THE CHRISTMAS ALBUM Keith Emerson Emerson Records: Keith CD 1 One of the great annoyances of the holiday season is the large amount of horrendous Christmas music that pops up on store shelves for a few weeks. Mercifully, it all disappears after the New Year. Just about everybody has recorded some sort of Christmas album, […]
Tag: Vol. 19 No. 9
Issue of Dec. 14 – 20, 1989
Posted inArts & Culture
Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser
The core of Charlotte Zwerin’s exciting if vexing documentary about the great jazz pianist and composer–brought to us through the courtesy of Clint Eastwood as executive producer–is drawn from 14 hours of footage of Monk, in performance and offstage, shot by Michael and Christian Blackwood over six months in 1968. The musical value of this […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Fun Times: Milly’s Orchid Show turns two
What this town needs is a good variety show, thought performance artist Brigid Murphy. And next week Murphy celebrates the two-year anniversary of her own rowdy and raucous, intelligent and provocative Milly’s Orchid Show. After studying choreography and performance art at Columbia College, Murphy was tempted to move to New York City. “I was tired […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
When John Terborgh was a child his family lived in the country near Washington, D.C. Their house stood on two acres of abandoned farmland fronting a dirt road that dead-ended two doors down. Behind the house, a path meandered through almost a mile of woodland, crossing a quiet stream along the way. The woods shaped […]
Posted inArts & Culture
84, Charing Cross Road/Arden
84, CHARING CROSS ROAD Northlight Theatre Can a story about a book buyer and a bookseller who become pen pals but never meet send much of an emotional charge? Yes. In its quiet, inferential way, Northlight Theatre’s production of 84, Charing Cross Road strikes resonant chords of loss, regret, and happiness remembered. Though only occasionally […]
Posted inMusic
Deromanticizing Schubert
THE CITY MUSICK at Saint Thomas the Apostle Church November 18 HIS MAJESTIE’S CLERKES at Saint Procopius Abbey December 10 When Academy of Ancient Music founder Christopher Hogwood began performing and recording Mozart symphonies on period instruments in the early 70s, the music community at large thought he had gone crazy. Baroque music on period […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Henry V
Kenneth Branagh’s superb version of the Shakespeare play, which he directed and adapted as well as stars in, presents a distinctly different view of this work from Laurence Olivier’s 1945 movie. While the earlier film, made during the war, was intended to whip up patriotic sentiment, Branagh’s version has a much darker view of England’s […]
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Cowardly Custard–A Noel Coward Encore
COWARDY CUSTARD–A NOEL COWARD ENCORE Body Politic Theatre at Ruggles Cabaret Actor, playwright, poet, tunesmith, director, producer, media star, world-weary bon vivant–Noel Coward did everything with an ease that belied his great gifts. He wrote Private Lives in only four days, and such productivity was not a rare thing for him. When he died, he […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Hispanic allies turn antagonists over a key state senate seat
Reporters throughout the city flocked to the near northwest side’s 26th Ward in 1986 to cover the raucous special aldermanic election between independent Luis Gutierrez and machine-backed Manuel Torres, a contest that ultimately ended Chicago’s famous Council Wars by handing control of City Council to Mayor Harold Washington. Most reporters ignored a simultaneous legislative election. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Nutcracker
THE NUTCRACKER at Arie Crown Theatre December 8-30 It’s sort of funny–if one stops to think of it–that The Nutcracker should be a treasured all-American Christmas entertainment for the entire family. Based on a story by E.T.A. Hoffmann, a well-known 19th-century German writer, and composed by a Russian for the edification of the czar and […]
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A Nice Place to Visit, but Harvey Plotnick Doesn’t Want to Stay There; Can Park West Bring Back the Beautiful People; Will “Noises Off” Close Due to Excess Profits?; Art of Africa; A New Restaurant Checks In at the Belmont Ho
Producers Michael Leavitt and Wes Payne may have to close their hit Noises Off come February. Byron Schaffer of the Theatre Building is tired of “subsidizing” their success.
Posted inArts & Culture
How to Read a Dancer
A LITTLE PERSONALITY Sentience at Link’s Hall December 9 Sentience’s A Little Personality offers a lighthearted, personable, positively painless introduction to dance. If you sought a performance filled with finely finished and meticulously crafted work, you probably would have been disappointed by the barely structured dances and marginally successful improvisations on the program. But if […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story According to the recent book White Man, Black War, Rhodesian military officers once tortured a black guerrilla by forcing him to listen continuously to a John Denver record played at high volume. Least-Competent People William Sibila, 34, was killed in September when he fell 35 feet onto a cement landing while trying to […]