The 1952 MGM movie musical starring Gene Kelly, Debbie Reynolds, and Donald O’Connor had too much energy for two dimensions–hence this 1985 stage version. A tribute to American pluck and resourcefulness, the original saluted the advent of the talkies and the colossal egos of Hollywood’s golden age, represented here by Monumental Pictures. The show teems […]
Tag: Vol. 32 No. 47
Issue of Aug. 21 – 27, 2003
Posted inNews & Politics
Poetic Injustice
Dear Chicago Reader, I have a small beef about the July 25 Culture Club item “And Speaking of Poets….” As the founder of the organization that represents one of the 26 poets nominated for state poet laureate, I found it disappointing that Deanna Isaacs took a gossip-column attitude with the information she had and that […]
Posted inNews & Politics
City File
If you can’t get married, be sure to adopt your kid. “When a married couple has a child together, both parents automatically have a legal parent-child relationship with the child,” writes Tiffany Palmer in the American Bar Association’s Human Rights (Summer). “Because same-sex couples cannot currently marry, this automatic legal relationship is not available, and, […]
Posted inColumns & Opinion
Savage Love
I’m a 16-year-old girl with a 17-year-old boyfriend. My boyfriend is religious and strongly against sex before marriage (vaginal, anal, or even oral). Recently our making out has lead to “dry humping.” I’ve heard all sorts of things from peers and teen magazines about what can happen when a guy ejaculates in this situation, and […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Something for the Pain
A relief agency that has helped heartbroken refugees and torture victims may need some help of its own.
Posted inNews & Politics
Cardinal Sin
Dear editor, I was astonished to see what your headline writer put above the story on Cardinal George and the Sun-Times [Hot Type, August 8]. Does the Reader’s respect for the Cardinal rate no more than a vulgar headline? Joe Wiley Near North side
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Underground Film Festival
The tenth annual Chicago Underground Film Festival runs Wednesday, August 27, through Tuesday, September 2, at Landmark’s Century Centre. Tickets are $9, a $30 pass admits you to five films, and a full festival pass, good for all screenings, is $100. For more information call 866-468-3401. Following is the schedule for August 27 and 28; […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fillet of Solo
Live Bait Theater’s eighth annual showcase of one-person performances features old and new work by a slew of fringe artists. The fest runs through August 30 at Live Bait Theater, 3914 N. Clark; performances take place in the theater’s Bucket space. Tickets are $10 per show; a festival pass to all shows costs $30. Call […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Janet Bean & the Concertina Wire
Perhaps you’ve heard the old saw about how a great drummer can make any band better. Janet Bean, who grew up in Florida and Kentucky but has lived in Chicago for 20 years, is no slouch behind the kit, but she manages to pull off the same trick with her voice. Her soprano is the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The 36 Lineup
The 36 Lineup, DSI Productions, at Frankie J’s MethaDome Theatre. Your average five-member improv ensemble is usually good for 30 to 45 minutes of serviceable comedy, so you can see why smaller companies might band together to fill out an evening. But of the three groups in The 36 Lineup, only one appears able to […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Datebook
AUGUST 22 FRIDAY Western outlaw William Henry McCarty was popularly seen as a bloodthirsty, one-dimensional villain “with no socially redeeming value to him” until Walter Woods’s 1903 play Billy the Kid–the first retelling of the young horse rustler’s story–spawned the mythology that persists today. “This play turned him into a misguided youth who was misunderstood […]
Posted inMusic
Spot Check
DUVALL 8/22, BOTTOM LOUNGE I’ve seen Duvall’s newest release, Racine, referred to as an EP, but one new song plus an acoustic version of an old song (“Time Is Gone,” from a 2001 EP) plus a Spandau Ballet cover is what back in the old days we used to call a “single.” That’s not a […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Hamsters on a Wheel
Below the Belt Steep Theatre Company Richard Dresser packs Below the Belt with allusions to other writers, and part of the fun is picking them out: Oh look, there’s Pinter’s inexplicable violence, there’s Mamet’s cutthroat workplace, there’s Sartre’s entrapment and futility, there’s Arthur Miller’s disdain for the corporate emphasis on being liked. But Dresser is […]
Posted inArts & Culture
L-Roy & the Bulletproof Band
Although he hails from deep blues territory (he was born Leroy Perryman in Vance, Mississippi, in 1945, and grew up in nearby Clarksdale, where he performed locally before moving to Chicago in ’66), L-Roy’s gravelly baritone and ebullient stage presence call to mind Kansas City-style jazz shouters like Big Joe Turner and soul sophisticates like […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Deerhoof
This San Francisco band is picking up beaming notices from such papers of record as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Kerrang! for its new album, Apple O’ (5 Rue Christine), but as with its previous four I had to overcome my natural resistance to overweening cuteness. All those bubblegum melodies and girly […]