Review: Vertical Horizon Stops and Rocks in Skokie!
In one of ten stops on their summer tour, Vertical Horizon closed Saturday evening off at Skokie’s Back Lot Bash last weekend. While the band needs no introduction, led by […]
Interview: Hearts Beat Still—Maggie Schmieder, Author of Hopeful Hearts in Highland Park
Hopeful Hearts in Highland Park is author Maggie Duplace Schmieder’s attempt to make sense out of something senseless. She and her family attended the Highland Park Independence Day parade this […]
Review: The Bliss Family Sets a Chaotic Table for Their Guests in Noel Coward’s Hay Fever at City Lit
A high farce, a comedy of manners, a play named after an irrelevant medical condition. Those would be a few ways to describe Noel Coward’s 1925 play, Hay Fever, now on […]
Review: Blank Theatre’s The Wild Party Is One Shindig You Can Skip
A funny thing happened in the New York theater scene in 1999: two new musicals, with the same name and based on the same source material, debuted in the same […]
Chicago Jazz Festival 2022 in Review: A Full Day of Maestros on Day 3
On day three of this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival, authors Kathy Hey and Bob Benenson spent the day taking in some modern jazz greats performing a myriad of styles from […]
Chicago Jazz Festival 2022 in Review: From the Young Lions to the Royalty on the Jazz Tundra
I wonder if people consider the focus, isolation, and discipline required to become an artist of any genre. That was running through my mind as I sat in awe of […]
Chicago Jazz Festival 2022 in Review: Local Talent Shines at The Cultural Center on Day One
The Chicago Jazz Festival returned after a year of live streamed performances in 2020 and taking last year off entirely. This triumphant return featured the eclectic and diverse range you’d […]
Review: Six Artists Imagine All That Glows in the Dark of Democracy at the Weinberg/Newton Gallery
It’s two months until our midterm elections. And four weeks for you to find some electoral insights by checking out All That Glows in the Dark of Democracy, an interactive exhibition […]
Interview: Wild Cards—Artist David Wilson and the Great Lakes Tarot Deck
Fortune favors the bold. Ohio artist David Wilson’s life journey has seen a typical array of ups, downs, and divergent paths, but it all led (more or less) to his […]
Review: Burial Features a Brutal, Fact-Based but Fictional World War II Mission
In Burial, the second feature from writer/director Ben Parker (2016’s The Chamber), we are dropped into a story that takes place during a period in World War II history that’s […]
Review: In McEnroe, the Tennis Great Reflects on a Career Driven by His Exacting Strategy and Explosive Temper
Told with more compassion and pathos than perhaps even John McEnroe would grant himself, the documentary McEnroe profiles one of the greatest tennis players the game has ever produced. With […]
Review: Fassbinder Gets a Gender-Swapped, Wickedly Funny Update in Peter von Kant
In the 1972 Rainer Werner Fassbinder film The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, the lead character was a female fashion designer who ungracefully bows out of a relationship with […]