Though he proudly calls himself a B-movie actor, Bruce Campbell left the realm of the merely thespian long ago. Like William Shatner or Elvis–whom he excelled as in the criminally underrated Bubba Ho-Tep (2002)–he’s muscled his way into celluloid immortality through the sheer force of his insolent, self-deprecating persona. The concluding chapter in the Evil Dead trilogy–whose opening credits read “Bruce Campbell vs. Army of Darkness”–copped to this, and Campbell has gleefully played variations on his bad self ever since....

One of Charles A. Gick’s inspirations, he writes, is a Dylan Thomas poem that blurs the lines between body, emotions, and landscape, and Gick’s seven works at I Space create a similar confusion. The projected video Flowers From the Mouth, in which flowers spread as if blooming as they emerge from between Gick’s lips, recalls childhood myths about how swallowing seeds can cause plants to grow in your stomach. Water Witching is an installation that includes a projected video: in a close-up cut off just below the eyes, Gick runs his hand from his nose to his mouth, making a popping noise that sounds a bit like dripping water; later his mouth oozes and squirts water, and finally we see a waterfall and the water’s foamy surface....

On land just west of Madison, Wisconsin, Kristina Amelong and her husband, Tim Cordon, graze 30 goats and have a pair of Jersey cows on the way. Their milk is fresh, creamy, and silken with fat, but it’s sought after for what it isn’t: pasteurized. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Because the legality of cow sharing is often unclear and more explicitly commercial programs are clearly illegal, it’s difficult to get an accurate picture of how many shareholders there are....

Congo Square Theatre Company has mostly focused on African-American playwrights during its eight-year history, but it’s gone international with the midwest premiere of this piece by black British actor and writer Kwame Kwei-Armah. Elmina’s Kitchen doesn’t break new thematic ground, but Kwei-Armah’s gift for street poetry and feeling for intergenerational conflict is in sync with the considerable acting skills of Derrick Sanders’s ensemble. The story concerns the struggle between Deli, an ex-con now running a West Indian restaurant begun by his late mother in London’s troubled Hackney neighborhood, and his son, who’s enthralled by the thug life....

The scrappy Velvet Willies specialize in bare-bones Shakespeare; this show’s only design elements are a sloppily varnished plywood stage, two chairs, and costumes that are (mostly) street clothes. The result is a Hamlet mercifully free of concepts, and Jeff Harnish’s brisk, uncluttered staging does concentrate the action and focus attention on the text. Still, Peter Brook’s production of the play, which came through town four years ago, set a dauntingly high standard for essentialist Shakespeare, and this show has a few glaring lapses....

Juiceboxxx is a senior at Homestead High School in Mequon, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. But his weekends, his posthomework nights, and his summers are taken up with the business of being the Juice, DJing–rapping, producing, and promoting the monthly all-ages Milwaukee dance party Get Wacky, now in its sixth month. While he could be just another precocious teen anxious to make a name for himself, Juiceboxxx has something beyond determination and kid guile, something most scene entrepreneurs twice his age would kill for: talent....

Except for a cat who stays in the basement and shies from men, Rebecca Wolfram lives alone in her century-old house in Little Village, painting in her attic studio and playing the violin. In the front room, which doubles as a private gallery, are five small paintings of women in the branks, or scold’s bridle, a head-size iron cage with a serrated bit used in 17th- and 18th-century Britain as a punishment for gossips....

On the fourth day of the spring quarter at Kendall College students in its culinary school were already hard at work learning to make sauce Portugaise, assemble vegetable terrines, and laminate dough for turnovers and croissants–192 layers of butter and dough for the croissants, 432 for the puff pastry. In Frank Chlumsky’s Introduction to Professional Cooking, 15 entry-level students clustered in the fifth-floor auditorium and demo kitchen as he gave a brisk rundown of the differences in standard menu structures, pricing, and terminology....

Stereolab singer-guitarist Mary Hansen, who was killed in a bicycle accident in late 2002, was a crucial component of the band’s sound: in concert it was she who elevated breathy, wordless cooing and ba-ba-ba-ing from bachelor-pad kitsch to exquisite art-pop trope. On Margerine Eclipse (Elektra), the ‘Lab’s first album since her death, the multitracked vocals of founding member Laetitia Sadier uncannily simulate Hansen’s presence, as lush layers of harpsichord, organ, electric piano, celeste, and analog synth cascade over Simon John’s slinking bass lines, Andy Ramsay’s weightless yet propulsive drumming, and Tim Gane’s relentless guitar strumming; in working through the tragedy the band has produced its sunniest album since the mid-90s....

