CHICAGO – YIPPIE! It’s back, in the neighborhood of its roots. YippieFest 2023 will be August 4th-6th in the Lakeview/Buena Park venue of PRIDE ARTS, 4139 North Broadway in Chicago. The space is less than a half mile from the former Mary-Arrchie Theatre, whose “Abbie Hoffman Festival” was the template for the three-day performance celebration. YippieFest currently has slots for theater acts, including one-act plays, monologue, sketch, improv, vaudeville and other stage performance arts. Artists get free admission to the rest of the festival, so click YiPPIE FEST 2023 to sign up.
On-Air Film Review: Deliver a Letter! Review of ‘Dear Evan Hansen’



CHICAGO – Patrick McDonald of HollywoodChicago.com appears on “The Morning Mess” with Scott Thompson on WBGR-FM (Monroe, Wisconsin) on September 23rd, 2021, reviewing the new movie musical “Dear Evan Hansen” – featuring Ben Platt in the title role – in theaters beginning September 24th.
![]() Rating: 3.5/5.0 |
Ben Platt reprises his stage role as the title character, a high school senior whose social anxiety yields few friendships. His therapist has recommended writing letters to himself as a coping mechanism, but a strange boy named Connor (Colton Ryan) steals one of the letters, and later it’s found on him when he commits suicide. Connor’s distraught family (Amy Adams as Mom, Danny Pino as Dad, Kaitlyn Dever as daughter Zoe) takes Evan under their wing, and Evan even makes up a false friendship with Connor to soothe their grief. The fake relationship between Evan and Connor gets out of hand, and soon the whole world will know.


Dear Evan Hansen
Photo credit: Universal Pictures
