Three Columbia College Chicago Theatre alums were singled out by the Chicago Tribune for its “Best of 2025” salute to the “Top 10 Performances on Chicago Stages This Year.” In the article, published December 26, 2025, Tribune theatre critic Chris Jones highlighted Columbia College alums Caroline Neff ’07, Anne Trodden ’09, and Ryan Hake ’14, all graduates of the Theatre program’s BA Program in Acting.

Hake and Trodden were selected for their work in Invictus Theatre’s acclaimed production of Tony Kushner‘s landmark drama Angels in America, which ran June 13 through September 21 at Chicago’s Windy City Playhouse. Jones, noting that “Chicago theater justly is famed for the quality of its actors,” praised Hake’s “rich and empathetic portrait” of Prior Walter, the play’s central character, as well as Trodden’s “magnificent” portrayal of the supporting role of Harper Pitt. “This was a multi-faceted deep dive, right up there with the very best Harpers in the various stage and film versions of this show, but also recognizably Chicago-style in its frankness, intimacy and gutsy determination,” Jones wrote of Trodden’s performance.

Jones also honored Caroline Neff for her work in the drama Mr. Wolf, which ran September 11 through November 2 at Chicago’s internationally lauded Steppenwolf Theatre, where Neff is an ensemble member. “Playwright Rajiv Joseph’s play is centered on two now-divorced parents whose child was first abducted and then, years later, returned to them,” wrote Jones. “But Neff, a longtime Chicago star, played the stepmother of the kid, meaning that her character not only had to navigate the grief of the situation with the husband but the question of what she actually had the right to feel. Neff showed us a cascade of emotions, from love to jealousy and back again, and took us inside the woman’s head. . . . Fans of Neff saw her work in a more minimalist and controlled style — but, as ever, every moment felt authentic.”

In a separate article published December 29, the Tribune‘s Jones cited his choices for the top 10 Broadway shows of 2025, including two directed by former Columbia College Theatre student and faculty member and Columbia College Honorary Degree recipient David Cromer HDR ’17: the musical Dead Outlaw and the drama Good Night, and Good Luck. Jones described Dead Oulaw as an “iconoclastic, sardonic, . . . delightful entry from the anti-sentimentalist team” of composer David Yazbek, playwright Itamar Moses, and director Cromer, who previously collaborated on the 2018 hit The Band’s Visit, for which Cromer won the 2018 Tony Award for Best Direction of a Musical.

Good Night, and Good Luck, which starred George Clooney as groundbreaking TV newsman Edward R. Murrow, was described by Jones as “a loving portrait of the center-left newsrooms of old, a time when America listened as one and trusted the integrity of its broadcasters.” As previously reported in this blog, Good Night, and Good Luck made history by becoming the highest-grossing play in the annals of Broadway and the first Broadway play to be broadcast live in performance for free on TV (it aired June 7 on CNN).