Puss in Boots, Lifeline Theatre. You may remember the fairy tale: a father divides his property among his three sons, leaving the third only a donkey, a cow, and a talking cat. The cat (played here with sharp cheerfulness by Jill Stephens) demands a pair of boots and through his cleverness wins his master a […]
Tag: Vol. 30 No. 51
Issue of Sep. 20 – 26, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
Time and Time Again
Fortinbras Defiant Theatre at the Viaduct Theater Arcadia Hypocrites at the Viaduct Theater The two plays at the Viaduct represent diametrically opposed views. Tom Stoppard in Arcadia argues that truth and the past are essentially unknowable and that to search for them is futile while Lee Blessing in Fortinbras asserts that truth is essential and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
World Music Festival Chicago 2001
Few things in the world can bring people together like music–and though learning about and listening to the music of a foreign land is not a substitute for understanding its culture or people, it’s certainly a step in the right direction. So Chicago’s third annual World Music Festival would seem a welcome balm for the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Rachel Corn and the Mystery of Cabin 13
Rachel Corn and the Mystery of Cabin 13, Corn Productions, at the Cornservatory. When the characters in Becky Werve’s new musical mystery grow up and talk about their weekend in the woods, they’ll have plenty of “When I was at band camp…” stories to share. While Rachel Corn (Jenny Lamb) and her friends investigate the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Billy Harper
When I listen to saxophonist Billy Harper, I often recall the title of his mid-70s album Black Saint–a powerful image of strength and spiritualism in a music world too often ruled by false gods. (Not coincidentally, the record was the first release from the now famous Italian label of the same name.) Harper’s tenor thunders […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Blithe Spirit
Blithe Spirit, Attic Playhouse. Noel Coward’s 1941 play, written during the blitz in London, wryly mocks death–and so may be unusually appropriate this fall. Unfortunately director James Bagnall’s bland production ignores the play’s dark underpinnings, instead focusing on the drawing room comedy, though not well. Geoff Isaac is zombielike as Charles, the middle-aged novelist and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Say the Right Thing
Say the Right Thing “Frankly,” Tribune columnist Clarence Page told me by E-mail, “I envy those who were able to react with remarkably measured, cold-blooded reason on the first day. I couldn’t do it.” There’s no need to say on the first day of what. Cold-blooded reason is the normal mode that columns are written […]
Posted inArts & Culture
SBD: Silent But Deadly
SBD: Silent But Deadly, at the Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. At this point, solo performer Brad Steuernagel hasn’t done enough homework to achieve his goals as a physical comedian. During one of the lulls in his latest one-man show, SBD: Silent but Deadly, he gushes on and on about Rowan Atkinson’s influence on his […]
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In Store: buy it, break it, or leave it be
Ed Crabbe turns to the lounge chair blocking an aisle at Harvest, the resale shop he operates with his wife, Cathy, in Rogers Park. He carts the chair out to the sidewalk and positions it just so. Then he goes back into the store for more chairs, an end table, shelves, a lamp, and a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Please check your principles at the door. According to the summer issue of “Taxnews,” published by National Taxpayers United of Illinois, four of the five Libertarians who won office in Illinois’ April 3 local elections are members of public-library boards. Last time I checked, libraries spend tax money to loan free books and magazines to […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Monster Mash
Bubonic Homunculus Drain at the Lunar Cabaret Lives of the Monster Dogs WNEP Theater The mad scientist is a hard character for writers to resist. His superior intellect gives the author license to indulge in the archest language and tone, to make him speak in insanely literary formulations, then play the resulting slide from dialogue […]
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Seven Chances
Buster Keaton is a bachelor who stands to inherit a fortune if he finds himself a bride by seven o’clock in this 1925 silent feature, which Dave Kehr has described as “a cubist comedy…based on a principle of geometric progression” from the number seven. Adapted from a stage-bound play by David Belasco, it takes off […]
Posted inMusic
Peter Kowald, Hamid Drake & Assif Tsahar
PETER KOWALD, HAMID DRAKE & ASSIF TSAHAR In 1969, pioneering free-jazz saxophonist Albert Ayler named an album Music Is the Healing Force of the Universe, and today bassist Peter Kowald, percussionist Hamid Drake, and reedist Assif Tsahar practice what he preached: their first tour was in Tsahar’s native Israel this February, and the sight of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Has anyone ever actually faked his own death and assumed another identity? I am speaking of public figures like Elvis, Hoffa, and the like, not the ordinary insurance scam. I know there are lotsa theories out there, like JFK and Elvis and Hoffa on a desert island having a hoot and so forth, but what’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ass Ponys
ASS PONYS The Ass Ponys seem to be making up for lost time: after one of those all-too-familiar major-label crashes, they fell silent for four years, but in 2000 they released Some Stupid With a Flare Gun on Chicago’s Checkered Past imprint, and earlier this summer they followed it up with Lohio, the best album […]