Fundamental Reading Some of Chicago’S Lgbtq-Friendly Page 14 Book Clubs
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Nov. 7, 2018 FUNDAMENTAL READING SOME OF CHICAGO’S LGBTQ-FRIENDLY PAGE 14 BOOK CLUBS Window of Women and Children First. Photo by Sarah Hindmarch Noah Cyrus. Photo from David Enriquez/Records Marketing Nov. 7, 2018 2 INDEX VOL. 34, No. 07, Nov. 7, 2018 The combined forces of Windy City Times, founded Sept. 1985, and Outlines newspaper, Theater reviews 4-5 founded May 1987. Music: Measure for Measure 6 PUBLISHER Terri Klinsky Theater review 6 5 Film: Conversion-therapy film ‘Boy Erased’ hits theaters 7 EXECUTIVE EDITOR Andrew Davis Film: Jenna Laurenzo talks ‘Lez Bomb’ 8 MANAGING EDITOR Matt Simonette DIGITAL DIRECTOR Jean Albright Books: Mark Zubro’s A Cradle Song: Part Three 10-11 ART DIRECTOR AND ASSOCIATE EDITOR Kirk Williamson Film: Review: Bohemian Rhapsody 12 SOCIAL MEDIA DIRECTOR Scott Duff BUSINESS MANAGER Ripley Caine SENIOR ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Terri Klinsky, Kirk Williamson, Scott Duff, Kathy Breit, Theresa Santos Volpe, Kevin Siarkowski, Amy Matheny NATIONAL SALES Rivendell Media, 212-242-6863 THEATER AND DANCE EDITOR Catey Sullivan SENIOR WRITERS Jonathan Abarbanel, Mary Shen Barnidge, Liz Baudler, Charlsie Dewey, Ross Forman, Carrie Maxwell, Rev. Irene Monroe, Jerry Nunn, Tony Peregrin, Angelique Smith, Sari Staver, Sarah Toce, Melissa Wasserman WRITERS Sarah Katherine Bowden, Ada Cheng, Eric Formato, Joe Franco, Veronica Harrison, Kelsey Hoff, Aaron Hunt, Eric Karas, Brian Kirst, Billy Masters, Scott C. Morgan, Amelia Orozco, Ariel Parrella-Aureli, Kerry Reid, Dana Rudolph, Ana Serna, Karen Topham, Joseph Varisco, Regina Victor, Sean Margaret Wagner, Lauren Warnecke, Steve Warren, Lauren Emily Whalen SENIOR PHOTOGRAPHERS Kat Fitzgerald, Hal Baim, Tim Carroll, Ed Negron 13 CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Jean Albright DISTRIBUTION Ashina, Allan, Dan, John, Sue and Victor WEB HOSTING LoveYourWebsite.com (lead programmer: Martie Marro) PRESIDENT Tracy Baim (773) 871-7610 FAX (773) 871-7609 Editorial: [email protected] Sales: [email protected] Calendar: [email protected] Circulation: [email protected] Art/ad copy: [email protected] Theater: [email protected] Copyright 2018 Lambda Publications Inc./Windy City Media Group; All rights reserved. Reprint by permission only. Back issues (if available) for $5 per issue (postage included). Return postage must accompany all manuscripts, drawings, and photographs submitted if they are to be returned, and no responsibility may be assumed for unsolicited materials. All rights to letters, art and photographs sent to Windy City Times will be treated as unconditionally assigned for publication purposes and as such, subject to editing and comment. The opinions expressed by the columnists, cartoonists, letter writers, and commentators are their own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Windy City Times. Publication of the name, photograph, or likeness of a person or organization in articles or advertising in Windy City Times is not to be construed as any indication of the sexual orientation of such person or organization. While Music: Olly Alexander: Out British singer on band, queer artists 13 we encourage readers to support the advertisers who make this newspaper possible, Windy City Times cannot accept Books: Some of Chicago’s LGBTQ-friendly book clubs 14 responsibility for advertising claims. Books: Atwood discusses impact of ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ 14 17 WINDY CITY MEDIA GROUP, 5315 N. Clark St. #192, Chicago, IL, 60640 U.S.A Nightlife/Drag: Drag It Up! 15 (MAILING ADDRESS ONLY) Billy Masters 16 Windy City Times Deadline every Wednesday OUT! Chicago’s LGBTQ Visitor’s Guide Online annual The Dish: Return of the MAK; SideDoor brunch 17 Windy City Times Wedding and Events Guide Annual Arts and Theater Weekly Online Nightlife/Drag: Scene photos (Touche, Meeting House Tavern) 17 www.WindyCityMediaGroup.com Calendar 18 Nov. 7, 2018 3 Nov. 7, 2018 4 THEATER REVIEW back-up singers. Gideon has AIDS and plans to Fire”—the shows’ centerpiece number—power- commit suicide, unable to endure the ravages of fully describes one’s body at war with itself from The Last Session the disease and the terrible side-effects of then- AIDS and nearly-poisonous drugs which cannot Playwright: Steve Schalchlin, music/lyrics; available drugs (AZT). His unseen lover of 13 cure. Each back-up singers has several solos— Jim Brochu, book; John Bettis/Marie Cain, years doesn’t know his plan, but Gideon’s studio Gideon is improbably generous in this respect— additional lyrics engineer (Benjamin Baylon) and back-up sing- which allow them to display feelings and emo- At: Refuge Theatre Project @ Atlas ers—two gals and a guy—eventually do and try tions beyond their diva bickering between songs Art Studio, 4809 N. Ravenswood Ave. to dissuade him. (some of which is funny-bitchy but often sounds Tickets: RefugeTheatre.com; $30 Spicing the stew is substitute backup singer