DRUNKIN GROWNUPS Mettle Theatre at the Heartland Studio Theatre Drunkin Grownups (that rhymes with Dunkin Donuts) delivers what the title promises: fresh, tantalizing doughnuts, stale and inebriated characters. Served with an unbelievable, uninteresting plot about a father who meets the son he never knew he had, Mark Routhier’s Drunkin Grownups belabors its points about relationships, […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 6
Issue of Nov. 18 – 24, 1993
Posted inNews & Politics
No Problemo!
On Handy Andy, Free Trade, and the CSO’s 1958 Living Presence Recording of Ma Vlast
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
MORPHINE, 11/19, METRO In his promising new band, singer and two-stringed slide-bass player Mark Sandman (former leader of Boston’s bluesy roots rockers Treat Her Right) has replaced the ever-present lead guitar with the saxophone of Dana Colley. Unfortunately, on its second album, Cure for Pain, the band comes across as mannered and uninspired–mostly due to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Eazy-E
Not since the end of the Beatles and Lennon and McCartney’s scathing recorded swipes at each other have we seen such public rock-star spatting as in the wake of the splintering of N.W.A. After this immortal bunch of gangsta-rap nogoodnicks (whose first album, Straight Outta Compton, put out-there rap on the map) saw the departure […]
Posted inArts & Culture
You Like to Watch, Don’t You
RIVER NORTH DANCE COMPANY at the Harold Washington Library Auditorium, November 11 and 13 Lovers of dance like to watch: there’s something deeply voyeuristic about watching dance onstage, something that goes beyond the attraction of ogling nearly naked bodies. Wallflowers at a social dance can jump up and join in, but viewers of concert dance […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In September police in Springfield, Massachusetts, charged wheelchair-bound Anthony C. Garafolo with robbing a Northeast Savings Bank. The thief demanded money, received $2,500, wheeled himself outside, and was picked up by a man driving a getaway van. Garafolo had robbed the same bank in 1990; he’d also robbed a liquor store and been […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: the travels of Bob Katzman, bookseller
Bob Katzman was 15 when he opened a newsstand in a three-by-four-foot wooden shack at the corner of 51st and Lake Park in 1965. He called it Bob’s Newsstand. The business was a success, and as it grew and expanded–eventually becoming a walk-in store–it began to acquire an international flavor. Katzman sold European magazines, and, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Can’t Pay! Won’t Pay!
CAN’T PAY! WON’T PAY! Stark Raving Ensemble at the Splinter Group In my more pessimistic moments I’m convinced we’re living in the dark ages of comedy–at least in Chicago–a time when silliness and sloppiness reign supreme, and no one gives, in the words of E.E. Cummings, “a shit for wit.” Stark Raving Ensemble’s production of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
WHO’S AFRAID OF VIRGINIA WOOLF? Raven Theatre Taken as domestic drama, Edward Albee’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a rather despicable work. Littered with misanthropy, misogyny, and vicious cruelty, it seems to be the product not of a rebellious enfant terrible but of a nasty spoiled brat biting the hands that provided the sizable […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Thrift Shopping: the magic of marabou
When Jean Harlow had only a minute to primp for a reluctant lover, she knew exactly what to reach for. “Tina, quick,” the negligee-clad Harlow barked to her maid in the 1933 film Dinner at Eight: “Get me that other jacket. The one with the fur.” Tina whipped out a white satin bed jacket trimmed […]
Posted inFilm
Southern Sleaze
A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE *** (A must-see) Directed by Elia Kazan Written by Tennessee Williams and Oscar Saul With Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, Kim Hunter, and Karl Malden. FLESH AND BONE ** (Worth seeing) Directed and written by Steve Kloves With Dennis Quaid, Meg Ryan, James Caan, and Gwyneth Paltrow. Depending on whose figures you […]
Posted inMusic
Platinum Pumpkins/Urge’s Video Subtext/Phair’s Coup/Memories of the Bar R-R
A tribute to the Sundowners December 1 at Bub City
Posted inArts & Culture
Die Walkure
Wagner’s epic retelling of the German saga Der Ring des Nibelungen gets more convoluted and psychologically complex with each installment. The prologue, Das Rheingold, which covers the theft of the Rhine maidens’ gold and the curse put on the ring forged from it, sets the stage for tragic confrontations between gods, giants, dwarves, and humans. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Young and the Uppity/Crewdson’s Conflict
The Young and the Uppity Anyone who’s just won the Nobel Prize won’t be easily destroyed by criticism. Testing this hypothesis, we called Robert Fogel of the University of Chicago. He’s that school’s fourth scholar in four years to receive the Nobel for economics, but the first to be attacked by a campus publication as […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Because You Are a Woman
This powerful feminist Korean docudrama by Kim Yu-jin (1990) demonstrates yet again the near universality of the injustices suffered by rape victims. In this case the victim is a young housewife and mother (Won Mi-kyung) who bites off the tongue of a man who attacks her one night on the street, only to find herself […]