On picture day in third grade, Rickie Prez wore his dads chefs coat and toque and posed with his favorite book from the Brentano Math and Science Academy library: Lynne Marie Waldees Cooking the French Way. I got heated for it, because we were in the middle of the second three-peat, he says. Everybody else […] The post Shuck off with Logan Oyster Socials ...

Disarray at the CTA The #FireDorval caucus grows larger. Governor J.B. Pritzker is the latest to call for the ouster of CTA president Dorval Carter. Although he declined to use terms like fired, Pritzkers message was clear: Changes are going to have to take place, theres no doubt, at the CTA, and I think thats […] The post CTA failures, Bears stadium, ...

Editors note: Coco Picard spoke with Selva Aparicio about the exhibitionIn Memory Of,on view at the DePaul Art Museum. Edited text from the comic is transcribed here to ease readability. Selva Aparicios solo show, In Memory Of at the DePaul Art Museum from March 14-August 4, 2024, alters the museums architecture with labor-intensive signs of […] The post ...

To a large extent, classical music and popular music are separate traditions with distinct audiences. No one told folk guitarist Marisa Anderson and indie-rock drummer Jim White, though. Their second album together, the new Swallowtail (Thrill Jockey), is a mix of abstract exploration and gentle folk melody that thoughtfully wanders through a landscape ...

Folly Groups Paying the Price is one of the best electronica-infused postpunk songs about shame, and its only a B side. The bands singlesof which theyve dropped plenty since debuting with Fashionista in 2021land with the digital punch of Sonic the Hedgehog and the spooky polish of Joy Division. The London quartet are on their […] The post Londons Folly ...

The Lute is Eternal proclaims the text that concludes the ten-minute video to Jozef van Wissems recent single, The Call of the Deathbird. The Dutch composers gruff vocals appear throughout the short film, shot in the vast Soviet mausoleum outside Warsaw, but his singing (and the relative angelic voice of Hillary Woods) directs the listener […] The post ...

When the Reader checked in with local noisemaking polymath Seb Alvarez in 2022, hed turned his creative focus away from his band Meth. and toward the beats-blasted experimental side project Virgin Mother. In that context, the vocalist and multi-instrumentalist made a weirdo junkyard-fi racket with members of rising Rockford screamo outfit Frail Body and ...

Even if Japanese songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and composer Eiko Ishibashi collaborated with Japanese filmmaker Ryusuke Hamaguchi only once, Id be grateful. When I saw Hamaguchis celebrated 2021 movie, Drive My Car, at the Siskel Film Center (it won an Oscar for Best International Feature Film a couple months later), Ishibashis pensive, understated ...

Pianist Erwin Helfer is a local hero who has made a global impact. The 88-year-old musician is resolute in his devotion to early blues, jazz, and ragtime piano, and hes taught his emotional, succinct style to legions of students. This month, Helfers Highland Parkbased label, the Sirens, hosts a celebration of his music and influence […] The post Chicago ...

Giggss self-released debut full-length, Walk in da Park, is a landmark album in UK hip-hop history, and almost 16 years after its release, the London rapper is making his first North American headlining tour. Giggs still has the coiled menace and cool-headed flow that made his breakout single, the 2007 freestyle Talkin the Hardest, a […] The post UK rap ...

Countless Survivor contestants have turned to the camera during their confessionals to express the difficult and draining nature of the gamethe physical and mental exhaustion, the lack of food, and the constant close proximity to others take an immense toll. Most cast members find this kind of precarity new and very destabilizing. But season 46 […] The ...

I saw my first Barrie Cole play the night before the world turned upside down.  On September 10, 2001, I trotted over to Curious Theatre Branchs home in the now defunct Lunar Cabaret space on North Lincoln to see To Relax and Laugh in that year’s edition of the Rhino Fest. In Cole’s one-act play, […] The post Barrie Cole: Chicago’s short-order chef ...

