John Schmidt, the mayor’s man in charge of Navy Pier, thinks he’s got the perfect spot for the Chicago Community Trust’s midsize-theater project. Anyone want to argue with him?
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 30
Issue of May. 7 – 13, 1992
Posted inFilm
A Midnight Clear
Writer-director Keith Gordon sustains rather than fulfills the interesting promise of his first feature (The Chocolate War, 1988) in another taut novel adaptation that shows the influence of Stanley Kubrick. The novel this time is by William Wharton, who also wrote the source novels for Birdy and Dad; it’s a semiautobiographical account of the members […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
Sixteen hundred black-crowned night herons have come to nest in the marshes around Lake Calumet. I helped count them on a bitterly cold evening two weeks ago. The total more than doubles the previous high count recorded for this species in a single day anywhere in the Chicago area. The clouds of herons provide a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ernst/Watson/Dance
ERNST/WATSON/DANCE at the Dancespace Performance Center May 1 and 2 The dances of Christina Ernst and Sam Watson are collaborations on many levels. Not only do they choreograph many of their dances together, but their movement style fluidly combines the jazz- and modern-dance idioms. Their dances tread a delicate line between a throwaway lightheartedness and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Manufacturers’ liability: a new weapon against assault guns?
Philip Andrew was a 20-year-old North Shore college kid when Laurie Dann quite literally shot him into public prominence on May 20, 1988. His parents’ kitchen is the one Dann invaded in her flight from the Winnetka school where she had just shot six children. After a 90-minute standoff with Andrew, she shot him and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hauptmann
John Logan’s Hauptmann is a compelling, tightly written play. Nevertheless, it’s hard to imagine it would have received half of the praise it has in the six years since it first opened (at the late, lamented Stormfield Theatre) without presence of Denis O’Hare in the title role. It is O’Hare’s startling performance as the haughty, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Willie & Esther
WILLIE & ESTHER Chicago Theatre Company It’s supposedly easier to get a cheap giggle than a deep, honest laugh. One-liners and snappy sex jokes trigger the audience’s laugh reflex faster than socially conscious or character-generated humor. But James Graham Bronson’s Willie & Esther stands this idea on its head. Its easy-target jokes fall flat, but […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: designs that covered the country
This year the Seville fair is plastered all over the travel sections, and Chicago’s 1893 Columbian Exposition has been memorialized in half a dozen recent books. But Chicago’s Depression-era world’s fair, the Century of Progress, rarely rates a mention. True, it never drew the crowds or dollars the city expected, but it may have played […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Joelle Leandre
To Joelle Leandre, the double bass is a supple little fiddle, the rigors of “new music” provide an open-ended playground, and the lines between modern forms of improvisation turn out to be dotted (if they exist at all). On the one hand, Leandre belongs to the Ensemble Intercontemporain, founded by her countryman Pierre Boulez, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Watch This Choreographer
WINIFRED HAUN & DANCERS at the Weinstein Center for the Performing Arts May 1 and 2 Winifred Haun is someone to watch. Though this young Chicago choreographer has been making dances only for the last two or three years, the eight short works in her recent concert at the Weinstein Center for the Performing Arts […]
Posted inFilm
Sex and Power: A Chinese Parable
RAISE THE RED LANTERN *** (A must-see) Directed by Zhang Yimou Written by Ni Zhen With Gong Li, Ma Jingwu, and He Caifei. Just five years ago Zhang Yimou made an auspicious debut on mainland China’s movie scene with Red Sorghum. Strikingly photographed and with sophisticated pacing, it celebrated patriotic resistance (against Japanese invaders during […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Les Arts Florissants
In 1971 Dartmouth prof William Christie settled down in Europe, hoping to make his mark on the early-music scene there. Two decades later the expatriate is the head of the French ensemble Les Arts Florissants. Founded in Paris around 1979 and named after a work by the Baroque master Marc-Antoine Charpentier, the vocal and instrumental […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Art vs. Commerce: I. Nudes in the Bank/II. Body Parts in the Trib/Fire and Flood
Art vs. Commerce: I. Nudes in the Bank Let’s go to the scoreboard. After last week’s hectic action in Chicago, the results are: Commerce 2, Art 0. First the rout at the LaSalle Bank Building, 135 S. LaSalle. Hopes ran high as painter Blair Gauntt and sculptor Michael Sippel set up shop Monday in the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Education: Schooling for Dollars
Can the king of captive-audience marketing turn a profit on grade schools? He’ll try, with the help of Chicago principal Sylvia Peters.
Posted inNews & Politics
Is the Pope Catholicism?
To the editors: Joyous Christian Greetings! In response to my letter [March 13] Jane Ellingwood [Letters, April 3] says that Christians are those who follow Christ and his teaching. True enough, but my letter dealt with the question of who are Catholics? In point of fact, they are those Christians in communion with Christ’s Vicar […]