Recommended Soundboard All Ages

Action Bronson, Calez, Alex Wiley, Impala Sound Champions

Queens rapper and former chef Action Bronson spent most of last year supporting Blue Chips, a Reebok-sponsored mixtape cut with Brooklyn producer Party Supplies. It was one of the most celebrated rap releases of 2012—the Reader’s Miles Raymer praised its boldly sloppy subversion of NYC hip-hop—and a wave of year-end best-of roundups that mentioned it began right around the same time Bronson released the Alchemist-produced mixtape Rare Chandeliers (Vice/Warner). Though Rare Chandeliers doesn’t have the rule-breaking, free-for-all aesthetic that helped make Blue Chips a hit, Bronson preserves the playful energy he demonstrated on the earlier recording, delivering lines about his lothario-foodie lifestyle with a just-blazed attitude that smooths out his rough, sometimes piercingly nasal voice. Alchemist’s beats recall 70s exploitation-film soundtracks, their dramatic horn melodies, burning guitar solos, and buoyant bass lines bolstering Bronson’s outsize rebel-without-a-cause character—together they’re as much fun as a midnight screening of a grindhouse flick with a half dozen rowdy friends. —Leor Galil Calez, Alex Wiley, and Impala Sound Champions open. $22, $20 in advance, $40 VIP tickets

Recommended The Short List (Theater) Member Picks

Baby Wants Candy: The Rock Musical

Baby Wants Candy--a tight troupe now famous for its improvised musicals--began in 1997 as one of the dozens of ImprovOlympic teams formed every year. Somehow they've avoided the usual dissolution of such groups. More impressive, they've never experienced the artistic conservatism that paralyzes improvisers eager to "do it right"--and reap the reward, presumably, of a career in NYC or LA. Instead the troupe has become the very model of smart, physical, quick-thinking, and just plain silly long-form improvisers; they still play well together and manage to entertain. Inspired by the improbable suggestion "So this is it" at the show I saw, nine actors (backed by the five-member Yes Band) improvised a complicated, hilarious, tongue-in-cheek tale of three partnerships on the rocks--two marriages and a professional relationship--and the narrator who helps bring the couples back together. --Jack Helbig $15

Recommended The Short List (Theater)

Barnstormers

Two caveats regarding Drinking & Writing Theater's SportsCenter-style comedy show: One, it's a celebration of functional alcoholism, which is inherently icky. Two, although dolled up with sketch bits, it's basically a literary history lesson . . . set in a bar. Get over those hurdles, though, and you arrive at a casually fascinating edutainment covering booze, sports, and journalism, with set pieces on topics ranging from the notorious MLB wife swap involving Yankee Fritz Peterson to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo Kentucky Derby trip. There are also first-person essays by Drinking & Writing principals Sean Benjamin and Steve Mosqueda. It's far from polished, but that's a part of the appeal. For better or worse, Benjamin and Mosqueda make you feel like their old drinking buddy. —Dan Jakes $15

Recommended The Short List (Theater) New Review (Theater and Comedy)

Beautiful Thing

Jonathan Harvey's tender, tough dramedy focuses on working-class British teen Jamie and his complicated, sometimes combative relationships with the two most important people in his life: his barmaid mother, who dreams of owning her own pub, and Ste, the handsome young schoolmate who lives with his abusive father in the council flat next door. The material feels familiar because it's true to life, and Harvey's 1993 script tackles still-timely themes--bullying, domestic violence, teenage sexual identity conflicts--with a hard-edged humor that doesn't sacrifice seriousness. The success of John Nasca's Pride Films and Plays production hinges largely on Robert Hilliard's engaging performance as Jamie, a stocky, sports-averse 16-year-old whose confidence blossoms as he journeys toward self-acceptance. --Albert Williams $23-$25

Recommended Agenda Member Picks

Blind wine tasting

Starting today, Eno Wine Room in the Fairmont hotel will offer blind tastings every Sunday evening; people who can correctly identify five attributes (like age, region, country, and grape) of three wines get their flight for free. There are two levels of difficulty, one aimed at the average wine drinker and the other created for aficionados. —Julia Thiel $25-$30 per wine flight

