In his 2002 play about a dysfunctional family of religious fanatics, Adam Rapp revisits themes he’s explored before: obsessive love, toxic families, the death (accidental or otherwise) of a sibling. But this script’s pace is so glacial that his dependence on stereotypes, awkward endings, and the gratuitous use of such taboo material as incest and sadism becomes glaringly obvious. Anthony Moseley, apparently unaware of the play’s flaws, has directed the fine Collaboraction ensemble, led by Craige Christensen and Bill McGough, to underplay every dramatic moment....

/11: He Saw It Coming A career diplomat, Bremer was President Reagan’s ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism. A decade later he sat on the Gilmore commission. In 1999 another congressionally mandated panel, the National Commission on Terrorism, began a six-month study of America’s capacity to prevent and punish acts of terrorism. “Seriously deficient,” it would conclude. Bremer chaired this commission. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “We concluded that the general terrorist threat is increasing,” Bremer said, “particularly because of a change in the motives of terrorist groups…....

It was over in minutes. “Sold—for $3,125,000,” barked the auctioneer, and Thalia Hall no longer belonged to Giuseppe Burlando. Geraci says that because he and Burlando are in court, on the advice of his attorneys he won’t get into specifics. But he says, “I did not steal the building. The whole world had the opportunity to buy the building at the sale. They can concoct whatever story they want, but the victim situation does not exist....

Oak Park-based journalist Alex Kotlowitz tackled race and urban poverty in his acclaimed books There Are No Children Here and The Other Side of the River, but he gets to chill–a bit–in his latest, Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago, published as part of the “Crown Journeys” series of literary travelogues. Shunning guidebook formulae, Kotlowitz examines some of the city’s neighborhoods by profiling their residents: steelworker and labor leader Ed Sadlowski personifies South Chicago; artist Milton Reed (“the Diego Rivera of the projects”) enlivens the section on Bronzeville; defense attorney Andrea Lyon gives a heart to the Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California....

Not long after the Colombian band Aterciopelados released its 2001 album Gozo poderosa, singer and songwriter Andrea Echeverri took a break from the group to have a child. Her new, self-titled solo debut (Nacional Records) is a poetic but unflinching meditation on motherhood–this from a singer who previously scoffed at the notion of letting pregnancy distort her figure. The songs on this record, sung in Spanish, blur the lines between her own sexuality and her feelings for her daughter and her lover....

Charles Bukowski is perhaps better known–and in some circles more revered–for the particulars of his life than for the quality of his writing. The bum, habitual drunk, Hitler admirer, and surprisingly successful consort packed scalding bitterness and jealousy into everything from his first novel, Post Office, to poetry collections like Love Is a Dog From Hell to his romans a clef Hollywood and Women. Ben Pleasants draws on 20 years of friendship with “Hank” in his memoirish Visceral Bukowski: Inside the Sniper Landscape of L....

Adapted from P.D. James’s dystopian novel, this SF feature by Alfonso Cuaron (Y Tu Mama Tambien) takes place in England in 2027, when the human race has mysteriously become infertile and faces extinction. A onetime revolutionary (Clive Owen) is asked by an old flame (Julianne Moore) to take part in her underground movement defending illegal aliens, who are trucked off to concentration camps; assisted by an older hippie pal (Michael Caine in an Oscar-worthy performance), he agrees to smuggle a young woman (Claire-Hope Ashitey) out of the country....

I didn’t expect a coherent plot or emotional development. But since the all-female Babes With Blades has devoted itself to stage combat for the last nine years, I did expect visceral excitement. I didn’t get it. First, there wasn’t much fighting (though there were piercing screams in abundance). Second, what there was of it was flat, unconvincing, and unimaginative. And the “interactive” gimmick–the audience makes suggestions at crucial points a la the “Choose Your Own Adventure” children’s books–seemed bogus: no matter what we picked, we got silly stories that went nowhere....

A winning evening by recent Northwestern grads, “The Piners Prom” marries a suite of loosely related dances to live renditions of Motown standards. The cozy gallery space has been outfitted with bleachers and a clutch of small evergreens, evoking a box social in a small mountain town with surprising success. The skilled, energetic performers–fetching in vintage-inspired white party dresses–don’t just dance. They also clap, sing, stomp their feet, yell, play tambourine, and, in two of the more high-concept numbers, help light the stage with miners’ headlamps....

