The question of what separates good theater from great theater is a vexing one. A production can have everything going for it—strong acting, a great set, amazing costumes, wonderful direction—and still leave us feeling unmoved and empty. The new play at Lookingglass, Sara Gmitter’s In the Garden: A Darwinian Love Story, left me feeling that way. Everyone performs in gorgeous Victorian costumes by Mara Blumenfeld, on a set (designed by Collette Pollard) that is to die for: a fine wood desk, a beautiful grand piano, a reclining sofa of the kind Freud made famous, and behind it all a high bookcase packed with books....

There’s a beautiful thread of stoic cynicism exuded by Katie Crutchfield as a songwriter, not unlike a sardonic country singer who’s as in tune with everyday drudgery as she is weary of it. Under the moniker Waxahatchee, Crutchfield has blossomed from bedroom-pop poet into full-fledged indie-rock force, and the new Out in the Storm (Merge)—on which her twin sister, Allison, contributes percussion and keyboards—is a testament to exactly how far that move has gone....

The best emo bands are the ones led by artists who follow the genre tradition of using music as a tool for self-examination in a lifelong quest toward maturity and growth, and capturing specific moments of personal evolution each time time their band cuts an album. On September’s LP5000 (Tiny Engines), Philadelphia fivesome Restorations sound like the same great band that for a decade has been translating blue-collar Springsteenisms into bursts of well-fed emo catharsis....

The Leftovers aired its season-two finale on Sunday, the conclusion to one of the more masterful television seasons of 2015. The finale delivered death, anguish, and a glimmer of hope while maintaining its mysterious twists for just more than an hour. Where season one was underwhelming and often moved slowly, season two was a dark horse filled with misery and nihilistic guile. In an era in which the Internet makes it possible for fans of a show to pick up its clues, the audience still can’t figure out who the boogeyman is....

Youths, take heed! Learn from my hard-won experience! Marrying an SAIC-educated artist will commit you to a life of restless grasping after gifts that have to meet advanced aesthetic criteria. Luckily, I’ve got (a) a wife who likes few things better than a well-designed bouquet and (b) a florist who designs bouquets exceptionally well. When I first started going to Barbara Bellamy at Ixia Flowers, I tried to coach her through my orders, telling her what I knew of my wife’s preferences....

If you want to know why Bruce Rauner doesn’t know what to say about Donald Trump, consider the fallout from the president’s latest Twitter war juxtaposed with POTUS’s proposed capital gains tax cut. “Lebron [sic] James was just interviewed by the dumbest man on television, Don Lemon. He made Lebron look smart, which isn’t easy to do. I like Mike!” (They’re already mad at Rauner for having signed HB 40, the abortion-rights bill....

A bill that would allow people of faith to deny services to LGBTQ people was quietly reintroduced to the Illinois General Assembly earlier this year after stalling in committee in 2016. Johnson pointed to language in SB 64 that would allow private businesses to refuse customers based on their belief that “sexual relations are properly reserved” to marriages between heterosexual couples. Such provisions in the bill amount to an “attack on women and unmarried people in sexual relationships,” he says....

Courtesy of RCA records Miranda Lambert As the years have passed I’ve come to realize that music critics often use a kind of sliding scale, where the benchmarks fall in different places according to what genre they’re discussing and where a particular artist might fit on the commercial continuum within it. As I see it, a lot of writing about mainstream country music goes easy on hammy production, by-the-numbers arrangements, and treacly lyrics....

Oopey Mason Brian McCann in the midst of leisure You might not know Brian McCann but you do. You know him as the FedEx Pope and as Eyeballs O’Shaughnessy, and you definitely know him as Preparation H Raymond. Because for 17 years he was a writer for Conan O’Brien, during both the New York and LA iterations of the host’s late-night show. And, according to McCann, he appeared in over a thousand sketches during his reign with Conan—which transformed the lanky, wily comic into a “that guy....

Released this past March, Spirit was heralded by AllMusic as Depeche Mode’s finest album since 2005’s Playing the Angel. A textbook case of damning with faint praise, but maybe the best we can hope for from Depeche Mode is a pretty good LP, not an actually great one, every decade or so. True, the leaden spirit of Delta Machine (2013) or Sounds of the Universe (2009) doesn’t afflict Spirit, likely due to the absence of longtime producer Ben Hillier....

Lucinda Childs in one of Andy Warhol’s screen tests As part of the multimedia exhibition “Persistence of Motion,” which took place at the Nightingale on Saturday evening, video artist and ImprovOlympic performer Jared Larson spent about 15 minutes in front of the room, shooting the audience with a camera and projecting his results onto the screen behind him. Larson zoomed in on each spectator and held the shot for several seconds, making everyone the subject of an impromptu screen test....

