As part of its William Finn festival, Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago performs Finn’s seldom revived 1978 pop opera about a sexually confused adolescent, Marvin, and the females in his life: the teacher he has a crush on, the girl he dates, and the woman he marries–and eventually leaves for a man, as we learn in […]
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 27
Issue of Mar. 31 – Apr. 6, 2005
Posted inArts & Culture
The Flaming Dames 2: Slippery When Wet
What kind of burlesque show might appeal to a jaded generation raised on scantily clad video babes? Why, one that features . . . scantily clad video babes! The New Millennium Theatre Company’s late-night extravaganza pits old-timey bawdy dames (including Amanda Krupman as an adorable Kewpie-doll moll) against the babes with big hair (and other, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Orpheus Now
Field House Lab in its debut production, a world premiere, shows an admirable eagerness to embrace ambiguity: writer-director Gigi Buffington splinters the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice into a dozen stylized scenes, expanding its potential meanings. Orpheus, a singer who’s lost his voice after forsaking his true love, is in session with a saffron-garbed, chain-smoking […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Falsettos
William Finn and James Lapine’s musical is tricky. The protagonist–sexually ambivalent Marvin–is an immature kvetch trying to hold together an extended family that includes his ex-wife, their precocious son, the ex-wife’s husband (who’s also Marvin’s shrink), and Marvin’s boyfriend, who suffers from a mysterious malady we know is AIDS. (The story is set in New […]
Posted inNews & Politics
How to Win the War on Drugs
Picnics, dancing, bowling–these are all part of a local program for convicted drug offenders that’s cheaper and more effective than prison.
Posted inArts & Culture
Decemberists, Okkervil River
I imagine that Colin Meloy was once the sort of arty, trench-coated high schooler his classmates wanted to either seduce or cram into a locker. His Portland-based indie-pop combo, the DECEMBERISTS, inspires a similar ambivalence: Meloy’s hyper-literary leanings often muck up an otherwise decent tune or engaging tale, and when he’s at his cloying, old-world-romantic […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Judy Irving’s graceful and laid-back 2003 documentary deals with at least three subjects, separately and in conjunction with one another. One is indicated by the title: the 45 or so wild parrots from South America that have mysteriously found their way to Telegraph Hill in San Francisco. A good many of them have been befriended, […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Dresden Staatskapelle
The Dresden Staatskapelle, founded in 1548, is one of the finest orchestras in Europe, renowned for its luminous winds, lush string playing, and precise, well-blended sound. It returns to Chicago for the first time since 1987 to give a single performance of two Beethoven symphonies. The monumental Third, or Eroica, altered the direction of music […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Punx in the Park
Where can a Canadian male feminist against fascism meet a nice nonracist skinhead girl?
Posted inNews & Politics
News of the Weird
Lead Story In February the Houston Chronicle reported on 22-year-old Dallas artist James Sooy and his solution to the problem of glasses slipping down one’s nose: he had a piercing inserted through the bridge of his nose and attached his prescription lenses directly to it. Sooy hoped to market the idea, but an optometrist interviewed […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Kills
On their new No Wow (Rough Trade/RCA), the Kills sound more like classic P.J. Harvey than Polly Jean herself does these days. Though the London duo can’t match the complexity of Harvey’s lyrics, they know how to work with what they’ve got. In a deep-down sex-choked moan, singer VV (aka Alison Mosshart) conjures a mixture […]
Posted inArts & Culture
God
Woody Allen’s 1975 comedy is nominally set in ancient Greece, but it’s a New York Jewish sort of Greece like the one in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. And once the action starts leaking out into the present day–anachronisms piling up like crazy–the Greek part falls away and it’s just […]
Posted inArts & Culture
SFJAZZ Collective
On top of booking the San Francisco Jazz Festival every fall, nonprofit presenter SFJAZZ organizes events year-round; in 2000 it installed saxist Joshua Redman as the artistic director for its spring season of concerts. Last year it launched the SFJAZZ Collective, also under Redman’s direction, and this week the high-powered octet makes its Chicago debut. […]