Kerry Reid (she/her) has been the theater and dance editor at the Chicago Reader since 2019.
Graduating from Columbia College in 1987, she worked with several off-Loop theater companies before beginning her arts journalism career by writing pro bono for Streetwise.
She spent most of the 90s in San Francisco, writing about theater for Backstage West and the East Bay Express, among other publications, and returned to Chicago in 2000.
Reid was a freelance critic for the Chicago Tribune for 17 years, and has also contributed to several other publications, including Windy City Times, Chicago Magazine, Playbill, American Theatre, and the Village Voice.
She taught reviewing and arts journalism at Columbia and is currently adjunct faculty at the Theatre School at DePaul University.
In a past life, Reid also wrote about ten plays or performance pieces. She is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and the recipient of two 2020 Lisagor Awards.
Reid lives in Rogers Park. She speaks English and is reachable at [email protected].
This 1966 parody of 1930s Busby Berkeley–style movie musicals is so sweet and light it makes Mel Brooks’s parodies look profound. The story is pure Hollywood fluff—bright-eyed girl from the sticks (in this case Utah) comes to bad old New York, New York, to make it on Broadway. And she does, after a few predictable twists. The tunes (book and lyrics by George Haimsohn and Robin Miller, music by Jim Wise) are clever send-ups of 1920s and 1930s tunes (“That Mister Man of Mine” for “The Man I Love,” “Good Times Are Here to Stay” for “Happy Days Are Here Again,” and so on). No wonder this show continues to be produced 58 years after it opened off-off-Broadway at the legendary Caffe Cino (with subsequent, noteworthy off-Broadway and Broadway productions).
Dames at Sea Through 12/15: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM; also Wed 11/27 and 12/11 1 PM; no shows Thu 11/28 and 12/12; Citadel Theatre, 300 S. Waukegan, Lake Forest, 847-735-8554, ext. 1, citadeltheatre.org, $45
Not all of the charm of Dames at Sea is apparent in Citadel Theatre’s unevenly cast, unpolished production. Some of the performances are great. Ciara Jarvis plays Mona, the show’s B-word diva, with just the right dash of Barbara Stanwyck hardness. Melody Rowland shines and shines as the Ruby Keeler-ish new kid on the block (named Ruby, in fact), just a stage mishap away from “going out there a kid and coming back a star.” But too many of the supporting performers lack Jarvis and Rowland’s energy, comic timing, and stage presence to make this show soar. It is thrilling that director and choreographer Gregg Dennhardt was able to fill the show with so many fabulous top dancers. Too bad parodies can’t live on tap alone.
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Reader reviews of Chicago theater, dance, comedy, and performance arts.
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America’s tragedy, onstage at Lyric Opera
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Every Brilliant Thing offers some quiet respite at Writers Theatre.
When I saw the national tour of Falsettos five years ago, I struggled to connect with the material. The complex family dynamics, quirky humor, and fast-paced lyrics of William Finn and James Lapine’s sung-through musical simply didn’t translate across the depths of the Nederlander Theatre.
Fortunately, I had a much better experience at Court Theatre’s new revival, coproduced with TimeLine Theatre Company and directed by Nick Bowling. In a smaller space, the seven characters are vibrant, funny, and touching in this tale about found family, coming out, coming of age, and the AIDS epidemic.
Falsettos Through 12/8: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM; no shows Wed-Thu 11/27-11/28; ASL interpretation Sat 12/7 2 PM; Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $15-$93.50
Originally written as two separate one-act musicals (1981’s March of the Falsettos and 1990’s Falsettoland), the full-length version of Falsettos premiered in 1992. In the first act, a Jewish family in 1979 New York City navigates its newly blended status. Middle-aged patriarch Marvin (Stephen Schellhardt) has left his marriage for a younger man, Whizzer (Jack Ball), and is trying to maintain a relationship with his preteen son, Jason (Charlie Long on opening night), and stay on cordial terms with his ex-wife, Trina (Sarah Bockel).
Further complicating matters—not to mention blurring professional ethics—Mendel (Jackson Evans), the psychiatrist who treats the entire family, soon marries Trina. The second act picks up two years later and introduces their friendly lesbian neighbors, Dr. Charlotte (Sharriese Hamilton) and Cordelia (Elizabeth Stenholt), while the comedic plot takes a somber turn. With music direction by recent Northwestern graduate Otto Vogel and movement direction by William Carlos Angulo, Bowling’s cast hits the right notes in this oddball of a tearjerker.
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Reader reviews of Chicago theater, dance, comedy, and performance arts.
America’s tragedy, onstage at Lyric Opera
Sweet Gwen Suite makes its company premiere alongside work by Aszure Barton, Lar Lubovitch, and Kyle Abraham.
Marriott’s White Christmas captures the seasonal spirit.
Sofa King Queer is a rousing pop-punk musical.