In Bram Stokers 1897 novel Dracula, the titular vampires victims were initially and primarily women. The bites and the blood were metaphors for sexual awakening, and the femmes who fell to the monsters fangs howled about being forever damned as unclean after theyd been bitten by the big D. Abigail stands the fallen-woman trope on […] The post Review: ...

Simon Godwins production of Macbeth was filmed live at Dock X in London, but even though it was intended for cinema release, a lot of the production choices dont work especially well on the big screen. The cast is in military dress intended to evoke contemporary conflicts in Eastern Europe or Syria, but the details […] The post Review: Macbeth appeared ...

Omen opens on the set of a windswept desert. A horseback rider appears as the score wanes and whistles. This is maybe the only moment of calm in the film, with the remainder involving stunning visuals that juxtapose harrowing dialogue and circumstances. It’s a heartbreaker, for sure.  After residing in Belgium, Koffi (Marc Zinga) prepares […] The post ...

Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver picks up right where the first film left off, continuing writer-director-cinematographer Zack Snyders Seven Samurai in space homage/reimagining/pastiche. (Albeit there isnt that much space this time.) Unlike the first Rebel Moon film, which saw Kora (Sofia Boutella) and Gunnar (Michiel Huisman) travel across the galaxy ...

In the opening scene of Meredith Willsons The Music Man at Marriott Theatre, a train car full of traveling salesmen showcase their talent and precision as they fast-talk and sing their way through the opening number, Rock Island (aka the Ya gotta know the territory song). The salesmen, each identified by a different company name […] The post The Music Man ...

There have been several intriguing plays about siblings dealing with loss onstage this year, including Leah Nanako Winkler’s The Brightest Thing in the World at About Face Theatre and the current production of John Patrick Shanley’s Brooklyn Laundry at Northlight. Charly Evon Simpson’s Jump, now in a midwest premiere with Shattered Globe Theatre under ...

A one-person take on Hamlet starring a famous comedian sounds like a recipe for self-indulgence. (Or the opening premise for a deliberately off-kilter affair, as in the ridiculous and sublime Gary Busey’s One-Man Hamlet, performed by David Carl at Chicago Shakespeare as part of the theater’s Shakespeare 400 festival in 2016.) HamletThrough 5/4: Tue and ...

Some shows age well, some dont. Youd think a silly 74-year-old musical comedy like Guys and Dolls, with its cartoonish characters and sitcom plotlines (like, gambler makes a bet he cant get a female preacher to come with him to Havana), would age out first. After all, the stories the musical is based on, written […] The post Guys and Dolls kills at Drury ...

Brooklyn Laundry is a deceptive show: It begins with a meet-cute and briefly lulls you into the sense that it will unspool as something of a rom-com. But playwright John Patrick Shanley isnt one for gauzy love stories. His dialogue is spiked with knives, his humor darker than the grave. Budding romance is fragile under […] The post Brooklyn Laundry mixes ...

Under the best of circumstances, it would be hard to make this 1983 musical soar. The story by playwright Sybille Pearson about three prosperous white, middle-class couples coping with pregnancy (or trying to become pregnant) feels creaky and dated. In different hands, these three couplesranging in age from early 20s to early 40smight have been […] The ...

It’s tempting to say that Neil Simon’s 1963 romantic comedy Barefoot in the Park hasn’t aged well. But even when it premiered on Broadway with Robert Redford and Elizabeth Ashley as newlyweds Paul and Corie Bratter (Redford went on to star in the 1967 film version, with Jane Fonda stepping into Ashley’s role), critics noted […] The post Simple ...

Last summer, Galen Odell-Smedley opened a solo show, Peach Peach, at Humboldts Ignition Project Space. The exhibition hinted at a meticulously arranged artists wood shop: What we normally consider raw material, waste material, and tools came to the foreground in intricate attire and partied with other elaborate kinetic sculptures.  It was hard to define ...

Come mingle and listen to an insider’s conversation on fashion and journalism. We have an esteemed group of panelists, from SAIC, the Chicago Fashion Coalition, and our very own editor-in-chief. You’ll also get to view the designs of emerging fashion designers. This event is free for our Reader members and $15 for the general public. All proceeds ...