VARIATIONS ON DEATH, Factory Theater, at the Athenaeum Theatre. Like sex, death has always been a potent source of comedy. So it’s all the more surprising that a company with a stellar comedy track record like the Factory Theater should stumble so often and so humorlessly in this show tackling the subject of death. Kevin […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 18
Issue of Feb. 1 – 7, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
His Way: A Tribute to the Man and His Music
HIS WAY: A TRIBUTE TO THE MAN AND HIS MUSIC, at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts. This tony new theater, poised improbably beside a cement factory, features a handsome, intimate three-quarter thrust stage with bright acoustics and perfect sight lines, and it’s been given a name that makes it sound like a venerable […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Digital Chicago Unplugged
An offshoot of the capitalist credo “Grow or die” is the strategy “Die, then grow.” Sacrifice whatever it was that earned a product the ardent loyalty of a few in order to extend its appeal to the multitudes. The sine qua non of Digital Chicago was always the magazine’s gravity and focus. In a 1999 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Betty’s Summer Vacation
Betty’s Summer Vacation, Roadworks Productions, at Victory Gardens Theater. In his latest play, Christopher Durang skewers voyeuristic reality TV: rambling and one-dimensional but occasionally insightful, Betty’s Summer Vacation is equal parts Big Brother, Hustler, and The Truman Show. Its philosophical flaws are as outrageous as its undisciplined story: a group of contemptible oversexed people, including […]