ART
IAN HAMILTON FINLAY: `VESSELS’
Objects and words that testify to the classical sensibility of one of the veteran mavericks in contemporary art; through July 16; Arts Club of Chicago, 201 E. Ontario St.; free; 312-787-3997.
`JAPANESE ART FROM THE ALSDORF COLLECTION’
Scroll paintings, ceramics and lacquer objects from distinguished holdings assembled over decades since the 1960s; opens Friday; Art Institute of Chicago, 111 S. Michigan Ave.; $12 suggested admission. 312-443-3600.
`SHIMON ATTIE — THE HISTORY OF ANOTHER’
Photographs concerned with memory, place and identity; closes Friday; Museum of Contemporary Photography, 600 S. Michigan Ave.; free; 312-663-5554.
— Alan G. Artner
CLASSICAL
BOSTON BAROQUE
Martin Pearlman’s splendid period-instrument orchestra and chorus makes its Ravinia debut at 8 p.m. Thursday with a program devoted to Claudio Monteverdi’s stirring sacred masterpiece, the Vespers of 1610. Ravinia Festival, Lake Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park; $25-$40; $10 lawn; 847-266-5100.
CHICAGO SYMPHONY
American music fills the air as the Ravinia Festival celebrates the Independence Day weekend. Christoph von Dohnanyi will conduct Ives’ “Three Places in New England,” along with works by Mozart and Schumann, at 8 p.m. Friday. Pianist Emanuel Ax is the soloist. Marin Alsop will conduct excerpts from John Adams’ opera, “Nixon in China,” with vocal soloists, at 8 p.m. Saturday. Brahms’ First Symphony rounds out the bill. Pianist Kevin Cole and Steppenwolf Theatre actors will join conductor David Alan Miller and the orchestra for an all-American pops concert at 5 p.m. July 4. Lake Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park; $25-$40; $10 lawn; 847-266-5100.
GRANT PARK FESTIVAL
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Principal conductor Carlos Kalmar leads the Grant Park Chorus in a free program of unaccompanied German Romantic works by Bruckner, Brahms and Distler at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday in the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Music and Dance Theater, 205 E. Randolph St. He also will conduct the Grant Park Orchestra in free concerts of American works by Barbara Kolb, Aaron Jay Kernis and Michael Hersch at 6:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday in the Harris Theater. Chicago favorite Jennifer Koh is the soloist in Szymanowski’s Violin Concerto No. 1; 312-742-4763.
JUILLIARD STRING QUARTET
One of America’s chamber music treasures returns to Ravinia’s Martin Theatre for a program of works by Haydn, Beethoven and Bartok, at 8 p.m. Monday. Ravinia Festival, Lake Cook and Green Bay Roads, Highland Park; $25-$40, $10 lawn; 847-266-5100.
— John von Rhein
MOVIES
AFRICA AT FACETS
Mahamet Saleh Haroun is one of the more remarkable young African filmmakers to emerge in years and his new movie, “Abouna” (“Our Father”) — which premiered at the last Cannes Film Festival and opens this Friday for a weeklong run at Facets — is a spellbinding, heart-wrenching study of boyhood in Chad. In French and Arabic with English subtitles; Facets Cinematheque, 1517 W. Fullerton; 773-281-9075.
KING VIDOR’S WAR
In King Vidor’s 1925 masterpiece “The Big Parade,” Vidor, working from a story by Laurence Stallings (“What Price Glory?”), made the biggest box office smash of the ’20s, the first fully realized expression of what World War I meant to America. In this gallant salute to the end of innocence, John Gilbert stars as a rich, Midwestern, playboy caught up in patriotic fervor and wartime romance (with country girl Renee Adoree) but confronted at last with war’s true horrors. Silent, with live piano accompaniment by David Drazin; 3 p.m. Sunday at The Gene Siskel Film Center of the School of the Art Institute, 164 N. State St.; 312-846-2600.
`FAHRENHEIT 9/11′
Michael Moore’s incendiary Cannes Palme d’Or-winning documentary is a shocking, sad, fiercely funny look at President George W. Bush’s handling of terrorism and the war in Iraq: Iraqi War: Another howitzer blast of heartland humor and journalistic chutzpah — and Moore’s (“Bowling for Columbine”) cheekiest, gutsiest, most hilarious ordinary-guy assault yet on the halls of the rich and mighty. In wide release.
