Reflections on Urban Infrastructure Occaisoned by the First Anniversary of the Great Leak
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 26
Issue of April 9, 1993
Posted inArts & Culture
An Artist’s Fears
THE FOURTH WALL at the Briar Street Theatre In Raymond J. Barry’s searing Once in Doubt, seen last fall at Remains Theatre, a tortured artist in blue jeans creates an abstract-expressionist painting with his own freely flowing blood and trades raw obscenities with his lover in their nearly empty loft apartment. A.R. Gurney’s new comedy, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Love Charts
SLICES: BIANNUAL REPORT ON STATUS OF RELATIONSHIP WITH SIGNIFICANT OTHER D. Travers Scott at N.A.M.E., April 2 and 3 Some have said that relationships are like trains. If you accept that you’re on a train whose destination is set, you can relax and enjoy the ride. But fighting the destination–trying to make the train that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hair of the Dog/Children of Cain
HAIR OF THE DOG at the Avenue Theatre CHILDREN OF CAIN at the Playwrights’ Center At its heart Thomas Arthur Repp’s Hair of the Dog, in its midwest premiere at the Avenue Theatre, is a simple, endearing melodrama of cockeyed redemption. Bones is a former music teacher who lost his job after slamming a kid’s […]
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Street Life
STREET LIFE Joel Hall Dancers at the Merle Reskin Theatre, March 18-21 A couple of summers ago, while studying in Paris, I would occasionally go to dance parties with my European friends. These parties were always a drag: lots of cigarette smoke and hip-hop house music droning on too loud and too long. But the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hans Clodhpper’s Greatest Adventure/The Flying Trunk/Rapunzel
HANS CLODHOPPER’S GREATEST ADVENTURE Princess Katherine is bored. Her parents and companions insist that marriage will give her all the adventure any woman could want, but the princess is not so sure–she will not marry without love, she declares, and she will not love without self-fulfillment. She agrees to conduct an audition, however, at which […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tad Shull
How much you like Tad Shull will certainly depend on how much you miss Ben Webster, Don Byas, Lucky Thompson, and the other big-toned, harmonically daring tenormen descended from the saxophone fountainhead, Coleman Hawkins. The 38-year-old Shull has built his music on models that predate his own birth: an unabashedly tonal, relentlessly swinging style that […]
Posted inMusic
Labels Raise Prices, Consumers Respond Like Sheep
See Hear’s Ken St. Jean/What’s he so happy about?
Posted inArts & Culture
Like Water for Chocolate
Based on the best-selling novel by Laura Esquivel, who adapted her own work for the screen, this delightful piece of magical realism from Mexican director Alfonso Arau (1991) contemplates the unrequited love of a single woman for her brother-in-law, a passion that can only be expressed and sublimated through the sensual meals she prepares for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Above & Beyond
ABOVE & BEYOND Milestone Theatre Company at Cafe Voltaire “Above & Beyond,” a program of four one-act plays presented by Milestone Theatre Company, feels an awful lot like a collection of daydreams. Daydreams are great–for the person dreaming them. As long as they stay in our imagination they’re better than any play, movie, or book. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Year of the BAT Woman/Systems Abuse at the Sun-Times/Navy Men/Quality Time
Year of the BAT Woman Although other women embedded their names in the legendry of sport–names like Little Mo and Flo Jo, and Olga and Wilma and Babe–there’s no denying that these women triumphed on separate, not necessarily equal playing fields. Which makes the triumph of Toni Ginnetti in the 1993 BAT competition so historic. […]
Posted inFilm
Actress
A masterpiece by Stanley Kwan, the greatest Hong Kong film I’ve seen (also known as Ruan Ling Yu and Center Stage). The story of silent film actress Ruan Ling Yu (1910-1935), known as the Garbo of Chinese cinema, it combines documentary with period re-creation, biopic glamour with profound curiosity, and ravishing historical clips with color […]
Posted inFilm
A Cinema of Uncertainty
FILMS BY MICHELANGELO ANTONIONI Jean-Luc Godard: The drama is no longer psychological, but plastic . . . Michelangelo Antonioni: It’s the same thing. –from a 1964 interview Just for my own edification, I’ve put together a list of the 12 greatest living narrative filmmakers–not so much personal favorites as individuals who, in my estimation, have […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Club Dates: a stunning mix of sound and theater
A trumpet player in lederhosen stands center stage doing a note-perfect impression of Miles Davis. Gradually a trio of crouching saxophonists gathers, surrounding him, their screeching horns ripping into his fragile lines like Dobermans. The trumpeter, flustered but patient, waits until the braying subsides, then resumes his wistful solo. A bearded man takes a toy […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bailiwick Repertory’s 5th Annual Directors’ Festival
This showcase of directorial aspiration features shoestring-budget stagings of classic and new works. Coordinated this year by Cecille Keenan, the event offers the work of 48 directors (chosen from 60 applicants), most of whom you’ve never heard of before. In a brave effort to bring order to the affair, this year’s festival is organized along […]