Newcity

While today former bandmate Mike Love leads a group calling itself the Beach Boys, that band features no Brian Wilson. Wilson’s group, on the other hand, includes original Beach Boys member Al Jardine as well as late-prime-era Beach Boy Blondie Chaplin, and is jaw-droppingly facile at recreating the Beach Boys sound.

The first of three world premieres by Ike Holter scheduled for this season is also the thirstiest play he's ever written. And that's saying something.

Sagittarius: You have two ways to live your life…

Northlight Theatre adapts Jane Austen's novel though the real question is: why?

This world premiere adaptation from Mary Zimmerman at Lookingglass Theatre Company is not so much an escape as an embrace of wonder.

While it aims for gender empowerment, Underscore Theatre Company's production of Jamie Shriner's one-woman show has limited appeal.

Charges of being Queen sound-alikes were brushed off by the band; magnetic vocalist Luke Spiller can be a credible Freddie Mercury vocal doppelganger, but can just as easily conjure thoughts of Kevin DuBrow (Quiet Riot) or Slade’s Noddy Holder. And onstage, Spiller works hard to engage the audience. He nearly always succeeds.

Writers Theatre offers this Shakespeare comedy with whiplash wit and two of his finest leading ladies.

Boards are seldom tread more finely than in this remount at Marriott Theatre.

Just in time for the holiday sale season, Broken Nose Theatre presents the world premiere of this new play by Spenser Davis about the iniquities and injustices of late capitalism

Scorpio: The United States is the world’s top exporter of food. A key factor is their unprecedented productivity.

The "but"s keep coming in Lyric Opera's latest installment of Wagner's Ring Cycle.

The Gilded Age, the grandeur of the Columbian Exposition existed alongside terrible poverty. The details have changed, but desperate need hasn't, nor have attentive people stopped searching for ways to live honest and useful lives.

Joel Paterson’s golden-age gig will undoubtedly be more intimate than Jane Lynch’s megawatt variety show; Certainly one or the other is a good fit for you; and I encourage you to order up some tickets while you can. If you’re going to be smothered by Christmas music in November, it might as well be on your own terms.

Fabric-based pieces tightly focused on contrasts in material and texture, rather than color, encompass a thoughtful and compelling statement by an artist searching for balance in the midst of the mundane.

Mayorga dramatizes excess and questions access. Gendered colors, labor and signifiers of luxury are pushed to their most luscious and vivid extreme as a way to undermine the oppressive structures that created them.

Scorpio: I know secrets about how and why to be a wanderer and voyager…

The first biography of African American arts mover and shaker, Margaret Burroughs.

Fresh as ever, a penetrating exhibition of the beloved Hairy Who reminds us of the risk-taking that today's new art lacks.

Traditional local markets reflect the culture of a place in ways supermarkets simply cannot. Visiting a local market is the best way to get a taste of place. Wherever I go in the world, there’s nowhere I’d rather go than the local market.

“Your hands on my throat, that bruise lace they left behind—those crown jewels, that ghost necklace.”

All kinds of crazy stuff to do in Chicago, during November 2018

West Side rapper Saba hosts the second annual John Walt Day benefit, named for his late cousin and major influence and with proceeds going to Chicago youth.

You Scorpios are of course the zodiac's masters of penetralia.

With portraits of Chicago's drag stars, Helen Maurene Cooper revives anachronistic photographic technologies to create a speculative history of queer photography.

Washington's crowning achievement of 2015 was the release of his fourth album, the major-label debut “The Epic.” Aptly named, the sprawling album runs nearly three hours, and showcases Washington's instrumental ability and composing/arranging prowess.

The Rites of Fall

In covering songs from "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood," Johnsrud sings with just enough sweetness to allow the material to remain true to itself, and just enough sophistication to hint at something more.

It’s hard these days to convey the simple offense the Violent Femmes were to 1980s musical culture. Now that they’re heralded as a classic band, assimilated by long-tradition listeners into roots music, you could almost be forgiven for miscalculating the degree of radicalism that was in their stripped-down, punked-out sound.

Artist and critic Peter Plagens reflects on a lifetime of painting.

Poetry, history, novels, philosophy and more.

This year, we present the Best of Chicago with a distinctively seasonal flair.

Jazz was like a tongue on your neck

from the Loop through K-Town: Kedzie, Kostner, Kildare.

November's top picks highlight the diversity and interconnectedness of Chicago's artistic history and present.