Truck in Pieces, Curious Theatre Branch, at the Lunar Cabaret. Notwithstanding its central character’s mantra–“I’m not going anywhere; where’m I gonna go?”–Beau O’Reilly’s new play tells the story of a journey. O’Reilly’s Bloom, like Joyce’s before him, spends a long day traveling on the fringes of the urban landscape as he struggles to square his […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 44
Issue of Aug. 1 – 7, 2002
Posted inArts & Culture
Artful Dodge
Sculptors Jeffrey and Anna Koh Varilla have won the commission to create a veterans memorial for Soldier Field. Was their appointment the result of a “soviet process?”
Posted inFilm
Maelstrom
This winner of several “best in Canadian filmmaking” awards, a fable about human disruptions of the natural order, brings an original mix of whimsy and melancholia to the story of Bibi, a 25-year-old manager of high-end boutiques on a downward spiral (played by the beautiful Marie-Jose Croze with an appropriately distanced flatness). After an abortion […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I believe the “pacemaker danger” signs people put up around microwave ovens are silly and baseless. Surely they spring from some lawyer worried about a suit. Please tell us the real deal. –Nukem All, Houston Here at the Straight Dope we speak to the universal human condition. However, we recognize that a large part of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
What Happened to My Father
Thirty years ago, Roosevelt Alexander was a fire-breathing Evanston alderman battling what he called “backdoor honkyism.” To his opponents, he was a fighter with a knack for posing “the devastating question at the appropriate moment.” To his young daughte
Posted inNews & Politics
Say Bye-Bye to the Boulders/Osterman Won’t Eat Greens
Hyde park stopped the bulldozers but so far the north side hasn’t: where things stand in the paving of the lakefront.
Posted inArts & Culture
Calendar
Friday 8/2 – Thursday 8/8 AUGUST 2 FRIDAY This weekend’s the last chance to catch Susan McLaughlin Karp and Stephanie Shaw in their highly lauded one-woman shows at Live Bait: they’re off to the New York Fringe Festival later this month. Karp’s Still is a frank exploration of the 1987 stillbirth of her daughter three […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Hot L Baltimore/Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts
The Hot L Baltimore, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company, and Empty Bottles, Broken Hearts, Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company. Thanks to director David Cromer and an unimprovable ensemble, it’s difficult to imagine a more authentic world than Lanford Wilson’s transient hotel, complete with rusty water, fickle heat, and fluorescent-lit ambience. A time warp in every grungy detail, Robert G. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Film: the otherwordly lure of anime
What if, in its early days, the U.S. space program had struck Americans as a fringe outfit of nerds and dreamers–a wacky wing of the military-industrial complex–and drawn sneers instead of Top Gun pilots and MIT engineers? That alternate history is the premise of the 1987 Japanese animated feature Royal Space Force: Wings of Honneamise […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fillet of Solo Festival
Live Bait Theater’s showcase of one-person performances features old and new work by a slew of fringe artists, among them Stephanie Shaw, Lotti Pharriss, David Kodeski, Mark Gagne, Judith Harding, Karin McKie, Susan McLaughlin Karp, and Kristin Garrison. The festival climaxes with a salute to the late James Grigsby, whose solo show Terminal Madness was […]
Posted inNews & Politics
No Mercy/Boys Will Be Boys/News Bites
No Mercy On July 5 the Tribune published a powerful essay about a mother driven to the ultimate act of love. For years 63-year-old Carol Carr had cared for her two sons while Huntington’s disease–which had already killed this Georgia woman’s husband–relentlessly destroyed them. But in June the suffering ended. She shot them in their […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Knight of the Burning Pestle
The Knight of the Burning Pestle, Tragedians of the City, at Wing & Groove Theatre. It’s 10:02 PM and I’m still stuck in the theater. I’ve spent the last two hours trying my best to pay attention while a troupe of mostly college actors slaughter Francis Beaumont’s 1607 comedy. But since they’ve paid scant attention […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Flatlanders
Now Again (New West) is the first new Flatlanders release in three decades–and you could argue that in some ways it’s really the group’s debut. Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, and Butch Hancock met in Lubbock, Texas, cut the Flatlanders’ first album in Nashville in 1972, and then settled in Austin. That record, originally released […]
Posted inArts & Culture
They Might Be Giants
John Flansburgh and John Linnell, better known as They Might Be Giants, have made a career of writing bite-size, ridiculously catchy tunes, and a quick look through their songbook reveals a playful preoccupation with grade-school subjects: science (“Why Does the Sun Shine?”), American history (“James K. Polk”), art (“Meet James Ensor”), geography (Linnell’s solo album […]
Posted inArts & Culture
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
Director Sam Jones set out to document a recording project by the innovative and critically acclaimed country-rock band Wilco, then stumbled onto one of the bigger music stories of 2001 when Reprise Records decided the album wasn’t a moneymaker and abruptly dropped the band from its roster. This black-and-white film is beautifully shot, and its […]