Kerry Reid – Page 17 –

‘Octagon’: In the messy world of slam poetry, what’s real?

May 9, 2019 at 5:37 a.m.

Made of spit and spirit, cunning and chaos, deliverance and destruction, Kristiana Rae Colon's "Octagon" takes apart the world of slam poetry with bravado and brio. Though at times self-indulgent,...

Nick Cave has been singing about mortality for decades, and he's really good at it. Whether the narratives are biblical or pulpy, the victims innocents or death row convicts, the circumstances comprehensible or cruelly random, Cave's songs are on intimate terms with the infinite ways a life can be extinguished. And yet, "Skeleton Tree", his latest album with his estimable band, the Bad Seeds, is a relatively concise song cycle shadowed by death that feels different than all the rest. <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/music/kot/sc-music-nick-cave-skeleton-tree-ent-0916-20160916-column.html" target="_blank">Read the full review.</a>

At the Neo-Futurarium, a lesson about Saturn’s pull

May 9, 2019 at 5:37 a.m.

What's a "Saturn return?" Think of it as Mercury retrograde on steroids. In astrological terms, a Saturn return refers to the ringed planet orbiting back to the exact place in...

Crazy is up for debate in Tom Stoppard’s ‘Henry IV’

June 9, 2018 at 8:41 a.m.

If the late Oliver Sacks had ever appeared on an episode of "Drunk History" scripted by a cyborg melded from equal parts Eugene Ionesco and P.G. Wodehouse, the result might...

No place like home in Harold Pinter’s ‘The Room’

May 9, 2019 at 5:37 a.m.

Though written in 1957, Harold Pinter's "The Room" — his first produced script — might well be the best thing to see to understand the U.K.'s Brexit vote earlier this...

Suburban hip-hop story told with heart in ‘How We Got On’

May 9, 2019 at 5:37 a.m.

Three years ago, "How We Got On," Idris Goodwin's affectionate portrait of 1980s teenagers learning to rap in the middle of suburbia, got its local premiere in suburbia — Lake...

Nordic absurdist ‘Hand in Hand’ is about the pitfalls of crash pads

May 9, 2019 at 5:36 a.m.

Akvavit Theatre's mission — staging contemporary Nordic plays — often takes them far away from the familiar dyspepsia of Ibsen and Strindberg. But their latest offering, Sofia Freden's "Hand in...

Twists, turns and a feminist insight in ‘Miss Holmes’

May 9, 2019 at 5:36 a.m.

Calling all Baker Street Irregulars: The place to be this fall in Chicago is Lifeline Theatre. Christopher M. Walsh's "Miss Holmes" offers a cunning and highly enjoyable gender-bent take on...

‘Carroll Gardens’: When your past shows up at your party

May 9, 2019 at 5:36 a.m.

The clash between past and present, haves and have-nots, has taken root in recent years through plays that use the trope of a down-on-his-luck friend or relative moving in —...

Set in Alaska, ‘Grizzly Mama’ strays from believability

May 9, 2019 at 5:36 a.m.

A play about the clash between old-school feminism and a female tea party-esque presidential candidate should resonate particularly well during this highly polarized election season. But George Brant's 2011 black...

50 shows for fall: Big musicals to tiny world premieres

June 14, 2018 at 6:19 a.m.

Yes, there's the Big Show Everybody Is Talking About. Let's face it, if you don't have your "Hamilton" tickets already, you're probably out of luck, unless you want to sell...

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