Richard Christiansen

When Mike Todd, not a producer known for bringing classics to the masses, brought a streamlined version of "Hamlet" to Broadway in the 1940s, he said, "I'll be the only...

Eight years, hundreds of hours of research and several staged readings after he first read a biography of Simone de Beauvoir, playwright John Susman is about to see a full...

In the hard-pressed world of not-for-profit arts institutions, there is no more sacred goal than "diversity." Repeated like a mantra at meetings and conventions, "diversity" has become a code word...

Film Two classic American films noir have been re-released this week: Billy Wilder's masterly 1950 Hollywood expose "Sunset Boulevard" and the Coen Brothers' hellacious debut thriller "Blood Simple." Both of...

Outside the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, stands a very large object called "Puppy." It's about four stories high, its green and color-flecked exterior shaped through hundreds of flowering plants...

`Don't say I'm back. It makes me crazy when people say that. I've never been away. Step by step, I've been quietly dealing with everything for the next stage in...

Theater Richard M. Nixon and Henry Kissinger, otherwise known as the actors Larry Yando and William Brown, are back this summer for an encore staging of their two-man show, "Nixon's...

Jazz Various Chicago radio stations devote at least a few hours a day to jazz, all of it welcome. But none has programmed the music as consistently as WBEE-AM 1570,...

Excerpts from a vacationing critic's notebook: In Berlin, getting my ticket to see the stage musical "Der Glockner von Notre Dame," I ask if there are English supertitles. "No," says...

Rock After helping make possible the once-exciting prospect of "alternative-rock," Sonic Youth briefly flirted in the early '90s with wider acceptance and more conventional song forms. But the 20-year-old quartet...