Dmitry Samarov, author at Chicago Reader

a white man with a pompadour and red tinted sunglasses sings at a mike

Review: Personality Crisis: One Night Only

by Dmitry Samarov April 24, 2023May 1, 2023

What raises this above the typical nostalgia-logged music doc is the clear sense that Johansen is not reliving his long discography onstage but continuing to live it in that moment.

Two men are shown onstage, tied up together with rope while sitting on chairs. The man on the left is Black and wears green fatigue pants, a brown T-shirt, a long white shirt, and boots. The man on the right is white and wears tan fatigues, boots, and a blue work shirt.

Theater Review

Army tales

by Dmitry Samarov April 15, 2023April 15, 2023

Jonah Saesan and LanDis Frederick are veterans of two different branches of the U.S. armed forces. After being discharged in 2015, they started processing their experiences in the military through sketch comedy, which has culminated in their first two-person show. Lasting 60 minutes, the program covers topics such as the difficulty of forming meaningful friendships […]

four people look at large floor-to-ceiling paintings

Film

Review: Hilma

by Dmitry Samarov April 14, 2023April 14, 2023

Watch the excellent 2019 documentary Beyond the Visible: Hilma af Klint, or better yet, just look at the paintings.

The book cover is read and shows a black and white image of a woman's face with an X through it. The order of the face is rearranged in the X, so she appears disjointed.

Arts & Culture

Unraveling X

by Dmitry Samarov April 11, 2023April 18, 2023

What if you fall in love with a monster who engulfs your entire world then dies? You’re bound to have questions, and, if you’re a writer, or just a certain type of obsessive, you’ll turn over every rock and upset every applecart looking for answers. In Catherine Lacey’s immersive new novel, Biography of X, a […]

a blond boy in a red shirt holds his hand to his forehead

Film

Review: The Worst Ones

by Dmitry Samarov April 7, 2023April 6, 2023

The line between fact and fiction always blurs when a camera is pointed at people, but in Lisa Akoka and Romane Gueret’s arresting new feature, it’s more like a game of three-card monte.

The 1932 book is shown opened to an ocean scene, popping up in the center are the characters standing in the mouth of a giant fish.

Arts & Culture

Hands-on reading

by Dmitry Samarov April 4, 2023April 18, 2023

The act of reading is rarely just a simple matter of decoding text, but as this diverting exhibition demonstrates, book designers have been augmenting blocks of words with fold-out extensions, rotating dials, opening doorways, and 3D elements for almost as long as there’s been a printing press. Composed of objects from the Newberry Library’s own […]

Arts & Culture

The Girls shows Chicago, warts and all

by Dmitry Samarov March 27, 2023March 29, 2023

What can a book about three generations of unmarried women in Chicago, set between the Civil War and World War I, originally published over 100 years ago and now out in a new edition by Belt Publishing, have to say to a contemporary resident of our city? Quite a bit, as it turns out. Its […]

Four people sit on orange rolling office chairs. They are wearing a mix of "professional" clothing (jackets and ties) with shorts. At the far left, the person in the chair holds a cement block. The next person to the right is beating against a suitcase with a drumstick. The two people toward the right of the photo are staring ahead, looking a little disgruntled

Theater Review

Fire sale

by Dmitry Samarov March 23, 2023March 23, 2023

What does material success look like to young people in 2023? Is it possible to attain the lifestyle they see in 80s TV shows? Is that something to aspire to? A talented Neo-Futurist troupe takes on capitalism, parents’ expectations, their own hopes and dreams, and whether it’s even possible to just get by in this […]

Film

Review: Inside

by Dmitry Samarov March 17, 2023March 17, 2023

An art thief breaks into a New York City penthouse and is unable to get back out.

two people sit on a printed couch in a messy room with a yellow-green wall

Film

Review: Art Talent Show

by Dmitry Samarov March 9, 2023March 9, 2023

This funny, thoughtful, verité look at the yearly selection process in Prague’s Academy of Fine Arts manages to pack insights about education, societal shifts, and intellectual differences without getting bogged down in culture war cliches.

a white woman in pink hides from a bear behind a tree

Film

Review: Cocaine Bear

by Dmitry Samarov March 2, 2023March 7, 2023

A smuggler dumps duffle bags full of cocaine into a forest before plunging to his death, and a 150-pound bear gets into the drug packets and dies. Great plot for a comedy, right?

Four people stand in a row onstage. A woman in a striped sweater and glasses is on the left. A woman in a green sweater is next to her on the right. The next woman is wearing a gray sweater and a red knit cap, clutching an old manual typewriter to her chest. A bald man stands at the right. The first two women and the man are all touching the woman in the red cap, as if asking her for something.

Theater Review

When a chair is a springboard

by Dmitry Samarov February 9, 2023February 9, 2023

Appropriation, wordplay, riffs on news headlines, improv skits, and a grab bag of absurdist tropes get thrown in a hat to very uneven ends in Curious Theatre Branch’s set of four half-hour plays responding to Caryl Churchill’s This Is a Chair. This Is Not a ChurchillThrough 2/25: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Facility Theatre, 1138 N. California, […]

Two people kneel onstage facing each other. The person on the right is holding a microphone. The one on the left wears a fur vest. The one on the right is entirely in black.

Theater Review

Viking rock

by Dmitry Samarov January 27, 2023January 26, 2023

In a world . . . where Norse mythology meets prog rock on a set seemingly built by precocious middle-schoolers, brothers Jorik and Jarl battle one another and several deities (best known to modern audiences via the Marvel Universe) to wear the crown of their kingdom. Songs are sung, seas traversed, swords crossed, and evil […]

Seven actors of various genders and ethnicities stand in a row. They are all wearing brightly colored extravagant clothing, except for a figure in the middle in plain earth tones, who is standing behind an empty picture frame with a cartoon version of a dollar bill shoved in their mouth.

Theater Review

The backstabbers

by Dmitry Samarov January 18, 2023January 23, 2023

In Witold Gombrowicz’s fictional kingdom of Burgundia, the royal court is bored. One day Prince Phillip (Keith Surney) and his consort, Simon (Gus Thomas) happen upon Ivona (Laura Nelson), a cowering and often mute peasant girl. Having nothing better to do and looking to outrage his family and friends, the prince announces that Ivona will […]

A black helmet mask, with four horn-like protrusions pointing up, and a headband and teeth below.

Arts & Culture

Reckoning with life

by Dmitry Samarov January 18, 2023January 12, 2023

I rarely read wall labels in art exhibitions as I find the verbiage gets in the way of my experience. My goal is to have a one-on-one reckoning with what I’m looking at without someone else’s words confusing or directing my reaction. The curators of this survey of some 250 sculptures, masks, and ornaments from […]