A Doll’s House, Next Theatre Company. When Nora Helmer shuts the door behind her at the end of A Doll’s House, another door opens–one leading to the emancipation of all women caught in the doll-like roles society has prescribed for them. Nora has been a sweet, loving wife for eight years, charming her husband into […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 20
Issue of Feb. 15 – 21, 2001
Posted inNews & Politics
Lou Reed Jive
Toting such a pretentious name would certainly lead me to believe that Michaelangelo Matos would be schooled in the music he or she writes of (“A Couple of Live Ones,” February 2). The “notorious” Lou Reed Live album from 1975 has no dialogue at all. The writer is, in ostentatious musicoliterary cluelessness, referring to 1978’s […]
Posted inFilm
In the Mood for Love
This brooding chamber piece (2000) about a love affair that never quite happens is so minimalist that it succumbs to the law of diminishing returns—yet for some reason it sticks in my gut. Director Wong Kar-wai, Hong Kong’s most romantic filmmaker, is known for his excesses, and in that sense the film’s spareness represents a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Sketchbook ‘One
Sketchbook ‘One The CollaborAction Theatre Company’s second annual festival of short plays features 16 world premieres, including sketches by David Mamet, Eric Bogosian, Brett Neveu, Regina Taylor, Beth Henley, and Wendy MacLeod. This “progressive mixed-media festival” also features visual art (environmental design by Wesley Kimler as well as a display of drawings by local artists, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
All Talk
R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe at the Mercury Theater By Justin Hayford In the late 1930s R. Buckminster Fuller introduced the Dymaxion bathroom, ingeniously designed to revolutionize society. The self-contained unit was made of four sheet-metal stampings bolted together and compressed a sink, shower, tub, and toilet into a few […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Model Plans
In his capsule reviews of four new books dealing with how industry might be altered or persuaded to co-exist more benignly with the environment [“Small Leaps Forward,” February 9], Harold Henderson states: Even if…big plans for protecting the environment are just too 20th century, we still need to come up with modest plans–plans that, if […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ted Sirota’s Rebel Souls
TED SIROTA’S REBEL SOULS On his brand-new album, juggernaut Chicago drummer Ted Sirota leads his band, the Rebel Souls, through a tune that recalls Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers (“Grendel”), two songs influenced by Herbie Hancock’s first compositions (“Tight Rope,” “Wonder”), another that could’ve come directly from Ornette Coleman’s bag (“Dig to China”), and a fifth […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Sports Section
Already I can see him, David Wells, pitching for the White Sox. I can see that wide-bodied left-handed delivery, in which he seems to pour himself down the mound the way syrup pours over pancakes. And then the walk back to the dugout after he’s dismissed the other side’s batters, his shirttail loose but not […]
Posted inMusic
Achim Wollscheid
On Airs and Shifts, two recent recordings made originally for his monthly radio program, Selektion, German multimedia artist Achim Wollscheid manipulated the playback of multiple CDs, layering the output in fluid combinations to create peripatetic, skittering soundscapes that move from ominous hums to flailing white noise. The music bears certain similarities to the “glitchwerks” school […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Trinity Irish Dance Company
The youngsters in the Trinity Academy of Irish Dance have been winning international awards for their traditional step-dancing for years, but Trinity founder and artistic director Mark Howard can’t leave well enough alone. Now he’s hired former Bill T. Jones dancer and Stomp performer Sean Curran, who studied step-dancing as a kid, to set a […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
LUNA 2/16 & 17, DOUBLE DOOR Live (Arena Rock Recording Co.), the new live record by New York indie darlings Luna, turned me off before I’d even turned on my CD player: the liner essay is a yucky diary entry by Rolling Stone editor Joe Levy about making out with his current girlfriend for the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hippolytus
Hippolytus, Slimtack Theatre Company, at the Side Studio. Tragedy tends to be big. And with the long solo speeches and emphasis on emotional declamation over intellectual debate in Euripides’ Hippolytus, an even larger universe is required if we’re to take seriously the characters’ cataclysmic passions: Phaedra, wife of Theseus, falls in love with her stepson, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Nelson Algren: For Keeps and a Single Day
NELSON ALGREN: FOR KEEPS AND A SINGLE DAY, Lookingglass Theatre Company, at the Ruth Page Center for the Arts. Adapter-director-filmmaker John Musial’s unconditional love of Nelson Algren and deft understanding of the writer’s thorny relationship with Chicago drive this jazz-infused collage of 12 Algren pieces. Thom Cox brings an understated ruefulness to the narration, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Two of the ten most endangered railroad stations in the country are in Skokie and Gary, according to the Great American Station Foundation (www.stationfoundation.org). Skokie’s 76-year-old prairie-style station, at the north end of the Skokie Swift, is for sale for $1 and will be demolished if it’s not sold. Some money has been allocated to […]