The Chicago Chamber Orchestra is one of those low-profile local groups that offer programs mostly for free and that are taken largely for granted. Under the direction of its founder, the redoubtable Dieter Kober, the 35-member ensemble gathered a cult following as an inexpensive introducer of beloved classical works, and its quality was wildly uneven, […]
Tag: Vol. 23 No. 7
Issue of Nov. 25 – Dec. 1, 1993
Posted inNews & Politics
Department of Aggrieved Thespians
To the editors: I was going to let this go, it seeming futile to respond to a review, but after some reflection, I’ve concluded that I must. Last week [October 15] Jack Helbig reviewed Greek Streets, currently running at the Royal George Gallery. In praising the production, an adaptation of stories by Harry Mark Petrakis, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sam Lay
Many folks know drummer Sam Lay best for his 60s-era association with pop superstars like Paul Butterfield; locally, he was an institution with the Siegel-Schwall Band. Make no mistake, though: Lay is first and foremost a masterful Chicago-style blues percussionist, as capable of tasteful shuffle accompaniment as he is of driving rock-pop blues. His experience […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grant Park Concerts Society Scrambles for Funds/Who Saved the Spring Festival of Dance?
Does this woman look nervous? She’s Elizabeth Kearns Madigan of the Grant Park Concerts Society, which has just been askid by the Park District to come up with $438,000 by December 1.
Posted inNews & Politics
Shedd Hospital?
To the editors: The Reader’s usual quality and diligence was evident in the November 5 article about the Shedd Aquarium. It is impossible to cover all aspects of a controversy this complex, but Grant Pick did a better job of it than I would have previously thought possible. Both Pick and photographer John Sundlof were […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Down the Slippery Slope
SEARCH AND DESTROY Strawdog Theatre Company Martin Mirkheim is a small-time booking agent–polka bands, wrestling matches–nearing the end of the line. His wife has left him, the IRS is after him, and his friends can no longer lend him money. Ah, but Martin has read this book–an inspirational novel, Daniel Strong, whose author, one Dr. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dick Dale
Sensible people tend to avoid nostalgia road shows: the old fans know what they’re getting (and by definition they’re gonna get what they want) but the merely curious–well, they generally don’t end up seeing what the fuss was about. “King of the Surf Guitar” Dick Dale, who played at the Cubby Bear a few months […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Mind-set of a Fanatic
To the editors: Your article “Scourge of the Shedd” [November 5] describing Steve Hindi’s assault on the Shedd Aquarium was very illuminating of the mind-set of a fanatic. He has become so entrenched in attacking the Shedd that he feels every act aimed at that end is justified. Such rudeness and acts of unkindness turned […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: a Jewish artist confronts the swastika
“I used to make art I could sell,” says Chicago artist Edith Altman. “Now, I make political art.” Two years ago one of her installations –three rooms of large pieces connected by Holocaust themes–was scheduled to be exhibited at the State of Illinois Art Gallery. But the show was canceled because state officials feared that […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dawn Toddy/Dysfunctional Family Night
DAWN TODDY Ed at the Famous Door Theatre Company DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY NIGHT North Avenue Productions at the Avenue Theatre Dying is easy. Comedy is hard. And improvisational comedy is sometimes just plain impossible. For a while the folks at Ed (along with their improv friends and relations at Jazz Freddy, ImprovOlympic, and the Annoyance Theatre) […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Correcting Shakespeare
To the editors: In his October 22 “Critic’s Choice” review of the APT production of The Taming of the Shrew, Jack Helbig notes the “patriarchal bias that mars this comedy for modern audiences” as well as the blatant anti-Semitism of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice, neither of which APT was able to find “a way […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sculpture in Vitro: Growing Up Female in the Age of Liposuction
Despite the subtitle, Molly McNett and Shirley Anderson’s wise and witty show, first produced last summer at the Prop Theatre, speaks volumes to anyone, female or male, interested in breaking the media-created consensus trance about body image. Combining elements of satire and autobiography, this wickedly funny five-person revue examines the myriad ways adolescent girls are […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: the dentist who turned HIV positive
In the spring of 1991 Dr. Laurence Spang was cleaning teeth and filling cavities in his seventh-floor office at the Metropolitan Correctional Center, the federal jail of many narrow windows at Van Buren and Clark. Two years earlier, he had tested positive for HIV. In Florida Kimberly Bergalis was wasting away from AIDS before TV […]
Posted inNews & Politics
An Explosive Hypothesis
To the editors: Regarding your recent article on the Peoples Gas explosion [November 12]: Does Peoples Gas want to know what happened–does the government? The answer is no. Peoples is in the business of making money. A recent Crain’s Chicago Business article said that of around 400 claims against the company, over 300 had been […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wager/Shadowlands
THE WAGER Roark Productions at Puszh Studios SHADOWLANDS Borealis Productions and Puszh Company at Puszh Studios The fact that The Wager, by Mark (Children of a Lesser God) Medoff, is an early play is no excuse. So is his equally phony When You Comin’ Back, Red Ryder?, another actors’ exercise that intimidates and bores. Yet […]