Recommended The Short List (Theater) Member Picks

Blue Man Group

Now in their 14th season at the Briar Street Theatre, the cobalt zanies have added wizard-worthy tricks to an already potent mix of visual puns, physical stunts, and cultural commentary. The latest edition conjures up a 2.5-D universe, giant "GiPads" that perform outsized multitasking, and Lady Gaga hat spin-offs. The same subversive spirit fuels the show's still-potent signature bits, including splatter-crazed "paint drumming." The secret of their cerulean success? Understanding that laughter and thought can be BFFs. --Lawrence Bommer $49-$59

Recommended The Short List (Theater) Member Picks

The Book of Mormon

I know it'll seem incomprehensible to you fans of talking turds, but I've never paid Comedy Central's South Park much mind one way or another. And when New York fell all over itself last year appreciating The Book of Mormon, I wondered if there wasn't just a smidge of hyperbole in calling the musical by South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone (along with Robert Lopez) the best of the "century." Now that I've seen the Chicago production, however, I've been—well—converted. A wise mix of nasty satire and compassionate truth telling, Parker, Stone, and Lopez's tale of Mormon missionaries in Uganda is as entertaining—and, strangely, uplifting—a piece of work as anything in recent American theater. Although the book draws whole quivers full of big red arrows to everything that's ludicrous about the Mormon way, it also ends up making a case for the hope we all derive from silly myths. Meanwhile, playful as it is, it ranks up there with Lynn Nottage's Ruined in exposing the danger, dignity, and distortions of African life. The cast is uniformly and perfectly seductive. And is that Steppenwolf's famously earnest James Vincent Meredith, showing a new side of himself as the Ugandan village chief? Incredible. —Tony Adler $65-$125

Recommended The Short List (Theater) New Review (Theater and Comedy)

Boy Gets Girl

Boy dates girl. Girl rejects boy. Boy tries to win girl over by sending boatloads of flowers, showing up at her office, leaving lots of messages, and watching her apartment at night. As the girl's coworker points out, "Normal male heterosexual behavior is somewhat psychotic"--so it takes a while for self-possessed journalist Theresa to realize that Tony is stalking her. But the tension in Rebecca Gilman's 2000 play is established right from the start, and builds as Tony's behavior becomes more and more terrifying. Leonard Kraft provides much-needed comic relief as an aging director of erotic films whom Theresa has to interview for an article. Cody Estle's dark staging makes it clear, though, that there's no plausible happy ending. At one point Theresa's colleague urges her not to change her life, because that would mean Tony had won. "He's already won," she replies. --Julia Thiel $36

Recommended The Short List (Theater) Member Picks

Bri-Ko

How many bumbling buddies does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Or juggle? Or deliver a meal in a water balloon? On Saturday afternoons at Stage 773, the answer is three—specifically the three members of Bri-Ko. The sketch-comedy troupe Rube Goldberg would've created if Rube Goldberg had created sketch-comedy troupes, Bri-Ko puts on a silent clown show for the sort of kid who'd appreciate British humor. The name suggests bricolage—i.e., art improvised from materials found at hand. But the many kooky props at hand here (Nerf darts, ping-pong balls, various foodstuffs) are used to make a great, big mess. Tim Soszko, Brian Peterlin, and Chicago Sketch Fest founder Brian Posen bop happily about like Beaker the Muppet, contriving difficult ways to accomplish routine tasks. High art it's not, but the slapstick is practiced and the dumb smiles on these bozos' faces are contagious. —Asher Klein $10-$20