`THE NOTEBOOK’
“The Notebook,” Nick Cassavetes’ movie version of Nicholas Sparks’ 1996 best seller — with James Garner, Gena Rowlands (Cassavetes’ mother), Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams, as old and young couples whose love stories are juxtaposed — is corny. But it’s also absorbing, sweet and powerfully acted — a movie about falling in love and looking back that avoids many of the genre’s syrupy dangers. In wide release.
— Michael Wilmington
THEATER
`CYRANO’
Most productions of the Edmond Rostand standard — not a great play, but a great situation built upon a great big nose — go in for well-coifed laughter and tears. Yet there’s more than one sort of panache to be had with this material. More than any other Chicago production of a classic this year, the Court Theatre/Redmoon Theater co-production feels like something wholly new. The designs, full of ropes and pulleys and puppets whirring away inside Cyrano’s brain, couldn’t be better. And, crucially, in this midst of all the formidable atmospheric achievements, directors Jim Lasko and Charles Newell create a distinctively witty triangle in Allen Gillmore’s Cyrano; Chaon Cross’s Roxane; and Jay Whittaker’s Christian; through Sunday at the MCA, 220 E. Chicago Ave.; $35-$50; 773-753-4472.
`THE DOCTOR’S DILEMMA’
A fascinating corkscrew set in early 20th Century London, among a cadre of London medical experts and demi-quacks. The recently knighted Colenso Ridgeon has a literal life-and-death choice to make: Should he save a poor, deserving medical colleague, or a wastrel of an artist, whose charming wife tickles Ridgeon’s various fancies and calls into question oaths both Hippocratic and hypocritic. A very satisfying production directed by Michael Halberstam, with especially nuanced work from Karen Janes Woditsch, stalwart anchoring from Kevin Gudahl as Ridgeon and a ham-with-relish turn from Bradley Mott; through July 18 at Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Ct., Glencoe; $45-$50; 847-242-6000.
`I NEVER SANG FOR MY FATHER’
A frayed play, but a fine excuse for John Mahoney and Kevin Anderson and their various Steppenwolf Theatre cohorts to dine out on some juicy family confrontations. In his first Chicago stage appearance in three years, Mahoney plays author Robert Anderson’s ailing martinet of a WASP, Westchester County variety, whose gruff, bullying persona vexes our well-meaning narrator (played by Anderson). Director Anna D. Shapiro has the taste and intelligence to go easy on the pathos, even when the pat, often predictable 1968 vehicle does not. A decade of “Frasier” hasn’t dented Mahoney’s theatrical instincts a bit; through Sunday at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted St.; $38-$60; 312-335-1650.
`LEONCE UND LENA’
Antic, highly inventive craziness from director Sean Graney and The Hypocrites. Georg Buchner’s 1836 fairy tale, about the prince of Peep and the princess of Pup, didn’t get produced until a half-century after Buchner’s death at age 23. It’s a seminal punk masterwork, and Graney has a ball with it, guiding a young, fleet-footed ensemble with a precision rare in any sort of contemporary shot at commedia-styled slapstick. As the servant with the bullhorn says: Ja! Gut! Through July 11 at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.; $15-$20; 312-902-1500.
`THE PAJAMA GAME’
Harebrained fun, with a lovable Richard Adler/Jerry Ross score featuring the illegally hummable “Steam Heat.” Set in a Cedar Rapids pajama factory beset by labor issues, this 1954 artifact comes from a faraway world of company picnics, presumably comfortable retirement pensions and office romance unclouded by the threat of a harassment lawsuit. Heidi Kettenring and Brian Herriott make for a fine, full-throated pair of romantic leads, and even with the Act 2 longueurs the show’s a fine, bubble-headed time; through July 3 at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire; $41.60; 847-634-0200.
— Michael Phillips
`BLACKBIRD’
Given a strong and intense production by the tiny Profiles Theatre, Adam Rapp’s “Blackbird” goes out of its way to shock with the scatological, the sexual and the narcotic. The two-character play is the tale of two sad-sack, drug-addicted desperados in the shape of Baylis (honestly played by Darrell W. Cox), a Gulf war vet with a barrel-load of addictions, and a 19-year-old former stripper apparently named Froggy (the terrific Lindsay Gould) who has run away from a privileged home in Michigan; through Aug. 29 at the Profiles Theatre, 4447 N. Broadway; $18-$22; 773-549-1815.
