DEBORAH BUTTERFIELD at Zolla/Lieberman Gallery Deborah Butterfield has been making the same work of art for more than 15 years. Working humbly in mud and sticks, monumentally in bronze, or–as in eight recent works on view through January 2 at Zolla/Lieberman–in old steel, Butterfield unapologetically explores the emotive potential of a single form. Her subject […]
Tag: Vol. 22 No. 8
Issue of Dec. 3 – 9, 1992
Posted inArts & Culture
Mud/Pastorale
MUD Piven Theatre at Victory Gardens Theater Mud, Maria Irene Fornes’s portrait of three souls mired in the savagery of their dirt-poor existence, is brutal and lyrical all at once. Fornes treats passion with respect and tenderness; she even treats passion of the unsavory sort unflinchingly, as nothing less than human. Also unflinching and true […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story The Two Rivers Baptist Church in Memphis established a special Christian Halloween exhibit this year to compete with local haunted-house exhibits that church officials fear are tools of the devil. “Halloween used to be fun and silly,” said church official Jeff Atwood. “[Now] it encourages occultic activity.” One of the rooms in “Judgment […]
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A Multilayered Masterpiece
THE CRUCIBLE Raven Theatre I’d forgotten just how good The Crucible is. You read such plays in high school, and by the time you’ve sat through some mope’s lecture about private versus public responsibility and after you’ve written your five-paragraph theme about whether one needs to obey corrupt laws and gotten your check plus on […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Waste watchers: Who’s paying attention to the Park District budget?
In November the Chicago Park District released its 1993 budget, and the city yawned. Apparently the media had more important things to think about, like the City Hall squabble over Mayor Daley’s proposed $48 million property-tax hike. The Park District’s proposed budget received little coverage in the dailies and barely a mention on TV. “It’s […]
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Wings
Not to be missed in its too-short (though just extended) run, the Goodman Theatre’s Wings is a rare fusion of state-of-the-art technique and straight-from-the-heart feeling. With director Michael Maggio at the helm, this wizardly production convincingly creates the shifting inner world of its heroine, former stunt aerialist and stroke victim Emily Stilson. A recent second […]
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A Bagel on Broadway: Does Lakeview Need Another Restaurant?/Cineplex Lockout: Whose Move?/CSO Buys Into Merchandising/Jam Resurrects Jesus Christ Superstar
Danny Wolf, proprietor of the Bagel: Can he cut it in a new restaurant-rich neighborhood?
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Son Seals
In the 70s guitarist Son Seals blasted out of here like the long-prophesied modern-day savior of Chicago blues: raw, raucous, unremittingly committed and emotionally engaged, he seemed capable of unlimited technical fire which never came at the expense of the primal passion that had kept him scuffling around the west and south sides for years. […]
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Chi Lives: Susanne-D’Arcy, the dominatrix next door
It was hard to get Maitresse Susanne-D’Arcy to set aside some time to talk. On Thanksgiving morning, she was going to a far-off suburb to pick up her mother; on Friday morning, she was going to a far-off suburb to cut down a Christmas tree. But we managed to have a conversation the night before […]
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The Serpent
THE SERPENT Live Theatre Jean-Claude van Itallie wrote The Serpent (in collaboration with Joseph Chaikin’s Open Theater) in 1968, when anything seemed possible–especially revolution, both cultural and political. Experimental theater of the time was drunk with alternatives, eager to raise the consciousness of a young and angry generation desperate to rethink everything from the bottom […]
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Etta James & Houston Person
You may never have asked a musical question along the lines of, “How could anyone possibly turn a hoary burlesque-era tune like ‘Ma, He’s Making Eyes at Me’ into a blues?” Nonetheless, you’ll find the answer on jazz singer Etta Jones’s new album Reverse the Charges (on Muse). In fact, I’d bet you could plug […]
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The Blue Hour City Sketches/The Vermont Sketches/Sexual Perversity in Chicago
THE BLUE HOUR CITY SKETCHES and THE VERMONT SKETCHES Walking Company at Stage Left Theatre SEXUAL PERVERSITY IN CHICAGO InFusion Productions at the Factory Theatre All manner of mystical meanings have been attributed to the plays of actor-turned-playwright Harold Pinter, but his characters’ communications are not so much deliberately cryptic as they are literal transcriptions […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Of a Fire in the Garbage
Jimmy Weinstein, the editor of the lefty newspaper In These Times, had never thought much about garbage cans. He hadn’t cared for the old metal cans that used to be strewn about the alleys. Stenciled “Compliments of some alderman,” they stunk of the Machine. He was glad when the city replaced them with standardized plastic […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Love, Death, Superman
At least we have a hero who can shake off the chains of mortality.
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Hellcab Does Christmas/Rage!!! Or, I’ll Be Home for Christmas
HELLCAB DOES CHRISTMAS Famous Door Theatre Company at Jane Addams Center Hull House I hate Christmas. Not just because what little spiritual message it still conveys–Be nice to people (for a change)–has been overwhelmed by the materialist message: Buy! Acquire! Gimme! But also because none of the traditional holiday theater events–the various Nutcrackers and Christmas […]