Undercover in the House of Love In this repressive atmosphere Brian Kirst’s intricate, erotic play about gay bathhouse culture is particularly powerful. In the 80s, gay performance artist Tim Miller’s frank nudity was a refreshing shock, but Undercover in the House of Love goes further, using explicit sexual choreography to turn the viewer into a bathhouse voyeur, an uncomfortable role that’s more political than pornographic. Kirst manages to demonstrate that sex–even anonymous lust–is more complicated than the self-protective, hypocritical Christian right would have us believe....

The English Only Restaurant, North Avenue Productions, at Voltaire. Silvio Martinez Palau’s extremely clever comedy is still frighteningly relevant seven years after is was first produced by the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York. Set in a restaurant owned by a Latino immigrant who forbids employees and patrons from speaking Spanish, the play explores American attitudes about immigration, class, and race and how language can be a tool of both empowerment and oppression....

The Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company’s annual marathon showcase of emerging talent, which features a slew of local fringe theater and performance companies and solo artists, was founded in 1989 to honor the late anarchist author of Woodstock Nation and to commemorate the anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock music festival. “Abbie Hoffman Died for Our Sins XII” offers an almost constant flow of entertainment while seeking to foster a communal spirit among performers and audience (which may be enhanced by sleep deprivation)....

AS YOU LIKE IT, Goodman Theatre. In Shakespeare’s comedy a forest is the neutral playground for the romantic encounters that eventually bind exiled lovers Rosalind and Orlando. In this shelter for simplicity and innocence, artificial privilege defers to natural merit. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Michael Maggio’s bumpy Goodman Theatre revival transplants the corrupt ducal court to our citified east coast circa 1880; the Forest of Arden becomes the rugged foothills of Missouri....

By Ben Joravsky During World War II he served on a coast guard transport ship, ferrying troops to war zones. “It was the most traumatic experience of his young life,” says Judith Sains, his widow. “He went all over the world and saw so much destruction, poverty, and death. These things stayed with Sam. They motivated him to do something special with his life.” Best of Chicago voting is live now....

Meat Loaf With David Dalton VH1 Storytellers Despite his long, strange resumé, high school smart-asses today may know Meat Loaf most intimately as Robert Paulson, the bearhugging, “bitch-titted” testicular cancer survivor in Fight Club. Meat Loaf’s autobiography, To Hell and Back, and his newest CD, an installment in the “VH1 Storytellers” series, both came out the day Fight Club opened–which was perhaps the most savvy marketing move so far in a professional life strewn with poor decisions, miserable timing, and ruinous management....

A song’s structure makes it more difficult to ad-lib than dialogue. Nevertheless, the eight cast members in Musical! the Musical are able to improvise a tuneful 90-minute production night after night on the basis of audience suggestions–including a three-note combination that will provide the foundation for one of the score’s highlights. They cover all the bases in this improvised Broadway show (formerly at the Royal George): romantic ballads, inspirational anthems, full-cast dance sequences, an intricately harmonized spectacle just before intermission, and a tear-jerking finale with the obligatory a cappella penultimate chorus....

Lead Stories Latest in Bathroom-Hygiene Technology Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Among the chilling incidents recorded in the weeks before and after the March shootings in Jonesboro, Arkansas: in Covington, Louisiana, a 12-year-old boy and others planted bombs in their school; in Cleveland, Ohio, a 4-year-old boy brought a loaded gun to day care; in Daly City, California, a 13-year-old boy fired a shot at his school principal; in Queens, New York, an 8-year-old boy took a loaded gun to school, as did two 8-year-old boys in Indianapolis; in Kennewick, Washington, a 12-year-old boy was found to have a hit list of teachers and students, as was a 15-year-old boy in West Lafayette, Ohio; in Millersville, Maryland, three boys left three unrelated bomb threats, and a fourth was arrested for plotting to kill a classmate; in Greenville, North Carolina, an 11-year-old boy threatened to shoot several classmates; and in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, a 14-year-old boy shot up a school door because of a bad report card....

By Michael Miner Van Horne had just finished his shift; Muller was just arriving. As one of Van Horne’s attorneys tells the tale today, the “colloquy” at the elevator was a brief one, with “no threats, no chasing, no physicality attended to it. As you may recall, there had been some publicity about Keith’s encounter with a young female at a convenience store.” Van Horne had been charged with battery. “That encounter proved ultimately to have been precipitated by a young woman....