Pilot Island & Her Keepers tells a captivating tale about a real lighthouse.
Every Brilliant Thing offers some quiet respite at Writers Theatre.
Your Monster (based on writer-director Caroline Lindy’s 2019 short of the same name) follows Laura (Melissa Barrera), a sweet, soft-spoken woman whose blossoming relationship and career as an aspiring actress are devastated following a cancer diagnosis. Alone and at rock bottom, Laura forges an unlikely friendship with Monster (Tommy Dewey), the long-suffering creature living in her closet.
Alongside the likes of Lisa Frankenstein and Humanist Vampire Seeking Consenting Suicidal Person, Your Monster joins the ranks of 2024’s offbeat horror romantic comedies—taking the beats of the classic Beauty and the Beast story while updating it with a strange, screwball comedy-horror flare. Admittedly, of the three, Your Monster’s script is the least elegant, leaning heavily on familiar romantic tropes and opting for low-hanging comedic fruit.
But where Lindy’s script may be slightly lacking, Barrera and Dewey are a match made in heaven, with a simple yet undeniable opposites-attract, will-they-won’t-they dynamic that left this writer longing for a series following their domestic exploits. Barrera plays against type as the dorky doormat Laura, but between her full-throated performance and Matthew Simonelli’s clever costuming, she makes the perfect Belle to Dewey’s Beast.
And what a beast he is—even under decidedly caveman-esque monster makeup, Dewey imbues Monster with an easy devil-may-care charm; a wicked sense of humor; and a soft, endearing underbelly. The crowning jewel of his performance, a Shakespeare recitation performed at Laura’s request, is a breathtaking scene that leaves no doubt in the audiences’ mind what Laura sees in her Monster.
A strange yet intoxicating combination of musical theater, horror, romance, and comedy, Your Monster is a delightfully fluffy debut feature from Lindy, bolstered by a pair of perfectly matched turns from Barrera and Dewey. R, 103 min.
Wide release on VOD
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One of the most starkly obvious things that happens in relatively long movies is when you can tell the filmmaker has run out of ideas. This happens about halfway into the nearly three-hour The Seed of the Sacred Fig, directed by Mohammad Rasoulof. A film that begins with the kind of political urgency and nerve-racking paranoia of Costa-Gavras’s Z (1969)seems to run out of steam when Rasoulof ditches everything he’s built up as a penetrating look at the invasive political life in Iran and turns it into what I can only describe as a pared-down remake of The Shining (1980).
The first half remains fantastic. It seems almost deliberate that Rasoulof uses generally the same nomenclature when describing his central character Iman’s (Missagh Zareh) paranoia regarding government agents, political disruptors, and foreign entities that we hear from conspiracy theorists in our government. It’s always about spies, nefarious hackers, how everyone on Earth is out to get us. Rasoulof depicts homelife within the family in acute and expressive close quarters in ways that let you feel the sense of distrust begin to tear at each person, especially the children (Mahsa Rostami and Setareh Maleki), who feel helpless as their parents become their biggest skeptics. The turning point in the film, when Iman tells his family to pack their things because their information has been leaked by protestors, is where the film also unravels in several points. The deftness with which Rasoulof is able to make the leering and crushing pressures of the regime potent and tangible dissipates. It all goes silly from there—the father loses his mind, puts his family in danger, chases them through a remote farmhouse, and eventually runs them into a maze outside. The movie becomes as lost as its characters. PG-13, 168 min.
Screened at the Chicago International Film Festival, in limited release in theaters
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Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
Interior Chinatown takes an ambitious, meta approach to satire of racism and police procedurals.
Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
Alice Maio Mackay’s trans slasher film Carnage for Christmas is a satisfying holiday treat.
A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
During the blitzkrieg of World War II, many families sent their children to the countryside to be out of harm’s way from the ongoing attacks. In the new drama Blitz, nine-year-old George does not see it this way. Instead, he views his mother Rita’s protection as abandonment. Determined to reunite with her, George begins an epic journey to find his way back home, on his perilous quest meeting various people with varying intentions.
While several of the elements of the film are expertly crafted, the overall theme never quite comes to fruition.
The score from Hans Zimmer is exceptional, building anticipation and making the film feel grand and immersive. Director Steve McQueen utilizes creative shots and beautiful cinematography to tell the story of war and the people left at home to carry on. Saoirse Ronan, as usual, gives a solid performance as Rita, a loving mother and factory worker. Newcomer Elliott Heffernan is endearing as young George, and the tender chemistry between Heffernan and Ronan is a highlight.
However, the film never seems to find exactly what it wants to say. While many storylines introduce compelling characters or themes, they often end abruptly without a common thread. The story of a mixed Black boy and his single mother during wartime has great potential, but unfortunately, as a whole, the film doesn’t stand out among others exploring a similar experience. PG-13, 120 min.
