Performing Arts
Friday, February 24, 2012
Onstage Film Performing Arts Arts Margaret: Immature
Posted by Tony Adler on 02.24.12 at 09:00 AM
As Reader movie critic J.R. Jones noted in his review, the original version of Margaret was much longer than the one that reached theaters. Writer/director Kenneth Lonergan was forced to cut the running time down to 149 minutes in order to get it released, and it's interesting to speculate on what exactly is missing from the tale of Lisa Cohen, a privileged Manhattan teen who goes a little mad after inadvertently causing a bus accident that kills a woman. Jones points, convincingly, to scenes involving Matt Damon as Mr. Aaron, Lisa's far too understanding math teacher. I tend to think some of the cuts must've come out of a subplot involving Lisa's divorced mom, Joan, and her courtly Colombian boyfriend, Ramon. Guilt and mourning are heavy presences in Margaret, and Joan has good reason to feel both when it comes to Ramon. In effect, he's her bus accident. And yet the scene in which she addresses the wreck directly seems to have been snipped from the movie.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Paranormal Onstage Lit & Lectures Music Performing Arts Arts Books If you liked Manual Cinema's Ada/Ava . . .
Posted by Tony Adler on 02.23.12 at 02:03 PM
That's how I felt on seeing Manual Cinema's Ada/Ava last summer.
All shadow-puppet plays necessarily look at least a little bit alike, so it was familiar in that respect. And the subject matter—an exploration of what happens when inseparable old twins are finally parted by death—seemed redolent, picking up on ingrown-sibling lore that runs from the pixilated sisters in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town through the murderous ones in Arsenic and Old Lace to the weird ones in Macbeth (with a side trip to the hoarding Collyer brothers of books, plays, movies, and reality). What took me by surprise was the Dante-esque journey undertaken—part willingly, but part not—by the devastated surviving twin, Ada, as she tried to master her loss. A visit to a traveling carnival yielded twisted images and false exits worthy of the hall-of-mirrors shoot-out in The Lady From Shanghai.
Onstage Performing Arts Dance Arts The latest Reader performing arts reviews
Posted by Sharon Lurye on 02.23.12 at 11:00 AM
- Johnny Knight
- Rush Pearson in Diary of a Madman
Also recommended are DreamLogic Theatrework's Elder Gods, a promenade-style adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's At the Mountains of Madness; the Actors Gymnasium's sweet Lost and Found: A Recycled Circus, featuring an outstanding cast of adults, teens, and kids; and They Are Dying Out, Trap Door Theatre's version of a 1973 satire by Austrian provocateur Peter Handke. The intimacy of a black-box set makes for great theater in Mary-Arrchie's revival of the 2008 Tracy Letts comedy Superior Donuts and (Re)discover Theater's Hamlet, which amps up the classic play's sex appeal by emphasizing the relationship between the melancholy Dane and Ophelia. (Hurry if you want to see Hamlet: it closes Saturday.)
Friday, February 17, 2012
Performing Arts Arts Steppenwolf expands
Posted by Deanna Isaacs on 02.17.12 at 02:43 PM
And since CRED reporter Dave Matthews took the opportunity to mention the David Margulies play, "Time Stands Still," running at Steppenwolf through May 13 and the subject of numerous critical raves, here's a question: Am I the only audience member who found the characters, the story, and the pacing insufferable? Well, no—here's Kerry Reid's Reader review.
Lit & Lectures Music Visual Art Clout City News Performing Arts Dance Arts Books The Toronto Chicago Cultural Plan
Posted by Deanna Isaacs on 02.17.12 at 01:19 PM
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Performing Arts Comedy Arts Have you heard of Ron Shock?
Posted by Tony Adler on 02.16.12 at 04:16 PM
I've got to admit I never heard of Shock, legend though he's supposed to be, until I got the notice about the benefit this afternoon. But I've been watching videos of him since then. Telling hip jokes and tales in a good-ol'-boy drawl, reminiscing about his prison term in New Orleans, he's kind of what you might expect if Charles Bukowski and Johnny Cash had a baby and let Lenny Bruce raise it. He's also got guts: since the diagnosis on December 14, he's been taping regular "cancer chronicles" that can be seen on Youtube. I say he deserves to live.
The benefit is scheduled for tonight at 10 PM at the Lincoln Lodge, 4008 N. Lincoln. Cost is $10.
Onstage Performing Arts Dance Arts The latest Reader performing arts reviews and previews
Posted by Tony Adler on 02.16.12 at 01:24 PM
- Suzanne Plunkett
- Hunger
Meanwhile, we have five Chicago-made shows to recommend.
Teatro Luna premiered Crossed late last year. The Reader's Julia Thiel liked it then, but the Lunas revised it anyway. Now this montage of scenes about immigrants, legal and otherwise, seems angrier in tone, and it's also jettisoned one of Thiel's favorite bits (a disembodied voice at an airport, sorting passengers for "additional screening based on the color of their labia"). But overall, we're sticking by our earlier assessment.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Media News Bites Performing Arts Arts The show's aged better than the write-up
Posted by Michael Miner on 02.14.12 at 04:02 PM
The worlds of Broadway and Park Avenue and their respective wives put on their best bibs and tuckers last night and converged at Mr. Ziegfeld’s handsome new playhouse on Sixth Avenue. There they milled about elegantly in the lobby, were pictured by flashlight photographers and finally got to their seats and on to the business at hand. That was the inspection of the news offering from the workshops of the maestro, the much-heralded musical adaptation of Edna Ferber’s novel, “Show Boat.”
We would flatter this passage by calling it merely archaic.
Friday, February 10, 2012
Media Performing Arts Arts "The Love Song of Saul Alinsky"
Posted by Jerome Ludwig on 02.10.12 at 04:16 PM
Which got me wondering: was the play any good?
Read Adam Langer's September 10, 1998, Reader review here.
Thursday, February 9, 2012
Religion Onstage Performing Arts Dance Arts Piety The latest Reader performing arts reviews and previews
Posted by Sharon Lurye on 02.09.12 at 02:45 PM
- Michael Brosilow
- Hesperia
