When a certain Professor G.H. Vincent got the idea in December of 1898 for the University of Chicago Comic Opera Company to put on an original operetta spoofing school life, he met with considerable coolness from on high; but the show he and several other teachers and students created turned out to be a substantial […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 25
Issue of Apr. 2 – 8, 1992
Posted inArts & Culture
Meet the Parents
It’s tempting to call this low-budget, independently made feature by Chicago stand-up comic Greg Glienna (who directed and cowrote the script) the ultimate worst-case-scenario comedy. Glienna plays an unassuming young man in advertising who drives from Chicago to Indiana with his fiancee (Jacqueline Cahill) to meet her folks (Dick Galloway and Carol Whelan) and sister […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Johnny B. Moore
Johnny B. Moore is the young west-side phenom who burst into the national consciousness in the late 70s, when he did a brief stint as a guitarist for Koko Taylor. Moore’s guitar technique is one of the most impressive in Chicago today; especially notable is his knack for backing up his own leads with full, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Don Juan Comes Back From the War
DON JUAN COMES BACK FROM THE WAR BNC Productions at Cafe Voltaire The original Don Juan was the son of a prominent 14th-century family in Seville who worked hard to develop his infamous reputation. His death was poetic justice: after killing the commander of Ulloa, whose daughter he seduced, he was lured into a Franciscan […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Search for Nightlife: why we need karaoke
Who’s Next?, 711 N. State: Ms. Crabby Chronicler hates to stay up late and go to nightclubs so she asked Mr. Smarty Pants and Ms. Savvy Leggings to help her get through the door of Chicago’s newest karaoke bar, where people get onstage and sing along to prerecorded music-video tracks and pretend they are Madonna […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago’s Own
Nino Pezzella’s new untitled 15-minute film consists of a short, enigmatic string of images repeated in the same order 44 times. That the images appear in the same order and for the same length of time in each cycle is not apparent at first, because their appearances vary with each repetition. They are seen negative […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Boy Who Knew No Fear
THE BOY WHO KNEW NO FEAR Skeleton Crew Theatre Company at the Avenue Theatre The Boy Who Knew No Fear, G. Riley Mills and Mark Levenson’s musical for children based on a particularly weird Brothers Grimm fairy tale, is bright and coherent, and it’s staged with plenty of energy and wit by the Skeleton Crew […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Solitaire
SOLITAIRE Cafe Voltaire “Has being black affected your work?” It’s a question that frustrates Danny, a black artist, in Solitaire, Lydia Gartin’s new play. As far as Danny is concerned it should be glaringly evident that yes, being black has affected her work. What she finds infuriating is the implication that it is the only […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
Thanks to a steal or an unusually long rebound or some other fortuitous occurrence, Michael Jordan breaks free with the ball. He’s alone on the far side of the court, and he’s closing in on the basket. It’s the moment every fan has been waiting for; like a tape-measure home run, it happens often enough […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Gays of Our Lives . . . The Play
GAYS OF OUR LIVES . . . THE PLAY Zebra Crossing Theatre at the Theatre Building If the gay activists who demonstrated at the Academy Awards Monday night are looking for a new source of stereotypes to protest, they should check out Gays of Our Lives . . . The Play, Claudia Allen’s soap-opera spoof. […]
Posted inMusic
Abraham Stokman
Abraham Stokman is one of the city’s best-kept musical secrets. For years the Israeli-born pianist has zealously championed new works, particularly those of local composers; I still remember vividly his performance in the late 70s of Ralph Shapey’s Fromm Variations, in which he played nonstop for more than an hour and managed to make sense […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In January the U.S. government declined to allow Scotland’s “national dish”–haggis–into the country for celebrations of poet Robert Burns’s birthday (January 23) because the food, said officials, is unfit for human consumption. Haggis is minced sheep’s heart, lungs, and liver mixed with oatmeal, onions, and black pepper, boiled in a sheep’s stomach, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gamblers Unanimous/Can ‘Inside Chicago’ Come Back?/Media Guide/Columnist’s Intuition
Gamblers Unanimous It’s always easier to debate an issue once you’re certain it has nothing to do with morality. Well, the papers were quick to clear that underbrush away from the lively argument Chicago and the state are about to enter over whether to build a $2 billion casino-entertainment complex that would be the city’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tatum Family Blues
TATUM FAMILY BLUES ETA Creative Arts Foundation On June 10, 1940, Chordam Tatum had a vision in which an apparition prophesied the coming of a “Lord of the Circle” who would lead his black brethren home to the motherland–and who would be the product of Chordam’s impending marriage with his sweetheart Varianne. Thirty years later […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Recording of Misdeeds
To the editors: I would like to share some facts and opinions on senatorial candidate Recorder Carol Moseley Braun [March 6] to balance the media rush to place her on a pedestal. Braun takes credit for the “profit” of the recorder’s office, but it has been historically taking in more money than budgeted. Last year […]