Limited release in theaters, Apple TV+
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Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
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A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
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The tenderness of Payal Kapadia’s latest film is rare to see, not only in Indian cinema of late but in general. Often, recently, the concepts of romance, sex, longing, and loss are accompanied by either a pandering level of condescension for the characters or a deep focus on trauma that bypasses emotion for tawdry symbolism. The aim is often to manipulate the audience into a sense of pity or attraction for the character, rather than letting the characters feel deeply for each other. This movie, with its gentle jazz-piano score by Topshe, its soft sound design that turns the cacophony of Mumbai into a lo-fi free-jazz rhythm, and its concentration on its characters’ skin—the warmth, the wetness, the softness—portrays the intense swirl of everything that surrounds love and belonging in few words. Its subtlety never feels embarrassed about being melodramatic. The poetic overlays and the direct obvious questions that Anu (Divya Prabha) asks her boyfriend Shiaz (Hridhu Haroon), like “Do you ever think about the future?,” are modes of melodrama that slip perfectly into place in the film’s quietness. The forbidden love of a Hindu girl and a Muslim boy refreshingly soars above its political implications. A filmmaker who values meaning over feeling could have easily turned this into a “state of the nation” address, but Kapadia’s eye for the gestures and smirks and tender looks that define burgeoning love rings louder than any pointed commentary that could’ve accompanied it. Prabha and costar Kani Kusruti perfectly embody their disparate experiences with love. Chhaya Kadam’s performance as the easygoing Parvaty is the sturdy bridge that joins them. 118 min.
Gene Siskel Film Center
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I was hoping that Red One director Jake Kasdan might do for the soulless, overstuffed, CGI-driven Christmas movie (I’m looking at you, 2000’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas) what he did for the tortured-artist biopic with Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story (2007). Instead, Red One answers the question: What if there were a Fast and Furious Christmas movie?
Chris Morgan, who wrote seven entries in the unbrakeable franchise, fills Red One with car chases and CGI fight scenes galore, plus of course heavy-handed talk about family. There is also gratuitous profanity that is as killing to the holiday spirit as the human behavior that has disillusioned Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), who means to retire after more than 500 years on the job as Santa Claus’s head of security. For the first time, he ruefully notes, there are more people on the naughty list than the nice list. But before Cal can make that proverbial last run with code-named Red One, Santa is kidnapped by Gryla (Kiernan Shipka), a shape-shifting witch out to punish the world’s naughty by encasing them in snow globes. Cal is forced to team up with Jack (Chris Evans), an amoral tracker who inadvertently opened the door for Santa’s abduction. Not believing in Santa as a child was his gateway to the naughty list. He is a degenerate gambler and a deadbeat and neglectful dad. “I’m not going to like you, am I?” Jack asks of Cal when they meet. Well, we know how that’s going to go.
With all its North Pole mayhem, Red One plays like a feature-length version of The Night the Reindeer Died, the Christmas movie spoof that kicked off Scrooged (1988). But that was satire, and Red One isn’t kidding. What keeps Red One from being a total, well, brown one is its collateral pleasures: J.K. Simmons’s uncynical and jacked Santa (you’ve got to be in shape for those yearly one-night treks around the world); the criminally underutilized Bonnie Hunt as his wife; Nick Kroll as a middleman in the whole kidnap-Santa plot; and Kristofer Hivju as Santa’s estranged brother Krampus, as fine a character creation as Davy Jones in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies, although a side trip to his castle pads the movie to its more than two-hour runtime. One fleeting moment that involves Cal’s disillusionment that he can no longer see naughty adults’ inner children did get me, and it makes one wish there were more such moments. This is a Christmas film, after all. PG-13, 123 min.
Wide release in theaters
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Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
Interior Chinatown takes an ambitious, meta approach to satire of racism and police procedurals.
Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
Alice Maio Mackay’s trans slasher film Carnage for Christmas is a satisfying holiday treat.
A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
Every franchise has to expand from one medium to another now; it’s the law. As such, after two movies and at least one more set to hit theaters in 2026, Dune now has a prequel TV series, Dune: Prophecy.
Set ten thousand years before the films, the show follows two Harkonnen sisters, Valya (Emily Watson) and Tula (Olivia Williams), who were instrumental in making the witchy sisterhood of the Bene Gesserit into the formidable group that shaped the events of their sci-fi world from the shadows. A group of powerful women who took an approach to molding the galaxy that was essentially very feminine, they are at once both inspirational and traditional, transcending stereotypes while adhering to them.
They fit the world which originated them like a glove, which gave us characters that adhered to tropes and used their familiarity to turn them inside out. There are no real heroes in Dune—there are merely characters we follow as their mostly good intentions make the galaxy a worse place. A series is the perfect place to expand on that, given Dune’s trademark slow place where worldbuilding is the true messiah.
