THE BAKER’S WIFE, One Theatre Company, at the Athenaeum Theatre. Based on Marcel Pagnol’s popular 1938 film La femme de boulanger, itself an adaptation of Jean Giono’s 1932 novel Jean le bleu, Stephen Schwartz and Joseph Stein’s musical should be better than it is. The setting is exotic: a village in Provence. And the premise […]
Tag: Vol. 33 No. 44
Issue of Jul. 29 – Aug. 4, 2004
Posted inArts & Culture
Ken Stringfellow
Ken Stringfellow’s new Soft Commands (Yep Roc) marks a significant if subtle shift from his last solo effort. 2001’s Touched found the silvery-voiced Posies front man hunkered down in producer Mitch Easter’s North Carolina studio trying to distill the essence of his old band’s decade-long career into a single disc. Soft Commands, written and recorded […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Horro’Rama Drive-In
As part of the Flashback Weekend nostalgia convention, the west parking lot of the Holiday Inn O’Hare International, 5440 N. River Road, Rosemont, will be converted into an open-air theater, with patrons invited to bring blankets and lawn chairs (the “drive-in” part is purely sentimental). Shorts, trailers, and remarks from drive-in aficionado Joe Bob Briggs […]
Posted inFood & Drink
Neighborhood Tours
The Quest for the Best Banh Mi: Finding one can be work, but a fresh Vietnamese sub is worth the trouble.
Posted inArts & Culture
Defying Gravity
DEFYING GRAVITY, Brown Couch Theatre Company, at the Athenaeum. This meditation on flight as a metaphor for human efforts to encounter God never quite reaches the profundity of its predecessor The Little Prince. But when author Jane Anderson forgets her tight little scheme long enough to present relationships between the characters, she creates some wonderful […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Tale/Spin
TALE/SPIN, Curious Theatre Branch. “I’ll be writing this forever,” sighs Michael Martin during the opening moments of this intensely personal monologue, which serves as the second half and centerpiece of this group show. Much has happened since the Great Beast Theater cofounder’s initial staging of his 2002 work The Bearer–including a move to New Orleans, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
On Film: horror under the stars
Movie buff Mike Kerz, the force behind Flashback Weekend’s Horro’Rama Drive-In and Convention, is setting up a full-size, 20-by-40-foot drive-in screen in the west parking lot of the Holiday Inn O’Hare for this weekend’s festival of outdoor movies. The only hitch is that the drive-in is actually a walk-in–bring your own lawn chair. On the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Chicago Human Rhythm Project
Guys jumping around inside crates may not sound like much, but the Tokyo-based Boxmen put on quite a show. Wearing suits and ties and sometimes bowler hats, they stand inside the wooden frames, which come almost to their waists, and use their arms to jerk themselves and the boxes a few inches off the floor. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Minders
From their inception in late 1995 the Minders were arguably the most doggedly nostalgic act of a backward-looking lot. While their fellow bands in the Elephant 6 collective, like Neutral Milk Hotel, Beulah, and Olivia Tremor Control, made the sacred mid-60s texts (Pet Sounds, Revolver, etc) a starting point for experimentation, Martyn Leaper and his […]
Posted inArts & Culture
One People
Director Pim de la Parra, who’s spent most of his career working in the Netherlands, returned to his homeland of Suriname in the early days of its independence to make this little-known 1976 gem. Roy (Borger Breeveld), a Creole college student, is called back from the Netherlands to Suriname, where his mother is dying. Immediately […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Take My presidency, Please; Deja Vu All Over Again
Take My Presidency, Please With all due respect to America’s democratic traditions, show me a contested election and I’ll show you an organization in turmoil. Tyrants don’t like contested elections because they’d rather think of their domains as one big happy family. Journalists do like them–they have papers to sell–but in their own bailiwicks they’re […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Safes
If you’ve tried to rent a practice space in Chicago, you’ve probably wished you had rich parents. But the three brothers in local garage quartet the Safes–bassist Michael and guitarists Frankie and Patrick O’Malley–say they don’t mind ponying up the money themselves, since their music-obsessed kin have already given them a priceless gift. Their carpenter […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dillinger Escape Plan
Miss Machine (Relapse), the first full-length in five years from New Jersey’s Dillinger Escape Plan, opens with the sort of stuff that’s led both fans and detractors to label the band “math metal”–brutally fast, meticulously executed amelodic cacophony that skips between time signatures the way a Formula One driver shifts gears. New vocalist Greg Puciato […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Africa & Plumbridge
AFRICA & PLUMBRIDGE, at Theatre Building Chicago. Vanity productions are often uncomfortable, but this new musical raises the eww factor. The production itself isn’t completely bad: Sue Carey, the local philanthropist who used her own story as the subject matter, has purchased the best talent she can find. The problem is that the heart of […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Indiefest Film Festival and Market
The second annual Indiefest Film Festival and Market, featuring more than 50 independent films, runs Friday, July 30, through Sunday, August 8, with screenings at the Biograph; Excalibur, 632 N. Dearborn; and Le Meridien Hotel, 521 N. Rush. Most of the screenings are Chicago premieres, but the festival also includes three Biograph screenings of Hany […]