Absurd Person Singular, Will Act for Food, at WNEP Theater. This Alan Ayckbourn social satire has so much going for it–verbal wit, physical comedy, and the silliest suicide attempt ever–that it’s practically guaranteed to provide a gut-busting evening. Will Act for Food’s production, directed by Jason Jude Hill, realizes much of the play’s inherent hilarity […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 17
Issue of Jan. 23 – 29, 2003
Posted inNews & Politics
There Is Power in Our Union
To the editor: We read a story in a recent article in the Reader that claimed to be about the carpenters’ union [“Suits vs. Boots,” January 10], but it had little to do with the reality of our union. The leadership of the Chicago and Northeast Illinois District Council of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Lighter Side of Southern Gothic
THE ROSE TATTOO Goodman Theatre Father De Leo: You’re not a respectable woman. Serafina: No, I’m not a respectable; I’m a woman. –Tennessee Williams, The Rose Tattoo The Rose Tattoo is back in Chicago, where it first flowered. Tennessee Williams’s “love-play to the world” is enjoying a terrific revival at the Goodman, a block from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Lee Konitz
The road from Chicago has been a long one for alto saxophonist Lee Konitz, and he doesn’t get back often enough. He left town with a big band in the 1940s, and by the time the decade was out he’d recorded early more-or-less free-jazz sides with Lennie Tristano and played in Miles Davis’s Birth of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Guys
The Guys, Piven Theatre Workshop, at the Lakeshore Theater. Four months ago, Goodman Theatre’s staging of Anne Nelson’s docudrama had a certain urgency. Essentially a simplistic dramatization of Nelson’s real-life experience helping a Manhattan fire captain write eulogies for the men he lost in the World Trade Center collapse, this collection of Ground Zero stories […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The View From the Truck
Joravsky [“Smoldering Resentment,” January 17] does capture some of the concerns of Chicago firefighters, but I would like to add a few flames to the fire regarding these issues: The city of Chicago would like to increase the number of promotions out of merit. This means firefighters would be promoted for “performance” in lieu of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Titus Andronicus/Titus Andronicus
Titus Andronicus, Defiant Theatre, at the Viaduct Theater, and Titus Andronicus, Theatre o’ th’ Absurd, at the Performance Loft. Shakespeare’s bloodiest tragedy is a catalog of cruelty: much-wronged Roman general Titus takes his revenge against the effete Emperor Saturnius and his vicious spouse, Tamora. The ensuing atrocities–amputations, decapitations, mutilation, rape, infanticide, cannibalism–recall a Hollywood pukefest. […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, etc. concerts AMERICAN ENGLISH Beatles tribute. Fri 1/24 and Sat 1/25, 7:30 PM, Raue Center for the Arts, 26 Williams, Crystal Lake. 815-356-9212. Sat 2/1, 8 PM (preceded by dinner at 6 PM), Rialto Square Theatre, 102 N. Chicago, Joliet. 815-726-6600 or 312-902-1500. BACK TO THE 60s AND 70s Rock On Entertainment impersonators […]
Posted inArts & Culture
B-Fest 2003
Inaugurated in 1981, this annual 24-hour marathon of B (and Z) movies runs Friday and Saturday, January 24 and 25, at Northwestern Univ. Norris Center, 1999 Campus Dr., Evanston. Tickets are $20, $10 after 8:00 am Saturday; for more information call 847-491-2378. FRIDAY, JANUARY 24 Kingdom of the Spiders A veterinarian (William Shatner) and an […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Save the Library
Can you stand one more letter about the Chicago Public Library staff transfers? Ben Joravsky’s article on the staff shake-up at Chicago Public Library [“Reading Is Incidental,” November 15] raised valid and disturbing points, but also omits some key issues that previous letter writers have also ignored. Having worked at an underfunded, understaffed CPL branch […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Trumpet Legacy
The legacy referred to here is that of Dizzy Gillespie. At the dawn of bebop, Gillespie unveiled an exuberant style forged in the heat of artistic revolution and gleaming with virtuosity. It might have remained the only viable model for jazz trumpetry had Miles Davis and Chet Baker not established a quite different sound in […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dear Brutus
Dear Brutus, North Lakeside Players. In 1904 J.M. Barrie gave us Peter Pan, the boy who wouldn’t grow up. Thirteen years later he produced this fantasy about people who are entirely too grown-up. Drowning in regret for the way their lives have turned out, guests at an English country estate are offered a second chance […]
Posted inArts & Culture
L’Heure Bleue
L’Heure Bleue, TinFish Theatre. French playwright Jacques Tephany takes a stab at a Pinteresque comedy of menace in this 1999 one-act, now receiving its North American premiere in a translation by Loyola University theater department founder Jack Trahey. A young architecture student-construction worker brings home two street dwellers, ostensibly as an act of charity but […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Heartbreak Hotel
Development dollars are in the offing for Uptown–as long as it’s willing to tear down the decrepit Plymouth Hotel. Nevertheless, a pair of novice preservationists are making a last-ditch bid to save the historic structure.