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Posted inPerforming Arts Review

Good medicine

by Deanna Isaacs

This take on Gaetano Donizetti’s 1832 comic opera, L’elisir d’amore, is a two-act antidote for our COVID-plagued reality. Cleverly directed by Daniel Slater and beautifully designed by Robert Innes Hopkins, it’s another one-set production, but what a set! In contrast to Macbeth’s interminable gray, this Elixir transports us to a sunny resort hotel in colorful […]

Posted inPerforming Arts Feature

Jump back into the cultural stream

by Salem Collo-Julin, Irene Hsiao, Deanna Isaacs and Kerry Reid

Theaters, comedy clubs, museums, galleries, and other venues are blowing off the COVID-19 shutdown dust and preparing to welcome you back this fall. Many companies are picking up with productions that were cut short in March 2020, while others have world premieres up their sleeves. We suggest calling venues ahead of time or checking their […]

Posted inOn Culture

Fred Hampton is having a moment

by Deanna Isaacs

If you’ve seen Judas and the Black Messiah, the multiple-award-winning film about the 1969 murder of Illinois Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton, you’ve got a picture in your head of the 4:30 AM raid in which a drugged and sleeping Hampton was killed by a barrage of police bullets. The raid was carried out […]

Posted inCulture

Ravinia opens its Music Box

by Deanna Isaacs

Here’s one way to think about the Ravinia Music Box, the new, high-tech attraction that debuted this month in its own building on the festival grounds: it takes the legendary music venue back to its earliest days. In 1904, when Ravinia first opened, it was an amusement park, intended to drum up passengers for a […]