ARCHITECTURE
THE PRACTICE OF PRESERVATION
Gunny Harboe, vice president of McClier’s Preservation Group, who has guided the restoration of such Chicago landmarks as the Rookery and the Reliance Building, speaks on “The Practice of Preservation, Chicago-style,” at the Graham Foundation, 4 W. Burton Pl., on Wednesdayat 6 p.m.; reservations required (waiting list only available) at 312-787-4071, ext. 226, or by e-mail to: [email protected].
— Blair Kamin
ART
`CHICAGO FINE PRINT FAIR’
Final day of the 2005 edition devoted to 15 dealers showing fine works on paper; 11 a.m.-5 p.m. today; Wyndham Chicago, 633 N. St. Clair St.; free; 312-664-9312.
— Alan G. Artner
CLASSICAL
More Top Picks Best Horse Saddle Bags
BELLA VOCE
Chicago’s premier a cappella choral ensemble will close out its final concert season with a program of commissions new and old, including a world premiere by Midwest composer Janika Vanderwelde, and works by Frank Ferko and Gustavo Leone. Anne Heider conducts; 8 p.m. Friday: St. James Cathedral, 65 E. Huron St.; 8 p.m. April 30: Our Saviour’s Church, 815 S. Washington, Naperville; and 7:30 p.m. May 1: St. Giles Church, 3025 Walters Ave., Northbrook; $25; 312-461-0723.
SYMPHONY CENTER
This week’s action begins at 3 p.m. Sunday with a recital by the remarkable Swiss pianist Andreas Haefliger. He will play sonatas by Beethoven and Brahms, along with Liszt’s arrangement of “Isolde’s Liebestod,” from Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde”; $15-$36. The gifted British composer George Benjamin will lead members of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and guest artists in his own “Three Inventions,” plus works by Wolfgang Rihm, Unsuk Chin and Milton Babbitt, in a MusicNOW concert at 8 p.m. Monday; $20; 220 S. Michigan Ave.; 312-294-3000.
— John von Rhein
JAZZ
SONNY ROLLINS
Still a reigning tenor saxophonist, Rollins makes a rare Chicago visit; 8 p.m. Friday at Symphony Center, 220 S. Michigan Ave.; $35-$72; 312-294-3000.
— Howard Reich
MOVIES
EYE ON IRAQ
“Turtles Can Fly,” written and directed by the phenomenally gifted Kurdish-Iranian filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, (“A Time for Drunken Horses”), is the first feature film out of Iraq since the war. A beautiful, intensely moving little picture, it’s the engaging and poignant story of some refugee children camped near the Iraqi-Turkish border just before and during the U. S. invasion. And it’s a cause for celebration. In Kurdish, with English subtitles; Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport Ave.; 773-871-6604.
–Michael Wilmington
ROCK
M83
France’s Anthony Gonzalez crafts gorgeous electro-pop soundscapes in the studio, and reanimates them onstage with a band, Thursday and Friday at the Empty Bottle, 1035 N. Western Ave.; $12; 773-276-3600.
SHELLAC
Noise-rockers Steve Albini, Bob Westen and Todd Trainer cap a rare three-night stand, Sunday at Martyrs’, 3855 N. Lincoln Ave.; $10; 773-404-9494.
–Greg Kot
THEATER
`LES MISERABLES’
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.
`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. 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
`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 production is funny and emotionally resonant; through April 24 at the Victory Gardens Theatre, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; $30-35; 773-871-3000.
More Top Picks Waterpik Complete Care 9 5
`TRAVESTIES’
Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties,” the subject of a very funny, savvy and spirited revival at the Court Theatre from director Charles Newell, seems like a densely intellectual affair juxtaposing the lives, times and works of Tristan Tzara, James Joyce and V.I. Lenin in the gray, painfully neutral Zurich of 1917. But it also has a great deal in common with the writing of Monty Python. When this play first appeared 30 years ago, critics fell over themselves trying to figure out Stoppard’s point. Now? One is more inclined to sit back and enjoy the silly, smug jokes. And Newell has the early Stoppardian style–a blend of neo-vaudevillian physicality and the Harvard Lampoon–down stone cold; through April 24 at Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave.; $8-$50; 773-752-4472.
— Chris Jones