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What the Dickens?

2008-11-21T06:46:24-06:00

Scrooged!
Stores have had their halls decked since Halloween, but for those of us not running a retail establishment, the holiday season is just getting started. This year, leave consumer culture to the mallrats (who has money for excessive shopping anyway?) and go rogue with a couple of irreverent holiday...

One Size Fitz All

2008-11-14T10:00:26-06:00

Great Scott!
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is a classic tale of wealth, privilege, consequence, and the schism between the haves and have-nots. It’s also, as you probably remember from high school, a full-length book—which means Gatz, a marathon theatrical staging of the unabridged novel by the New York troupe Elevator Repair Service, runs a good six-plus...

Double, Double Toil and Trouble

2008-11-07T09:58:11-06:00

It’s been an emotional week, but election-day jitters are nothing compared to the 400-hundred-year-and-counting eau de anxiety that clings to Macbeth. The backstage whispers—Ghosts! Accidents! Funny business!—are almost as old as the play itself, but Radio Macbeth blows the...

Thrills! Chills! And Halloween, too!

2008-10-31T09:18:35-06:00

Ballad of the Ballot
Those who missed snagging tickets to Obama’s blowout in Grant Park—i.e., just about everybody—can still catch a screening on Tuesday, November 4th of local filmmaker and producer Maggie Bowman’s Election Day. The documentary, shot entirely on November 2, 2004, weaves together the stories of 11 citizens, from a factory worker to an ex-felon to a busy...

The Monster Mashup

2008-10-24T07:44:00-06:00

When Aliens Attack
Nearly 70 years ago to the day, Orson Welles scared the bejeezus out of America by declaring that Martians had invaded a small New Jersey town. In Martian Invasion! Decoding the War of the Worlds, a live edition of the syndicated public radio show Radiolab, hosts Jab Abumrad and Robert Krulwich pair original radio footage with new audio in an attempt to...

Can We Buy a Vowell?

2008-10-17T07:44:00-06:00

The Early Bookworm Catches the Seat

Grab your toothbrush. It’s such a big week at the library, you’ll be tempted to find a quiet spot in the stacks and set up camp (maybe somewhere in the 700s: Recreation). At 6 p.m. Monday the 20th, Writers on the Record’s Victoria Lautman sits down with the best-selling author Alaa Al Aswany, the Egyptian-born...

Tom Wolfe, Rachel Weisz, and Jesus

2008-10-10T10:18:51-06:00

Proud Morty Keep on Burning
Poor Christopher Marlowe. It’s hard to snag the spotlight when Bill Shakespeare is a contemporary, but a new production of Marlowe’s The Troublesome Reign and Lamentable Death of Edward II, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud Mortimer, adapted and directed by The Hypocrites’ much buzzed-about...

Cheap Thrills

2008-10-03T12:09:00-06:00

Theatre of the Absurdly Affordable
Save the belt-tightening for that extra martini or the premium cable subscription: When it doesn’t cost a dime, culture can stay in the budget. The nationwide program Free Night of Theater hits Chicago in October, and not a moment too soon. How it works: Anyone can reserve free tickets to one of more than 45 selected plays. The only stipulations are that you...

Hedda the Class

2008-09-26T09:10:00-06:00

Gabler, Interrupted
Into the Woods meets Groundhog Day in The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, a campy twist on the story of Henrik Ibsen’s doomed heroine from playwright Jeff Whitty (Avenue Q). When Hedda decides to take things into her own...

Our Kind of Town

2008-09-19T07:07:22-06:00

Even if you’ve seen it butchered by a high-school cast—especially if you’ve seen it butchered by a high-school cast—don’t miss The Hypocrites’ take on the Thornton Wilder classic Our Town. The troupe remounts its too-short, sold-out staging, an imaginatively revisionist twist on what must be...