`DOORS OPEN ON THE RIGHT’
Joshua Funk’s stellar, daring and frequently hilarious new revue on the Second City mainstage blames poor Steve Bartman (of Cubs’ choke infamy) for everything from fire to the lack of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The cast is young but the material is hot, and Funk’s formative mastery of the Second City genre without recent peer; open run at Second City, 1616 N. Wells St.; $17-$19; 312-337-3992.
`DRINKING AND WRITING’
Performed in actual taverns, this humorous and savvy effort from the ever-imaginative Neo-Futurists is a funny, poignant and intellectually stimulating look at the irrefutable causal link between drinkers and writers of various stripes; open run (Mondays only) at Levin’s, 1450 Sherman Ave., Evanston; $12; 847-869-0450.
`FUDDY MEERS’
David Lindsay-Abaire’s strange satire of marriage and family life is one of those darkly satirical plays destined always to teeter on the theatrical knife-edge between yucks and yuck. Yet the very capable young Chicago director Kimberly Senior does her considerable best to give this hybrid play a Strawdog Theatre production that’s sufficiently credible that we stay with the characters throughout, and sufficiently funny that all the bizarre people on stage don’t begin to cloy; through July 31 at Strawdog Theatre, 3829 N. Broadway; $10-$18; 773-528-9696.
`JOB OPPORTUNITY’
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In Michael Fossberg’s noir-esque crime-caper show, the dramatic action takes place in the moving front seat of a 1985 Oldsmobile — literally. All seating for the audience, maximum of four, is in the car, which roams the city streets. The real fun is that one has no idea which street denizens are in the cast and who is simply roaming the streets. There’s a whiff of danger here, especially if you go for one of the late-night road trips; open run at Bailiwick Repertory Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.; $37; 773-883-1090.
`PARADE’
Bailiwick operates on relatively small budgets and draws from a non-Equity pool. And David Zak’s production — which now has transferred pretty much intact to the Mercury Theatre — is by no means flawless. But especially for lovers of contemporary musicals who’d rather drop $30 than $80, these issues do not constitute reasons to pass this superb musical by. Directed with passion and daring, it is very skillfully cast. There is a stellar little orchestra providing the musical accompaniment.And most important, the married couple at the center of the story of a trumped-up murder case born of anti-Semitism is very well played; through July 18 at Mercury Theatre, 3745 N. Southport Ave.; $20-$40; 773-325-1700.
`THE PEOPLE VS. FRIAR LAURENCE: THE MAN WHO KILLED ROMEO AND JULIET’
Thanks to a proudly nebbish directorial sense, oodles of clever material and a remarkably impressive ability to make fresh satiric hay out of the most hackneyed iconography in all of dramatic literature, Ron West’s Second City-style parody of “Romeo and Juliet” is a blast. West works in everything from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern to Kevin Bacon via Susan Lucci and tiramisu. And the terrific composer Phil Swann even gives the lovers from “MADtv” a ballad titled “Why Don’t We Use Each Other Tonight?” which sets just the right PG-13 tone; through Aug. 15 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier; $25-$28; 312-595-5600.
`THE ROMANCE OF MAGNO RUBIO’
A beguiling contemporary play from author Lonnie Carter, “The Romance of Magno Rubio” has an all-Filipino cast of characters, is performed entirely by a group of stellar actors with Filipino roots, and deals with the travails of lovelorn migrant workers in the California of the 1930s. A language-driven piece, this is a small but sweet play about the beauty of the native Filipino speech patterns, the agony of cultural oppression and the complex nature of the Filipino identity in a hostile new world. It feels intensely authentic; through July 11 at Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; $30-$35; 773-871-3000.
`THE SHAGGS: PHILOSOPHY OF THE WORLD’
A full-throated and earnest original pop musical about a real-life New Hampshire sister act from the late 1960s now affectionately regarded as one of the worst bands of all time, Joy Gregory’s new musical still needs a lot of work and a more consistent mood and tone. But this is a big, entertaining show. And given the savvy idea, droll tunes and clever, entertaining execution, “The Shaggs” both deserves and will gain many fans amid locals and tourists alike; through Sunday at Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave.; $15-$57; 312-337-0665.
— Chris Jones
JAZZ
CLAUDIA ACUNA
The magnificent Chilean vocalist appears on a double-bill with Chicago’s aptly named duo Two for Brazil; Tuesday through Sunday at the Jazz Showcase, 59 W. Grand Ave.; $20; 312-670-2473.
— Howard Reich