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 […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 21
Issue of Feb. 24 – Mar. 1, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
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 […]
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Millennium Mambo
Millennium Mambo, Goodman Theatre. Each segment of Regina Taylor’s one-woman show, an anthology of four short pieces by African-American women, ends with her breaking in some portion of the surrounding walls, allowing white light to pour through the opening. The symbolism is obvious but evocative, as is the rest of this multimedia staging. Linda Buchanan’s […]
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The Old Man and the Sea
The Old Man and the Sea Best known for its huge community-based spectacles, Redmoon Theater also aspires to narrative on occasion. Sometimes these attempts fall flat, as when the company stretched an adaptation of the American folk ballad about ill-fated lovers Frankie and Johnnie into an overlong, gaseous evening of puppetry and dance. But sometimes […]
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Like Pigs in Slop
Killer Joe at the Theatre From the moment it opened, in August of 1993 in the Next Theatre’s closet-size experimental Next Lab space, Killer Joe has intrigued me. After an eight-month run in Chicago, the show was moved pretty much intact to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where it won a “Scotsman Fringe First” award. It […]
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What Next?
WHAT NEXT? The Chicago Symphony Orchestra will give Elliott Carter’s first opera, What Next?, its American premiere this weekend–only a couple months after its composer’s 91st birthday. By his own admission, Carter was a late bloomer, but it’s a little puzzling that the senior statesman of American music waited so long to tackle opera. After […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music listings
Music listings are compiled by LAURA KOPEN and RENALDO MIGALDI (classical, fairs and festivals) from information available Tuesday. We advise calling ahead for confirmation. Please send listings information, in-cluding a phone number for use by the public, to Reader Music Listings, 11 E. Illinois, Chicago 60611, or send a fax to 312-828-9926, or send E-mail […]
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The Trial
The Trial Though in certain respects debatable as an adaptation of the Franz Kafka novel, Orson Welles’s nightmarish, labyrinthine expressionist comedy of 1962–shot mainly in Paris’s abandoned Gare d’Orsay and various locations in Zagreb and Rome after he had to abandon his plan to use sets–remains his creepiest and most disturbing work, and it’s been […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Date Baiting
To the editors: Meghan Romano’s letter in the February 4 Reader correctly points out that a majority of Matches ads are exclusionary in nature because they are written with a specific personality type in mind. But, dear Meghan, this does not mean that the ads are written by racists! The ads are written by knowledgeable, […]
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Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater
Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater I like to think of this company as one big evolving nontraditional family. With all the emphasis placed on continuity and heritage by artistic director Judith Jamison, that’s no accident. There are lots of relatively new choreographers on the troupe’s upcoming program, but all have a strong commitment to the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories Demand-side regulation: A bill introduced in the Vermont legislature by Representative Fred Maslack in January would penalize any adult who chose not to own a gun by requiring him to register with the state and pay a $500 fee for the privilege of being unarmed. Also in January, a bill introduced in the […]
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Having Our Say
HAVING OUR SAY, Chicago Theatre Company. “Life is short; it’s up to you to make it sweet.” That’s no cliche in Emily Mann’s moving 1995 play but one of many hard-earned pearls of wisdom in this generous portrait of two centenarian sisters. Based on the oral histories provided by Sadie and Bessie Delany before their […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Fueling the Phobia
I’m one of the people whose quote appeared in the Hot Type column about Savage and Gary Bauer [February 11]. Eric Zorn of the Chicago Tribune was kind enough to let me know about the article since we had traded E-mails over the story. According to what’s in the column, it appears that I was […]
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Jimmy Burns
JIMMY BURNS Jimmy Burns has a honeyed croon that harks back to his teenage days with the Medallionaires, one of Chicago’s fabled 50s doo-wop groups, but he’s also picked up the multifaceted guitar technique and varied tastes of a seasoned juke-joint scuffler. He’s recorded for a few local labels since doo-wop faded, but not until […]