Essay: Dreaming My Dreaming—Thoughts on Seeing Patti Smith at the Chicago Theatre
Despite her fame as a rock and roll singer, Patti Smith is a poet at heart. Poetry has always been her passion. Even her prose sounds like poetry. At the […]
Review: Tom Morello and Friends Help the Revolution “Keep Going” at the Vic
Tom Morello is no stranger to Chicago and the injustices going on in our fair town. Having been raised in Libertyville and having a keen revolutionary lean, Morello felt like […]
Review: King Princess Puts the Limelight on Girl Violence at Salt Shed
Coming through Chicago at about the halfway mark of her ambitiously extensive headline tour, the ever-charming singer songwriter King Princess made her Salt Shed debut last week. Bringing along the […]
Review: Genius, Envy and Madness on Display in Amadeus at Steppenwolf Theatre
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Whenever I speak or hear the name, his glorious and stirring Requiem is the first thing that springs to mind. Sir Peter Shaffer’s Amadeus is now playing […]
Review: Kings and Queen: Mia Zapata and the Gits, by Steve Moriarty
Some people are born with an inner light that fills every room they enter. By all accounts, Chicago-born Mia Zapata, singer/songwriter for the Gits, had talent, presence, and charisma to […]
Review: A Mythic and Intimate Tragedy, Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative), by Herman Melville, Illustrated by Barry Moser
Herman Melville’s novella Billy Budd, Sailor (An Inside Narrative) is both mythic and intimate. So, too, are the woodcuts Barry Moser created for the centennial edition from the University of […]
Dialogs: Rushdie’s Return to Fiction—Bopping Until He Drops
He wore a black patch over his right eye while the other eye, the good eye, looked out towards the standing room only audience. Salman Rushdie wasted no time in […]
Review: As You Like It at Writers Theatre Is a Dazzling Tribute to Love and Community
As someone who’s been meaning to visit Writers Theatre but was struggling to get out of the city and up to Glencoe, I can say that my trip was more […]
Review: In its Third Installment, Ensemble Caper Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Offers Plenty of Cast But Little Magic
Words can barely convey how much I have always hated the Now You See Me movies. And the fact that Now You See Me: Now You Don’t director Ruben Fleischer […]
Review: In The Running Man, Glen Powell Is an Everyman Fighting to Change the Distorted, Dystopian System
If you’ve only seen the 1987 adaptation of Stephen King’s The Running Man and never read the 1982 novel (originally published under King’s pseudonym Richard Bachman, but written in 1973), […]
Dialogs: Jill Lepore’s Book We the People Tells Us Why Our Constitution Needs an Overhaul
I like to think of Jill Lepore sitting down at her desk to plan her new book on the US Constitution. We don’t need just another history, she thinks. There […]
Poetry: Coin of the Realm (1793–2025)
We hardly knew ye Or at the very least we took you for granted Even though your pedigree runs deep Alexander Hamilton gave you birth Despite your modesty You meant […]