Wandering Through Chicago's Arts and Culture

Riff Raff By Laurence Fishburne The Story Mike Cherry, Eric Sherman-Christ, Eduardo Martinez Riff Raff tells the story of Michael (20/20) Leon and Michael (Torch) Murphy, two New York half-brothers who attempt to steal four kilos of heroine. Instead, they end up with three kilos and a trail of murder and violence as they end up hiding in an abandoned New York apartment. Enter Tony (The Tiger), an old drug dealing partner of 20/20. The minimalist plot unfolds for 110 violence-filled minutes. In fact, there isn’t a great deal of plot to unfold. 20/20 and Torch attempt to steal four kilos of heroin from the most powerful drug lord in New York City. In the process they kill the drug lord’s nephew. They take flight and end up in an abandoned apartment. 20/20 calls his old friend Tony The Tiger to ask Tony to help them escape the wrath of the drug lord. The Real Story As the characters interact with one another we learn a great deal about their individual weaknesses and strengths. T...

Farragut North Stage Left Theatre And You Thought Politics Was About…   I’m not sure what I thought politics was about when I went to see this remarkable play by thirty-something playwright Beau Willimon. Certainly I didn’t think it was about what I saw. I almost never read reviews about plays I’m about to see and confine my “research” to the hype posted by the theater company. I’m almost never disappointed by this tactic since it permits me to form my own reactions and opinions as the production unfolds before my eyes.  Farragut North Cast What first strikes you is the incredibly crisp set presented by Scenic Designer Roger Wykes. The formal, grey-blue tongue-and-groove paneling atop the clean, dark blue with white picture-frame wainscot speaks nothing of the perfidy you’re about to witness as Farragut North unfolds. Playwright Willimon tells us in the Dramaturg’s Notes that “…the atmosphere of it, the paranoia, the bald ambition, the gluttony for power and the ways ...

The Double Babes With Blades Theatre Company Fun With Swashbuckling I wasn’t going to bother seeing this despite getting numerous offers from the various coupon/deal companies that seem to fill my in-box with offers for mostly massages and pedicures. Then I realized that in only a few minutes I could walk to the theatre from my apartment so I said what the heck, I’ll give it a shot. I wasn’t disappointed. Don’t look for a profound message in The Double. Right up front the director tells us that it’s “screwball comedy.” But what great fun it is, none-the-less. The Double is a play about a play—always a winning concept in my book. Set in the 1940s The Double concerns a troupe of actors trying to mount a play about Cyrano de Bergerac and naturally are struggling to find funding. There are numbers of romantic involvements in the script, one that turns out to be a reunion of a married couple, another that makes a discovery about women who love women and yet another case of mistaken int...

Understanding the Fundamentals of Music A Teaching Company Course Taught by Robert Greenberg The Great Master Robert M. Greenberg It is no secret that I admire Robert Greenberg greatly as a lecturer and teacher. His complete mastery of his subject I view as a prerequisite to being a great lecturer and unquestionably Greenberg has mastered whatever he teaches and then some. What sets him apart as a teacher is his ability to communicate that material, complex though it may be, in ways that are understandable by any student willing to engage his brain (and in the case of music courses his ears) in the pursuit of the knowledge Greenberg freely passes on. I have even been known to purchase a ticket to Ravinia, for a concert I had no interest in hearing, just to be able to attend a Greenberg lecture following in the Murray Theatre. In person he is just as impressive as he is on an edited and produced DVD with the added bonus that during the following Q&A he was patient and persev...

Deconstructing Putting It Together Notes From a Sondheim Ambivalent In The First Place… I wanted to write a great deal about my impressions of Stephen Sondheim and his art. That’s going to take up most of this blog entry. I know that lots of people will want to hear about the current Porchlight production of Putting It Together and won’t care a bit about what I think about Stephen Sondheim’s art. So up front, here’s the skinny, the low-down, the scoop, the cat’s meow and the cream from the milk: This is a terrific production even if you’re not completely enamored of Sondheim’s output. Porchlight is superb; the venue is great, the staging is nothing short of miraculous, the music direction is flawless; the singers are just what you’d expect from Sondheim vocalists and then some. Rush over to your PC and buy tickets, NOW! Purchase Tickets - Porchlight Music Theatre . Now I can write about what really interests me. By the way, there are a lot of good reviews of this production alr...

Underground With Madness Christopher Hampton’s Alice’s Adventures Under Ground Mad Hatters and March Hares City Lit Theater has spent nearly one-third of a century (a very long time indeed) “dedicated to the vitality and accessibility of the literary imagination.” In keeping with that part of its mission statement, City Lit is currently treating us to the Chicago premier of Alice’s Adventures Underground, a romp through the unlikely slapstick world created by Lewis Carroll for his favorite muse, Alice Liddell. Audience looking for a stage adaptation of Carroll’s best-known works for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There, will be disappointed. The play most certainly does not attempt to recreate the contents of the books. Rather, it is a play about the relationship between Carroll and Liddell and attempts to imagine the creative process that gave us these timeless and charming children’s stories. The play opens innoce...

There are spirits and then there are spirits Of course what I’m referring to here are ethanol spirits: the kind that alter your consciousness to a greater or lesser extent so that the man or woman in the bar next to you that you wouldn’t have given the time of day to a couple of hours ago now appears to be the handsomest or most beautiful creature you’ve ever laid eyes on. This, of course, refers to its psychoactive properties. It can also be used as a solvent or added to the gasoline in your car to “fortify” it. (Mainly, it provides subsidies for farmers since its value as a fuel additive is far less than the cost of producing it.) But Koval makes spirits for human consumption, and wonderful spirits they are—twenty-six different products ranging from clear whiskies made from five different grains to spirits in a light or dark form depending on the barrels they were aged in to some of the most exquisite liqueurs you’ve ever had cross your jaded palate. How spirits are made To gain a fe...

New Millennium Orchestra Opera Milioto and Lee Team Up For an Evening of Superb Music A Night of Favorite Opera Yonghoon Lee A great tenor, a fine orchestra, a gifted conductor, Orchestra Hall: It doesn’t get any better than this. This thought passed through my mind as I sat in Orchestra Hall’s Upper Balcony listening to lirico-spinto Tenor Yonghoon Lee effortlessly enchant a largely Korean audience with his renditions of some of opera’s most beloved Tenor arias. Accompanying Mr. Lee was The New Millennium Orchestra led by its co-founder and Conductor, Francesco Milioto. People's Gas Building The concert was preceded by a reception/fundraiser for the orchestra at Chicago’s Cliff Dweller’s Club, high atop the building at 200 S. Michigan Avenue. Across was the Art Institute of Chicago, Millennium Park, Grant Park, the Field Museum, Shedd Aquarium and Monroe Street Harbor. Buckingham Fountain seemed almost miniature from the Cliff Dweller’s vantage point. Across Jac...

Pornography He who looks deserves what he gets: Nothing. What is Pornography? At first I thought that perhaps I didn’t understand pornography despite having watched a lot of it over the years. I jumped over to Onelook , the online free dictionary and learned a few things I didn’t know about pornography. The word comes from Greek (where else?) and means “writing about prostitutes.” This was a pretty honorable profession to the ancient Greeks, so what happened? Somewhere western civilization decided that prostitution was something to be eschewed and spurned. Prostitutes themselves fell in stature and esteem. I assume that this is true for both male and female prostitutes since rest assured; both types exist, although the male variety is probably much smaller in number for reasons that beg yet another blog at another time. The word “pornography” came to mean something more specific. For example:   the depiction of erotic behavior (as in pictures or writing) i...