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Chicago Theater Review: PENELOPE (Steppenwolf)
SUITORS SUIT ILL-FITTING SUITS Enda Walsh, scribe of The Walworth Farce and The New Electric Ballroom, is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater: his admirers love the English dramatist’s quirky theatrical imagination and his command of language, while his detractors complain that his stories are improbable, if not incomprehensible, and that his…
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Movie Review: NEW YEAR’S EVE directed by Garry Marshall
DON’T HATE ME BECAUSE I’M PRETTY MUCH RECOMMENDING THIS GUILTY PLEASURE I’m allowed one disastrous recommendation per year, right? And here it is already December, and I don’t think I’ve used it yet. So just like those dental insurance benefits that you’re eager to max out before the calendar changes :. consider yourself warned. So…
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Film Review: WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN directed by Lynne Ramsay
THE CONVERSATION BELATEDLY BEGINS We Need to Talk About Kevin isn’t the first film this year to outlast its immediacy. A novel written by Lionel Shriver in the wake of the Columbine school killings, director Lynne Ramsay has been trying to make the film since her last feature, Morvern Callar, in 2002. The unusually long…
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Theater Review: ELIZABETH REX (Chicago Shakespeare Theater)
MEET THE QUEEN Timothy Findley’s Elizabeth Rex confines Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare inside a royal barn one wintry night in February 1601. The placement of the two most luminous personalities of England’s Golden Age should set off glorious dramatic and theatrical fireworks at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The performers do their best to…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: THE NIGHT WATCHER (Kirk Douglas Theatre)
TELL US A STORY, AUNTIE CHARLAYNE If I were a child, I would want Auntie Charlayne to tuck me in and tell me a story. Why? Because Auntie Charlayne – that’s Charlayne Woodard – just happens to be a great storyteller. She can get right in there, keeping you interested every step of the way,…
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Chicago Theater Review: IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (American Theater Company)
IT’S A WONDERFUL PRODUCTION A stage adaptation of the movie classic It’s a Wonderful Life premiered in Connecticut in 1997 and, before long, the adaptation became a staple of the regional theater circuit during the Christmas season. The show now challenges A Christmas Carol as the preeminent live theater attraction of the holidays. There is…
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Chicago Theater Review: A CHRISTMAS CAROL (Goodman Theatre)
A CAROL FOR THE PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE The Goodman Theatre is the custodian of the most popular tradition in Chicagoland holiday entertainment, Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. The 2011 production does not depart in any major way from the 33 previous presentations (excluding a disastrous revival many years ago that turned the story into…
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Los Angeles Theater Review: DESIRE UNDER THE ELMS (A Noise Within)
TWISTED LITTLE PASSIONS IN THE SUBURBS Now that A Noise Within – the Southern California repertory theater company dedicated to the classics – has gotten a snazzy new suburban theater in Pasadena, guess what? They are doing the same fair-to-middling work on their new stage as they did in their old space in Glendale. I…
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DVD Review/Commentary: THE FABRIC OF THE COSMOS (PBS NOVA series)
WEIRD SCIENCE If you’re like me, you’re someone who is fascinated by science now, as an adult, but hated it back in school. Why was something so fascinating presented as such drudgery? If a teacher can’t capture a student’s imagination, it’s pointless. So after years of straight Ds (which I think were mercy passings so…
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Los Angeles/Chicago Dance Review: THE NUTCRACKER (Joffrey Ballet at the Dorothy Chandler in Los Angeles & the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago)
EVEN WITH A FEW CRACKS, THIS HOLIDAY CHESTNUT STILL DELIGHTS It is a testament to the vision of Robert Joffrey that his 1987 version of Pyotr Illyich Tchaikovsky’s perennial ballet The Nutcracker has become an annual event both on tour and at the Joffrey’s home base in Chicago. This year, 2011, the Mice, Princes, Sweets…
