THE TOOTH OF CRIME Sterling Theatre at Cabaret Metro The Tooth of Crime should be considered one of Sam Shepard’s problem plays. Completed in 1972, this wildly imaginative rock-and-roll fantasy is so full of hip references and insider lingo that it can seem nearly impenetrable. Just trying to figure out that the line “Lush in […]
Tag: Vol. 20 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 20 – 26, 1991
Posted inNews & Politics
Consequences of War
To the editors: Some of us thought that the real consequences of the U.S. led destruction of Iraq would take time to become clear. We were way off on this. As Tom Johnson’s interview with Dr. Louise Cainkar [May 10] makes clear, the consequences of the Gulf War, at least for the Iraqi people, are […]
Posted inFilm
Hearing Voices
JUNGLE FEVER **** (Masterpiece) Directed and written by Spike Lee With Wesley Snipes, Annabella Sciorra, Spike Lee, Samuel L. Jackson, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Lonette McKee, John Turturro, Frank Vincent, and Anthony Quinn. Trusting to luck means listening to voices. –Jean-Luc Godard in the 1960s Compared to Do the Right Thing, Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Miss Vagina Pagaent/Mann Ist Mann
THE MISS VAGINA PAGEANT Metraform at the Annoyance Theatre MANN IST MANN at Urbus Orbis Faith and Jill Soloway have been getting national attention this past year as the “creators” of the Annoyance Theatre’s Real Live Brady Bunch, in which actual episodes of the early 70s sitcom have been transferred to the stage. I suspect […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Price of Perversion
To the editors: Reprints of “The Sins of the Fathers” [May 24] should be distributed to every Catholic and all benefactors of the Catholic Church. The audacity of the Catholic hierarchy to close schools and churches pleading impoverishment while spending millions to protect and defend its homosexual and pedophile priests. The faithful should withhold its […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Voces y Cuerpos III
VOCES Y CUERPOS III The Latino Experimental Theater Company at the Blue Rider Theatre Spanish-language theater in Chicago has never attained the utter silliness of Spanish-language theater in Miami, where vaudevillian shows like El pariente Vicente draw huge crowds, nor posed the hard-nosed political questions of Pedro Monge’s work in New York and the progressive […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Imagine No Religion
To the editors: I wish to commend you on the article “The Sins of the Fathers” [May 24]. A few more documentaries of this nature might educate the religious yahoos as to the nature of the witch doctors (of all creeds) who control their minds (and bodies). A religion-free universe would really bring about the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Reel Life: Bertolucci’s uncut ‘1900’
At a time when communism seems moribund, it’s ironic that Paramount Pictures is reissuing Bernardo Bertolucci’s spectacular utopian socialist drama 1900. Starting today, the Music Box is screening the complete 311-minute director’s cut, with more than 70 minutes restored to the version Paramount released in 1976 (the same version that’s now available on video). It […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Rebuke Them Sharply
To the editors: Perhaps you would like to print some of the following quotations from some of the Catholic Church’s holiest and most venerable saints, popes, etc, to authoritatively counter the “pius” heat you will undoubtedly take for publishing Jason Berry’s article “The Sins of the Fathers” [May 24] that actually only exposed the tiny […]
Posted inNews & Politics
An Iranian in Exile
Amir’s father writes him letters. Most of them start with a poem about how much he loves his son and what they’ll do together when he comes home, after the next revolution.
Posted inNews & Politics
Grateful in Milwaukee
To the editors: Your article in the Chicago Reader “The Fighting Is Over, the Dying Has Just Begun” (May 10, 1991) represents the kind of journalism I hunger for, and unfortunately find too little of these days. I experience a great deal of gratitude for Louise Cainkar and others from the Gulf Peace Team, who […]
Posted inArts & Culture
An Angel at My Table
Jane Campion’s stirring follow-up to Sweetie adapts the autobiographical trilogy of New Zealand writer Janet Frame into a 163-minute feature, originally made for New Zealand TV–clearly a labor of love by a masterful talent responding to a soulmate. The poetic empathy, the beautiful, offbeat framing and unexpected transitions, and the magnificent handling of actors are […]
Posted inMusic
Truth or Dare: Madonna’s big lie
To read the awestruck mainstream press on the subject of the Madonna tour documentary Truth or Dare—breathless features, interviews, and reviews marveling at the movie’s unparalleled frankness—you wouldn’t suspect that the film is actually the most baldly manipulative and scarily dishonest piece of propaganda to be recorded on celluloid since at least the Reagan campaign’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sweeney Agonistes/The Bad Infinity
SWEENEY AGONISTES and THE BAD INFINITY Blind Parrot Productions Mac Wellman sometimes asks his students to write a bad play. “As soon as you tell somebody to write a bad play, the language becomes large and theatrical,” he told American Theatre magazine. “You get a lot of emotion, and you get a sense of humor.” […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Morrissey
Morrissey is a damp Kleenex of a rock star, a full-time mope who complains far too much–even when he’s not it seems like he’s about to. He has a limpid smile and a flamboyantly indeterminate sexuality and sings in a melodramatic, lugubrious manner guaranteed to wear down the nerves of any sentient being in the […]