Week 2
Tag: Vol. 20 No. 1
Issue of Oct. 18 – 24, 1990
Posted inArts & Culture
Music People: Remains Theatre’s preplay players
“Hi. We’re the House Band Remains. We write songs about plays,” says Lloyd King brightly. He’s standing on the stage at Remains Theatre, managing to look not quite out of place. Behind him is the rest of the four-man aggregation, which plays a fluid blend of tarted-up jazz and dressed-down rock. King is the band’s […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
The Bears are once again proof of the continual pop-culture significance of sports. Many players remain from the 1985 world-championship team, but the Bears’ overall personality is completely different. The mid-80s were an urgent, ruthless, marauding time, and the Bears reflected that. With their quick outside linebackers, Otis Wilson and Wilber Marshall, tackling opponents the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Travel Incentive
Folding chairs are arranged in three neat semicircles around the tiny makeshift stage–a slightly raised platform with a jungle backdrop, all purple, green, brown, and gray tendrils, vines, and leaves. Big rocks have been painted onto two folding screens that are placed off to each side, and one suspiciously square boulder rests in lone splendor […]
Posted inMusic
Replacements–All Shook Down
ALL SHOOK DOWN Replacements Sire Records 926298-2 Paul Westerberg, sturdy and talented, burst into the record business with a snotty and loud foursome, the Replacements; he’s been trying to live it down ever since. The bashing and crashing have given way to sensitively constructed songs, and the band’s bad attitude has smoothed out into a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story Michael S. Doherty’s murder conviction was reversed in November by the Texas Court of Appeals because of his lawyer’s “ineffective assistance.” The two most serious errors came in courtroom conferences in which the lawyer, checking facts with his client, whispered loudly (within earshot of the jury), “You didn’t take all the money, right?” […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Aldo Goes to School
On a Tuesday Aldo DeAngelis, Republican candidate for Cook County Board president, visits DuSable High School at 4934 S. Wabash. He tells about 100 African American students who are crowded into a classroom and overflowing into the hall that by choosing to live in Cook County they pay 20 percent higher taxes than they would […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Stromboli
When a genuined aesthetic history of cinema is finally written–as opposed to industry and entertainment histories–the five films Roberto Rossellini made with Ingrid Bergman between 1949 and 1956 should rank high in importance. It is not simply that his daring plotless scenes helped shape the explorations of the inner lives of characters in the films […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Baker’s Wife/Fiddler on the Roof
THE BAKER’S WIFE Apple Tree Theatre FIDDLER ON THE ROOF Candlelight Dinner Playhouse If one consistent element runs through the work of musical-comedy librettist Joseph Stein, it’s an interest in common people living in close-knit communities. His scripts for such musicals as Plain and Fancy, Take Me Along, Zorba, and Fiddler on the Roof focus […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sid Caesar & Imogene Coca Together Again
SID CAESAR & IMOGENE COCA TOGETHER AGAIN at the Briar Street Theatre On the night I saw Together Again, Sid Caesar had his pink shirt open down to there. He was tanned, he was slim, he wore a gold chain around his neck, and the monogram on his shirt read “Sid.” It was a sort […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Independent Bookstores Still Standing–and Expanding/Theater League Closing in on New Head/Civic Center Dance Show Will Go On/Dancing for Dollars
Pat Peterson of Barbara’s Bookstores: she survived the attack of the giant book chains.
Posted inArts & Culture
Trashvision!
TRASHVISION! BDI Theater Company at Chicago Actors Ensemble I happened to see “Trashvision!” on the same day I read of Douglas Edwards’s death. Edwards was the first network news anchor–he headed CBS’s national news broadcast from 1948 until he retired and was replaced by Walter Cronkite. The newspaper obituaries for Edwards carried comments about his […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Mr. Dudycz Goes for Washington
Straight-arrow cop, Vietnam vet, defender of the common people, flag nut: Does he have a prayer against the entrenched incumbent?
Posted inArts & Culture
Vampire Lesbians of Sodom/The Passion of Dracula
VAMPIRE LESBIANS OF SODOM Edge Productions at Royal George Theatre Center THE PASSION OF DRACULA KKT Productions at Talisman Theatre It’s simple enough: a person of the vampire persuasion gives you a hell of a hickey and slurps down your blood. Suddenly you’re not just dead, you’re undead, not to mention thirsty. You end up […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Female Futures
EMILY Goose Island Theatre at the Avenue Theatre HELLO, WE MUST BE CLOSING at Ruggles Cabaret It’s a jungle out there, all right. Wall Street, 1986, the high-stress world of stockbrokers: the men talk business and spectator sports, brag about their incomes and alma maters, complain about their wives and ex-wives, and drink, drink, drink. […]