I’m a 19-year-old male with a 4.5-inch cock that hasn’t grown since I was 12. My girlfriend says it doesn’t penetrate deeply enough. I’ve already lost two girlfriends because they said the sex wasn’t sensational enough. My doctor says I could have surgery, but my girlfriend says I should take pills. I would go with my doctor, but I don’t want to have them fuck up my cock. –Cock Ain’t Penetrating...

Palliard, High Hawk Info 773-227-4433 or 866-468-3401 Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The two of them started playing together in college in the downstate town of Charleston. In 2002 they formed a bluegrass band called Butcher’s Legs, and after it broke up in 2004, Boyles and Alford stuck together, collaborating on the songs that would end up on High Hawk’s EP. Later that year they moved to Chicago and hooked up with guitarist Joel Shute, who’d been making music with Alford on and off since high school, and after recruiting drummer Mike McGrath from the Thin Man they moved slowly away from traditional bluegrass and country....

The first time I spun 2004’s Mystery Girl (Failed Experiment), the second album by local ass kickers the SONNETS, I took in their bouncy, gritty mix of punky power pop, surf, Who-style melodies, Motorhead-ish oomph, and Insomniacs-like garage and thought, “Pretty good.” But a second listen wrecked my day: the band’s rare talent to turn joy and anger into a holy flame of rock ‘n’ roll passion managed to pierce my jaded skull, and though I had lots to do I wound up boinging around the house playing air drums all fucking afternoon....

With shows like Lost and Gilligan’s Island, movies like Cast Away and Swiss Family Robinson, and books like Robinson Crusoe, I’ve been wondering: Are there documented cases of a person or persons being shipwrecked on an uncharted, deserted isle and surviving for some length of time only to be rescued later? Are there a lot of large, uninhabited islands in the South Pacific that could sustain a person indefinitely? –D.G., Dallas...

The only John Cheever story ever adapted to the big screen, “The Swimmer” follows the eccentric journey of a New England bon vivant who appears at the house of some old friends and resolves to take a dip in each of the backyard swimming pools that lead across the county back to his stately home. It’s an unlikely movie property, but this 1968 feature imposes a dramatic shape on the story while preserving Cheever’s characteristic sense of suburban rot....

The Treatment blue meanies, bollweevils The thought of a seven-piece ska-punk band reuniting is generally a mortifying prospect, but old-schoolers the Blue Meanies were angular and artful enough that lumping them in with the rest of the pack is a little insulting. They haven’t released a record or played out regularly in over five years (and still won’t officially say they’ve broken up), but if the reports from their late-2004 Metro show are any indication, it’s safe to expect the same trademark energy the group had in their prime....

On its surface The Merchant of Venice invites us to cheer the calculated, merciless destruction of greedy, vengeful Jewish moneylender Shylock, who’s not only stripped of his possessions but forced to abandon his faith by the pack of seemingly virtuous Christians who rule Venice. Even the great Shakespeare apologist Harold Bloom condemned the work as unplayable. “It would have been better for the last four centuries of the Jewish people,” he wrote, “had Shakespeare never written this play....

This staging by Will Act for Food lacks the sense of ease needed to make Alan Ayckbourn’s farce brightly entertaining. The situation–an afternoon tea party where unhappily married couples gather to comfort a friend after his fiancee’s death–is meant to be awkward, but the actors themselves appear uncomfortable: quick wit and physical antics elude most of them. Ironically, the most relaxed and charming performer is Kristen Williams as the party’s high-strung hostess....

A baby boomer who came of age listening to Joni Mitchell and Judy Collins with one ear and musical-theater luminaries Barbara Cook and Mary Martin with the other, Andrea Marcovicci long ago established herself as the finest American cabaret singer of her generation. Since her last appearance here, at the 2003 Chicago Cabaret Convention, she’s also taken on the roles of producer and record exec. Her label, Andreasong, just debuted with How’s Your Romance?...

You don’t have to be a foodie to be a guest on WTTW’s Check, Please! In fact, your chances might be better if you’re not. David Manilow, creator and executive producer of the weekly show, which features ordinary people discussing their favorite local restaurants, doesn’t care nearly as much about expertise as he does about personality and diversity. Funny is good, as is having an underrepresented profession. “I got enough lawyers,” he says....

In 2004, when Richard Pryor was too ill to speak on camera, his wife told 60 Minutes that her husband felt he’d “passed the torch” to Dave Chappelle. “That’s a lot of pressure,” responded Chappelle, who turns 30 this month–but whether he likes it or not he just may be the current barometer of race relations in America. There’s still speculation about why he walked away from the third season of Chappelle’s Show more than a year ago; in interviews he’s insisted he was unhappy with the direction and with himself as a sketch comedian....