John Sturdy Baathhaus Back in June Gossip Wolf reported that queer-friendly synth-poppers Baathhaus were working on their first music video—it’s for a massive trance-industrial number called “Cave Song.” Baathhaus founder and vocalist Dan Foley divulged some details about the video, including that it’s inspired by a classic horror film (Suspiria) and a gay soft-core movie (Pink Narcissus). Photos and short videos of the “Cave Song” shoot that the band posted to their Instagram and Vine accounts—including images of walls of flowers and a hell of a lot of glitter—clued me in to the fact that this would be a huge production....

Milwaukee MC Juiceboxxx turned me into a lifelong fan when I witnessed a particularly in-your-face performance of his back in 2008—at the beginning of the show he grabbed my head and shoved me toward the floor in an effort to propel himself into the air. Juiceboxxx approaches his rapping with a similarly freewheeling attitude, and his life-affirming party jams are simply exuberant. He performs at the Burlington tomorrow night with his backing band (aka the Thunder Zone Band), and to prepare for the show I’m spotlighting one of his tunes for today’s 12 O’Clock Track....

I didn’t have the language for it at the time, but the uptick in limpias de huevo after I had accidentally left the photo of a semi-nude male model up on the family computer sat with me like a intervention. “Calvin klein underwear model” was the Google search that had betrayed me while I was in the bathroom jerking off. When I returned, he was still there, thumbs hooked under his waistband, his body propped up against an assemblage of lumber....

On Sunday, January 15, pro-choice activists and women’s health advocates will convene a March for Abortion Rights across the street from Federal Plaza at Dearborn and Jackson, as a counter to the March for Life that’s meeting in the plaza the same day. That night, abortion-rights witness movement #ShoutYourAbortion will throw a fund-raiser at Gman Tavern hosted by comedian Sarah “Squirm” Sherman and featuring DJs such as Rabble Rabble‘s Matt Ciarleglio and Absolutely Not keyboardist Madison Moore....

Last week, on my way to a trial to decide what the British should do with the Parthenon Marbles they stole—er, took—from Greece, I made a short detour for a look at some treasures they stole from Benin. The trial—a mock event about an actual, raging cultural dispute—was produced by the National Hellenic Museum, which, yes, has some skin in the game. Over time, though, the Marbles had been damaged, especially during the four centuries, beginning in 1453, when Greece was ruled by the Ottoman Empire—and particularly during a 17th-century Turkish war with Venice, when the Parthenon was the target of a massive cannonball attack....

Portraying Billie Holiday, arguably the most iconic jazz vocalist of the last century, is well-traveled territory, posing a potential trap for dusty cliches. Yet Alexis J. Roston paints a vibrant portrait of the legendary tragic chanteuse in Congo Square Theatre’s revival of Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill. Director Shanèsia Davis perfectly cultivates the mood of a smoky jazz joint to tell the story of a fallen star who once graced the stage of Carnegie Hall, now an ex-jailbird reduced to playing dives....

Last August at Northwestern’s Block Museum of Art, a pipe connected to the sprinkler system burst, showering the main gallery. No art was harmed in the deluge, but the building, designed by Dirk Lohan, sustained enough water damage to require it to reschedule its fall exhibit, “Steichen/Warhol: Picturing Fame,” and close its doors till the end of the year. Director Lisa Graziose Corrin (who once commissioned an installation titled Drowned in a Glass of Water) assured the public that the Block would “sparkle” when it resurfaced, and in January the museum did just that, reopening with not only the Steichen/Warhol exhibit but a redesigned, more inviting lobby space (previously planned) and a second major show, “The Left Front: Radical Art in the ‘Red Decade,’ 1929-1940,” which ran through June 22....

TJ Medel and Terrence “T-Baby” Carey first performed as the improv group Preach in March 2016. The two comics met at iO, bonded over their spoken-word backgrounds, and decided to incorporate the art form into an experimental show—the audience makes a suggestion, Carey and Medel turn it into a slam poem, and then transform the poem into a performance. The format was immediately successful, and since then the group has grown from two to seven members and has appeared at comedy venues all across the city....

QI’m a 34-year-old straight female. I am morbidly obese and have been for most of my life. I have never dated. I’ve been on a couple of dates and only when I asked the guy out. From reading your columns and books, I am aware that some men are attracted to fat women. But since I never received any real sexual attention as a teen/twentysomething, I don’t know how to deal with men in a sexual way or in a way that would develop into a relationship....