How long are these huge dams, like the Hoover Dam, engineered to last? How would we go about replacing it if it began to weaken or became obsolete? What’s the largest dam ever to fail? –Craig S., Jacksonville, Florida Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Don’t sweat the big dams, chum. It’s the little ones you should worry about. Most of the small and medium-size dams in this country were built to last just 50 years....
Friday 21 THE JUAN MACLEAN John MacLean (aka the Juan Maclean) first met James Murphy, now of the production team the DFA, in the late 90s. MacLean was a member of Six Finger Satellite, Murphy was their sound man and producer, and they were both tiring of the conventional rock-band grind. MacLean retreated from music altogether after 6FS broke up, but was egged on by Murphy and his production partner, Tim Goldsworthy, to record something for the label they were starting....
Noble Fool Theatricals director Nick Sandys takes an Alice in Wonderland approach to Shakespeare’s play, adding a Mad Hatter and hookahs–which works well visually. Shipwrecked Viola disguises herself as eunuch to Duke Orsino, whom she hopes to marry, but he’s in love with Olivia. When Viola (in male garb) delivers the Duke’s sentiments to Olivia, she falls for the messenger. This comedy requires clear distinctions between nobles and fools, but Rebecca Spence’s almost unrelenting gravity as Viola–which serves her well in the touching conclusion–deprives many of the practical jokes and cases of mistaken identity of their humor....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “The start of the extravagant closing ceremony also served as a spontaneous signal for a growing crescendo of carnivalesque hysteria to spin out of control. Hordes of fairgoers began appropriating unique mementos of the magnificent event. In the Halloween-night frenzy, people broke into many of the exhibition pavilions and walked away with furniture, light fixtures, signs, and decorative building details....
Breakbone artistic director Atalee Judy reins herself in a bit in her new “noise opera” Heroine–A Woman’s Tale, about survivors of abuse. Performed in the intimate Strawdog Theatre space, it has none of Judy’s trademark “bodyslam” movement, which basically involves hurling yourself to the floor, then getting up and doing it again. Instead the dancing is mostly light, loose, and floaty. The cast has also been downsized from Breakbone’s last few shows: two dancers in pale, flimsy gowns that barely cover them represent the vulnerable heroine/victim, and two vocalists encased in heavy black suits and shoes are the witnesses to her suffering....
It would be easy to ding Mia McCullough’s new play for its resemblance to other sci-fi surgery stories, particularly Flowers for Algernon. But she wastes little time on moralizing about medical ethics in this deeply humane tale about implanting the brain of a famous–and famously dysfunctional–artist in a comatose pro golfer in order to keep the artist alive. Under Kevin Heckman’s taut direction, McCullough’s story focuses instead on an essential question: what makes us who we are?...
The Unmentionables Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The tempest in a designer teapot over the children cast in The Pain and the Itch tended to overshadow discussions of its merits–though eventually it did win a Jeff Award for best new play. Unlike Tony Kushner in his Old Testament-prophet mode, Norris seldom courts serious consideration. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it. The Pain and the Itch and 2002’s Purple Heart are both terribly funny and relentlessly, unflinchingly ugly....
This Broadway hit charts the rocky road traveled by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, working-class Italian-American kids who became pop icons. The show is a 60s nostalgia fest, filled with hits like “Sherry,” “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night),” and the Bob Gaudio-Bob Crewe classic “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” The script, by Marshall Brickman (Annie Hall) and Rick Elice, doesn’t ignore the story’s dark side: the failed marriages and one-night stands, the financial travails and mob connections, the fatal drug overdose suffered by Valli’s daughter, and the bandmates’ complex, often combative relationships....
Pianist Joseph Kalichstein, violinist Jaime Laredo, and cellist Sharon Robinson have become one of the best-known trios in the country since making their debut together in 1977 at Jimmy Carter’s inauguration. As part of a chamber recital at Mandel Hall, members of the trio will perform two works with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s brilliant principal flutist, Mathieu Dufour, who never seems to breathe. Of his numerous piano trios, Haydn wrote only three for piano, flute, and cello, and the one on this program, in D major, Hob....
One of my favorite shows of all time took place here, and not just because of the show. It was my junior year of high school, and I was going to see Depeche Mode–I’d been into them since I was eight. I went with a friend who drove, which was very exciting because there were no parents along. During the show I kept smiling at this really attractive drag queen who was staring at me, checking me out....
I was talking with my Rush Limbaugh-quoting uncle and gay marriage came up. I told him that gay men and lesbians wanted nothing more than their human rights. I told him that telling part of the population that they can live as “partners” but not get married is separate and unequal. He responded by saying that anal sex is unhealthy and insisted that all old gay men wear colostomy bags. He said a doctor told him this....
