THE BARROW Chicago Actors Ensemble I once knew a struggling poet who so idolized T.S. Eliot that everything he wrote sounded like bad Eliot. Judging from The Barrow, Chicago actor, director, and playwright Paul Jones has a similar problem. Only the Great Man whose shadow Jones can’t escape is Samuel Beckett. In almost every way […]
Tag: Vol. 21 No. 49
Issue of Sep. 17 – 23, 1992
Posted inNews & Politics
No Patronage Here
To the editors: As a Cook County employee for the past 24 years I object very strongly to Commissioner Pappas’s sweeping assertions that county employees are part of a patronage army [“What Does Maria Pappas Want?” August 14]. I have never been invited, even indirectly, to perform any political activity as a condition of employment […]
Posted inArts & Culture
My Sister’s Wedding
Cynthia Rich’s 1955 story is a creepy little tale of the Landis family: elder sister Olive, chafing under her widowed father’s quasiincestuous domination, finally escapes by eloping with the humblest of suitors; younger sister Sarah Ann, passionately jealous of her father’s unequally meted affections, vows to care faithfully for that parent in precisely the manner […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reading: Women in the Bible
It’s easy to understand why many women want nothing to do with the Bible and the religions it spawned. But there’s much in the Bible that’s prowoman, if one knows how and where to look.
Posted inNews & Politics
Oobleck the Elephant
To the editors: I very much appreciate the Critic’s Choice plug for Birth of a Frenchman for the Rhino Fest [August 21], and I also don’t believe that Jack Helbig meant to disparage Theater Oobleck in any way with his allusion to my work with them. However, since, with very few exceptions, nearly every article […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Trask & Fenn
TRASK & FENN New Tuners Theatre at the Theatre Building “I don’t care what they do,” the Victorian actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell is supposed to have said about homosexuals, “so long as they don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.” Trask & Fenn, a gay romantic murder mystery set in Mrs. Campbell’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: architecture by amateurs
You have no doubt heard of Sunday painters, but “Sunday architects”? The very concept conjures nightmarish visions of catastrophic building-code violations and a rush of complicated lawsuits. If the unschooled can dabble in architecture, then why not license amateur neurosurgeons and nuclear physicists too? Despite its apparent inconsistency with general notions of good sense, “Sunday […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Prescription for Disaster
To the editors: Having just finished reading the article by Levinsohn [“Doctors for National Health,” August 21] on national health care, I must take issue with a number of points in the article. First let me state that I am not a medical professional and have no medical practice to protect; I am a health […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Fun Times: gotta samba!
Lorene Vilela grew up dancing, singing, and drumming the samba–both in the streets of Rio de Janeiro and at one of the samba schools where thousands rehearse year-round for Brazil’s famous Carnaval. Since marrying an American rock musician and moving to the United States nine years ago, Vilela has made a career of promoting the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
My Love, My Bride
Lee Myung-sei’s delightful Korean comedy about the trials and tribulations of a young married couple (Park Joong-hoon and Choi Jin-sii, both charming and resourceful actors) offers eloquent testimony to the stylistic importance of Frank Tashlin (The Girl Can’t Help It, Artists and Models, Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?) as an international legacy. Tashlin’s background as […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Catholic Worker: Help Wanted
To the editors: In Maura Troester’s review of Haunted by God: The Life of Dorothy Day [August 7], she mentioned the Catholic Socialist newspaper Day and Peter Maurin founded in 1933, the Catholic Worker, and noted they sold it “for a penny a copy on the corner.” The Catholic Worker still costs one penny a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Self Examination
WILDER MILDER DANCES at Link’s Hall September 11-13 Dance is strangely well suited to explore certain philosophical issues, one of which is personal identity. Perhaps it’s because the body seems to offer a nice, clean way of establishing identity: the boundaries of my body define the country of me. But what happens when even those […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Visible Cities
In Babette Mangolte’s new film Visible Cities two women search for a house they can afford in southern California. We do not see the women on the screen; we only hear their voices on the sound track while we view images of the locales and houses they visit. The landscapes are terrifyingly well-ordered: The abrupt […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Yes, It Was Nono
To the editors: Regarding the letter by Ross Feller [August 21] concerning Ted Shen’s review of the May 15 Goethe-Institut concert. I was disturbed to not find a reply from Ted Shen and (or) Frank Abbinanti regarding the latter’s non-performance of Nono’s Post-Praeludium per Donau. The implications are appalling and enormous for anyone interested in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
A friend recently told me that her boss, an Orthodox Jew, could not eat M&M’s due to their shells being coated with beetle juice. Restricting bug intake doesn’t seem extraordinary considering Talmudic law (which might be more discerning than federal food regulations but who knows), but what about the accusation that insects are being used […]