ART
THE BOONE COLLECTION
“Objects of History: The Boone Collection of Japanese Art,” scroll paintings, woodblock prints and decorative works drawn from holdings of more than 3,500 objects at the Field Museum; opens Saturday, Smart Museum of Art, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave.; free; 773-702-0200.
`TEXTILE ART BY EVA RODENIUS’
Works by one of Sweden’s foremost contemporary textile artists; opens Thursday; Swedish American Museum Center, 5211 N. Clark St.; $4; 773-728-8111.
— Alan G. Artner
CLASSICAL
CHICAGO A CAPPELLA
New music about love by three Chicago composers — Paul Carey, Stacy Garrop and artistic director Jonathan Miller — makes up the choral ensemble’s program, “Eighteen Lips”; 8 p.m. Saturday; Unity Temple, 875 Lake St., Oak Park; 7:30 p.m. April 15; Chicago Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph Drive; 7:30 p.m. April 17; Music Institute of Chicago, 1490 Chicago Ave., Evanston; $25; 773-755-1628.
CUBE ENSEMBLE
Chicago’s plucky contemporary music group will explore the rich variety of new music coming out of Western and Central Europe in the opening concert of its fifth annual South Loop Spring Festival; 7:30 p.m. Friday; Fine Arts Building, Curtiss Hall, 10th fl., 410 S. Michigan Ave.; $15; 312-554-1133.
DOWNTOWN CHURCHES
The dynamic violinist Angele Dubeau, Canada’s best-selling Analekta recording star, will perform with the La Pieta ensemble in her Chicago debut at 7:30 p.m. Friday at St. James Cathedral, 65 E. Huron St.; $10-$25; 866-468-3401. The Sixteen, a splendid vocal ensemble from Britain, will salute the birthday anniversaries of two native composers, Thomas Tallis and Michael Tippett, at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Fourth Presbyterian Church, 126 E. Chestnut St.; $20-$25; 866-468-3401.
SYMPHONY CENTER
The Dresden Staatskapelle, the world’s oldest orchestra (founded in 1598), plays its first Chicago concert in nearly two decades at 8 p.m. Thursday. Myung-Whun Chung will conduct Beethoven’s “Pastoral” and “Eroica” symphonies; $39-$73. Classical guitarist John Williams spans several centuries of works from Baroque to world music in his solo recital at 8 p.m. Saturday; $26-$46; 220 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-294-3000.
— John von Rhein
JAZZ
STEFON HARRIS
The brilliant young vibist brings technical precision and musical elan to everything he plays; Tuesday through April 10 at the Jazz Showcase, 59 W. Grand Ave.; $20-$25; 312-670-2473.
AHMAD JAMAL
Even after so many decades before the public, pianist Jamal still sounds radical and restlessly inventive; 7:30 p.m. April 10 at the University of Chicago’s Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St.; $15-$30; 773-702-8068.
— Howard Reich
MOVIES
MAYSLES DOCS
“Salesman,” the Maysles Brothers’ classic 1969 documentary about four Catholic bible salesmen in Opa Locka, Fla., is one of the major revivals at this year’s Chicago International Documentary Festival, part of a series-long tribute to Maysles Brothers Albert and (the late) David, jointly honored with the fest’s Lifetime Achievement Award. This 10-day celebration of non-fiction film runs through April 10 at a variety of venues. Top picks include “Darwin’s Nightmare,” 8:45 p.m. Wednesday at Facets, 9 p.m. Tuesday at Doc Films; “Dust to Glory,” 7:30 p.m. Wednesday at Beverly Art Center, 7 p.m. Thursday at Gateway Theatre; and the other Maysles brothers, 1975’s “Grey Gardens,” a grotesque look at the later lives of Kennedy relatives Edith and Edie Beale, 9:30 p.m. Monday at Facets; and 1970’s “Gimme Shelter,” with the Rolling Stones and Tina Turner, 7:15 p.m. Friday at Facets; for tickets and full schedule, call 773-486-9612.
MILLER’S CROSS SIN
“Sin City,” Frank Miller’s post-“Kiss Me Deadly” comic book world of hard guys, rich degenerates and hookers looks even better as a movie, shot in bleak or gleaming black and white. Co-director-writers Robert Rodriguez and Miller charge up three of Miller’s stories, “That Yellow Bastard,” “The Hard Goodbye” and “The Big Fat Kill” with stunning visuals and a top hard-boiled cast: Bruce Willis, Mickey Rourke, Clive Owen, et al; in wide release.
