George Bernard Shaw once called Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew “one vile insult to womanhood and manhood”—and with reason. The main plot concerns a boorish opportunist (Petruchio) who woos and wins a strong-willed woman (Kate) by breaking her with gaslighting and, after they marry, intimidation and starvation. The subplot, involving a sneaky suitor who fools a controlling father into letting him court and marry Kate’s beautiful younger sister, is contrived and confusing....

Sting wasn’t born Sting, you know. Years before he got famous as lead singer of the Police, he was Gordon Sumner of Wallsend, a spot in the northeast of England known for shipyards that boosters today call “historic” and “proud” because little in the way of shipbuilding actually goes in them anymore. Born in 1951, Sting grew up during the slow Detroitification of the Wallsend yards; now, at 62, he’s apparently in a retrospective mood—ergo his farfetched yet entertaining new musical, The Last Ship, set in the Wallsend of his youth....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago.

It’s been 20 years since Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks Its Back first screened in Chicago. A black-and-white documentary about the encroachment of modernization on America’s last frontier, it was shot in the Aleutian Islands by directors Braden King and Laura Moya, but its gray-shaded score was tracked at the South Loop’s Truckstop Audio by the Boxhead Ensemble. Guitarist Michael Krassner selected the ensemble’s members like he was casting his own film, directing different combinations of musicians from Gastr Del Sol, Tortoise, and Eleventh Dream Day to improvise along with scenes from the movie....

Ren Schofield has been making deranged sounds for years in projects such as noise-rock outfit Gang Wizard and challenging electronic collective Form a Log. With his solo project, Container, the Providence musician is able to fuse all of his past artistic identities into one. Existing at the crossroads of techno and noise, Container is a simple, streamlined project in which Schofield lays out four-on-the-floor electronic beats and pairs them with twisted, circuit-bent synth pulses and washes....

Starting today and continuing through Thursday, I’m counting down my 40 favorite albums of 2015. The usual caveat applies: I truly love all this music, but take the rankings with a grain of salt. And please bear in mind that I’m not trying to be definitive. (Also, I consider D’Angelo’s excellent Black Messiah to be a 2014 release, which is why you won’t see it here anywhere—due to a poorly timed move, though, I didn’t manage to make a list last year....

Hours after Muse finish their headlining set on the opening day of Lollapalooza, Keith Kay will return to Grant Park. He’ll arrive at around 2 AM, like a housekeeper entering a just-vacated hotel room, to help make sure that the festival grounds are just as ready for the next 100,000 fans as they were for the first 100,000. Kay sees what most of us never will: the vendors prepping mountains of food and oceans of beer, the grounds crews picking up every crushed plastic cup and scrap of litter, the delivery trucks refueling the generators that power the refrigerators and stages....

I was a little harsh on Jamie XX in my Soundboard write-up of his sold-out show this Thursday night at Concord Hall—my issue is mostly with his recorded music, which tends to dampen many of the spiky or subversive elements of electronic music. I still recommended the show for two reasons: his lava-hot set at this summer’s Pitchfork Music Festival, and his excellent taste as a DJ and remixer. On Thursday night you might hear Jamie XX play stuff from his records, but you’ll probably also hear some other people’s records that he will mix into his set....

Since 2004 Plastic Crimewave (aka Steve Krakow) has used the Secret History of Chicago Music to shine a light on worthy artists with Chicago ties who’ve been forgotten, underrated, or never noticed in the first place. Older strips are archived here. 

Sweat is rolling off Alex Harris’s neck, beading on his nose, and darkening his gray T-shirt. “I’ve never been this hot in my life,” he says. At the marver again, he rolls the egg in powder-blue and cobalt glass powders, coloring its exterior. Harris first came to Ignite last fall, and soon began working for Dick part-time. He’s nearly as keen about glassblowing as she is. “It amps up your awareness,” he says, his finished egg resting in an annealer, an oven that cools completed pieces gradually so they won’t break....

Last week Trey Gruber, front man of promising Chicago band Parent, died at age 26. An Ohio native who lived in Humboldt Park, Gruber quickly found fans on the northwest-side scene with easygoing songs reminiscent of 70s Laurel Canyon rock. “He was so captivating,” says Paul Cherry, a frequent Gruber collaborator. “Parent were playing at the Bottle—Max [Kakacek] from Whitney came up to me and was like, ‘Dude, that was incredible....

