The Butcher’s Fantasies, Playwrights’ Center, at Loyola University Chicago, Kathleen Mullady Memorial Theatre. The plot is almost that of a Moliere farce: Luc, the town butcher, is content with his job and his television, but his wife, Pia, longs for the finer things. An evening at the local theater ends with their inviting an out-of-work […]
Tag: Vol. 29 No. 37
Issue of Jun. 15 – 21, 2000
Posted inNews & Politics
Acadec Lies
Dear editor: I thank Jack Clark for renewing my anger regarding the cheating scandal involving the academic decathlon team at Steinmetz High School a few years ago [May 19]. Having worked in college admissions for the better part of the last decade, and having visited both Whitney Young and Steinmetz High School on numerous occasions, […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Just when I thought that all I had to worry about was the Pakistanis with a nuke, I receive a letter telling me that jet contrails are killing me! The letter referred me to this site: contrailconnection.com. I was aghast! I knew a bad set of entrails could mess you up, like eating a bloated […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Last Look Back/Ivanhoe: Not Dead Yet
Chicago’s off-Loop theater is so focused on young and emerging talent that it’s easy to forget how barren the landscape was three decades ago, when Ruth Higgins moved to town. In 1969 she and her husband, Byron Schaffer Jr., founded Dinglefest Theatre Company, one of the off-Loop scene’s early success stories. Five years later Higgins […]
Posted inArts & Culture
In Print: Thomas Lynch’s twin undertakings
“When I die,” undertaker Edward Lynch told his sons, “you’ll know what to do.” And they did. The widowed Lynch’s heart gave out when he was vacationing in Florida with a friend. She called his children in Milford, Michigan, and two of the sons of Lynch & Sons Funeral Directors flew down with their embalmer’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 6/16 – Thursday 6/22 JUNE by Mike Sula 16 FRIDAY Spanish painter Remedios Varo was the daughter of an atheist scientist father and strict Catholic mother. As a youngster she ran away from the convent where her mother had enrolled her in school and ended up hanging out in Madrid and Barcelona with all […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Did my Grandpa Mac help clean up this mess?
On the Trail of the Mysterious Embalmer
Posted inArts & Culture
Joe Maneri with Mat Maneri, Barre Phillips & Randy Peterson
JOE MANERI WITH MAT MANERI, BARRE PHILLIPS & RANDY PETERSON For four decades Boston reedist Joe Maneri has been developing an intensely idiosyncratic microtonal approach to improvisation. For most of that time he’s been hidden away in academia, teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music; he didn’t begin touring and recording regularly until the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Underground Duo
CHICAGO UNDERGROUND DUO In interviews cornetist Rob Mazurek has occasionally talked about his notion of “total music,” an organic, uninhibited approach to jazz that sweeps up everything in its path, from bebop to African music to abstract electronica. With regular cohorts Jeff Parker (guitar), Noel Kupersmith (bass), and Chad Taylor (percussion), Mazurek has consistently employed […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Down on the Farm
Iowa’s attempt to lure me back only remind me why I left in the first place.
Posted inArts & Culture
The Miseducation of Dr. Laura
THE MISEDUCATION OF DR. LAURA, GayCo Productions, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. This evening of gay and lesbian sketch comedy starts with a bang. The seven-person opening number–sung to the tune of “Gee, Officer Krupke!” from West Side Story–lambastes not only overtly antigay “professionals” like Dr. Laura but a broad range of legitimate scientists […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grant Park Orchestra
GRANT PARK ORCHESTRA The Grant Park Orchestra’s new principal conductor, Carlos Kalmar, is a 42-year-old Uruguayan of Austrian parentage who got much of his musical training in Vienna. He’s still very much an unknown, though he’s done a tour of duty with orchestras in Hamburg, Stuttgart, and Dessau and in this country has risen from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Grandmama Tree: A Folk Fable
THE GRANDMAMA TREE: A Folk Fable, ETA Creative Arts Foundation. The rather conventional idea that young people could learn a thing or two from old-timers gets a fairly witty and inventive treatment in Benard Cummings’s “folk fable.” Young, well-meaning Alfonso is hiding out in the woods after shooting his pregnant girlfriend’s brother, apparently in self-defense. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Motherson and Relative Comfort
MOTHERSON, Bailiwick Repertory, and RELATIVE COMFORT, Bailiwick Repertory. By now many concur that sexual orientation is not a choice. Still, homosexuals acknowledging their nature to family and friends often face fear and confusion. Playwrights Jeffrey Solomon and Gina Schien explore the dynamics of coming out in these Pride 2000 productions. “Bradley, this is your mother […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hippolytus
HIPPOLYTUS, Janus Theatre, at North School Park Amphitheatre. If academics call Euripides the father of psychological realism, it’s because his characters are a bit more three-dimensional and regular-guyish than those of other Greek tragedians. But Janus Theatre director Terence Domschke seems to believe that Euripides’ Hippolytus, a highly stylized saga of Queen Phaedra’s love for […]