FOUR, About Face Theatre. Christopher Shinn’s Four, being given its U.S. premiere by the ambitious About Face Theatre, is a creepy, cryptic slice of lifelessness. Written in the verisimilitudinous style of screenwriter-director Mike Leigh, it follows two mismatched, emotionally inert couples stumbling through a long Fourth of July evening. Middle-aged black college professor Joe hooks […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 21
Issue of Feb. 24 – Mar. 1, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
Seeing
Seeing These five films by Stan Brakhage–one from each decade of his career–are part of a surrealism series presented by Doc Films and the Smart Museum of Art. Yet Brakhage’s work explores every variety of visual consciousness, from dreaming to waking to imagining to discovering previously unimagined sights through film. Window Water Baby Moving (1959) […]
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Ladysmith Black Mambazo
LADYSMITH BLACK MAMBAZO The South African a cappella group Ladysmith Black Mambazo has been together for four decades, touring the world pretty much constantly since Paul Simon brought it to the international stage with Graceland in 1986. So you have to wonder why it took so long for someone to release an album like Live […]
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In Print: growing up black in an Aryan nation
If you ask, most authors will tell you why they wrote their books. Hans J. Massaquoi’s reason has more to do with others. “My friends knew about my life, and they kept asking me if I was going to write a book,” says Massaquoi, retired managing editor of Ebony magazine. “I wrote it partly so […]
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Shlemiel the First
SHLEMIEL THE FIRST, Pegasus Players. There are messes and there are messes. Some mind-blowing messes are wonderful, resulting from an overflow of inspiration; Oobleck and the Curious Theatre Branch specialized in this kind of show in the early 90s. And then there are the shows like Shlemiel the First, shows that exhibit no inspiration or […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Classical Gas
Dear Reader; I have read the lame classical reviews in the Reader for years and never commented, but this week’s review of Tristan und Isolde [February 18] has prompted me to respond. There have been naive statements such as the reviewer a few years ago (in all fairness, not Lee Sandlin, I think) who wondered […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Much Too Late for Goodbyes
More than once my husband begged to leave the hospital–or more accurately, he tried to escape it, his hospital gown flapping, his eyes wide and desperate as he shuffled to an elevator and frantically pushed the button. That was several weeks after he’d entered Rush-Presbyterian-Saint Luke’s for detox–after he’d gone to a substance-abuse treatment center, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Shoot the Bull
Guys, guys! Everyone knows Bulls general manager Jerry Krause is short, overweight, and loyal to his boss. Why won’t you give it a rest? Bernie Lincicome, Tribune. Favorite Nickname: Crumbs. Nickname II: Super clerk. Fat Joke I: “The idea of either [Tim] Duncan and/or [Grant] Hill ever playing for the Bulls is as likely as […]
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Food for Thought
In reading Laura Levy Shatkin’s review of Soju, the Korean restaurant in Wicker Park named after a vodkalike Korean distilled liquor, I thought that you might be interested to know that while the “maki rolls” may be historically influenced by Japan’s occupation of Korea, Korea has adopted them and the Korean term is “kim bab.” […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Scoop Dreams/ Schadenfreude Incorporated
By Michael Miner There’s reporting that’s true and reporting that’s false and reporting that’s preposterous. The Tribune made a claim last week that was so far off it was funny, but nobody laughed. The Tribune has been playing catch-up with the Illinois driver’s license scandal since–well, since George Ryan was elected governor with the Tribune’s […]
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Chris Speed’s Yeah-No Quartet
Chirs Speed’s Yeah-No Quartet New York reedist and composer Chris Speed–a veteran of groups led by Tim Berne, Myra Melford, and Dave Douglas, among others–has a voracious musical appetite, and with his own quartet he likes to feast on all of his favorite things at once. Genre blending is part and parcel of jazz, but […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Letter to the Editor
Any empathy that might be felt toward the plight of Ms. Moore [“Kicking and Screaming,” February 18] evaporated when I read that she moved into CHA in 1966. She justifed her long tenure with the statement that, “It [public housing] gave me a sense of independence…. Because I was living in public housing, I was […]
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Kingdom of Earth
Kingdom Of Earth, A Walk About Theater Company, at National Pastime Theater. The term “self-parody” was often used to describe Tennessee Williams’s dramatic output in the latter part of his career. And certainly Kingdom of Earth (later retitled The Seven Descents of Myrtle) wastes no time on subtlety: consumptive, mother-obsessed Lot has married trashy waif […]
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On Film: return of the incubus
In the early 60s Anthony Taylor, a successful broker with seats on the Chicago Board of Trade and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange as well as an aspiring film producer, was introduced by a friend to director Leslie Stevens. Though Taylor’s experience was limited to some training films for air force pilots, he seized the opportunity […]
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Group Efforts: stories from the soul kitchen
Proudly displaying her palm, Kim Crutcher says she has her great-grandmother’s hands–the hands that made the best caramel frosting she’s ever tasted. The recipe is written down, but Crutcher is the only member of her family who can replicate the taste. “I inherited a recipe with my hands,” she says. She tells of her bedridden […]