Freelance copywriter Chris Bittler was in the middle of a long and tedious catalog gig three years ago when his mind began to swim with ideas for nonsensical products. “There were a lot of qualifiers in the particular products that I was working on that would kind of set me off–things like ‘batteries not included, […]
Tag: Vol. 31 No. 5
Issue of Nov. 1 – 7, 2001
Posted inArts & Culture
A Little Night Music and Pacific Overtures
A Little Night Music, Porchlight Theatre, at the Theatre Building, and Pacific Overtures, Chicago Shakespeare Theater. With its tender, hummable songs and wry comic tale of sexual intrigue and midlife romance, composer Stephen Sondheim and director Harold Prince’s A Little Night Music–scripted by Hugh Wheeler, based on Ingmar Bergman’s film Smiles of a Summer Night–was […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago International Children’s Film Festival
The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival, now in its 18th year, continues Friday through Sunday, November 2 through 4, at City North 14 and at Facets Multimedia Center, 1517 W. Fullerton. Tickets are $6 for children and adults, $4.50 for Facets members; various discounts are available for four or more tickets. Professional actors will be […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Low Sodium Getting the Hook?/Chagrin Falls: It Killed/Guild Complex
Low Sodium’s Aaron Haber says Stage Left Theatre is trying to dump its boisterous, beer-swilling late-night guests.
Posted inArts & Culture
Love Seat
Love Seat, Sulacco Productions, at the Playground. There are some fleeting moments of fine comedy in Matt Larsen’s Love Seat, but they can’t compensate for this underdeveloped play’s overall predictability. Kit is frustrated by her unemployed, childish boyfriend, Todd, so she invites her angry lesbian sister, Gloria, to visit. Meanwhile Todd has forgotten to mention […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Other Cinderella
The Other Cinderella, Black Ensemble Theater. Revived every other year since 1976, when it launched the company, this musical version of the fairy tale has become a Chicago classic that’s updated as needed; this year’s production–part of Black Ensemble’s 25th-anniversary greatest-hits celebration–includes brief references to pagers and Web sites. The show has aged well, perhaps […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Cupid’s Kitchen
Cupid’s Kitchen, Shanana Productions, at Second City, Donny’s Skybox Studio. Musical sketch comedy is the focus of this plucky 16-member company in an evening that loosely revolves around assorted complaints to Cupid. The enthusiasm alone in their third revue, energetically staged by Brian Posen, could sell several easy-listening songs despite forced rhymes, tortured meters, and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Man Who Wasn’t There
The Coen brothers stay true to their bent for dense heroes and neonoir, and to their unshakable conviction that life usually turns out to be splendidly horrific. Here they’ve cast Billy Bob Thornton as a self-effacing small-town barber in the late 40s who’s slowly enmeshed in a doomed crime plot. Apart from a couple of […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
The longest journey starts with a single step, but this is ridiculous. A trek through the Chicago Housing Authority, as described by Mary C. Johns in the Residents’ Journal (August/September). Step 1: “During a Housing Choice Survey Clinic this past June, I and other Madden Park residents were told that scattered site units were not […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dance Chicago 2001
Now in its seventh year, this festival has ballooned into the city’s most wide-ranging showcase for local talent, from Hubbard Street and the Joffrey Ballet to Glass House Dance (I’ve never heard of ’em). Presenting more than 200 companies and choreographers on eight programs over about four weeks, festival founders Fred Solari and John Leonard […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Old and Out of the Way
When he was a student at Simeon High School back in the mid-1970s, Ronald Harris figured it was only a matter of time, maybe a year or two, before he and his classmates got the new school the Board of Education had promised. The existing building, at 82nd and Vincennes, had a leaky roof, peeling […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
Are there any reliable accounts that dogs (and/or cats, which I doubt highly) have been able to find their way home over long distances a la The Incredible Journey and Old Yeller? If so, is there any explanation for this? Is this all a bunch of pet-lover hooey? –Mike Bauman It’s not all pet-lover hooey. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Doubt Springs Eternal
Lynda Lowe: By a Grace of Sense at Gwenda Jay/Addington, through November 13 Philip Livingston: Open Book at Sonia Zaks, through November 13 Anne Howard: Curious Links at I Space, through November 10 Metaphors of exploration and discovery describe an encounter with great art in John Keats’s 1816 sonnet “On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer”: […]
Posted inMusic
Someone’s in the Kitchen/Here Comes the Son
Someone’s in the Kitchen Although the occasional national act has played there over the past decade, the Beat Kitchen has always been a decidedly local venue. Its bookings generally range from popular bar bands like the Waco Brothers and the New Duncan Imperials to hopefuls who draw more family members than fans–and many of the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts !!! Free in-store performance; see Critic’s Choice. Thu 11/8, 5 PM, Reckless Records, 1532 N. Milwaukee. 773-235-3727. A WOMAN WROTE THAT SONG! Chicago Humanities Festival program pays musical tribute to Billie Holiday, Dorothy Fields, Kay Swift & others. Sat 11/3, 8 PM, Thorne Auditorium, Northwestern University Law School, 357 E. Chicago. […]