ROMAN EPIC
Director Marco Tullio Giordana’s extraordinary “The Best of Youth” is about two brothers and their family, friends and lovers, traveling through four turbulent Italian decades, from 1965 to the present. Six hours long, shown in two parts, it’s a major cinema event with a splendid cast: a masterpiece of the Italian film traditions of social/political realism and the historical family epic. In Italian, Norwegian and English with English subtitles; Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; 773-871-6604
— Michael Wilmington
THEATER
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`ACTION ITEM’
It sounds ridiculous: A film about a theater troupe’s inability to put on a show for this year’s PAC/edge Performance Festival. Subtitled “DOG does not perform,” “Action Item” had no business being anything more than a time-wasting jape. Yet as the members of the DOG theater company spill their guts in separate, makeshift home videos wittily assembled by Jason Greenberg, all the soul-searching about time crunches, health problems and incompatible pets turns into a strangely funny collage portrait of experimental artists staring middle age in the face. 6 p.m. Sundays; through April 10; PAC/edge Performance Festival at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.; $10; 773-722-5463.
`THE CABINET’
Gorgeously macabre. Redmoon Theater’s adaptation of the 1919 German Expressionist cinematic nightmare “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” unfolds entirely within a 10-by-14-foot cabinet. Each bureau drawer and hinged door opens to reveal, graphic-novel style, another arresting image of monocled puppeteers–five of them–manipulating the evil Caligari, his sleepwalking partner in murder, Cesare, and a host of other creepazoid characters. Director Frank Maugeri and composer Mark Messing lead an inspired team. This is design, direction, puppetry and cold-creep storytelling of a high and wonderfully sinister order; through May 8 at the Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western Ave.; $20-$25; 312-850-8440.
`L’AIR LAIR’
It’s 15 minutes long, it’s performed for a mere five or six people at a time, in a vending machine room no bigger than a janitor’s closet. A man and a woman, both dressed in dark blue janitor garb, crouch atop a couple of soda machines. The dreamy reverie that ensues is a plaintive and memorable evocation of longing, memory and desire. Created by Asimina Chremos and director Kairol Rosenthal, performed by the eagle-eyed Chremos and Dan Mohr (the latter lending a lovely tenor to an old Corsican lament), “L’air Lair” may well prove a highlight of this year’s PAC/edge Performance Festival; through April 10 at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.; $10; 773-722-5463.
`LES MISERABLES’
The barricades. The turntable, spinning ’round like the salad bowl at Don Roth’s Blackhawk. The power ballads. The saints. The sinners. Of all the international musical blockbusters, the one adapted and directed by John Caird and Trevor Nunn holds up best. The current touring edition makes a hearty and swaggering case for this material. This is the sixth time “Les Miz” has brought Jean Valjean, his stalker Inspector Javert and the whole gang of sufferers and French Insurrectionists to Chicago; through April 24 at the Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St.; $27-$80; 312-902-1400.
`RED HERRING’
Set in anti-Commie 1952, Michael Hollinger’s comedy follows a couple of FBI agents (played by Scott Jaeck and Tracy Michelle Arnold) hot on the trail of a Russian spy ring. Director Jessica Thebus’ Northlight Theatre production, staged with exquisite detail and atmosphere, works all the film noir angles with surprising freshness. Even when the script putters around, performers such as Jaeck, Arnold and–as Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s fictional, fervently dim daughter–Lesley Bevan reel in laugh after laugh; through April 24 at North Shore Center for the Performing Arts, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie; $32-$48; 847-673-6300.
`REFUGE’
A beautiful nightmare. Chris Jones said it in 1999 and it’s no less true six years hence: Plasticene Physical Theatre’s imagistic and seductive piece–much-revised for its current engagement in the PAC/edge Performance Festival–is “an intense and visceral hour, spinning with hidden insights.” Two women and two men, four suitcases and four paneled platforms on wheels are the materials of Dexter Bullard’s dazzling staging. Mark Comiskey, Sharon Gopfert, Tere Parkes and Andy Rothenberg enact crisscrossing scenarios (interrogations, seductions, evasions) as if their lives depended on them; through Saturday at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport Ave.; $15; 312-902-1500.