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Film Review: SHAME directed by Steve McQueen
LOTS AND LOTS AND LOTS OF SEX A man. A woman. An underground train. Traded looks. Traded fantasies. No one looking. No one aware. The train stops. The lick of her lips. The ring on her finger. Will they? Won’t they? The crowd in the station. The man is Brandon. We soon meet the rest…
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Upcoming Los Angeles Theater: ALLEGRO (Perpetual Surrey at the Met Theatre in Hollywood – One Night Only)
UNAPPRECIATED MASTERPIECE OR ABJECT FAILURE? Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein began the Golden Era of Broadway with two musicals that reimagined the previous form of musical comedies – a cluster of songs packaged together by a plot – by using songs to heighten and embellish a striking narrative. After creating Oklahoma! (1943) and Carousel (1945),…
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Chicago Theater Review: CHANGES OF HEART (Remy Bumppo at Greenhouse Theater Center)
THE 1700s MEET THE 1960s Back in the early 1700’s, Pierre Marivaux was a major playwright in France, but his romantic comedies never made much of an impact on the American stage until the 1990s, when opera and theater director Stephen Wadsworth translated Marivaux’s plays into English. Wadsworth’s successful adaptations made Marivaux a significant presence…
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Theater Review: MEMPHIS (National Tour)
MEMPHIS PROVIDES RHYTHM BUT ULTIMATELY GIVES YOU THE BLUES Kicking off its national tour, Memphis blew into Chicago trying to sell itself as a romping, stomping celebration of rhythm and blues and rock ‘n’ roll during its turbulent early years in the 1950s. There is plenty of energy on the stage at the Cadillac Palace…
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Film Review: THE ARTIST directed by Michel Hazanavicius
DON’T SPEAK! It is common to think of the Silent Era as cinematic pre-history, a lost era ruled over by tyrannosaurs and Charlie Chaplin. Even the most dutiful moviegoers have left silents for so much pterodactyl meat, with a few known comedy routines kept around as much for anthropology as enjoyment. For most, movie history…
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Movie Review: THE MUPPETS directed by James Bobin
YOU’LL SEE IT AND YOU’LL LIKE IT Who doesn’t love The Muppets? Birds love them. Bees love them. Even monkeys stuck in trees love them. That’s been the case since the 1970s, when Jim Henson first stuck his hand into a green sock and pulled out a cultural icon. (I know, he’s not really a…
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Chicago Theater Review: THE JACKIE WILSON STORY (Black Ensemble Theater)
THE JACKIE TAYLOR STORY TAKES PRECEDENCE OVER THE JACKIE WILSON STORY Jackie Taylor is a happy lady these days, and everyone with a fondness to Chicagoland theater should rejoice with her. Taylor finally has her new theater, a sumptuous multi-story that is the home of Taylor’s Black Ensemble Theater. The architectural ornament stands just a…
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Chicago Theater Review: SEASON’S GREETINGS (Northlight Theatre in Skokie)
HO HO HUM Alan Ayckbourn’s Season’s Greetings is an anti-holiday-cheer comedy which should be appropriate for audiences ready for an excursion into the dark side of the Christmas season. There’s drunkenness, attempted adultery, endless family bickering, a shooting, and a preposterous marionette show. For anyone who has endured a dysfunctional family holiday gathering, this show…
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Chicago Theater Review: AN ILIAD (Court Theatre)
A HOMER RUN One-actor shows are by their nature demanding, but Timothy Edward Kane’s volcanic storytelling in An Iliad is a stunning marvel. This retelling of the famous epic The Iliad – attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer – is an exceptionally staggering test of a performer’s physical and emotional resources. The adaptation is…
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Theater Review: I LOVE LUCY®: LIVE ON STAGE (Greenway Court Theatre in Los Angeles)
BLACK-AND-WHITE MEMORIES IN LIVING COLOR Whether you had viewed the original airings of I Love Lucy or discovered the show during the thousands of reruns, it is undeniable that the breakthrough comedy has a multi-generational appeal. Not only is it fun to watch Lucy, Ricky, Ethel, and Fred in that familiar apartment every week, but…
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