The Tribune Takes Its Chances With a Jury Knight was again in the paper’s crosshairs when reporters Maurice Possley and Ken Armstrong wrote on January 12, 1999: “Thousands of pages of testimony from the DuPage 7 grand jury and court documents paint a picture of a prosecution that was constructed with lies and half-truths, buttressed with distorted evidence and, according to the indictment, stitched together with criminal misconduct.” Halfway through the story Possley and Armstrong made this reference to the Du Page 7 grand jury: “As the [first Cruz] trial approached, lead prosecutor Thomas Knight summoned John Gorajczyk, a shoe print examiner in the sheriff’s police crime lab, to discuss his examination of Buckley’s boots, according to the grand jury transcripts....
As the chairman of the City Council’s police and fire committee, 29th Ward alderman Isaac Carothers is one of City Hall’s more recognizable characters. Reporters generally have no trouble tracking him down when they need a quote. So it’s curious that Sheriff Michael Sheahan’s employees who are trying to serve him with a summons for a civil suit haven’t been able to find him. Wilson, a political strategist who comes up with snappy quotes and has a taste for allusions to the Bible, Shakespeare, and ancient history, says, “I’ve known Ike for a long time–I’ve known his family....
It’s appropriate that Paul Oakley Stovall’s new play touches on Darwinism since the playwright’s clearly evolving artistically. Ape suggests a talent that may soon develop opposable thumbs, at which point expect something fine. He’s not there yet, however. Stovall demonstrates a knack for dialogue, an impulse toward intriguing characters, and a light, almost musical way with a joke. But a great deal is left unexpressed and unexplained, mostly because he hasn’t found the narrative heart of this piece about four people stranded at a high school during a blizzard....
Did Shanley Get Screwed? The Boston Globe launched the sexual-abuse story three years ago. “Under an extraordinary cloak of secrecy,” it reported, “the Archdiocese of Boston in the last 10 years has quietly settled child molestation claims against at least 70 priests.” Shanley was the one who’d been a public figure. Go to the Globe’s elaborate Web site, “Abuse in the Catholic Church,” for more: “The Rev. Paul R. Shanley made his reputation as a Boston ‘street priest’ in the 1960s and 70s–a crusader for runaways and drifters, drug addicts, and teenagers struggling with questions about their sexual identity....
Unusually seedy and small-scale for a Fox picture of 1952, this black-and-white thriller is set over one evening exclusively inside a middle-class urban hotel and the adjoining bar. The bar’s singer (Anne Bancroft in her screen debut) breaks up with her sour pilot boyfriend (Richard Widmark), a hotel guest. He responds by flirting with a woman (Marilyn Monroe) in another room who’s babysitting a little girl (Donna Corcoran), but the babysitter turns out to be psychotic and potentially dangerous....
In 1910 the world was rocked by what became known as the North London Cellar Murder when a pile of human viscera was found buried in a basement. The man of the house, a mild-mannered doctor named Hawley Harvey Crippen, had some months earlier reported his wife missing and now was on the lam with his much younger mistress. But that’s only one of the twin narratives that make up Erik Larson’s new Thunderstruck (Crown)....
Jean-Claude van Itallie’s one-act Interview has the potential to reverberate intelligently with audiences, as diverse characters seek help or a means of connecting in a contemporary world of isolation. But Kathryn Korosi’s production fails to provoke much reaction: she offers only two or three interesting staging choices amid sporadic moments of comedy or insight. Still, Interview outshines the other half of MidTangent Productions’ double bill. Tony Lewis’s Fascination, about a couple who meet cute and wax philosophical on an overnight train in Europe, is an unoriginal piece with little fresh to say about celebrity worship and fearing love....
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » As of right now there are only five more days for Lupe Fiasco to (kick) push back his record’s release date. Between him and Rhymefest, Chicago’s pretty much got the lock on delayed hip-hop gratification. Both of them managed to squander more heat than most rappers will ever earn, and in Lupe’s case it seems like that’s directly proportional to his inability to deal with the Internet....
A dapted from a classic 19th-century novel, this Dutch saga (1976, 169 min.) by Fons Rademakers portrays the title character’s efforts to alleviate racism and corruption in the colonial East Indies. An idealistic young bureaucrat, Havelaar is named supervisor of a Javanese outpost where the natives are terrorized by the militia of a local prince; he tries to redistribute wealth and power but fails to recognize how much the prince’s oppression is intertwined with his own country’s subjugation of an entire culture....
