Fool's Gold Coast

All That Glitters 148

A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.

Books
READ: King Lear by William Shakespeare, ed. by RA Foakes [I think Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres has forever altered my understanding of the play].
COMING UP: Ben Jonson, Alastair Brotchie.

Movies
SAW: Children of Paradise [a gorgeous new print].
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
MINE: Being Elmo [about Muppeteer Kevin Clash].
KITO'S: The Grey [so I guess Liam Neeson is done being a serious actor?].
NEXT WEEK'S THEME: Radio.

Television
WATCHING: The Simpsons (Fox), Bob's Burgers (Fox), Glee (Fox), Awake (NBC) [I really hope next week's finale ties up all the loose ends 'cause the network decided not to bring it back next season].
ON DEMANDING: Game of Thrones.

Current Interests
Television, Mitt Romney, the death penalty, theater, the Palins, US history, gay marriage, NPR, Uptown, my new apartment, camp, my family, photography, music, race, Kito, the BFF, comedy, movies, books, AIDS, the Internet, my dog Lucy.

Fool's Four
FOUR INTERIOR PAINT COLORS YOU WILL NEVER FIND:
1. White.
2. Brown.
3. Red.
4. Gray.

Flashbacks
TWO YEARS AGO: "Tomorrow is my last day at the soul-crushing office job I've held for more than six purgatorial years (don't worry: it only felt like 60)."
THREE YEARS AGO: "The First People I Came Out To."
&
"Rue McClanahan wants to premiere her new one-woman show in Chicago."
FOUR YEARS AGO: "How can he be all that irresistible without a chin?"

Glitter

Shows Worth Seeing 11

The Cripple of Inishmaan (Redtwist Theatre). Martin McDonagh balances sentiment and cruelty in his surprising Irish-gothic folktale about "Cripple Billy" Clavin and his dreams of stardom. Director Kimberly Senior avoids the Darby O'Gill route, yielding a production simultaneously stark and cozy. Through June 24.

Sexy Baby (Hell in a Handbag Productions). A biting, hysterical musical about child beauty pageants. The parents are all Mama Roses and most of the contestants are dudes in drag. My personal favorite: Alex Grelle's demented Beyansay Riddle, who has a prosthetic forehead and several untreated behavioral disorders. Through June 16.

When the Rain Stops Falling (Circle Theatre). Andrew Bovell's multigenerational family drama resembles a villanelle in its use of recurring phrases and images whose meanings deepen with each repetition. John Gawlik's production is sensitive, layered, and performed with quiet honesty by an ensemble cast. Through June 17.

The Iceman Cometh (Goodman Theatre). Nathan Lane and Brian Dennehy head a uniformly excellent cast in Eugene O'Neill's merciless masterpiece about dreams going poof. Robert Falls's restrained yet monumental staging manages to evoke both Edward Hopper and Caravaggio. Through June 10.

Color Me Bored

Today Kito made me help him select paint colors for our new apartment. We went with Harvest Brown in the living room, Smoky Blue in the guest bathroom, Fresh Cement in the bedroom (for that homey, concrete-bunker look), and Blue Tundra in the master bath.

Take my word for it: you haven't really grasped the extent to which you've become a boring person until you find yourself in an argument with your significant other about whether the color of your walls should be Butternut Wood or Storm.

I used to think about art.

Closed

Yesterday Kito and I closed on our condo. It involved borrowing his sister's car and driving to some godforsaken suburb to meet with attorneys, realtors, and administrative types in an office strongly reminiscent of the set design for Steep Theatre Company's The Receptionist (haven't seen the show? just picture despair and add Muzak).

We were led to a room filled with paper, each handed a pen, and told we had to sign our way out. I'm telling you: we did more signing yesterday than Marlee Matlin.

To make matters worse, an official-looking woman told me that my signature had to match my name exactly as it appeared on the documents, meaning that instead of scrawling my usual "ZK[abstract scribble]," I had to write out "Zachary K. Thompson" every single time. I was like, this settles it: if Kito and I ever have a child, we're going to name it Cher. No last name. Just Cher. If he ever applies for a mortgage--perhaps with some nice girl he met in group therapy--little Cher will thank us.

But anyway, I am now a homeowner. Did you ever think you'd live to see the day?

ELSEWHERE:
My reviews of Northlight Theatre's [Title of Show] and Redtwist Theatre's The Cripple of Inishmaan are in this week's Chicago Reader.

