Another Part of the Forest PRICE $40-$58 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Of course, Freud’s lesser works stopped getting produced regularly as his reputation waned along with the century. But now, suddenly (maybe it’s a boom-generation thing–a return to the psychoanalyses of our fathers), there’s a spasm of revivals in Chicago. No less than three Freuds are running simultaneously: two by William Inge, one by Lillian Hellman....
If Beethoven’s Fourth Piano Concerto is a dialogue between soloist and orchestra, then his Fifth, the Emperor, is a confrontation. Its bold opening announces a work that, like his Eroica Symphony, is on a grander scale than anything before it–the roar of middle Beethoven at its peak. Pianist Stephen Hough’s exceptional touch and control seem best suited to the glorious middle-movement adagio, where he can be expected to suspend time, though his relatively lean and unsentimental way with the Romantic repertoire might not do full justice to the rugged outer movements....
High Anxiety Within days Salopek was behind bars. Few people at the Tribune knew that until publisher David Hiller announced his arrest by e-mail on August 26. “As you know, Paul is not a spy, but only one of the world’s finest journalists,” Hiller wrote. “Ann Marie Lipinski and many others within the newsroom have been working around the clock for more than a week to get Paul back safely, and these efforts continue....
After local MC Lupe Fiasco was named best artist last year at the Chicago Hip-Hop Awards, the rumor was his name had been spelled wrong (“Lupe Fisco”) on the plaque. Mishaps like that have been the story of Fiasco’s career over the last six years, and at times it looked like he’d be permanently exiled to the realm of the almost famous. He’s bounced between three major-label deals, seen his creative partner and producer, Chili, thrown in jail, had his debut record leaked through the Internet months before it was even completed, and worried publicly that the album might not even get released....
This overwrought masochistic fantasy, loosely following the traditional ballet story and using Tchaikovsky’s music, features a prince/hero so clingy and nebbishy you want to kill him on the spot. His mother is a nympho. The Swan is a beefy guy (all the swans are guys) so earthbound he couldn’t possibly represent an airy ideal. Director-choreographer Matthew Bourne’s schizophrenic update vacillates between vulgar parodies of modern life, eliciting titters, and clumsy efforts at romantic transcendence–here you’re supposed to hold your titters–until it culminates in what appears to be a gay bashing by the swans....
Patrick Somerville Info 773-342-0910 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » For his debut collection of short stories, Trouble, published by Vintage last month as a paperback original, Somerville drew on the knocks and scrapes of his Green Bay upbringing to spin a set of dark, wry stories about guys getting into all kinds of mishaps. Disasters of every degree dog his cast of hapless and frustrated teenagers and men....
continued from last week . . . Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » So there I was at 4 AM, drunk, with no clue where the cops had taken my roommate, who’d been arrested after diving across the hood of a police car to catch a football. I made a few phone calls to friends, who were like, “You’re incoherent,” and then I passed out and woke up the next morning in a panic....
Obi Nwazota, the 38-year-old owner of Orange Skin, a design firm and high-end European furniture showroom, was born in Nigeria and travels the world for his work, which has no doubt influenced his cosmopolitan style. He leans toward items not readily available elsewhere, which is why he likes to shop at Gamma Player, a Wicker Park boutique specializing in lesser-known European and South American designers. Nwazota prefers something well made with a narrow continental cut or some sort of interesting detail, be it a suit or a T-shirt....
Pizza Rustica Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Every Italian restaurant likes to claim it’s the real thing, but if you believe the waiter we had at Pizza Rustica, a clean, bright, simply decorated spot just north of Wrigley Field, all the other contenders are fooling themselves. After a recent visit, I’m inclined to agree. The essence of authenticity, he said, is found in absolutely fresh ingredients and in simple execution, both of which characterized our meal....
Remember that character in the Police Academy movies who did all the sound effects? That wasn’t Pablo Francisco (it was Michael Winslow, who’s still doing stand-up), but Francisco’s voice talent is that good. Parodying telenovelas, he performs a scene in which a guy catches his girlfriend cheating–and not only delivers fantastic accents and perfect melodramatic acting but adds a cheesy sound track and the guy’s heartbeat. His impressions, though limited in range, are among the best (Arnold Schwarzenegger, Aaron Neville, Joan Rivers), and he switches from one to another with such speed and facility it can sound like several people are onstage....