SAM PREKOP BAND Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » The multitude of scribes who’ve dismissed (or embraced) Sea and Cake front man Sam Prekop’s solo debut as “jazz” either haven’t listened to the record or have never listened to jazz. Their careless categorizing probably has something to do with the presence of cornetist Rob Mazurek, who contributes a few solos, and Josh Abrams, who plays upright bass....

Hey, Faggot: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Does this make me an awful person? I feel rotten and racist, especially because of how upset my boyfriend was. He didn’t say one thing in the car on the way home, and I was sitting there imagining him locked up. So is this a racist thing or just a fantasy? I’ve always thought that if you had a desire and you confronted it, it would go away....

Steve McMichael used to talk with dread about having to play the Lions “on that damn carpet up there” at the Pontiac Silverdome outside Detroit. He knew that Barry Sanders ran that rug like a windup mouse–turning, twisting, spinning, and forever finding one way or another to race toward the goal line. That was several years ago, however. The frightening thing about Sanders now is that he runs that rug better than ever....

The Cripple of Inishmaan Synge’s plays also helped create a whole genre of Irish drama whose influence is still felt: bittersweet, rough-hewn tragedies and comedies whose hallmarks include lilting cadences and lyrical imagery, political pronouncements and nationalistic paeans, outbursts of “natural” sexual passion and brutal yet almost farcical violence, and an endless parade of colorfully named eccentrics. But Synge’s plays themselves are hardly formulaic or easy: the irreverent Playboy of the Western World prompted a riot at its 1908 Abbey Theatre premiere, and its subsequent popularity was partly the result of directors who played up its rustic romanticism and soft-pedaled what Abbey actress Marie Nic Shiubhlaigh called the work’s “nastiness....

This is something that drives me crazy every time I hear it: “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Is there really a hilarious answer to this seemingly impossible riddle? Or is the hilarious part that there really isn’t an answer? Also, where did this riddle originate? –Mary, via the Internet Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Back to the riddle. Alice is at the tea party with the March Hare, the Mad Hatter, and the Dormouse, when apropos of pretty much nothing the Hatter pops the question above....

On a recent NBC Today Show segment, some Martha Stewart wannabe said you shouldn’t throw rice at weddings because it kills birds. Supposedly birds eat the rice, it swells in their stomachs, and they explode over playgrounds. Having cooked a lot of rice, I know it takes boiling heat and a good 20 minutes to get it to swell (aside from so-called Minute rice). It seems to me if any bird has an intestinal temperature near boiling, eating a few grains of rice is the least of its worries....

Some say we’ve all been on this planet before. To convince the doubters the doctor gives his own witness. In this life he’s a therapist, an MBA, a macrobiotic chef. But one day while walking down the street he felt himself called to enter a jewelry store. Then he felt called to browse a case that contained a wooden ring. He bought the ring, put it on his finger, and discovered an ancient existence....

URSULA OPPENS with the ARDITTI STRING QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Between them American pianist Ursula Oppens and England’s Arditti String Quartet probably have performed more of the music of our time than anyone else. Both came up in the mid-70s and have remained steadfast champions of the new; Northwestern professor Oppens has even earned the nickname “Saint Ursula” from composers grateful for her encouragement and advice, and as a performer she’s earned their respect for the clarity and confidence with which she illuminates their scores....

WORLD SAXOPHONE QUARTET Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Whether or not the World Saxophone Quartet, formed back in 1977, triggered the wave of four-reed, no-rhythm-section jazz ensembles that crested in the early 90s, no one would deny that it was one of the idiom’s brightest beacons. The quartet collected the best of the avant-garde saxists who converged on New York in the mid-70s–alto-soprano men Julius Hemphill and Oliver Lake, baritone saxist Hamiet Bluiett, and tenorist David Murray....

My neighborhood is a fruit. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Compared to many other programs, participation in CAPS [community policing] has been sustained in many of the places needing it most,” according to a recent report published by Northwestern University. “Beat meeting attendance rates are highest in predominately African-American areas, while rates of participation in largely white areas are lower….In general, attendance rates are higher in lower-income areas where people do not have much education....

BR5-49 By Kevin McKeough Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » This tug-of-war between tradition and trend has continued into the 1990s. Country has enjoyed unprecedented popularity in this decade, thanks to both “hat acts” like Garth Brooks and Vince Gill and changing audience demographics: the music’s audience is now as suburban as it is rural, and its commercial growth has been achieved by attracting baby boomers put off by most contemporary rock....