Dune: Prophecy carries on this tradition, giving us complex, ruthless, at times bloodthirsty women who are devoted to making better leaders and training the young women in their still relatively new school of thought. Like us, they’re also grappling with the role AI should play in humanity (being more biased against it, having recently won a hard-fought victory against thinking machines set on enslaving humanity) and having to cope with a powerful threat to their lives and mission from the shadows.
As witches, royals, and those amassed around them each wrestle with ideals and hard choices, the show’s cerebral approach demands some patience and sticking with characters who prove to be the anti-heroines their onscreen foremothers could never have dreamed of playing, notably including an injection of sweaty spice that has nothing to do with Arrakis. For a mere six episodes, it might be too slow going and too much for those not invested in the original story, since it still seemed to have quite a bit left to unpack even in episode four. But what it does provide is an intriguing story where even the main characters give us anxiety for their seeming disposability. TV-MA, six hour-long episodes
Max
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Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
Interior Chinatown takes an ambitious, meta approach to satire of racism and police procedurals.
Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
Alice Maio Mackay’s trans slasher film Carnage for Christmas is a satisfying holiday treat.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
Clint Eastwood’s legal thriller Juror #2 is a compelling moral parable.
It was a terrible year for trans rights, but it was a great year for trans cinema. If that’s not a chilling reminder of media representation’s political limits, I’m not sure what is. But seeing a film in person encourages a sense of communion that streaming never will, and anything is possible when we’re able to see one another and grow bonds from shared passions that prove strong enough to change the world beyond, say, a movie theater. That’s why you should mark your calendar for Alice Maio Mackay’s Carnage for Christmas.
Mackay is a 20-year-old Australian filmmaker who makes horror movies for people who grew up watching Disney’s Shake It Up but are gay and take drugs now. Earlier this year, her campy, zombie–adjacent feature T-Blockers set the Internet ablaze with its parasite-hunting queer girl gang and generous use of bisexual lighting. Now she’s releasing a slasher movie that follows a trans true-crime podcaster as she returns home for the holidays, where there’s a murderer dressed as Santa on the loose. For my taste, the movie is a little too on the nose about who’s good and why; it’s all the tropes of a slasher movie satisfied by characters who feel like hollow representations of various factions of the digital culture wars. There’s no nuance or real elements of tension or surprise. But it’s fun in that it’s such obvious wish fulfillment—trans woman returns to small-minded hometown, is hotter and more successful than everyone else, saves the day because police are useless—that it goes down like a slice of holiday pie.
This time of year can be fraught for many of us in the LGBTQ+ community. (I myself am mostly estranged from my family and have not been back to my hometown in years.) We lean on chosen family to get us through—and maybe escapist fantasies too, like seeing a TERF murdered instead of the typical “woman who enjoyed sex too much.” Trans people can have some dead TERFs this year, as a treat. The screening will be presented by the film’s editor, Vera Drew, better known as director of The People’s Joker (2022), which will be screening at the Music Box Theatre on 35 mm two days following the local Carnage for Christmas screening. Drew will be kicking it off with her first annual Musical Christmas Remix Tribute to Blood and Sex. On Twitter, she promised her introduction would be “one of the most sacrilegious and erotic videos in the history of cinema.” Carnage for Christmas at Facets will be a night of Olive Garden proportions—a neverending pasta bowl of gay fan service—because when you’re at the trans movie screening, you’re family. 70 min.
Wide release on VOD, screening Thu 11/21, 9 PM, with film editor Vera Drew in attendance, Facets, 1517 W. Fullerton, $12 general admission, $10 Facets members and students, facets.org/programs/vera-drew-presents-carnage-for-christmas
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Our critics review the best on the big and small screens and in the media.
Interior Chinatown takes an ambitious, meta approach to satire of racism and police procedurals.
Wicked is a fantastic movie musical epic that hits all the right notes and stays true to its source material.
A new addition to the Dune franchise gives an intriguing perspective on vengeance, power, and humanity itself.
Payal Kapadia’s latest film finds a refreshing tenderness and subtlety in this story of burgeoning love.
Your Monster is a tropey but enjoyable horror rom-com with perfectly cast leads.
Clint Eastwood’s legal thriller Juror #2 is a compelling moral parable.
Chicago Reader staff writer Micco Caporale (they/them) is an award-winning journalist and Korn-fed midwesterner bouncing their way through basement shows, warehouse parties, and art galleries.
They’re interested in the material, social, and political circumstances that shape art and music and the subcultures associated with them.
Their writing has appeared in outlets such as Nylon, Pitchfork, Buzzfeed, In These Times, Yes! Magazine, and more.
When not nurturing their love affair with truth, beauty, and profanity, they can be found powerlifting.
Caporale lives in Chicago. They speak English and you can reach them at [email protected] and follow their work on Twitter.