artificial). Runs through: Dec. 2 Buddy (Ryan Armstrong), a very young, Bible- The only musical accompaniment is Gideon at carrying Baptist. “A man can’t be a Christian and the piano (Pearson also is the production’s mu- BY JONATHAN ABARBANEL a homosexual,” he says when he learns Gideon— sical director), which is more than sufficient to whom Buddy idolizes—is gay. Even though the drive the powerful vocals by Pearson, Armstrong Four extremely gifted performers power through a show’s world is small, no character is fully-ex- and Darilyn Burtley (as Tryshia) and Elizabeth dozen songs in this gospel-rock flavored chamber plored or developed, not even Gideon, but Buddy Bollar (as Vicki). The women also adroitly deliver musical, written and set in 1997 at the height (or is the least dimensional and believable (no fault most of the laugh lines. Director Christopher Paz- depth) of the AIDS crisis, when tens of thousands of Armstrong’s). A singer-songwriter himself, he’s dernik has staged the show—which has no dance of Americans still were dying each year. Very a gospel star pursuing a crossover career in LA, element and little scenery—very simply in the much of its time period, The Last Session is dated Darilyn Burtley, Liz Bolla and Ryan Armstrong and yet he’s naïve about gays, booze, drugs, sex intimate Atlas Art Studio, the effect being that but still has emotional power, similar to other in The Last Session. and humor. Just a little much. you’re in the session with the artists. “AIDS plays” such as The Normal Heart and As Is. Photo by Rob Riddle of Ghost Light Foto Of course, much exposition and emotion is FYI: The Last Session is heavily autobiographi- Unlike those plays, The Last Session has a re- channeled into the songs and most are gang- cal. Schalchlin was at death’s door in 1997 but stricted setting: one night in a small Los Angeles Wells (Erik Pearson), a self-described one-hit- busters. In Act I, “The Preacher and the Nurse” survived with new medications. He’s 65 today and recording studio where singer-songwriter Gideon wonder, is recording his last tracks with three fills in Gideon’s backstory, while Act II’s “Friendly an ardent LGBTQ activist. the 1954 European tour of iconic jazz vocalist her fellow Danes, chafing under the Nazi occu- loneliness. THEATER REVIEW Billie Holiday, called “Lady Day” by her fans— pation, the music of Count Basie and Duke El- As archeologists postulate entire civilizations specifically, an incident documented in her au- lington, whether captured on vinyl records or on a minimum of physical evidence, so has Or- Lady in Denmark tobiography describing how, following a concert replicated by local bands in smoke-filled “under- landersmith fabricated a fascinating (if still in Playwright: Dael Orlandersmith appearance in Copenhagen, Denmark, a local ground” clubs, proclaimed a freedom as profound need of some tightening) backstory, replete with At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. doctor and his teenage daughter invited her to as that embraced by expatriate artists of color wry humor and unflinching candor transcending Tickets: GoodmanTheatre.org; their house for a post-show dinner, and how fleeing North American injustice. racial boundaries. The only structural flaw in the 312-443-3800; $15-$45 the welcome extended her by these “plain good For young Helene, too, Billie Holiday’s pain, text at its premiere is Helene’s too-frequent bouts Runs through: Nov. 18 people” was so different from the treatment of given voice in songs like “God Bless The Child” of melancholy over her recent loss. A woman who African-Americans in the United States. and “Strange Fruit,” becomes a source of sol- lives as fiercely as the one we have met deserves BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE All right, so a glimpse of domestic life in a for- ace—especially now, as our hostess pauses in a better takeaway than a lingering farewell by eign country, the celebrity status of the glimpser the cleanup of what would have been an 80th a hospital bed and prognostications of a joyless Historical fiction typically recounts its chronicles notwithstanding, may not represent an earth- birthday party for her beloved husband, who died future. from the vantage of a humble witness whose shaking cataclysm, but to our narrator—whom a mere three weeks earlier (after instructing his proximity coincidentally enables them to ob- we learn is the doctor’s teenage daughter Helene, bereaved wife to continue with plans for the serve—perhaps even participate in—the signifi- now a widow living in Andersonville, Chicago’s anniversary celebration) to share her memories c cant events under scrutiny. gateway district for Scandinavian immigrants— with us and look to her gardenia-bedecked and The event in Dael Orlandersmith’s solo play is the multicultural implications are manifest. For needle-scarred guardian angel for comfort in her CRITICS’PICKS Rock ‘N’ Roll, The Artistic Home, through Nov. zalez-Cadel as the second performer. Wallace in- which makes him a safe guide for the evening, 18.