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Shakespeare’s Richard III is the embodiment of a man with a chip on his shoulder, a hunchbacked aristocrat who feels “cheated” of the joys of living by his “deformity.” Fancying himself denied the pleasurable pursuit of love, he declares that he is “therefore . . . determined to prove a villain.” But unlike the average “incel” cowering behind a sock puppet on Reddit, he is also a Plantagenet of the House of York, with more than the average number of weapons and warriors to hand....

This morning I woke to the news that pianist Cecil Taylor had died on Thursday in his Brooklyn home at age 89. Sometimes artists of Taylor’s stature are so ingrained in your consciousness that they become part of you, whether they’re alive or dead. He came out of jazz and belonged to it, but beginning the late 50s he bucked the tradition in every way, blazing a trail all his own....

Want proof that context is everything? Consider the Hypocrites‘ Dracula. Onstage at a cabaret-style comedy venue like, say, the Annoyance, where party-primed customers sit around bistro tables and drink alcoholic beverages, Timothy F. Griffin’s new version of the classic horror story by Bram Stoker would be a gory, funny—if overlong—Halloween goof with a fist-pumping feminist gloss. Yes, it’d be a goof with a gloss: righteously yet uncomplicatedly entertaining. We wouldn’t even worry about the cartoon mugging of the actors under Sean Graney‘s direction, needing no better justification than that the funny faces make us laugh....

For nearly 200 years the Dutch East India Company monopolized the trade routes between Europe and Asia. That many years later, we can thank its exploitative reign for de Quay, a new Lincoln Park restaurant that embellishes the fortifying food of the Low Countries with the tropical heat and sunshine of Indonesia. That’s been going on more or less since the 17th century, when Europeans began to learn what to do with the boatloads of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves that sailed the trade winds to their shores....

Small-town girl finds adventure, fame, and love in the big city: the evergreen plot gained new color in 1937, when Jackie Ormes made history as the first Black female cartoonist with a syndicated comic strip with Torchy Brown in Dixie to Harlem, in which teenage Torchy Brown leaves rural Mississippi to sing and dance at the Cotton Club in New York City. Trading in a cow for train fare north and sitting in the “whites only” car to get there (18 years before Rosa Parks), Torchy was an independent, outspoken heroine who served up style with social commentary—and posed weekly as a paper doll with pinup proportions and a killer wardrobe....

Saul Levine in A Few Tunes Going Out: Groove to Groove Tomorrow night at 8 PM venerated artist Saul Levine, who’s been making experimental films since the mid-1960s, will be at the Nightingale Cinema to present a career-spanning program of his work. Many of the pieces will screen from Super-8 film, a format that Levine considered his preferred medium for many years. “When Kodak stopped making Super 8-millimeter sound film, it was like having my tongue ripped out,” he wrote a few years ago, emphasizing the intensely personal nature of his imagery....

“If your aim is to see your neighbors die, don’t fill out the census,” census researcher Andrew Reamer tells those who have asked him how important the census is over the last few months. In the middle of a pandemic, he says, the stakes have never been higher for census completion. “In a way, in a very strong way, filling out the census is like wearing a mask in public....

Sundays With the Tigers at East Room 2828 W. Medill 773-276-9603 eastroomchicago.com In the past year, Logan Square’s cash-only speakeasy lite emerged as a Chicago hip-hop hotbed, hosting DJ nights by Grammy-nominated flattop Stefan Ponce, rising Adult Swim affiliate Thelonious Martin, and Closed Sessions cofounder RTC; Vic Mensa premiered “U Mad” there during a set in April. The club goes hardest on Sundays, when Vic Lloyd and Joe Fresh Goods (plus weekly guests like Holt and Peter Cottontale) host a cover-free party with “no silly dress code,” filling the bar’s large dance floor with the latest local juke, rap, and Future cuts (there are also five-dollar whiskey gingers)....

Fun game: make an 80s hard-rock/hair-metal/stadium-goth/early-thrash-metal playlist, sneak a track by LA’s contemporary Black Veil Brides onto it, and see if anyone notices. Bonus points if you pass it by anyone old enough to remember some of the junk-and-fire-everywhere hard-rock videos that looked like they were filmed in an unused corner of a Mad Max set and were de rigueur back in the day. We’re as far removed in time from the dawn of the styles of music BVB plays as the 60s were from the heyday of big bands—and like always, retro is up for grabs....