As You Like It My favorite Shakespeare comedies always have a touch of the melancholy in them. You need both the bitter and the sweet to raise the stakes and deepen the poetry. Some of the performers in Skyler Schrempp’s brash, uneven production for First Folio get this, most notably Kevin McKillip (superb as that most likable depressive, Jacques). McKillip isn’t afraid to show us there are tears behind laughter. Others seem utterly unaware there are dark undercurrents in the play, or that the Bard’s lines can have second and third meanings; too many are just bellowed, most of the comedy lost amid the histrionics....

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Tuesday, July 11, 2017. Three Chicago police officers connected to Laquan McDonald case plead not guilty Three Chicago police officers pleaded not guilty “to conspiring to cover up what happened the night Laquan McDonald was shot to death” Monday, according to the Sun-Times. Officers Joseph Walsh and David March (both of whom have already retired) as well as officer Thomas Gaffney were indicted in June on charges of conspiracy, official misconduct, and obstruction of justice in connection with the 2014 shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by CPD officer Jason Van Dyke, now charged with first-degree murder along with 16 counts of aggravated assault....

AP Photos The Missouri Highway Patrol sent an armored personnel carrier to Ferguson, but some counties around the country received their own for free from the federal government. Let’s look beyond a story and see what we can find. I learned from the Times that if you ever get out of line in Hartford County, Connecticut, the powers that be are prepared to set you straight with M-79 grenade launchers; in Benton County, Arkansas, a mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicle will encourage you to mend your ways....

The Era are tired of footworkers like themselves being pigeonholed as background dancers to the rappers and DJs who’ve taken the breakneck tracks from the streets of Chicago to the mainstream. The four-man crew are pushing the culture forward through “footwork with words,” their attempt to bridge the gap between hip-hop and the 160-plus BPM homegrown tunes. And it works—their laid-back rhymes seamlessly lead listeners in and out of the adrenaline-pumping dance routines in the video for “Get U Some (Remix),” a track off their self-released debut EP So·lo (z)....

Andrea Bauer Adrienne Alexander (pictured) joins Mick and Ben at the Hideout on Tuesday, June 3, joined by state rep Christian Mitchell and Will Guzzardi. As part of a determined effort to make me feel like the oldest man in Chicago, Mick Dumke and I have assembled a guest list for our June 3 show at the Hideout that can best be described as young, younger, and youngest. Wait! Correction!...

Make a list of the best of anything, and people will argue with you about it. An entire subspecies of online “media” has arisen to exploit this contentiousness, cynically provoking audiences with hacky, tossed-off top tens—after all, hate-clicks count like any other clicks. Because the Reader wants its Best of Chicago issue to be a positive place, though, those of us who assemble it each year try to sidestep the sniping, griping, and one-upmanship that usually surround such lists by devising categories so odd or so particular that they could have only one winner....

Michael Gebert Meatballs, sausage, and neck-bone gravy About the time three of us were munching on the house-made braunschweiger (pork liver) at Tete Charcuterie, we were talking about Formento’s, the upcoming Italian-American throwback/tribute place coming in December from the team behind the Bristol, which also partners (with the Boka Group) in Balena. For some guys who’ve been fairly cutting-edge, throwback Italian-American seems a funny move, but sitting on Randolph Street, the logic of it gets pretty clear....

COURTESY GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO Mardi Gras Bar Crawl Looking for something to do today? Agenda‘s got you covered. For more on these events and others, check out the Reader‘s daily Agenda page.

During the last couple of years I’ve been increasingly impressed by the playing and writing of reedist Anna Webber, a British Columbia native based in Brooklyn. She has a knack for idea-rich, multipartite compositions that sound great in multiple contexts, whether in her nimble trio with pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer John Hollenbeck or a larger European group where her gift for contrapuntal arrangements shines; she’s also an impressive soloist. But none of that earlier stuff prepared me for what she’s doing in a newer trio called the Hero of Warchester with fellow reedist Nathaniel Morgan and synthesizer player Liz Kosack....