Tartuffe Molière updates can be something of an uphill struggle. The sensual charms of a rococo period staging are simply a lot of what his works have going for them. And if just getting a handle on their complicated historical context is daunting, fitting the plays to another is far trickier. Take the case of Tartuffe, in which a “holy” con man wreaks havoc on the household of a credulous man of wealth, Orgon....

Boyd Graham and Jed Feuer’s musical revue packs about 30 minutes of laughs into its 90 minutes–and those yuks stem from the playful, high-energy performances of its two-man cast, who milk the material when it’s smart and mock it when it sucks. Framed as a backers’ audition for a Broadway epic about the history of the world, the show consists of silly vignettes about Adam and Eve, Nefertiti, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Columbus, Eva Braun, Jimi Hendrix, and other famous folks....

Being a woman of the world, I’ve encountered quite a few strange fetishes in my life. However, my brother Mikey and his hopelessly blond girlfriend recently got into coprophagia. I’m a pretty open-minded gal, but I draw the line when I have to kiss the face that . . . well, you know. Alas, pointing out the bizarre and repugnant nature of his behavior has done little to change my lost sibling’s ways....

Friday 11 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » BETTIE SERVEERT “Don’t get stuck somewhere in the middle,” Bettie Serveert singer Carol van Dyk pleads on the pep-talky title track of Attagirl (Minty Fresh/Palomine), but this veteran Dutch band always struck me as a stuck-in-the-middle kind of act itself. I’ll cast no aspersions on their competence, their good taste, or their way with a wistful tune and well-placed sudden turn....

friday22 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » hideout christmas pyrate panto A pantomime is a traditional British Christmas play, but this all-star cast couldn’t do “traditional” if their lives depended on it. Sally Timms directs this carnival of melodrama, comedy, and implausible dialogue, in which Jon Langford plays a woman, Kelly Hogan plays a man, Janet Bean plays a mermaid, and–in a pinnacle of typecasting–Hideout proprietor Tim Tuten plays Tuttons, the chatty fishmonger....

As a commercial commodity, Lee Blessing’s play is pure Tuesdays With Morrie: a heart-tugging, easily tourable star vehicle about the bond between two men of different generations. As a work of art, however, it’s the anti-Morrie. There’s no impish Jewish Buddha here dispensing wisdom. Only Omar Carlyle, a retired MLB umpire whose quiet dissipations are interrupted by a visit from the full-grown result of a one-night stand. Omar’s boozy white-trash proclivities wouldn’t work for Morrie star Harold Gould, but they suit Robert Breuler fine....

Playwright August Wilson, who died of cancer last weekend at age 60, celebrated the black oral tradition in an epic ten-play cycle dramatizing 20th-century African-American life, including this lyrical comedy set in a Pittsburgh diner in 1969. The action is minimal but profound, focused on the hesitant romance between a young ex-con and the restaurant’s put-upon waitress. But mostly this is an ensemble storytelling piece, as the characters sip coffee and share their tales of history and legend, racial injustice and black-on-black scandals....

If the White Sox’ recent troubles served any purpose, it was to make their fans admit to each other how much this year’s team meant to them. As delightfully unexpected as their early success was–the White Sox had the best record in baseball for most of the season–the fans seemed almost blase about it. But that’s the south-side manner–or, more accurately, the Sox-fan manner–and it’s often misinterpreted. Best of Chicago voting is live now....

For more than 80 years kids have been learning to sail, paddle, and water-ski at the Park District’s junior lifeguard summer camp at Leone Beach in Rogers Park. This past spring the Park District quietly decided to dump the boating part of the program, then stashed the kayaks, canoes, skis, boats, and other equipment in a south-side warehouse. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The junior lifeguard program was started in 1925 by Sam Leone, the Park District employee for whom the beach (which is off Touhy east of Sheridan Road) is named....

Cinnamon Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When Hanger 18 relocated to Lincoln Square last year, the heart of Roscoe Village, between Damen and Western, lost its only new-clothing boutique. That void was filled in April when Emily Helfrich, a former elementary school social worker, opened Cinnamon, offering cute, colorful clothes in a pretty cream-and-cranberry-colored space. Helfrich wanted her shop to suit a variety of budgets, so besides splurge-worthy items like a floaty, fabric-edged cream kimono by Liquid ($170) she also stocks casual cotton skirts by XCVI ($52 and $67)....

Rich in regrets, this astute 1989 compilation of never-produced songs by Richard Maltby Jr. and David Shire (creators of Baby) offers a slew of bittersweet ballads for nonlovers, antilovers, and mature lovers. Nick Bowling’s staging for Porchlight Music Theatre Chicago features five superb performers (a number that allows for the strategic odd person out) who turn the 24 songs into 24 scenes, each with its own climax, cleverly detailing fading friendships, second chances, sexual survival, unrequited everything, and the march of time and those it tramples....