Recommended Agenda Soundboard

Brooklyn Rider

It’s no longer unusual for a classical group to have a name that doesn’t include a word like “quartet” or “ensemble,” or for it to focus on new compositions or on music that draws on pop, jazz, electronica, and the like. All of which means New York string quartet Brooklyn Rider isn’t an oddity these days—but it’s one of the best of this new generation. Violinists Johnny Gandelsman and Colin Jacobsen, violist Nicholas Cords, and cellist Eric Jacobsen (Colin’s brother) formed the quartet in 2006, while playing together in Yo-Yo Ma’s expansive Silk Road Project. In Ma’s group they adapt music from all over Asia, and in Brooklyn Rider they’ve done likewise—for the excellent 2008 album Silent City (World Village), they collaborated with Iranian kamancheh virtuoso Kayhan Kalhor. That’s not to say Brooklyn Rider restricts itself to Asian music: last year they released a double CD collecting the complete string quartets of Philip Glass, plus an album called Seven Steps (In a Circle) that collides a dramatic rendering of Beethoven’s meticulous String Quartet No. 14 in C-sharp Minor (with heavy use of glissando and less vibrato than is traditional) with the dense 2008 work Together Into This Unknowable Night by New York composer Christopher Tignor (who leads the rock-flavored new-music group Slow Six). The real oddity on the album, though, is the title track, a response to the Beethoven quartet composed collectively by all four members of Brooklyn Rider, who write in the liner notes that they were “guided by a spirit of free play rather than the heavy hand of the auteur’s pen.” It’s just 12 minutes long, in contrast with the 40-minute Beethoven quartet, but its scratchy textures, extended techniques, and rapid-fire movement make up for in impact what’s missing in duration and exposition. For tonight’s concert the group will play Seven Steps, but the centerpiece of the program isn’t the Beethoven but rather another classical warhorse, Felix Mendelssohn’s String Quartet No. 1 in E-flat. Also included are John Zorn’s The Alchemist, Colin Jacobsen’s “Three Persian Miniatures,” and works by Christina Courtin, Dana Lyn, and Vijay Iyer, all from a series of commissions called the Brooklyn Rider Almanac, for which the group asks composers to use any artist from the past 50 years as an inspiration. —Peter Margasak $35, $5 students

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) 17+

Brown Bird, Joe Fletcher, Al Scorch & the Country Ensemble

Recommended The Short List (Theater) New Review (Theater and Comedy)

Bud, Not Buddy

Director Derrick Sanders doesn't miss a beat in this well-orchestrated stage version of Christopher Paul Curtis's 1999 children's book, about an African-American boy searching for his father in Depression-era America. Each part of the show just hums along: Sanders's eye-pleasing staging, Rick Simms's ear-pleasing sound design, Courtney O'Neill's superb scenic design, and the tight, playful ensemble. Among the many fine performances are Travis Turner's as the title character and Cedric Young's as a grumpy bandleader who may be Bud's dad. Though clearly pitched to school-aged children, there's enough texture in both the book and the wonderful Chicago Children's Theatre production to move adults as well. --Jack Helbig $36

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) Soundboard

Sera Cahoone, Ryan Jeffrey

Sera Cahoone named her recent third solo album, Deer Creek Canyon (Sub Pop), after a park near where she grew up in Colorado; in the mid-90s she moved to Seattle, where she still lives, and played drums in Carissa’s Wierd, Band of Horses, and other groups. Almost every song on Deer Creek Canyon expresses a longing for home, familiarity, and companionship, whether she’s literally yearning for a place (on the title track) or struggling with the pull of romantic nostalgia (on “Rumpshaker” she sings, “But now that I’m here I don’t know why I came at all”). As with her previous records, Cahoone’s sometimes wispy, sometimes twangy folk-rock flirts dangerously with ethereal fluff a la Sarah McLachlan, but she saves her songs with the directness of her writing and the leanness of the arrangements. —Peter Margasak Ryan Jeffrey opens. $10

Recommended Agenda

Cascade Drive-In

The drive-in theater is open seven nights a week in the summer, with first-run double features on weekends. Pets and children under 5 are free, and there is a deal of $14 per carload on Tuesdays. See website for showings. $5-$9, $14/carload on Tuesday

Recommended Early Warnings (Music) Soundboard

Casket Lottery, Maps for Travelers, Sweet Cobra, Jar'd Loose

If you’re a forlorn thirtysomething susceptible to nostalgia and still partial to early-aughts emocore—the kind that’s heavy on thick, twangy bass and doleful, out-of-key vocals with syllables drawn out like thiiiiiiiiisss!—the past five years have been pretty kind. Midwestern staples such as Small Brown Bike, Braid, and the Get Up Kids have re-formed and released new material, and just last year Kansas City’s Casket Lottery (who broke up in 2006) did the same, reintroducing their relatively proggy brand of emo with last fall’s Real Fear (No Sleep)—piano and second guitar now included. Having evolved into their present shape from that of a metalcore pillar a la Coalesce (who also exist again), Casket Lottery have a knack for playing potent, intricate guitar licks and getting as tough as the raspy vocal harmonies of Nathan Ellis and Stacy Hilt allow. Their 2000 release Moving Mountains stands toe-to-toe with anything from that era, and despite 2013’s expanded lineup and the visible gray hair on the heads of the band’s front men, the mature and thoughtful Real Fear can match the spirit of the best material in Casket Lottery’s catalog—aches and pains and all. —Kevin Warwick Maps for Travelers, Sweet Cobra, and Jar’d Loose open. $10