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Hedy Weiss biography

Hedy Weiss has been Theater and Dance Critic of the Chicago Sun-Times since 1984, reporting on local, national and international productions, as well as a …

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  • Role a challenge, but actor at one with Freud

    In Mark St. Germain’s play, “Freud’s Last Session,” now at the Mercury Theater, Sigmund Freud, the grand master of psychoanalysis is 83 years old and just weeks away from dying of oral cancer. Mike Nussbaum, who has just assumed the role of Freud in this …Read More

    • ‘Jamaica, Farewell’ a glorious journey for playwright and audience alike

    The stage of the Chopin Theatre is bare, aside from a large steamer trunk and a few stacks of old suitcases. But have no fear. Jamaican-bred, Los Angeles-based actress Debra Ehrhardt is a storyteller who can fill up empty space with the sheer power of …

    ‘My Kind of Town’ takes theatrical look at Chicago’s brutal police scandal

    John Conroy would be the first to admit that for more than two decades he has been a man in the throes of a serious obsession. The object of his obsession is what is referred to in shorthand terms as Chicago’s “police torture scandal” — …

    Riveting play about Chicago police torture opens many areas of debate

    HEDY WEISS: Never preachy, John Conroy’s “My Kind of Town” shows all sides of the issue with vivid characters in hellish dilemmas.

    ‘Rain’ falls quite nicely on Circle Theatre’s season

    Australian writer Andrew Bovell’s strange, haunting play, “When the Rain Stops Falling” — now receiving a strongly acted Chicago premiere by Oak Park’s Circle Theatre — begins with a great downpour during which a huge, silvery fish seems to drop from the sky, landing with …

    Starry companies and community ‘Bolero’ set for Chicago Dancing Festival

    This summer will mark the arrival of the 6th annual Chicago Dancing Festival — the weeklong summertime celebration that showcases world class companies from Chicago and beyond, and fills the Harris Theater, Auditorium Theatre, Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre and the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in …

    ‘Kin’ a family affair that’s quite complex

    ‘Kin,” the title of London-born, New York-based playwright Bathsheba Doran’s play — seen Off Broadway last year and now receiving an impressively acted Chicago debut by Griffin Theatre — may seem simple enough to define. But check for precise definitions via both Wikipedia (which thoughtfully …

    Jonathan Larson’s ‘Tick Tick... Boom’ gets fine staging at Porchlight

    Writer-composer Jonathan Larson seemed to have sensed something about his premature mortality well before he died of an undiagnosed heart abnormality in 1996 at the age of 35. And in fully tragic but theatrical fashion, his sudden death came the very day before “Rent” — …

    ‘Timon of Athens’ a timely portrait at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

    HEDY WEISS: Ian McDiarmid of the “Star Wars” films brings swagger to the speculator who finds his friendships short-lived.

    Nathan Lane excels in Goodman’s gorgeously dark ‘Iceman Cometh’

    HEDY WEISS: Director Robert Falls’ investment in Eugene O’Neill pays off in a simply brilliant production co-starring Brian Dennehy.

    Designing Woman — Mara Blumenfeld nabs 2012 Merritt Award

    When I caught up with costume designer Mara Blumenfeld last week, she was in New York, shopping for fabrics for several upcoming productions, including a grand-scale mounting by Gary Griffin of the Disney musical “Aladdin,” set to open July 5 at the 11,000-seat Muny amphitheater …

    Chicago’s Jessie Mueller and “Clybourne Park” up for Tonys

    HEDY WEISS: Jessie Mueller, a veteran of local stages, is nominated for her Broadway debut opposite Harry Connick Jr. in the short-lived revival of “On a Clear Day You Can See Forever.”

    Theater on the Lake celebrates 60th season

    Chicago’s enduring summer theater festival, Theater on the Lake, housed in the building at Fullerton Avenue and Lake Shore Drive, is gearing up to celebrate its 60th season. Not only has its new co-artistic curators (Michael Patrick Thornton, artistic director and co-founder of The Gift …

    Deanna Dunagan settles in for the ‘Night’

    Texas-bred, Chicago-based actress Deanna Dunagan won a Tony Award for playing Violet Weston, the pill-popping, rapier-tongued, cancer-wracked Oklahoma mother of three adult daughters in Tracy Letts’ “August: Osage County.” But now, in the Writers’ Theatre revival of Stephen Sondheim’s “A Little Night Music,” set in …

    ‘The Iceman Cometh’— and he brings Brian Dennehy and Nathan Lane with him

    Last fall I became totally hooked on an NPR audio documentary by David Isay titled, “The Sunshine Hotel.” It told the story of men from surprisingly varied backgrounds who had ended up living in one of the last flophouses in the Bowery, New York’s fabled …

    ‘Sixty Miles’ a journey worth taking at Collaboraction

    ‘I so much wish you weren’t my dad,” mumbles 16-year-old Denny (the excellent, ideally boyish Ethan Dubin), a cute but gangly soccer-playing kid, and child of a divorce, who is driving with his father, Ky (Sean Bolger) from his mom’s home in Los Angeles, to …

    A critic’s look at 1990’s ‘Iceman Cometh’

    The following is an excerpt from Sun-Times Theater Critic Hedy Weiss’ 1990 review of the Robert Falls-directed revival of “The Iceman Cometh,” which starred Brian Dennehy as Hickey. “The first major Chicago revival of O’Neill’s 1939 play since the original national tour came to the …

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