This remarkable combo from Cleveland only formed at the start of 2016, but they’ve grabbed my attention with a flurry of recordings since then. Led by producer RA Washington, Mourning [A] BLKstar features a trio of dynamic singers—James Longs, LaToya Kent, and Kyle Kidd—and an indeterminate number of musicians. The ensemble traffics in a gritty strain of DIY Afrofuturist soul music, balancing hip-hop production techniques with lo-fi experimentation that bathes sultry grooves in darkness, either in scratchy samples or washed-out synth tones....

In 2014 former Chicagoan David Grubbs published a wonderful book called Records Ruin the Landscape that explores the historically conflicted relationship between experimental music and recordings of it. Grubbs, who made his name in the bands Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol in the 80s and 90s, generally had his first encounters with 1960s experimental music—New York School composers, Fluxus artists, pioneering minimalists, the improvised sound works of UK group AMM—through recordings, yet many of those artists expressed antipathy toward them, insisting on the experiential nature of their work....

Voting early for Chicago mayor, clerk, treasurer, and alderman won’t automatically opt you out of the endless ads, flyers, and candidate forums, but we can only hope that someday there’s an app for that. Voters can update registration, register for the first time, or change their names or addresses at the polls. You just need two forms of government-issued ID, one of which has your current address. Click here for a list of acceptable forms, which include a utility bill or report card....

Indie singer-songwriter Gabrielle Smith broke out in 2015 under the name Eskimeaux. Since then, she’s changed the name of her project a couple times, and last year she made her debut as the front woman of Gabby’s World—which released Beast on Beast (Yellow K) in November. Though Gabby’s World positioned as a fleshed-out band and Smith does tour with a core group of musicians, the project seems more like the next step in her personal artistic trajectory....

In just the past couple of weeks, theaters have started sending out announcements that they’re getting ready to reopen. Second City is already welcoming audiences back with Happy to Be Here on the mainstage and Out of the House Party at Second City e.t.c. Goodman plans to open its doors with Jocelyn Bioh‘s School Girls; or, The African Mean Girls Play, directed by Lili-Anne Brown, on July 30. (The show was in previews in March 2020 when the COVID shutdown hit, and a recorded performance from that truncated run was available as a streaming show for a time last year....

Public libraries are the backbone of any great community as they serve as not just a repository for ideas, but also a vibrant space for gathering, reflection, and social services. Free boxes and other initiatives with a DIY spirit build upon these principles, and the popularity of organizations like the Little Free Library system means that you can find a lot of free reading material in public boxes all over Chicago....

The Fireman’s Ball As part of the series “Prison Break!: Great Escape Films of the 20th Century,” the University of Chicago’s Doc Films Club is screening One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, the famous Jack Nicholson vehicle that’s director Miloš Forman’s most overrated film. In his capsule review, Dave Kehr writes, “This slick and entertaining 1975 film of Ken Kesey’s cult novel will inevitably disappoint admirers of director Miloš Forman’s earlier work ....

Courtesy the artist Okean Elzy, with front man Svyatoslav Vakarchuk second from right I won’t put on airs: I can’t speak or read a word of Ukrainian. And I’d never heard of Okean Elzy (“Elza’s Ocean”) till I got a press release last month alerting me to their show on Sunday at the Riviera Theatre. The subject line of that e-mail referred to this group from Lviv simply as “Top Ukrainian band,” which hardly seized my imagination....

There are two specific places in Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm’s P.Y.G. or the Mis-Edumacaton of Dorian Belle that are likely to change every time this play (which premiered in Washington, D.C., this past April) hits the stage. One is a montage of news reports on unarmed Black people killed by police and other acts of white supremacist terror, such as Charlottesville. The other is a scrolling list of rappers killed in 2018—in the script’s stage directions, Chisholm provides a list, adding “update accordingly” for the latter....

William Shakespeare’s 1606 tragedy is often regarded as the Mount Everest of English drama, a towering peak of theatrical poetry whose awesome reputation both intimidates and inspires. But the great strength of Steve Scott’s intimate, bare-bones, modern-dress staging of the play is its emotional humility. With a cast of 19 excellent non-Equity actors—all solidly in command of the Bard’s vigorous, rhythmically dynamic blank verse—this production reminds us that King Lear isn’t just about a monarch; it’s about a man....

In my idiosyncratic personal dictionary, the current definition of the word “omnimusician” is a little different from the one you might’ve found there ten years ago. At that point, it would’ve meant someone who plays all kinds of creative music—free, composed, conducted, acoustic, electronic. Now the term applies to a different kind of figure, one who not only pursues an interest in many different approaches to playing music but also takes a multifarious role behind the scenes....