Tag: Vol. 32 No. 31

John Malkovich makes his cinematic directorial debut with this fine political thriller about a police detective in an unnamed Latin American country who’s charged with tracking down the charismatic leader of a terrorist group (based on Abimael Guzman of the Shining Path in Peru) as the president prepares to declare martial law. Handsome Javier Bardem […]

Flora Purim burst onto the scene in the early 70s as a member of Chick Corea’s original Return to Forever. With her fleshy good looks, a husky voice buoyed by the crisp rhythms of her native Brazil (as adapted by Corea), and enunciations swimming in the slightly nasal diphthongs and lilting cadences of Brazilian-accented Portuguese, […]

“They loved me in America–loved me to death,” says Welsh poet Dylan Thomas in the one-man play Do Not Go Gentle. Presented by Chicago Shakespeare Theater in association with Canada’s Stratford Festival, Leon Pownall’s monodrama explores Thomas’s conflicted identity as one of the 20th century’s great writers of verse and short stories and as a […]

Brooklyn postpunk revivalists the Rapture released their raw debut, Mirror, in 1999, but they didn’t really make a splash until their Sub Pop EP Out of the Races and Onto the Tracks came out in 2001. Though the gnarly noise rock that dominated the disc was nothing special, a couple songs pointed in fresh directions. […]

Hedwig Dances artistic director Jan Bartoszek offers a smorgasbord of five new dances by five choreographers on the troupe’s spring program–and returns to the stage herself in company member Victor Alexander’s Nunca Tarde (“Never Late”), a piece about a choreographer’s journey from youth to maturity. Sometimes holding out her hand to people who don’t see […]

Each decade since the 30s has produced a handful of versatile pianists who can convey the music of a broad array of soloists and composers–e.g., Hank Jones in the 40s, Tommy Flanagan in the 50s, Mulgrew Miller in the 80s. Since such versatility can obscure one’s distinctive musical persona, such players often remain under the […]

With their small central images surrounded by rectangles of mottled red or yellow, the eight paintings by Marjorie Guyon at G.R. N’Namdi recall the ruined wall paintings of Pompeii and Herculaneum, but in place of natural decay she offers craft. Made of marble dust mixed with pigments from soil, her luminescent color fields seem to […]