Call it agit-prop if you like, or say "If you want to send a message use Western Union;" but if you're not inspired by Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty as performed by American Blues Theater, you must have ice water in your veins.

Kelly KleimanI really thought I could not bear to see another Cyrano. Edmund Rostand's verse drama about the nasally-challenged romantic is so terminally depressing that the only appropriate critical response to it is a good stiff drink.

If the test of success for a Stephen Sondheim show is whether you leave the theater in a state of utter despair about human relationships, then Porchlight Music Theatre's season-opening Putting It Together is the Platonic ideal of Sondheim shows.

My picks this week are from among the past year's worth of Equity productions, as I respond to the Jeff nominations that came out this week.

This weekend's Chicago Tribune travel section contained a piece about a trip to Spring Green, Wis.--and if the married reporters' capabilities are truly reflected in this piece, it's no wonder the paper is circling the drain.

Kelly KleimanIsn't theater supposed to disappear in August?

If my dueling partner Jonathan Abarbanel wants to throw down about public funding for the arts, I'm happy to oblige him.