`THE STORY’
Many plays pretend to be about race (such as the recent “Permanent Collection”), but Tracey Scott Wilson’s brisk 90-minute newspaper drama really is about race in a way that serves its story. Inspired by Janet Cooke’s fabrication of a Washington Post feature, Wilson delivers a paradox–a cool, controlled potboiler, in which an ambitious African-American reporter (Lizzy Cooper Davis) pursues a story of a young black female gang member (Monet Butler). The story is a pip–but is the gangbanger a figment of a complicated imagination? Every newsroom character’s a bit of a weasel in playwright Wilson’s hands. It’s not deep, but the play keeps an audience intrigued and morally off-balance. In director Chuck Smith’s production the scenes between Davis and Butler, particularly, crackle with urgency; through April 10 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.; $20-$60; 312-443-3800.
`SWING!’
A gasser, and a case of a savvy regional production making a musical revue look better than it did in the original Broadway edition. The show’s nothing more than a plotless song-and-dance paean to the swing era, defined here as the late 1920s to the mid-1940s, packed with standards (“Stompin’ at the Savoy,” “G.I. Jive”). The conception may be on the vanilla side, but the execution–thanks to director/co-choreographer Marc Robin and a cast dominated by dancer-alums from the “Swing!” original–is murder. Murder, you hear me? Murder. It’s reet, petite and gone; through April 24 at Marriott Theatre in Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire; $44.63; 847-634-0200.
— Michael Phillips
`FROM FEAR TO ETERNITY’
The27th revue at the zesty, zippy Second City e.t.c. stage has many future rock stars of comedy. No question. And since the sketch-comedy form fundamentally relies on the talent, those with only one Second City spot on their schedule should head for the scrappier, louder e.t.c., where much sharper amusement awaits in “From Fear to Eternity.” Director Sue Gillan’s immensely enjoyable show is a jovial, nicely cynical romp through these dismal days for progressives and liberals; open run at the Second City e.t.c., 1608 N. Wells St.; $17-$19; 312-337-3992.
`HUMBLE BOY’
Without the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company–an artistic asset if ever this town had one–Charlotte Jones’ “Humble Boy” is precisely the kind of decent, quiet, complex and thoughtful show that Chicagoans would never get to see. Set in a midsummer English garden and riffing with melancholy merriment on “Hamlet,” the dysfunctional family, the class system and the joys of astrophysics, this is the kind of contemporary life-as-it-is-lived play that opens at London’s National Theatre with regularity. The piece lands somewhere in the soft middle ground between the warm social comedy of Alan Ayckbourn and the tarter aesthetic tricks of Tom Stoppard. James Bohnen’s superbly cast production is both funny and emotionally resonant; through April 24 at the Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; $30-35; 773-871-3000.
`LOOKINGGLASS ALICE’
We’re happy to announce the Lookingglass Theatre Company’s family-friendly rescue of Alice–that pugnacious explorer, demure deconstructionist, woman unfazed by Jabberwock or hedgehog–from the customary cutesiness. Worry not. Adapter-director David Catlin and Chicago’s Lookingglass have kept the dress. And it’s all still the black kitten’s fault. Entirely. Oh, and the White Rabbit has the usual trouble with his cue. But in the shape of the remarkably talented Lauren Hirte, the Lookingglass Alice is a bona-fide, rope-loving acrobat, sitting atop a fun, smart and sophisticated circus-oriented adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic; through April 17 at Lookingglass Theatre in the Water Tower Water Works, 821 N. Michigan Ave.; $20-58; 312-337-0665.
`REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT’
As the title implies, Jose Rivera’s latest work of magic realism is a peculiarly poetic drama with little tolerance for the consistent application of dramatic rules. Therein, a cat holds a conversation with a coyote and the moon waxes lyrical on its flaws. “I’m a co-dependent satellite not even confident enough to be a planet,” Rivera’s chatty lunar orb says, complaining that Shakespeare was a bully to call him inconstant. The sensual script–which focuses mainly on a return soldier and his passionate wife–is stranger than anything Sean Graney could think of doing to it, which turns the usual dynamic surrounding this director on its head. And it makes for a consistently evocative and intermittently moving evening; through April 10 at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.; $22-25; 773-883-1090.
— Chris Jones