THE HEART OF A DOG New Crime Productions at the Famous Door Theatre Company THE MASTER AND MARGARITA Lookingglass Theatre at Steppenwolf Studio Theatre It makes good sense and strong story telling. Chicago’s two most distinctive troupes, Lookingglass Theatre and New Crime Productions–both companies prized for their visceral style, ingenuity, and acrobatic acting–have taken inspiration […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 24
Issue of Mar. 24 – 30, 1994
Posted inNews & Politics
Guns & Death
Dear editor: We are writing in response to the Guns & Women article in the February 4 issue of the Reader. It was distressing and surprising that the article makes little reference to the fact that nearly half (48 percent) of all gun deaths are suicides and that another 18 percent of gun deaths are […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Minute Art
RADICAL SCAVENGER(S): THE CONCEPTUAL VERNACULAR IN RECENT AMERICAN ART at the Museum of Contemporary Art, through April 17 In recent years, a group of artists has emerged whose work challenges the conventional wisdom that a great work of art is ever changing and rewards long and repeated viewings. We have instead works that ask, even […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Matter of Undeath and Death
Dear Reader, On the subject of Brain Death Your interviewer, Harold Henderson, and his subject, Loyola philosopher Father Paul Quay [January 28] seem bent, like Dickens’s Fat Boy, on making your readers’ “flesh creep.” We quote your two banner headlines, assuming the interviewer or Editor to be responsible for them (such statements appear too absolute […]
Posted inFilm
Acts of Defiance
*** SAVAGE NIGHTS Directed by Cyril Collard Written by Collard and Jacques Fieschi With Collard, Romane Bohringer, Carlos Lopez, Corine Blue, Claude Winter, Denis D’Archangelo, and Jean-Jacques Jauffret. If memory serves, the first time I ever heard of Sylvia Plath was the first time a lot of other people heard of her–in the mid-60s, a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Honeyboy Edwards
Honeyboy Edwards is a living link to the birthplace of the blues: he knew and learned from Delta masters Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson. Edwards never attained either the musical sophistication or the lyrical complexity of his illustrious colleagues, but blues historians Stephen Calt and Gayle Wardlow have noted that his 1942 Library of Congress […]
Posted inNews & Politics
True Punk
True Punk Dear Frederick Mosher: I was wondering, since when were Pearl Jam [March 4] ever considered a sellout? I always thought they were four studio musicians and a wacky guy who decided to “catch the wave.” In your feeble mind, Pearl Jam is the product of the unlikely union between stadium and “punk” rock. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Shakespeare for My Father
I never thought very highly of Lynn Redgrave’s post-Georgy Girl work, but this bold and moving one-woman show, which interweaves intimate family anecdotes with scenes and soliloquies from Shakespeare, bowled me over. Though the evening would be far more effective as a 90-minute one-act than in its present two-part format, Redgrave’s uncompromising emotional exposure and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sound Bit/Board Comparison/Black Days for the Newspaper Guild/Return of the Silent Majority
Sound Bit The worst kind of Faustian bargain is the one you don’t know you’re making. The other day Warren Friedman was given what every serious person covets: the opportunity to be paid attention to, in this case by a national audience. The price he paid? Friedman was trivialized. He was identified on an NBC […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Narrow Sectarianism
Dear Editor: Steve Craig’s letter [February 18] exemplifies the attitude that his political position is totally correct, and everyone else is wrong–generally called narrow sectarianism. First, through the efforts of the Illinois Labor History Society and particularly Bill Adelman, the historical events of Haymarket were rescued from the dustbin of history. Popularizing the event, Bill […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Cop and the Killer
Two kids born in Cook County Hospital after the war: Why did one become a policeman and the other his murderer?
Posted inArts & Culture
A Night to Remember
THE NIGHT OF THE IGUANA Goodman Theatre Not much seems to happen in Tennessee Williams’s The Night of the Iguana, now running in a magnificent, revelatory revival at the Goodman Theatre. In this 1961 play no one is led off to the madhouse; no glass menageries come crashing down; there are no abortions or castrations, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Harding’s Due
Editor: Alan Boomer’s “Sports Section” for March 4 offers some of the most intelligent commentary I’ve seen on the class and sex stereotyping that has dominated reporting on the Harding-Kerrigan affair and on women’s sports in general. But I think that Boomer fails to give Tonya Harding her due as an athlete. To call someone […]
Posted inMusic
Acetone
Neil Young’s influence on a disillusioned generation rears its head again in this young LA trio. On their debut album, last year’s Cindy (Vernon Yard), Acetone bashed away at loose grooves, Mark Lightcap’s guitar staggering drunkenly through the wreckage left by Steve Hadley’s frantically splashing drums and Richie Lee’s rumbling bass. “Pinch,” with its refrain […]