Kerry Reid – Page 20 –

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>

Chekhov’s ‘The Seagull’ gets a solid staging by the Artistic Home

May 9, 2019 at 5:33 a.m.

Anton Chekhov's first major play always strikes me as a bit more claustrophobic than his later work. Unlike "The Cherry Orchard," with its prescient echoes of the decline of the...

‘No Matter How Hard We Try’ set in a world of hardships and despair

May 9, 2019 at 5:33 a.m.

To put yourself in the right frame of mind for Dorota Maslowska's "No Matter How Hard We Try" at Trap Door Theatre, it helps if you stroll the 606 beforehand...

‘American Beauty Shop’ shines when womens’ stories are the focus

May 9, 2019 at 5:33 a.m.

How many stories do we find in popular culture about working-class American women in small towns? Subtract "Roseanne" from the equation and the answer is "not many." Fortunately, Dana Lynn...

‘Mike Mother’ gives daughter control over her familial horror story

May 9, 2019 at 5:33 a.m.

In her collection of essays on storytelling, "The Faraway Nearby," Rebecca Solnit notes: "The present rearranges the past. We never tell the story whole because a life isn't a story....

‘A Splintered Soul’ tells refugee tale from another era

May 9, 2019 at 5:31 a.m.

In a year when the fate of refugees in Europe has dominated headlines, a play about European Jews struggling to make their way in America after the Holocaust should hit...

Gory ‘Taste’ fails to flesh out its cannibalistic characters

May 9, 2019 at 5:31 a.m.

It's pretty much impossible to avoid culinary metaphors in reviewing Benjamin Brand's "Taste." But before you think, "Great, an onstage cooking show," Google "Armin Meiwes." I'll wait. All right. Brand's...

‘Dry Land’ a shocking but honest portrayal of teen crisis

May 9, 2019 at 5:31 a.m.

The smell of chlorine hits the nostrils the second you walk into the small lobby at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble for Ruby Rae Spiegel's "Dry Land." Appropriate, since Spiegel's piece, now...

Steep Theatre’s ‘The Few’ suffused with sadness

June 12, 2018 at 6:50 a.m.

Samuel D. Hunter could easily lay claim to being the Raymond Carver of contemporary American theater. Like the late short-story writer and poet, Hunter's world portrays the backwaters of the...

In ‘Jesus Hopped the “A” Train,’ prisoner’s faith is put to the test

May 9, 2019 at 5:31 a.m.

Stephen Adly Guirgis' Pulitzer Prize-winning "Between Riverside and Crazy" gets its local debut at Steppenwolf in June. But before that, you can dip into his earlier work with Eclipse Theatre...

‘Don’t Make Me Over’ pays loving tribute to Dionne Warwick’s songs

May 9, 2019 at 5:31 a.m.

Dionne Warwick's voice — resonant, cool, but with a persistent undertone of wistful loss — provides a soundtrack that crosses generations and genres. It's a tough one to imitate. Thankfully,...

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