If I were Derrick Sanders, artistic director of Congo Square Theatre Company, I’d produce anything Chadwick Boseman wrote, however ungainly, implausible, wrongheaded, or misbegotten. Because it’s a sure thing that eventually he’d give me something great. Unfortunately, Deep Azure isn’t great. Written entirely in rhymed couplets that bounce between hip-hop and pseudo-Shakespearean diction, this supernatural […]
Tag: Vol. 34 No. 52
Issue of Sep. 22 – 28, 2005
Posted inNews & Politics
To Love, Honor, and Be Gay
One camp says gays shouldn’t marry because they can’t reproduce. The other syays we should because we’re pillars of monogamy. They’re both full of it.
Posted inArts & Culture
Time and the Conways
Griffin Theatre Company director Jonathan Berry understands perfectly the significance of J.B. Priestley’s title: time is as much a character in this 1938 play as any member of the Conway family. What could have been a simple family melodrama–a mother and six children celebrate the end of World War I, then reassemble 20 years later–instead […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Treatment
Friday 23 BLACK DICE, 13 & GOD, BLOOD ON THE WALL Last August New York’s BLACK DICE played one of the most aimless, self-indulgent sets of music I suffered through all year, so I was heartened to see Aaron Warren confess that the band’s had a hard time performing live since drummer Hisham Bharoocha left […]
Posted inArts & Culture
William Basinski
New Yorker William Basinski has been involved in music for more than two decades–he’s played saxophone in a variety of experimental contexts and helps run Arcadia, a Brooklyn performance space. But his greatest acclaim has come in the last few years, as a rash of releases from Raster-Noton, Die Stadt, and his own 2062 label […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Grand Hotel: The Musical
Like the chandelier in Phantom of the Opera, a revolving door is the all-purpose metaphor here. Luther Davis, who wrote the book for this 1989 musical version of the 1929 novel and 1932 film, has a mere 110 minutes to spin the show’s many intersecting stories, set in the world’s most luxurious hotel, so the […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Triad
Matthew Wilson’s elliptical noirish play for Hysteria Productions opens with a fantastic scene: two men at a costume party, one dressed as Superman and the other like Sherlock Holmes, engage in a Hitchcockian cat-and-mouse conversation on a high balcony. Turns out that the Holmes impersonator (played by Wilson) is a shrink, Ray, who’s treating the […]
Posted inFilm
A History of Violence
Though he avoids platitudes, David Cronenberg is a troubled moralist who lingers over cherished mythologies to find their dark residue: this masterpiece, an art film deftly masquerading as a thriller, seems to celebrate small-town pastoralism and critique big-city violence, but this position turns out to be double-edged. Josh Olson adapted his script from a graphic […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner
A fat-camp failure continues to pack on the pounds in this sharp, sweet, serious show. Eventually Minerva (Diana Campos) is literally so puffed up she floats above her loving but ineffective husband (Tony Sancho) and concerned yet self-absorbed sister (Sandra Delgado). Minerva is relieved to be free, and they realize too late what she means […]
Posted inNews & Politics
In Defense of Bullshit; Right or Wrong, Bloggers Put It Out There
The American justice system depends on it.
Posted inNews & Politics
My Cousin the Saint
Luis Urrea spent 20 years spinning a masterpiece of magical realism from his own family history.
Posted inColumns & Opinion
A Site for Poor Eyes; Nice Work If You Can Get It; Get Out the Abacus; Miscellany
The city’s latest gift to the starving-artist community is a kiosk in cyberspace.
Posted inArts & Culture
Benefits for Hurricane Katrina Surviviors
Numerous live music and theater performances are being held in the Chicago area to raise money for survivors of the recent gulf coast catastrophe. Here are this week’s benefit shows; see the roundup at www.chicagoreader.com for events taking place next week and beyond. FRIDAY 23 Woodstock Katrina Relief Concert NEAR GALT AIRPORT, 5112 Greenwood Rd., […]
Posted inNews & Politics
When the Cat’s Away
With Daley out of the room, Joe Moore and Rick Munoz scrounged up a majority to disagree with the administration.