Bigger, Brighter, Louder: 150 Years of Chicago Theater as Seen by “Chicago Tribune” Theatre Critics by Chris Jones (review)

For someone whose introduction to theatre occurred by way of Chicago (and not the Great White Way), reading Chris Jones’s Bigger, Brighter, Louder: 150 Years of Chicago Theatre felt like a personally-guided tour of the city’s vibrant and contentious world of theatre. It also affirmed Chicago’s influence on American theatre history both on the stage and on the page while embracing the city’s “Second City syndrome” as an honor rather than a curse. With over fifteen years’ experience as a theatre critic for the Chicago Tribune, an arts writer for numerous national publications, and an educator at DePaul University, Jones is eminently qualified to craft this narrative, primarily comprised of Tribune theatre reviews and historical commentary. In his first book, Jones marries his voice as a theatre critic and theatre scholar, creating a work with the potential to reach a wide range of readers and appeal to theatre fans, historians, and educators.

Organized chronologically and without any chapter or topical divisions, Jones presents a collection of reviews, of which “many have not been republished or widely read, since their initial publication” and are “reprinted with the original headline and often with the original typographical errors” (3). Beginning with an anonymous report from an evening of theatre published six years after the paper’s founding in 1847, the 101 reviews selected by Jones form a “trajectory of Chicago and its theatre” (2), written by the paper’s most prominent theatre critics, including well-known personalities Peregine Pickle, Percy Hammond, Charles Collins, Cecil Smith, Claudia Cassidy, Williams Leonard, and Richard Christiansen; the reviews conclude with five from Jones (beginning with Steppenwolf’s August: Osage County in 2007 and concluding with the Goodman’s 2012 production of The Iceman Cometh). At first glance, these last few reviews appear self-serving, but the endnote following each reveals their purpose: the role Chicago played in moving each production from the “Second City” to Broadway. Despite this informative context, readers might have been better served with the inclusion of older, less accessible reviews and similar historic details.

Jones devotes a quarter of the book to the “golden age of theatre criticism at the Tribune” beginning with the spirited reviews of Claudia Cassidy (97). Known for her bravura style and relationships (some warm, some less so) and exchanges (some caustic, some less so) with theatre artists, such as Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, and Robert Emmett Keane, Cassidy covered performing arts in Chicago for over 20 years. The selections reflect her tenacity as a critic and an early example of the Tribune’s “eccentric” style (3). Selections written by William Leonard (Cassidy’s successor) signal the “future of Chicago theatre” and the paper’s coverage. Worth noting are Leonard’s piece written after attending the 1966 conference at the University of Chicago, “The Arts and the Public,” and his July 1967 season overview where he “struggles” with the ongoing debate about what constituted professional theatre (210-1). Another significant section of the book includes reviews from the “courteous, gentlemanly” critic, Richard Christiansen, beginning with Steppenwolf’s production of The Glass Menagerie in 1979 and concluding with the Goodman’s 2002 production of Long Day’s Journey into Night, his final review for the Tribune (272). Through these selections by Cassidy, Leonard, and Christiansen, Jones provides a narrative of the desire for a “native Chicago theatre” and what he later terms its “renaissance,” as well as the ideological and stylistic shifts of theatre critics who ushered in a new era (212).

As the selected reviews traverse time, Jones introduces the reader to some of the city’s most famous and infamous citizens from Jane Addams of Hull House and Maurice Brown of the Little Theatre to coverage of the Beulah Annan trial (the basis for the musical Chicago). He also reminds the reader of...