Closing Time

Tomorrow afternoon Kito and I will attend the closing for our new condo. I've never been to a closing, but I assume it'll be a lot like the ceremonies that conclude the Olympic games. I hope we weren't the ones who were supposed to hire the Chinese acrobats and rent the 2,012 white doves symbolizing world peace.

In any case, our time in Uptown grows short. Target, I think I'll miss you most of all.

All That Glitters 147

A look at how I've been diverting myself lately.

Books
READ: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon [I've been acting like such an expert on comic books lately].
COMING UP: Don DeLillo, Evelyn Waugh, Zoe Heller.

Movies
SAW: We Have a Pope.
THIS WEEK'S MOVIE NIGHT PICKS:
THEME: Based on TV Shows.
KITO'S SELECTION: The Addams Family (dir. Sonnenfeld, 1991).
MINE: The Fugitive (Davis, 1993) [gets my vote for best use of Chicago as a setting].

Music
LISTENED TO: Leonard Cohen, The Complete Studio Albums Collection [he's really good at lyrics and really good at spoiling a cheerful mood].

Current Interests
Obama's support for same-sex marriage, pop music, Kito, comedy, the BFF, books, movies, show tunes, AIDS, the 2012 election, the Goodman, the Internet, art, my dog Lucy, inter-species animal friendships, my family, television, anti-gay bullying, sleep, Arkansas, Christianity, race.

Fool's Four
MY FAVORITE PLAYWRIGHTS:
1. William Shakespeare.
2. Anton Chekhov.
3. Tennessee Williams.
4. Samuel Beckett.

Glitter
And now, a friendly reminder that Mother's Day is this Sunday, May 13.

The Gold Mine 146: Larry's First Two Speeches in THE ICEMAN COMETH

Stuff I've dug up.

1.

I'll be glad to pay up--tomorrow. And I know my fellow inmates will promise the same. They've all a touching credulity concerning tomorrows. It'll be a great day for them, tomorrow--the Feast of All Fools, with brass band playing! Their ships will come in, loaded to the gunwales with cancelled regrets and promises fulfilled and clean slates and new leases!

2.

Don't mock the faith! Have you no respect for religion, you unregenerate Wop? What's it matter if the truth is that their favoring breeze has the stink of nickel whiskey on its breath, and their sea is a growler of lager and ale, and their ships are long since looted and scuttled and sunk on the bottom? To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober. And that's enough philosophic wisdom to give you for one drink of rot-gut.

--Eugene O'Neill

ELSEWHERE:
My review of 20% Theatre Company's Devour is in this week's Time Out Chicago.

Gamey

I've chosen the next TV show to work my way through on demand: HBO's Game of Thrones, a medieval-ish fantasy series now in its second season. This is the fifth show I've undertaken to watch in full since 2010, and each of them has fallen into a different genre: white-trash satire (Eastbound & Down), family drama (Parenthood), British historical soap opera (Upstairs, Downstairs), and whatever the genre is where it's the best goddamn thing you've ever seen (The Wire).

I'm one episode into Game of Thrones. So far, it's very violent and very boob-filled.

ELSEWHERE:
My short reviews of Circle Theatre's When the Rain Stops Falling and Hell in a Handbag Productions' Sexy Baby are in this week's Chicago Reader.

Farewell Tour

This year's Great Gay-Bar Bar-Crawl will be my last. Every other summer since 2004, I've embarked on a three-weekends-long whirlwind tour of Chicago's gay bars. The first three times, I tried to pack in as many nightspots as possible; in 2010, I limited the itinerary to only the new and the noteworthy. That's what I intend to do for this year's edition--my fifth and final attempt.

Why have I decided to put a stop to this beloved biennial event? For one thing, I have said just about all I have to say about places like Manhandler and the Granville Anvil. For another, I have grown positively geriatric in nightclubbing years. In August I'll turn 33--which, as Jesus Christ demonstrated, is a good age at which to bring one's ministry to a close.

Come July, we'll go once more around the track with this tired old feature, and then put it out to pasture for good.

Addendum

According to Alexander Waugh's memoir, Fathers and Sons, here's how his grandfather Evelyn described Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, which Waugh saw in its first London production: "an intolerable Irish-American play about a family being drunk and rude to one another in half-darkness."

God knows I tried, but I couldn't figure out a way to work that quote into my review of Goodman Theatre's The Iceman Cometh. So I'm sharing it with you people instead.