THE LAST GOOD MOMENT OF LILY BAKER, Mary-Arrchie Theatre. It would be a challenge for any company to make Russell Davis’s atrophied play engaging, given the playwright’s penchant for excessive exposition and his jumbled point-and-click style, which jumps from Hollywood melodrama to TV sitcom to metaphor-soaked naturalism with slight regard for structural integrity. While Kay […]
Tag: Vol. 26 No. 7
Issue of Nov. 21 – 27, 1996
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
If the earth stopped spinning would we fall off of it? Which way would we fall if we did? Or would there just be less gravity? –Grant Shepard, age seven, Oak Park, Illinois You gotta be prepared for anything, kid. If you’d asked this a couple years ago I would have said, “The earth stop […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dancing Across State Lines
The last couple of dances that Zephyr Dance Ensemble artistic director Michelle Kranicke has choreographed have had an understated elegiac quality, a sorrow that insinuates itself into every movement. Her new Memory Slipped conveys a feeling of quiet abandonment, perhaps the feeling of a woman with two children asleep in the house gazing at the […]
Posted inFilm
Madame Butterfly
Translating opera into film requires a director who can grasp the narrative stripped of music, then come up with a visual strategy that sustains the emotional resonances and rhythms of the music. Few reach the standard set by Ingmar Bergman and Joseph Losey in their thoughtful and visually imaginative adaptations of two of Mozart’s masterpieces. […]
Posted inMusic
Fight From The Inside
Stereolab/Emperor Tomato Ketchup/(Elektra)/Rage Against The Machine/Evil Empire/(Epic)
Posted inNews & Politics
Betrayed
Bart’s sister killed their mother, Then she blamed it on her brother. Now her debt remains unpaid, Look’s like Bart has been Betrayed.
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: Zeek Sheck’s talking cure
About ten times a month Rose Meyers will receive a letter from a stranger detailing what’s often a pretty weird problem. “I feel like I am being lit on fire from behind,” a recent one said. “It’s horrible. I can smell my flesh burning, and my backside gets hot. Sometimes I can hear my hair […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Field & Street
The storm that hit the day before Halloween marked the end of the soft autumn days that provide Chicago with its annual taste of perfect weather. The seasonal shift announced itself at my house about 3 AM, when the wind blew a large packing box into the fence under my bedroom window. I awoke expecting […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Zine-O-File
PERIOD ATTIRE OPTIONAL: THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE LITERARY SOIREE By Holliston Black Not having a television? Why cast the matter in terms of not doing something? The tone is defensive, sulky. Does one characterize a person going about the business of life in a sensible way as “not a blithering idiot”? There are […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bonnie & Clyde-Wanted
Bonnie & Clyde–Wanted, Feral Theatre Company, at the Organic Theater Greenhouse, Lab Theater. Playgoers who fondly recall the extravagant passion and violence of Arthur Penn’s romantic 1967 film need fear no competition from Feral Theatre’s Bonnie & Clyde–Wanted. This work, jointly devised by the company, acquaints us at great length with the domestic problems of […]
Posted inMusic
Moonshine Willy
Moonshine Willy The large number of bands joining rock ‘n’ roll to country and western belies the difficulty of doing it. Some bands (such as Son Volt) lapse into stuffy, joyless reverence, while others (such as the now-defunct Texas Rubies) wallow in campy caricature. Moonshine Willy avoids these pitfalls. The Chicago-based quintet’s arrangements combine bluegrass […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Frankly Brendan
Very little can go wrong when a highly talented, engaging actor performs an evening of deftly written, time-tested short stories. And despite Chris O’Neill’s self-effacing manner and somewhat quirky appearance–he describes himself as a cross between Harpo Marx and Marty Feldman–the veteran of Ireland’s famed Abbey Theatre is spellbinding, showcasing his twin talents as stage […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Reform or Rehash?
A watchdog group remains skeptical of the Vallas revolution.