Rock, Pop, Etc. Concerts MURIEL ANDERSON & RACHEL BARTON Sat 5/3, 8 PM, Prairie Center for the Arts, 201 Schaumburg Ct., Schaumburg. 847-895-3600. BLOODHAG See Critic’s Choice. Sat 5/3, 4 PM, Niles Public Library, 6960 Oakton, Niles. 847-663-1234. LUKA BLOOM, CHILDREN’S HOUR All-ages. Fri 5/9, 7:30 PM, Park West, 322 W. Armitage. 773-929-5959 or 312-559-1212. […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 31
Issue of May. 1 – 7, 2003
Posted inArts & Culture
Bevy
Bevy, ImprovOlympic. Clearly out to challenge the Admiral Theatre’s status as the place to see an all-girl revue at 10:30 on a Sunday night, ImprovOlympic presents this troupe of nine women playing a version of long-form improvisation punctuated by what appear to be group hugs and relay races. Company members solicit an audience suggestion, which […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Hairy Ape
The Hairy Ape, American Theater Company. It’s no accident that Eugene O’Neill made the protagonist of his 1922 expressionistic powerhouse a stoker on an ocean liner: for O’Neill, such steel behemoths epitomized everything thrilling and terrifying about American modernity. Crashing relentlessly forward, the ocean liner both pays tribute to the force of human ingenuity and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Seducing the Audience
Seducing the Audience, CarniKid Productions, at Frankie J’s MethaDome Theatre. If you’ve seen the recurring Saturday Night Live sketch “The Continental”–in which Christopher Walken plays a smooth-talking lothario who speaks directly to the camera–then you’ve got the gist of Dan Carr’s “slightly more than one-man show.” Sitting at a restaurant table center stage, Carr treats […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Vera Bila & Kale
Most of the Gypsy folk music that’s made its way to our shores in the past few years has been celebrated for its raucous vitality and virtuosity–and from Boban Markovich’s wild Serbian brass band to the woolly Romanian string ensemble Taraf de Haidouks, the Rom do know how to get loose. But Czech Gypsy Vera […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Winning Isn’t Anything/Domestic Violence Beats Out the Imports/Liberty Fries, Anyone?
Winning Isn’t Anything The Chicago Headline Club’s Ethics in Journalism Award, always an eccentric honor, was bestowed last Friday night on the editor of the Daily Southtown, who wasn’t sure he deserved it, and on the Tribune, which wanted nothing to do with it. Even though the Tribune delegation filled two tables at the Lisagor […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Leslie Stella
I had the same problem with Leslie Stella’s second novel, The Easy Hour (Three Rivers Press), as I did with her first: it was embarrassing to read on the bus because I couldn’t help laughing out loud. The Easy Hour, subtitled A Novel of Leisure, chronicles the travails and triumphs of one Lisa Galisa, a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Stories At the height of the war in Iraq, 32-year-old army chaplain Josh Llano, a Southern Baptist, requisitioned 500 gallons of water to fill his baptismal pool at Camp Bushmaster (near Najaf) and offered exhausted, grimy soldiers, some of whom had not been able to shower for ten days, a chance for a refreshing […]
Posted inNews & Politics
On the Block: Binor and More
“I stage photos based on things I’ve seen,” says Evanston artist Iris Binor. “It’s a repetitious process. If I were to come into a room I wanted to use, I would measure all the furniture, remake everything, and then put it in a photo that would most likely be remade again. It takes me a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chi Lives: Frankie J’s new spin on “dinner and a show”
At Frankie J’s on Broadway, dinner-theater audiences will find neither buffet lines nor aging icons singing “Some Enchanted Evening.” In chef and comedian Frank Janisch’s newest production, Frankie J Supperstar, the dinner is the theater: restaurant patrons get an up close look at the preparation of the meal they’re eating while Janisch delivers jokes and […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Art people: Telophase inhabits the space between
Five months ago, novelist and installation artist Matthew Jewell spent the first edition of Telophase–a periodic exhibition mounted by a loose collective of artists and writers–in bed in the far corner of an uninhabited apartment above the Inner Town Pub in Ukrainian Village. Smoking and reading aloud, he enacted scenes from Scale, his novel in […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Life Sentence
Savagely beaten by rival gangbangers, Danny Orozco will spend the rest of his life unable to walk or talk. But he’s still determined to confront his past and, possibly, change the future.
Posted inArts & Culture
BloodHag
In order to be cool in high school, according to BloodHag lead singer J.B. Stratton, “you had to ignore everything and not read.” That didn’t sit right with him, and in 1995 he and a friend, J.M. McNulty, formed BloodHag, a self-proclaimed “edu-core” band that mixes the cheesiest aspects of speed, grind, and death metal […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Thomas Lehn
You never know what you’re going to get with Thomas Lehn. On recent recordings the German analog synth master has effortlessly adjusted to radically different contexts. In Konk Pack, his anarchic trio with drummer Roger Turner and multi-instrumentalist Tim Hodgkinson, he’s a dervish, frantically uncorking stabs, smears, and blasts. His approach on Dach (Erstwhile, 2001), […]