JACQUES BREL IS ALIVE AND WELL AND LIVING IN PARIS, Brown Couch Theatre Company, at National Pastime Theater. It’s a tad disconcerting to see young performers throw themselves into Jacques Brel’s anthems of disillusionment. More bitter than sweet, his songs celebrate weathered survivors, wronged lovers, and battered souls, from soldiers furious with the killing game […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 21
Issue of Feb. 19 – 25, 2004
Posted inNews & Politics
Dog Bites Man
Man says “Good boy!” Teaching pets to attack might keep them from attacking.
Posted inNews & Politics
Confuse-a-Candidate
In Chicago holding on to your office can be as simple as getting a good lawyer to mess with the other guy.
Posted inArts & Culture
Dragons 1976
On the new debut album by Dragons 1976, On Cortez (Locust), alto saxophonist Aram Shelton, bassist Jason Ajemian, and drummer Tim Daisy (all born in 1976, the Year of the Dragon) lay bare the components of their simple, uncluttered music and bet everything on careful phrasing and attentive interaction. Shelton, one of Chicago’s finest young […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Ethel
Though Kronos Quartet’s world-in-a-blender approach has yielded some dodgy cocktails over the years, you have to give them credit for helping to break down the walls of the classical music ghetto: just about every genre of music on the planet borrows freely from others, so why shouldn’t serious composers have the freedom to do the […]
Posted inMusic
Minimalist Mythmaking
Pandit Pran Nath Midnight/Raga Malkauns (Just Dreams) Early on in The Concert for Bangladesh, the sound of Ravi Shankar’s group tuning up is received with applause from the Western audience, which has mistaken it for the actual music. Three decades later, it’s still not such a small world after all. The sitar craze of the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
TRG Music Listings
Rock, Pop, Etc. Concerts ERYKAH BADU, FLOETRY Sat 2/28, 7 PM, Auditorium Theatre, 50 E. Congress. 312-922-2110 or 312-902-1500. TRACY BECK Free concert. Wed 2/25, noon, Chicago Music Mart, DePaul Center, 333 S. State. 312-362-6700. BIG BAND Tribute to big-band music. Fri 2/20, Sat 2/21, Fri 2/27, and Sat 2/28, 7:30 PM, and Sun 2/29, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Henry Rollins
It’s hard to believe that the same Henry Rollins who declared that “sensitivity is for pussies” has spent the last few years as a solo performer detailing a set of neuroses thicker than his own neck, fussing about turning 40 and finding the right girl to settle down with. Maybe people are finally getting hip […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Fur Beethoven
FUR BEETHOVEN, Journeymen Theater Company. In press materials, director Tonika Todorova maintains that the biodrama she conceived (Jeremy Beiler wrote the script) is told “from Beethoven’s perspective.” Yet this rudimentary pageant, offering little information one couldn’t gather from 45 minutes on Google, has no discernible point of view at all. The basic elements of Beethoven’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Paragon Springs
PARAGON SPRINGS, TimeLine Theatre Company. Steven Dietz’s transplant of Henrik Ibsen’s An Enemy of the People from Norway in 1882 to the midwest in 1926 has a couple of interesting points to make–the play is more compelling than, say, Drowning Crow, Regina Taylor’s arid, pointless reworking of The Seagull. But ultimately Dietz adds little that’s […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Over The Tavern
OVER THE TAVERN, at Metropolis Performing Arts Centre. For good and ill, Tom Dudzick’s play about a 1950s working-class Catholic family resembles a two-and-a-half-hour sitcom. Well-worn grievances are rehashed, most related to nuns brandishing rulers and threatening hellfire for oversleeping on Sunday or (saints preserve us) having impure thoughts. Precocious kids mug and crack wise […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Exhibit: Haitian art shines through the chaos
So far, Haiti’s bicentennial has been no party. In an echo of its birth on January 1, 1804, the hemisphere’s second-oldest independent republic is in armed revolt. If the impasse between Aristide and his opponents continues Port-au-Prince may yet see a parade in its harbor–of American warships. That won’t stop art dealer Paul Waggoner from […]
Posted inArts & Culture
George Piper Dances
Who the heck is George Piper? And what does he have to do with the Ballet Boyz? Turns out that “George Piper” is an amalgam of the middle names of Michael Nunn and William Trevitt, dancers with London’s Royal Ballet who were featured in Ballet Boyz, a collection of video diaries that first aired on […]