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William Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy is often regarded as the Mount Everest of English drama, a towering peak of theatrical poetry whose awesome reputation both intimidates and inspires. But the great strength of Steve Scott’s intimate, bare-bones, modern-dress staging of the play is its emotional humility. With a cast of 19 excellent non-Equity actors—all solidly in command of the Bard’s vigorous, rhythmically dynamic blank verse—this production reminds us that King Lear isn’t just about a monarch; it’s about a man....

I n 1865, Asa Harmon McCoy made the miscalculation of his life, figuring he could return to his home on the Tug Fork River, where Kentucky and West Virginia meet, after serving on the Union side in the Civil War. A Confederate guerrilla unit led by Jim Vance soon showed up and killed him. Jim being a relative of Devil Anse Hatfield, patriarch of the Hatfield clan, and Asa being a member of the mountain dynasty led by Randolph “Ol’ Ran’l” McCoy, the incident has come to be considered an early tussle in the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud....

The Dept. Q Trilogy, based on three best-selling crime novels by Danish writer Jussi Adler-Olsen, draws comparisons with Stieg Larsson’s The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo franchise: set in Scandinavia and featuring a sullen male protagonist, it’s violent, hard-boiled, and psychologically disturbing. But its antihero, a clench-jawed police detective (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), also embodies a belief that individual goodness might be enough to prevail over darkness. “I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in jack shit,” the detective tells the villain at the climax of the third installment....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

The first time I heard “Bogalusa,” the soulfully grooving jam that closes Sun Speak’s new album, Sun Speak With Sara Serpa (Flood Music), I had to double-check to make sure it wasn’t a cover. It has a melodic sprawl that oozes southern charm, with an opening lick that evokes Sam Cooke’s immortal “A Change Is Gonna Come,” but as drummer Nate Friedman lays out the massive, loping beat and Matt Gold rips into his meaty chords, it’s clear that the duo is tapping into a familiar tradition and putting a spin on it that suggests the Dirty Three rolling through Memphis....

Karl Wirsum, an eminent Chicago artist and founding member of the exhibition collectives the Hairy Who and the Chicago Imagists, is the subject of a rediscoveredtuesday 1973 film that offers a rare glimpse into his fertile creative process. The Chicago-based Pentimenti Productions will screen its digitally restored and remastered version of the original 14-minute short, Karl Wirsum, complete with a new score from local musicians Alex Inglizian and Marc Riordan, at the Museum of Contemporary Art on Thursday, October 27, and at the Northwestern University Block Museum of Art on Friday, November 4....

Lifeline Theatre’s stage has been something of a home away from home for dapper hobbyist detective Lord Peter Wimsey over the past few decades. The mystery-unraveling sleuth protagonist of many of English author Dorothy L. Sayers’s crime novels has appeared in four different adaptations by Frances Limoncelli at the company, including this 2002 script dramatizing Sayers’s debut full-length work of fiction. On the same day a high-profile financier disappears, a freshly barbered corpse is discovered in a bathtub propped up and styled to resemble the missing man....

A new report conducted by Parents Organized to Win, Educate and Renew-Policy Action Council (POWER-PAC Illinois) focuses on the kinds of debt crippling parents face in very low-income communities in Chicago and elsewhere in Illinois. The report, called “Stopping the Debt Spiral,” is based on surveys conducted by POWER-PAC members—themselves mostly low-income women of color—throughout 2016, and includes policy recommendations and information on campaigns already in the works to resolve some of the inequities discovered in the surveys....

If you haven’t already heard Human Impact, you could be forgiven for wondering whether the New York four-piece were soothsayers who’d prophesied humankind’s current struggle with an invisible threat. On “Respirator,” from the group’s new self-titled debut, vocalist and guitarist Chris Spencer (formerly of Unsane) laments, “We’ve made a mistake / Problems that can’t be undone / I see what this will bring / I see, respirator to breathe.” And on “Protestor,” which kicks off with plodding bass and off-kilter keys, Spencer delivers an eerily prescient opening line: “A virus we can’t control....

After 11 years in business, Not Normal Tapes has become synonymous with Chicago and Northwestern Indiana hardcore and punk (and more recently hip-hop). Reader writers have covered many of NNT’s blistering releases, including tapes from Gas Rag and CB Radio Gorgeous, as well as the label’s expertly curated events, including the Infestational fest in 2016 and its awesome anniversary shows. Last week, founder Ralph Rivera announced in a heartfelt entry on NNT’s blog that the label will wind down over the next year and close in October 2020, but not before a final burst of activity: “We’ve got about eight releases left in us,” says Rivera, “ending with the same hyperlocalized focus that we kicked off on....

O.B. Buchana has yet to establish much of a name up north, but he’s one of the leading lights of soul-blues, also called southern soul—a genre that thrives on a circuit that’s still mostly regional and somewhat isolated. His voice is thick and gritty, and he favors bouncy, good-timey paeans to all-night juking and double entendre-laden odes to sexual prowess (both his own and his partners’), leavened by the occasional steamy boudoir ballad....

A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn. Gnistor, irrbloss 1:2 by Jurmo Pete Nelson, Be in a Treehouse It doesn’t have much to do with music, but it’s been inspiring my music lately. This 2014 book shows you current tree houses all around the globe. Some are for rent, and they all look like great places to make music in....

Just beyond the edge of the south side, the city of Blue Island borders Chicago neighborhoods such as Morgan Park and West Pullman. “The Wild Hundreds,” as part of the area has been nicknamed, encompasses the communities of Pullman and Roseland, and nearby staples include the Kroc Center—which calls itself Chicago’s largest community center—and reliably yummy sandwich shop Home of the Hoagy. Insomniac Studios sits at 127th and Western in Blue Island, across the street from an outpost of a favorite midwestern chain, Beggars Pizza....

My first impression of Jupiter Bokondji and his band Okwess was that their sound resembled Fishbone filtered through traditional African music. That’s not to say that the players in this Congolese ensemble actually take any cues from the legendary ska-punk band—rather, both groups combine African rhythms with rock, funk, and the occasional jazzy flourish. Jupiter & Okwess have an insane stage presence, and I was glad to catch their riotous performance at Millennium Park in 2019....

In this week’s issue of the Reader, I wrote at length on King Hu’s supremely entertaining The Fate of Lee Khan (which screens again tomorrow night at 6 PM), but that isn’t the only great revival screening happening at the Gene Siskel Film Center this week. On Thursday afternoon you can catch Francesco Rosi’s Christ Stopped at Eboli (1979) in its complete, nearly four-hour version, which had never been released in the U....

When the owners of Challengers Comics decided they wanted to put on more events, they knew they wanted some of them to focus on women, but they had no idea what that would look like. But when they asked for organizers, Samantha LaFountain volunteered. She knew what she wanted to see. “I connected with a lot of the gals,” said Cristina McCrystal, who lounged on the floor in a Wonder Woman onesie....

ARTIST: Dean Tomasek SHOW: The Grateful String Band and Wood Belly at the Beverly Arts Center on Fri 10/11 MORE INFO: deantomasek.com

In Look, I Made a Hat, the second volume of his lyrics and musings about his work, Stephen Sondheim notes the unlikely genesis for Into the Woods: he and book writer James Lapine had concocted an idea for a TV special mashing up characters from similar comedies (Ralph and Alice Kramden from The Honeymooners, Archie and Edith Bunker from All in the Family) with characters from various cop and medical dramas, using a car accident as the narrative pretext for bringing them all together....