Nothing makes me want to run faster from a show than the promise that it will star someone made famous by this or that now-canceled TV series. In general, TV actors don’t have a clue how to act on the stage. In fact, many of them don’t have a clue how to act. Those who […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 4
Issue of Oct. 26 – Nov. 1, 2000
Posted inArts & Culture
How the Other Half Loves
HOW THE OTHER HALF LOVES, Broutil and Frothingham Productions, at the Theatre Building. Alan Ayckbourn is a hard-core if droll formalist, which is to say his plays often aren’t about much of anything besides themselves. How the Other Half Loves is no exception. Its chief strategy, the simultaneous presentation of two separate domestic situations in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Slip
Slip, Second City, at Donny’s Skybox Studio. There are probably about a million things funnier than skewering frumpy Victorian-era women, but it takes true skill to pull off a good Emily Dickinson joke. Dina Facklis and Angela Forfia’s sketch about “Thee Antique Dollhouse,” a high-class strip joint where the dancers titillate and edify their patrons […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Monday, October 16, 11:40 PM Dispatcher: How about a domestic? North Hamlin–actually, I think that might be a dupe. Hang on. 1147: Well, if I have a choice, then I’ll say no. Thank you. Dispatcher: You really don’t have a choice, because most of the jobs wouldn’t get done. 1147: You’re right. Wednesday, October 18, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The History of Bowling
It’s easy to sentimentalize the disabled. The mainstream world actually encourages it, with Jerry Lewis’s lachrymose telethons and those sickeningly sweet after-school specials that try oh so hard to show that “they” are just like the rest of “us,” only more so. Mike Ervin’s perverse comedy–first produced last year at Victory Gardens and now revived […]
Posted inNews & Politics
I’m OK, You Suck
As one of the “Local Zeroes” filmmakers who was dogged in your Letters column [October 20], I must regretfully inform the author of that hate mail that I will not be using any of his comments on the back of the video box for Sailorman. Instead, I will use buzzwords I gleaned from other local […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Language of Nature
Toshiko Takaezu at Perimeter, through November 25 Joseph Bernard at Arena, through November 12 By Fred Camper Toshiko Takaezu’s 41 sculptures at Perimeter have the shape of traditional pots, cups, and bottles but are completely closed save for a tiny hole at the top. They have the globular form and finger indentations of ceramics made […]
Posted inArts & Culture
58 Group
Never one to stand still, choreographer Ginger Farley has moved from the sophisticated nightclub setting of her HotHouse performances last May to the drafty, barnlike Chopin Theatre. In keeping with the new setting, she’s devised an hour-long show of 17 short sections–she calls them poems or sketches–inspired by the act of drawing (musical director Cameron […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Nice Shorts
To the editors: I take exception to the comments of M. Edward Archer published in last week’s Letters section under the heading of “Local Zeroes [October 20].” As he indicated, Mr. Archer is obviously not going to a film festival event for the love of cinema, but rather, “as a civic duty.” His feeble criticisms […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Royal Horror
Up in Winnipeg, where it’s really cold and there’s not much else going on, they have North America’s longest continuously operating ballet company. It was formed in 1939, and because the Canucks never managed to get out from under the Brits, they get to call it the Royal Winnipeg Ballet. This gives the company a […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I’d like to comment on WBS, the married man whose wife backed out on her promise to have a threesome with him in exchange for his agreement to have kids. First of all, Dan, I sincerely hope that you were joking when you told WBS he had a “right” and a “responsibility” to cheat on […]
Posted inArts & Culture
DC Bellamy
DC BELLAMY Blues guitarist DC Bellamy moved to Kansas City years ago, but he learned to play in his native Chicago–his half brother Curtis Mayfield used to rehearse with the Impressions in the family’s living room. At Bellamy’s ninth Christmas, in 1957, he was given his first guitar, and by his late teens he was […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Archer’s Arrows
To the editors: After reading last week’s Letters section (“Local Zeroes,” 10/20) I felt it was my moral, ethical, and “civic duty” to write in to defend my and my friends’ films against the hateful and unjustified letter you printed. Coming from a paper with some of the best film critics in the city, if […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Death, Drugs, and Art
From one Pole to another, how Zbigniew Kaspruk is keeping a giant of the avant-garde alive.