During the dark days of censorship in the Soviet Union–from World War II to glasnost–about the only endorsed performing arts were ballet and opera. No expense was spared when it came to sumptuous revivals of 19th-century masterpieces that ironically (or intentionally) recalled Russia’s imperial past, so most of these productions featured stellar casts and top-notch […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 25
Issue of Mar. 31 – Apr. 6, 1994
Posted inFilm
Kids’ Stuff
* THE HUDSUCKER PROXY (Has redeeming facet) Directed by Joel Coen Written by Ethan Coen, Joel Coen, and Sam Raimi With Tim Robbins, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Paul Newman, Charles Durning, John Mahoney, Jim True, and William Cobbs. A black man called Moses but who might as well be named Rastus serves as the narrator for […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mordine & Company Dance Theatre
Shirley Mordine recently announced that she doesn’t want to rely on her previous success with “the well-made dance.” And judging by the excerpts from Edge Mode shown at an open rehearsal, her newest work is open-ended, intuitive, and a little frayed, rawer and less dancerly than many of her recent efforts. Dardi McGinley spends long, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Social Cleansing
Hey Patrick Griffin: How ’bout we ban these quirky persuasive essays altogether? I’ll tell you what’s wrong with a ban on smoking [March 18], you don’t smoke anymore. Cuz if you did, at some point in time during the writing of this piece, you’d have come to the grave conclusion that it won’t just stop […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Secret in the Shed
It was the stench coming from my neighbor’s toolshed that led police to the grizzly truth. They hacked off the padlock with an ax, whipped open the door, and found the shed packed with dozens of stuffed garbage bags. Jim had always seemed kind of antisocial. He went to work at the post office, but […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Richard Thompson
It’s difficult to fix precisely the brand of anachronistic fever that infects the songs of Richard Thompson. Without specific references, he manages to conjure up the baleful events of distant times: you think of a troubadour mucking through an Arthurian miasma, a Jacobin hanger-on agog at the beheading of Danton, or maybe something more grisly–he […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Barkin’ Bill
Don’t let the nickname fool you: Bill Smith doesn’t bark the blues, he croons them in a mellow baritone reminiscent of Billy Eckstine, Johnny Hartman, and other great jazz balladeers. Bill traces his career back to early gigs with the late guitarist Tampa Red; like Tampa, he combines the musical instincts of a jazz musician […]
Posted inNews & Politics
McPoetry
Regarding: “A Poem for McDonald’s” by S.L. Wisenberg [January 7] In this era of ever increasing sellout to commercial aspects of one’s art, S.L. Wisenberg’s process of writing a poem for a corporate giant to whom she cannot relate articulates with style the temptation artists feel to make art “at any price” regardless of the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Sleep of Reason
THE SLEEP OF REASON Bailiwick Repertory Francisco Goya’s 14 “black paintings” open a window on a great painter’s quiet agonies: the man who made them had been deaf for over three decades. Despite the aging painter’s serious illness, from 1821 to 1823 he poured into these murals a silent torment, painting not just with brushes […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reader to Reader
Without an umbrella, my wife and I were caught unprepared for a sudden shower as we left Pat’s Pizza on Sheffield not long ago. We hailed an empty cab that was approaching and quickly hopped inside. “West Grace between Pine Grove and Lake Shore,” I said. “Aw, that means I have to turn around,” replied […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Uneasy Writer
COLOR ME EDWARDO Edward Thomas-Herrera at the Avenue Theatre, March 15, 16, 22, 23, 29, and 30 Color Me Edwardo, a performance made up of poems by Edward Thomas-Herrera–some of which were already staged as part of his Tango Edwardo last year–is often quite charming, but Thomas-Herrera’s uneasiness about how he wants us to view […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Three Lucky Strikes and You’re Out
Dear editor: Let’s see. Patrick [“Let’s Ban Smoking Outright,” March 18] was a smoker. Then he quit. Then he found out that lots and lots of people die from tobacco related causes. So, if we have a prohibition on tobacco, that would be just like the abolition of slavery. Are you with me so far? […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Mechanics of Nature
WILLIAM SMITH: EXPERIMENTS IN MECHANISTIC INTUITIONISM at I Space, through April 16 At first it brings a smile to one’s face, this collection of slightly goofy-looking contraptions that recall Rube Goldberg: a giant rotating rod with “feet” at each end that extend and retract, a long cluster of cables and wires that slowly crawls around […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Sports Section
After not mentioning the name of a certain minor-league baseball player in our last column, it’s time we admitted that the Bulls miss Michael Jordan. They miss him not merely for his 30-points-a-game average and his infectious will to win, but because the team was designed to complement his talents. It’s not that the Bulls […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Thinking Is Form: The Drawings of Joseph Beuys
THINKING IS FORM: THE DRAWINGS OF JOSEPH BEUYS at the Art Institute of Chicago, through April 24 When Joseph Beuys was alive, America didn’t know what to think of the quintessentially German artist. With his deathly stare and stylish derby, he conveyed both the intensity and the ridiculousness of Friedrich Nietzsche or some other 19th-century […]