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Sometime in the 1940s, it occurred to choreographer Jerome Robbins that an updated musical version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet could be a good idea. He pitched it to composer Leonard Bernstein and librettist Arthur Laurents, and when they actually got to work on it, in the mid-1950s, Laurents brought in a 25-year-old with a talent for lyrics, Stephen Sondheim. The current Lyric coproduction with Houston Grand Opera and the Glimmerglass Festival retains Robbins’s original choreography, reproduced by Julio Monge....

Who says you can’t come home again? Though he currently lives in Texas, Rob Mazurek remains closely identified with Chicago. The 54-year-old multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, and multimedia artist grew up in Naperville and right out of high school moved into the city, where he attended the Bloom School of Jazz and learned on the bandstand from local luminaries such as Jodie Christian and Lin Halliday. Since the mid-1990s he has maintained the Chicago Underground Duo with drummer Chad Taylor, and they’ve kept the Chicago Underground name (sometimes as a trio, quartet, or orchestra) even though Taylor long ago moved to the east coast and Mazurek spent eight years in Brazil....

Sun-Times Media Neil Tesser in 1985 When I read online that jazz critic Neil Tesser had just received a lifetime achievement award I posted the comment that he’s young enough to win it again if he keeps busy. Then I thought twice and asked Tesser his age: 63, he said—so maybe not. (Time flies.) “These days, I suppose a lifetime in journalism (let alone JAZZ journalism) is an achievement by itself,” Tesser e-mailed me when I asked him to comment....

As the audience enters The Ready storefront space in Lincoln Square, they’re asked to take off their coats and shoes and don threadbare pink slippers before entering the theater. Inside, the black box theater has been transformed into an oval or lozenge, with two tiers of hard wooden bleachers for seating. All is painted bordello red, with old-fashioned fringed lamps enhancing the atmosphere of a house of ill-repute. A woman in black lies immobile below red gauze, while three women holding infants pace around the middle of the room, muttering, trying to hold onto their shifting, kicking, wailing cargo....

Not even ten minutes into director Gerald Fox’s 2004 documentary Leaving Home, Coming Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank, the legendary photographer-collagist-filmmaker, then turning 80, explodes when the camera runs out of film again and he’s asked to do another take. “Well, look, forget it! Look, I’m not an actor, you know? I can’t go through this shit, you know? I mean, there’s no spontaneity in this; it’s completely against my nature, what’s happening here....

Why write a book about a singer whose music you hate and whom you don’t even respect? For singer-turned-writer Alina Simone, it’s because she was commissioned to do so, but the task ends up more rewarding than she initially anticipated. Though Madonnaland seems to be about other musicians, at heart it’s a meditation on the author’s own career, which provides a convenient entry point for readers. Going in, I had even less interest in Madonna and her music than Simone did....

It can be overwhelming trying to decide where to see comedy in Chicago. Once you start looking, there’s a seemingly endless list of showcases every week, and, thanks to an embarrassment of riches when it comes to talented comics in Chicago, most of them are a guaranteed good time. Still, there are standouts. This list features the results of a quick informal poll of some local comics—the people who arguably see more comedy than anyone—combined with some of my personal favorites, shows that have inclusive lineups, creative concepts, or were simply just a blast to attend in 2019....

RIP Chicago Craigslist Personals. Craigslist preemptively reacted by taking down its personals on Friday. When you go to the site now, it sends you to a message that says: Handsome, swarthy buff guy in steam early a.m. – m4m (XSport) Beautiful curly red haired lady searching for pasta (Southport Jewel) (“I was in the pasta aisle at the Jewel on Southport when I turned, saw you, and was immediately struck by how gorgeous you are....

For those still recovering from the Reader‘s Cocktail Challenge, there are plenty of laid back events to choose from in Chicago this weekend. Kick back or keep the party going with some of our top picks: Fri 9/16: According to Eula Biss, Belle Boggs’ The Art of Waiting: On Fertility, Medicine, and Motherhood suggests that “all our moments that feel fruitless may be bearing their own sort of fruit, in their own time....

There were bathrooms in the building, but the protesters weren’t allowed to use them. And if anyone left the police headquarters, the officers wouldn’t let them back inside. But shortly before 8 PM, nearly five hours into what would be a 19-hour occupation of the University of Chicago Police Department, a protester who was stretching accidentally pushed the metallic handicap button inside the building. The door, which was supposed to be locked, swung open....