The Raconteurs have been tagged a Jack White side project, but there’s nothing that sounds second-rate to me on the quartet’s debut, Broken Boy Soldiers (V2/Third Man). White’s more annoying blues-rock proclivities are nicely softened by Brendan Benson’s power-pop urges, and Benson’s songwriting is toughened up by the rhythm section of bassist Jack Lawrence and drummer Patrick Keeler, both from the garage band the Greenhornes. The songs on Broken Boy Soldiers have a Stripes-like immediacy and rawness–particularly the splintered guitar breaks on “Hands” and White’s trademark faux-Robert Plant whine on “Broken Boy Soldier”–and those rough edges make the blatant pop touches hit all the harder....
What do playwrights (and their producers) want from the press? Feature stories! And lots of them. What they definitely don’t want are reviews of any play they haven’t declared totally finished. Never mind if the script has already traveled the workshop road and is getting a full production with sets, costumes, professional actors, and ticket sales to the public–if it has the word developmental attached to it, it’s verboten. Dramatists Guild president (and Sondheim collaborator) John Weidman, in town for “Hold the Press,” a forum hosted by the Theatre Building last week, put it this way: “Work in development never should be reviewed....
I’m a straight guy, 17 and a half. I have a Catholic Christian girlfriend, and we’ve been going out for more than four months now. She’s still a virgin. I’ve been patient and have been waiting for her to be OK with the idea of sex through the whole relationship, but there’s been almost no advancement. I’ve tried to make sure that I’m not pressuring her into anything, but after being at a sexual stalemate for months it’s starting to get a little old....
There’s much to admire in playwright-magician Dennis Watkins’s Tim Burton-esque clown show for House Theatre of Chicago. His magic tricks range from charming to mind-blowing, and then there’s Collette Pollard’s handsome yet creepy design, Lucas Marino’s childlike video dream segments, Kevin O’Donnell’s melancholy score, and director Molly Brennan’s precise routines for the three clown narrators (she and assistant director Paul Kalina are members of 500 Clown). But this abundance of talent is put in service of a sketchy, maudlin, glacially paced story about a dying magician teaching his craft to an impressionable young mute boy....
What is the story with human growth hormone (HGH)? I know that the actual hormone can be injected (at great expense), and some of the Hollywood crowd supposedly use this to stay young. However, a lot of companies are marketing “HGH enhancers,” which are not HGH but supplements that are supposed to stimulate the body to produce HGH in greater quantities. The enhancers are much less expensive than actual HGH and supposedly almost as effective in raising your HGH level....
Turkish Cuisine and Bakery A week and a half earlier, Galina told me, she’d helped the Cardaks enlarge the place. “We were breaking down walls till three in the morning,” she said. The two-room restaurant now has a broad expanse of red carpet and a stage at the far end decorated with a strip of multicolored lights on a pole. Our table faced the stage and was bordered on one side by a closet and on the other by a dark alcove containing a tall hookah....
Though no one in We Ragazzi lives in Chicago anymore, folks here still have sufficiently warm feelings for the band that this gig is being treated like a hometown CD-release show. (Their third album, Wolves With Pretty Lips, comes out on Suicide Squeeze later in the month.) For those who haven’t been keeping up with the We Ragazzi saga: Original drummer Alianna Kalaba, who elected not to rejoin the band after a brief 1999 breakup, is back behind the kit....
Among journalists one school of thought has it that there’s no such thing as an inappropriate source. Your source might be embarrassed–or worse–to be found talking to you, but you were just doing your job. “Justin Kmitch is engaged to be married. Justin reports he proposed to Jen Engel Aug. 17 on the peak of Mt. Haleakala, the highest peak in Maui, and she accepted. No date has been set yet....
Bailiwick Repertory Theatre is the company that finally closed Naked Boys Singing so they could open Barenaked Lads in the Great Outdoors–what kind of a costume sale could they put on? A pretty good one, it turns out. Besides cowboy hats, collars, cuffs, boots, and Robert Mitchum masks worn by the naked fellas, they got your ball gowns worn by the Spider Woman, your plastic conquistador helmets should you feel the need to invade Peru, your military uniforms, religious garb, and rainbow pride thongs, and lots of shoes and slippers....
Shelly Kurzynski Villasenor, 38, does Web design for a medical publisher and plays in the bands Telenovela and the Congees. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I think my style has definitely evolved as I get older. When I was younger, it was the sparkly stuff and loud crazy prints. I used to be, embarrassingly, into the kinderwhore look–the little babydoll dresses, little bib fronts....
