THE REAL INSPECTOR HOUND Temporary Theatre Company at Mayfair United Methodist Church UPSET BOULEVARD Midemax Players at Stage Left Theatre The only thing worse than reviewing an Agatha Christie-type whodunit is reviewing a play about two critics sent to review an Agatha Christie-type whodunit. In The Real Inspector Hound, critics Moon and Birdboot have the […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 18 – 24, 1992
Posted inNews & Politics
Surface-Value Slurs
To the editors: Notwithstanding any level of sarcasm that may have been intended, your Hot Type item (“Buy American, Burn Asian”) in the May 15 edition of the Reader is hurtful and potentially harmful to both the Japanese and Asian American communities. For those who would take your column at surface value, it may serve […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Power of Positive Women
ZEPHYR DANCE ENSEMBLE at Link’s Hall June 5 and 6 A man appeared in only one of the six dances featured in Zephyr Dance Ensemble’s Link’s Hall showcase–and he was the choreographer. Paul Cipponeri, of Chi-Town Jazz Dance, almost seemed out of place in this evening of works danced mainly by women, though he had […]
Posted inFilm
The Grandfather
INTIMATE STRANGER *** (A must-see) Directed and written by Alan Berliner. The subject of Alan Berliner’s remarkable hour-long documentary, showing Friday night at Chicago Filmmakers, is his maternal grandfather, Joseph Cassuto–a Jew born in Palestine in 1905 and raised in Egypt, where he started working for the Japanese Cotton Trading Company in his teens. He […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Starting Monday/Miss Julie
STARTING MONDAY Argyle Gargoyle Productions at Strawdog Theatre Anne Commire’s drama of female bonding in the face of terminal illness has all the potential for a TV Weeper of the Week–but Argyle Gargoyle Productions’ stubborn honesty rescues Starting Monday from the cliches of Hollywood soaps. Impending death may work many changes, but–Love Story notwithstanding–beautification of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Where does the candle wax go? –Dave, Vanessa, Jill, Susannah, and everyone else we know Where do you think it goes? It burns, just like the logs in a fireplace. You evidently have the idea that candle wax is only there to hold the wick upright. On the contrary, the wax is the fuel for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art People: Mary Jones is looking for a special place
Dotty Christine Gentle and mean Angels dance on her lawn Call her sad call her gone Tell all thats gone wrong She calls herself Serene. Dotty Christine has stilts for legs and a tiny head. Her arms are soft, like tentacles. They curve around a chicken she cradles. Behind her, a cobbled path diverges, its […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Man Called Macbeth
Sort of a cross between Naked Lunch and Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, the Tokyo-based Daisan Erotica theater company’s free and freaky adaptation of Macbeth transports Shakespeare’s tragic hero to a modern, mobster-ruled Japan overrun by sleazy samurais in dark pinstripe suits. Director-adapter Takeshi Kawamura divides the title character into three different roles–a fierce young […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The City File
“The dearth of true monuments in Chicago may be explained by the fact that nothing really significant has occurred here,” writes Paul Krieger in Inland Architect (May/June). “It is more likely, however, that Chicago has always been too busy being Chicago to build monuments to itself, especially the kind that cannot be leased out….There is […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Music Notes: opera stars honor the memory of a mentor
Singers call them “church jobs,” the regular weekend work that saves the world’s most promising vocalists from starvation and full-time office careers. Of course some church jobs are better than others. For 50 years one of the better ones was not in a church but at K.A.M. Temple (now K.A.M. Isaiah Israel Congregation) in Hyde […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Malachi Thompson’s Africa Brass
Chicago trumpeter Malachi Thompson played for a while with Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, the acclaimed and popular brass-and-percussion unit; but even before the Bowie band took flight, Thompson had fooled around with something he called Brass Proud. The latest incarnation of his fascination with this format is Africa Brass, replete with three trombones, four trumpets, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
International Theatre Festival of Chicago
In Chicago, even-numbered years bring the odd productions from around the world to town. At least they have since 1986, when Jane Nicholl Sahlins, Bernard Sahlins, and Pam Marsden first launched this sometimes controversial, visionary biennial event. When the festival was founded, Chicago was routinely omitted from major national theater tours, whose producers gauged that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
All My Hopes and Dreams
ALL MY HOPES AND DREAMS Lisa Kron at Randolph Street Gallery June 5 and 6 When I go to New York I generally find the performance work there tedious and self-important. But whenever Randolph Street Gallery brings in New York artists–Richard Elovich, Split Britches, and now Lisa Kron–I find the work exhilarating. Of course, the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Annals of school reform: Is this any way to nominate a board?
Mayor Daley maligns it, his key aldermanic allies want to change it, and even its supporters call it unwieldy. But the arduous, time-consuming process of nominating new school-board members recently lumbered through yet another season of turmoil and doubt. In April the 28-member school-board nominating commission delivered to Daley a list of 18 candidates for […]