Those familiar only with the Disney version of Carlo Collodi’s picaresque fantasy might think they’ve stumbled into the wrong place. But the opening spectacle of planets orbiting in darkness, accompanied by a vibrant hymn in Latin, is enough to win anyone over. Andrew Park’s innovative 75-minute adaptation for the Quest Theatre Ensemble offers a variety […]
Tag: Vol. 35 No. 42
Issue of Jul. 13 – 19, 2006
Posted inArts & Culture
Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard
Outside of Ellen DeGeneres, probably no female stand-ups have done more in the past ten years to promote the cause of gay rights than Margaret Cho and Sandra Bernhard, performing in town this week in conjunction with Gay Games VII. Both are self-professed bisexuals specializing in a bawdy bitchiness and impassioned by their distaste for […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Gross and Selfish
Small communities that–feeling they have no better alternative claim to fame–host overeaters’ competitions [“Overeating for Fun and Profit,” June 30] are truly pitiful. The man in the crowd decrying the prize money Pat Bertoletti wouldn’t get when he vomited up those dozens of tamales (“That’s $2,500 he just put in the trash”), like the many […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Straight Dope
I’ve searched your archive in vain–how is it that the vital 6eld of phytoestrogen research has escaped your scrutiny? The straight dope, please: Can herbal supplements containing phytoestrogen truly increase a woman’s breast size significantly? Is this method safe, or are there negative side effects (sure they’re bigger, but they feel like baseballs)? You know […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Correctional Fluids–From Pentecostal to Bi-Coastal
In his one-man show, Spencer Lord tells his own incredibly eventful life story, depicting himself as a resourceful transient drifting all over the planet and into the lives of everyone from Dolly Parton to the Dalai Lama (deemed “too giggly”). Lord’s world-weary demeanor and derisive sense of humor give his name-dropping a wry edge–and his […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Miesidentified
Fred Camper, Two weeks ago in the Reader you wrote an art review [Now Showing, June 23] that the Hermann Hall (student union at the Illinois Institute of Technology, IIT) was designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. That is incorrect; Hermann Hall, like the library building directly to its south, was designed in 1962 […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Emerson String Quartet
Shostakovich wrote one of the two most important string-quartet cycles of the 20th century (Bartok wrote the other), and in celebration of his 100th birthday the Emerson String Quartet will play the last three works. “These three together pack the greatest punch and present Shostakovich in a way that goes to the greatest depth,” says […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Martin Short: Fame Becomes Me
Martin Short’s Broadway-bound revue should delight fans of the Canadian-born comedian, who trots out some of his popular characters (Jiminy Glick, Ed Grimley, Irving Cohen, Jackie Rogers Jr.) and displays astonishing energy with his singing, dancing, tumbling, and Peter Pan-style flying. But this trippy, free-associative “party with Marty,” which purports to relate his saga from […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Up Everest, Quietly
Sophia Danenberg was the first black woman to sit on top of the world and nobody noticed.
Posted inNews & Politics
Correction
In my article on bike messengers, “Fresh Air! Speed! Poverty! Servitude!” [June 23], I referred to the International Workers of the World, which, as a union member pointed out to me, is both wrong and redundant. The correct name is the Industrial Workers of the World. Scott Eden
Posted inArts & Culture
Performance of Sleep in One Long Act Without Intermission
Live Action Cartoonists’ show is just as disjointed and superficial as it was in its premiere at the PAC/edge Performance Festival in spring 2005. Though the video segments are ingenious, writer-director Natsu Onoda unwisely chooses to throw everything but the kitchen sink into her 90-minute production: insomnia, capital punishment, criminality and the justice system, mercy […]
Posted inNews & Politics
The Life and Death of the Deadliest Man Alive
How a south-side Irish boy came to be Chicago’s most notorious martial-arts master
Posted inArts & Culture
Plastic Surgery or a Really Good Haircut?
Syndicated Sylvia cartoonist Nicole Hollander turns semiconfessional monologuist in this hour-long Fillet of Solo Festival premiere. The premise is that she’s imagining scenes she’ll write for a memoir, which she insists will include stories about drugs and sex with musicians. Her longest story concerns preparing for her first sexual encounter in 14 years, which requires […]
Posted inArts & Culture
John Dean
Since coming to prominence in 1973 as the White House lawyer who exposed Richard M. Nixon and his circle to a Senate committee during Watergate, John Dean has established himself as a cloth-coat conservative who’s willing to cry foul on the betrayal of democratic principles; his 2004 book, Worse Than Watergate, was an incisive critique […]