This late, rarely performed Tennessee Williams play has been compared to Beckett and Pinter–and I’d add Sartre. But it inverts the claustrophobic gravity of these writers’ minimalist scenarios, which, however blank, possess a concrete, crushing reality. The existential terror of The Two-Character Play is defined by lightness, to use Kundera’s term: insubstantiality, transparence, oblivion. Dissociative-disorder […]
Tag: Vol. 35 No. 9
Issue of Nov. 24 – 30, 2005
Posted inNews & Politics
It Doesn’t Take a Village
Loved your piece in today’s paper on the Andersonville cultural wars. My partner and I just moved out of the hood after a number of years of experiencing the demo-graphic changes. We were, are, and will continue to be in strong support of Dan [McCauley]. We have grown children who were always expected to behave […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Traffic Jam
Steppenwolf’s “Traffic” series, usually made up of one-night stands on Mondays, is celebrating its tenth anniversary in high style. For almost three weeks straight, artists like Elaine Stritch, the Roches, Buddy Guy, and Kiki & Herb will get a chance to try out new work, reintroduce audiences to previous shows, and chew the fat about […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Believe the Children
A “victim” in a landmark ritual-abuse case, now 30, tells a reporter he lied. But at least one prosecutor’s not buying it.
Posted inNews & Politics
They Scream for Ice Cream
Dear Mike, As a longtime Hot Type reader and one of your biggest fans, I feel compelled to call you on one aspect of your otherwise fine column on the “antitoddler coffeehouse” flap [November 18]. By granting you an interview, the toddler’s mother was doing you a favor, and your reference to “the two-year-old screaming […]
Posted inArts & Culture
“Pseudo Arrogant”
Hong Kong native Sam Ng moved to Chicago in 2001 to study film and music at Columbia College. He dressed as predictably as the next Wicker Park dude–until he started going to parties at spaces like Buddy and Camp Gay last summer. Liz Armstrong: Those shoes are insane, Sam. Sam Ng: Be careful–don’t touch them. […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Einstein’s Dreams
Alan Lightman’s precious, largely banal 1993 best seller makes for precious, largely banal theater. Snapshots of imagined worlds where time operates unconventionally–sometimes flowing back and forth, sometimes stopping, sometimes sticking here or there–are supposed to represent Einstein’s fantasies while developing his special theory of relativity in 1905. But most are too pedestrian or logically inconsistent […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Let’s Not Go There
The NYT story only works because of the words protesting moms and boycott. Those words give credence to Dan McCauley’s claims we have a sense of entitlement. “He should let us in and let our kids do whatever they want” seems to be how the parents (mommies) are portrayed. Even your story calls it a […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Weird Justice
Gang enforcer James “Bo Diddley” Williams had already done his time for shooting Lucky Wade. Then Wade died and he found himself on trial for murder.
Posted inArts & Culture
Rent
I wasn’t encouraged to learn that this screen adaptation of Jonathan Larson’s long-running Broadway musical was directed by big-screen funster Chris Columbus (Home Alone, Mrs. Doubtfire, the first two Harry Potter movies). But aside from a few overblown production numbers, Columbus respects the show’s smaller scale, and the property itself is a knockout, with great […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Man Man
Last year’s The Man in a Blue Turban With a Face (Ace Fu), the first full-length by this Philly band, set a new standard in a genre I can only call short-bus prog. The various members bring in what seems like way too many instruments–marimba, trumpet, sax, Fender Rhodes, and more–to run rampant over the […]
Posted inNews & Politics
Put to Rest by the River; Lost in the Mail
The new Vietnam veterans memorial marks a partial victory for the little guy.
Posted inArts & Culture
Blackalicious
Listening to Gift of Gab rhyme on Blackalicious’s 1999 EP, A2G, was like watching someone juggle flaming chain saws: he spewed a seemingly endless supply of offbeat images with the kind of speed, breath control, and stamina that made me wonder if his lungs weren’t transplanted from an elephant. To match that energy, Chief Xcel […]
Posted inArts & Culture
Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley
Jamaica notoriously refuses to settle for yesterday’s riddims, but despite sounding like some half-forgotten mid-80s classic, Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley’s “Welcome to Jamrock” echoed through the island’s yards all summer. And as both the homicide rate and the temperatures there soared, no cry could’ve sounded as current as the song’s ancient Ini Kamoze sample: “Out […]
Posted inArts & Culture
The Long Christmas Ride Home
Dysfunctional families are a staple of holiday fare. But Paula Vogel’s play about a fateful car ride home from grandmother’s house goes beyond the cliches. Set first in 1970, her story of a family of five tearing itself apart is told through narration and Bunraku puppetry until it fasts-forwards to the future, when the gay […]