Two Days, One Night Just when you thought Jean-Luc Godard couldn’t create any more friction—between sight and sound, between words and feeling—he’s decided to pit your left eye against your right eye with his first 3-D opus Goodbye to Language. Ben Sachs has a four-star review of the French filmmaker’s latest, screening for three weeks at Gene Siskel Film Center. We’ve also got new reviews of American Sniper, Clint Eastwood’s movie about the legendary Navy SEAL Chris Kyle, and Two Days, One Night, the latest assault on predatory capitalism by Belgian brothers Luc and Jean-Pierre Dardennes....

Born in Montevideo, Uruguay, Juan Wauters moved to Queens, with his father in 2002, when he was 17, and worked alongside him at a picture-frame factory to save money to bring over the rest of the family. In 2008, having picked up the guitar, he got together with some neighborhood friends to start lo-fi garage band the Beets, which became a favorite on the DIY circuit in New York and beyond....

Playwright Jez Butterworth won the 2019 Best Play Tony Award for The Ferryman, but it’s tough to see that coming in The River. You could use words like “nonlinear,” or “elliptical,” or “opaque” to describe Butterworth’s 65-minute play. Calling the BoHo Theatre production meaningless is more accurate. Well, perhaps not entirely meaningless. Directed by Jerrell L. Henderson, the drama’s myriad monologues about wild salmon and the joys of fishing are mildly educational for those looking to learn about the various lures used in the solitary sport....

In theory, it’s still a few months till festival season. In practice, that season never ends—the events just get smaller and usually move indoors. The key word there is “usually,” because tomorrow the Empty Bottle hosts its fifth annual Music Frozen Dancing, which has succeeded despite the fact that it’s clearly batshit to hold a free outdoor music festival in the middle of a Chicago winter. Apparently the Bottle’s great reputation as a booker—and the absence of a cover charge—is enough to convince perfectly sane people to volunteer for possible frostbite watching bands playing in the street outside the venue....

Formerly known as Chin Chilla Meek, rapper and Harvey native Chimeka shows she’s ingrained in Chicago hip-hop on her most recent self-released EP, January’s Cool. She teamed up with producers such as the hard-grinding Novacane, Twista’s right-hand man Sunny Woodz, and ZMoney’s secret weapon J. Neal, and got a nice assist from rapper the Boy Illinois, but you can easily hear the world of Chicago in her vocals. On “Champagne Showers” she adapts Ty Money’s syncopated flow, though she dispenses her run-on-sentence verses at a slower pace—whereas Ty sounds like he’s sprinting down a track, Chimeka sounds like she’s in the driver’s seat of a convertible, her left arm resting on the car door as her hand gently bobs up and down in the wind....

Bridging the cultural gap between Chicago’s LGBTQ+ individuals and the greater community sometimes starts with a simple act of giving back, like volunteering at a food pantry or cleaning up the debris at Osterman Beach on the city’s far north side. “Honestly, I do not know the origin story of the name,” says Belcher. “Gay may not be the best word to represent the entire LGBTQ+ community today, but I struggle to find a word that does....

Liz Lauren A scene from Stop. Reset.: J, the janitor from the future (Edgar Sanchez), and his boss, Alexander Ames (Eugene Lee) At the outset of Regina Taylor’s new drama Stop. Reset., currently onstage at the Goodman, Alexander Ames, a Chicago book publisher, is struggling to figure out how to adapt his business to the e-book era. The play’s original inspiration was the closure of Taylor’s favorite bookstore, her neighborhood Borders, five years ago, but as it developed, Taylor realized that the subject was far bigger than that....

Hip-hop has welcomed a platoon of talented emerging artists over the past five years or so, but few exhibit their love for the art of rapping quite like North Carolina’s Marlanna Evans, better known as Rapsody. In the late 2000s, she formed a crucial bond with star producer 9th Wonder, who signed her to his Jamla label. After dropping her debut album, 2012’s The Ideal Beautiful, she landed a guest spot on Kendrick Lamar’s 2015 masterpiece, To Pimp a Butterfly, contributing vocals to “Complexion (A Zulu Love)”—a high-profile appearance that enhanced her already blossoming career....

This week we’re getting ready for a spooky time at the drive-in courtesy of Riot Fest! Two fine folks who work for Riot Fest, graphic designer Monique Doron and art director Dan Wade, created a poster to advertise the Riot Fest Halloween Special: two nights that combine live concerts and movie screenings at Bridgeview’s Chicago Drive-In at SeatGeek Stadium. Friday-night concertgoers will be treated to a set by New Found Glory (who’ve excitedly made new merch for the occasion, including car air fresheners), followed by a screening of the 1988 comedy Beetlejuice (if you somehow haven’t seen this beloved goth-nerd favorite, be warned that former Reader critic Jonathan Rosenbaum, while not contrarian enough to pan it, did call it “an appealing mess”)....