I am fond of scrolling through Instagram’s stories feature, where you sometimes get to see “reposts,” items created by other people that the accounts you actually follow on the app have scooched over to their stories to share with everyone. It feels like walking by people’s house windows and catching a glimpse of the art […]
Posted inThe Secret History of Chicago Music
The late great Joe Cassidy links music scenes across the Atlantic
Last month I traveled to Belfast to attend the Northern Ireland Music Prize, because this year’s ceremony included the debut of the Joe Cassidy Chrysalis Award—named for the late Belfast-born artist who’d become one of Chicago’s most important and beloved musical transplants. Cassidy, who led the group Butterfly Child, was an old friend of mine […]
Posted inFeature
Johnson administration’s early days marked by lapses in transparency
Something seems shady at City Hall. It’s not the first time a Chicago politician is operating in the dark. But the actions of Mayor Brandon Johnson are conspicuous for the progressive union organizer who ascended to office on bold promises of cogovernance with the pantheon of Chicago’s political left who coalesced around him. Since taking […]
Posted inTheater Review
Promises, Promises gets a rare revival with Blank Theatre
Don’t ask me how many times I’ve seen Billy Wilder’s Academy Award-winning 1960 film The Apartment. I honestly couldn’t tell you. I can tell you it’s my favorite movie, and it should certainly be on anyone’s list of great holiday films, as well. (If for no other reason, you should watch it for the glorious […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Other Cinderella still has soul and sparkle to spare
It’s been a minute since I’ve visited the Kingdom of Other: 13 years, to be precise. The last time I saw Jackie Taylor’s The Other Cinderella was in 2010, before Black Ensemble Theater moved to their spacious Clark Street home. (And it was certainly long before BET planned an expansion across the street that will […]
Posted inTheater Review
Islander loops together a minimalist but enchanting Celtic tale
If Laurie Anderson had done a mash-up of Scott O’Dell’s young adult classic Island of the Blue Dolphins and the 1994 John Sayles Celtic magic realist film, The Secret of Roan Inish, the result might be very similar to Islander. This minimalist but enchanting musical, which started life in 2017 on the Isle of Mull […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Buttcracker plays it naughty and nice
Fast becoming a staple of Chicago’s alternative holiday entertainment scene, The Buttcracker: A Nutcracker Burlesque is back for a seventh year of tinseled twerking and tasseled twirling. Dreamed up around a campfire by artistic producer and playwright Jaq Seifert, the queer-friendly, sex-positive show celebrates bodies of various sizes, shades, ages, and genders in an exuberant […]
Posted inTheater Review
Even goblins can’t chase away Hershel‘s Hanukkah fun
Things get meta pretty quickly when you walk into the theater of Chicago Loop Synagogue to see Hershel and the Hanukkah Goblins. Cast members come out to schmooze with the audience members (especially young ones). During the first 15 minutes of the show, we’re treated to a wonderful performance by a band of roving Eastern […]
Posted inTheater Review
The Golden Girls Save Xmas is festive, raunchy, and heartwarming
Hell in a Handbag Productions serves up a hefty helping of Christmas camp in this new episode of its “The Golden Girls: Lost Episodes” franchise, which purports to feature never-broadcast episodes of The Golden Girls, the 1985-1992 NBC sitcom about four over-60 women—three widows and a divorcee—sharing a home in Miami. In Handbag artistic director […]
Posted inTheater Review
Caveman Play lets the audience decide the course of humanity
Clare Brennan directs Savannah Reich’s 2017 silly/smart comedy about the dawn of civilization—and the audience gets to decide how it works out in the end. Dandelion (Tess Galbiati) and Rocky (Jack Rodgers) are the world’s first farmers. They’ve moved indoors. They’ve even adopted a cat—albeit a talking, often aggravated tiger called Douglas (Evan Cullinan)—and are […]
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Posted inMonday Night Foodball
Meet your new fungal overlords when Sauce and Bread Kitchen, 18th Street Distillery, and Fernet Fungo play the next Monday Night Foodball
“I see the mycelium as the Earth’s natural Internet,” wrote mycologist Paul Stamets. “A consciousness with which we might be able to communicate.” Yeah, that’s also kind of how a figurative fungal network operated when Sauce and Bread Kitchen’s Mike Bancroft infused an Italian-style amaro with shitake mushrooms and gave Drew Fox a taste. Invisible […]