To the editors: Psychopoetica is not without flaws in its documentation of human fears (Where is a poem about being afraid of catching AIDS? Now that’s scary) but any show which tries to cover such a huge subject in such a short time is doomed from the beginning. Still, some things about Achy Obejas’ review […]
Tag: Vol. 17 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 23 – 29, 1988
Posted inNews & Politics
On the Broadway
You never know who’s going to get on the 36 Broadway bus. I remember riding it late one night when it stopped at Broadway and Wilson to pick up a lone woman. She had a hard time getting on. Once aboard, obviously drunk, she pulled out a gun and pointed it at the bus’s ceiling. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Zotti’s Taste
To the editors: Who is this chap Ed Zotti, and what qualifies him to hand out the gold medal in the Chicago Public Library design competition? (Reader, June 10.) Zotti seems to know his technical details well. He is sadly lacking though in taste, and shows a conspicuous dislike for daring and innovative design. Zotti’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Macondo
MACONDO Dreiske Performance Company at the Ivanhoe Theater Nicole Dreiske bills herself as “internationally recognized as a major force in 20th-century theatre and education.” She also claims to have directed, taught, and/or toured her productions at either 200 or 500 (her accounts of her accomplishments conflict on this point) theaters and universities across the globe. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Jazz Notes: a rock drummer changes his pattern
“I’m moving in the wrong direction,” laughs veteran drummer Bill Bruford; “we’ve all heard of jazz musicians going rock to make money, but a rock musician going jazz?” As former drummer-laureate for such mega-progressive rock groups as Yes, King Crimson, and Genesis, Bruford sees his recent excursion into jazz with his new quartet, “Bill Bruford’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Women on Top
PAL JOEY Goodman Theatre When Pal Joey opened on Broadway in 1940, it was a controversial breakthrough: not only because of the show’s adult tone and seamy subject matter, but because (in the words of New York Herald-Tribune critic Richard Watts Jr.) it was “the only Broadway girl-and-music show I can recall in which the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Barbara Cook
When Barbara Cook was in Chicago earlier this year, she was anticipating a return to Broadway in a new musical. Well, Carrie has come and gone–Cook starred as the telekinetic teenager’s Bible-thumping mama in the ill-fated show’s English premiere, but dropped out before it opened in New York (where it became the costliest failure in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Poetry of Blood and Guts
Todd Moore’s Epic on the Life and Times of John Dillinger
Posted inFilm
When Worlds Collide
WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT **** (Masterpiece) Directed by Robert Zemeckis Written by Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman With Bob Hoskins, Joanna Cassidy, Christopher Lloyd, Stubby Kaye, Alan Tilvern, and the voices of Charles Fleischer and Kathleen Turner. Imagine, if you can, that the characters who appear in animated cartoons actually exist. A repressed minority and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Dance Against Darkness
A DANCE AGAINST DARKNESS Afternoon Fine Arts League at Reflections Theatre The AIDS epidemic was rather late in hitting Chicago in full force, compared to its impact on other major cities–the result, mainly, of this not being an international seaport. Chicagoans were hearing about AIDS, both in the news and through creative arts efforts, before […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Bobbie Raymond and her Housing Center: Would Oak Park have made it without them?
Bobbie Raymond claims she saved Oak Park. She may be right. She is a woman with a determined mien, a healthy ego, and gradually graying blond hair that she still wears long and straight, in the manner of a late-60s folksinger or grad student. The Oak Park Housing Center is her baby. With a small […]
Posted inArts & Culture
High Season
Clare Peploe’s accomplished and intelligent first feature is a sunny tale of expatriates set on the Greek island of Rhodes, with a cast of characters and a set of crisscrossing destinies that occasionally suggest Graham Greene in one of his happier moods. The people include a talented professional photographer (Jacqueline Bisset) faced with the possibility […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Annals of Crime: Chicagoans Steal “Improv”!; Self-Made Media Critic
Annals of Crime: Chicagoans Steal “Improv”! Some guy named Budd Friedman out on the coast is trying to muscle in on Chicago theater. He must think there’s not an ounce of fight in us. About 25 years ago, Friedman opened a club in New York called the Improv. Now Friedman’s based in LA, where he […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Nebraska
NEBRASKA Bailiwick Repertory I recently interviewed an evangelical preacher who has founded an extremely successful church near Chicago. Every weekend 12,000 people flock to hear him speak, and 4,000 return for the Wednesday night service. His church’s budget is balanced by more than $7 million in contributions from the congregation. There’s talk of doubling the […]