Fans holding their breath for more of the immaculately crafted cynical pop that put Elvis Costello on the map have already gone blue in the face ten times over: Costello has spent most of the last decade making a garish display of his alleged artistic range, collaborating with the likes of Burt Bacharach, the Mingus […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 36
Issue of Jun. 6 – 12, 2002
Posted inArts & Culture
Indulgences in the Louisville Harem
Indulgences in the Louisville Harem, Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, at the Chicago Cultural Center. As directed by Kimberly Senior, this John Orlock play can be bright and fun even as the characters’ frustration and longing give the script depth. Meighan Gerachis and Tara Mallen play Florence and Viola Becker, two sisters in 1902 Kentucky who decide […]
Posted inArts & Culture
A Walk in the Woods
A Walk in the Woods, Grounded Theatre, at the Chopin Theatre. Fourteen years after its Broadway run, Lee Blessing’s play about two arms negotiators during the cold war seems almost quaint, a relic of a simpler time when America danced a delicate pas de deux with the Soviet Union around nuclear arms instead of worrying […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Splendor on the Grass/Puppets Pooped?
Last year Ravinia’s ticket sales set a record; this year they got red-hot director Gary Griffin for the musical theater program. Will next year be the season they get Radiohead?
Posted inArts & Culture
Local Lit: Can Tyehimba Jess wake up the world?
Tyehimba Jess’s 1992 poem “when niggas love Revolution like they love the bulls” challenged Chicago fans to think about issues more substantive than their team’s NBA championships. If the promise of the poem’s title is fulfilled, he wrote, “We will know cia stats / fbi stats, / infant mortality stats, / police brutality stats, / […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Bailiwick Repertory Directors’ Festival
Bailiwick Repertory’s 14th annual showcase of projects by emerging directors, coordinated by Jason Palmer, features programs of three or four short plays. The scripts run the gamut from selections by Romulus Linney, David Mamet, Thornton Wilder, William Saroyan, Heiner Muller, and Tennessee Williams to new works. The fest runs through June 19 at the Bailiwick […]
Posted inFilm
Death and Life
Landscapes of the Soul: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko When I speak of poetry, I am not thinking of it as a genre. Poetry is an awareness of the world, a particular way of relating to reality….Think of Mandelstam, think of Pasternak, Chaplin, Dovzhenko, Mizoguchi, and you’ll realize what tremendous emotional power is carried by […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Lady and the Duke
My favorite Eric Rohmer features are mainly his period films–Percival, then The Marquise of O (despite its emotional toning down of the Heinrich von Kleist novella), and now this fascinating antirevolutionary take on the French Revolution. Inspired by the memoirs of Scottish royalist Grace Elliott (beautifully played by Lucy Russell), it centers on her relationship […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
Mapping madness. Writing in Illinois Issues (May), Ryan Reeves notes that because of the way redistricting lines have been drawn, the tiny town of Illiopolis (population less than 1,000) will be able to command the attention of 3 of the state’s 19 congressional representatives. It “will be represented by the 17th District, a seat currently […]
Posted inArts & Culture
It’s an Earthquake in My Heart
It’s an Earthquake in My Heart, Goat Island Performance Group, at the Athenaeum Theatre, through June 8. Goat Island has always struggled to give its spoken texts as much impact as its nonverbal imagery given the power of its harrowing but lyrical physicality, especially in enigmatic quotidian routines repeated to the point of near collapse. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Land of Look Behind
Alan Greenberg’s 1982 documentary–his first and only released film–has been praised by Werner Herzog and Jim Jarmusch, the latter calling it “an organic portrait of the very soul of Jamaica, and the earthy, pervasive substrata of Rastafarianism.” Greenberg, who lived in Jamaica on and off for 26 years, decided to document the funeral of Bob […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I need to know why the women in my office always seem cold while the men are warm. The women are always wearing light sweaters (even in summer) and complaining about the air conditioning. Last summer I called maintenance to have them adjust the temperature, which was 25 degrees Celsius (or 77 degrees Fahrenheit), down […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Police Scanner
Monday, May 27, 10:55 PM Dispatcher: ’63-Eddie, go with the emergency– 763-e: 6— Lowe, male black, uh, he’s going down, he’s going down to the back there, go back to the front! Go back to the front, go back to the front! He’s in the front, he’s running inside. No, in the front! In the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
We Were Only Freshmen
Each autumn, before a single class is held, all University of Chicago freshmen spend an entire week in orientation. I passed much of the first day standing in line. At the front of one long line, a smiling upperclassman handed me a canvas bag. Inside the bag were pencils and coupons and class schedules and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
A Tale of Ordinary Madness
His keen mind made him a respected cardiologist. Schizophrenia made him a prisoner of his own delusions.