Friday / March 7
Attend Hyde and Chic, MODA’s fourth annual spring fashion show, which promises a spectacular night of fashion showcasing original designs from students and Chicago designers. The Chicago store Akira will be showing off the newest spring trends for both men and women. The show will include opening performances by Le Vorris and Vox Circus, and Rythmic Bodies in Motion. Come for the latest fashions, free food, amazing goodie bags, and more. (Hutch Commons, 8–11:30 p.m., VIP tickets $10, regular tickets $5, tickets sold at Reynolds club from 12–3 p.m.)
Andy Warhol’s enchanting 1966 installation, Silver Clouds, is on display at the Loyola University Museum of Art until April 27. Consisting of many silver helium-filled balloons wandering about the gallery from floor to ceiling, the piece is among Warhol’s most emotionally accessible. (Who doesn’t love balloons?) The easy, gliding motions of the silver spheres lend themselves to dance analogies; the installation was incorporated in a 1968 dance called RainForest, a recording of which can be seen at the exhibit. On Saturday, Chicago dance company Molly Shanahan/Mad Shak offers its own interpretation. (820 North Michigan Avenue, 10 a.m.–5 p.m., free for students)
Saturday / March 8
Spencer Dew, a University of Chicago Ph.D. candidate and author of the harrowing Blood and Guts in High School, has just released a collection of short stories depicting a bleak, post-9/11 world of alienation, paranoia, and fear. Treating everything from cervical cancer to phone sex, Songs of Insurgency is neither tame nor gratuitous. Dew will read from Songs at The Book Cellar tonight. (4736–38 North Lincoln Avenue, 7 p.m., free)
The concept of the artist as romantic genius may be at an ebb since the “neo-expressionist” days of the mid-’80s, but it refuses to completely die out. Our culture’s pill-popping obsession with psychiatric afflictions like depression, paranoia, and OCD has given it a second wind, to which Chicago Cultural Center’s new exhibit Slightly Unbalanced attests. This time, though, the artist’s relationship to his mental ailments is often very tongue-in-cheek. David Shrigley’s 2002 photograph of an artist’s studio with a prominent gallon bucket of anti-depressants is a notable example. (77 East Randolph Street, 9 a.m.–6 p.m., free)
Venerable old man of rap Scarface headlines at the Harold Washington Cultural Center tonight. Scarface, a former member of seminal Houston-based group Geto Boys, seems to just get better as the years go by. He recently released the excellent album Made, and with Twista as an opener, this concert is set to be pretty kick-ass. (4701 South King Drive, 7 p.m., $35–50)
Sunday / March 9
Nominated for seven Oscars, Michael Clayton is the gold standard for the savvy thriller in the mold of Syriana (also starring George Clooney) and The Constant Gardener. Clooney plays a “fixer” for a law firm who, due to a mix of family troubles, professional failures, and scruples, becomes disenchanted with his job while working on an Enron-like corporate case. (Max Palevsky Cinema, 1 p.m., $5)
As I am too young to remember his role as the gay quip-meister on Match Game, my only memory of Charles Nelson Reilly is Alec Baldwin’s hilarious impression of the Tony-winning theater actor paired with Will Ferrell’s equally uproarious take on Charles Lipton of Inside the Actors Studio on Saturday Night Live. Yet more interesting than Reilly’s actual life in the theater is his witty retelling of it, as shown by The Life of Reilly, a one-man act he toured around the country before his death in 2007. The eponymous film captures one of the show’s last performances. (1517 West Fullerton Avenue, 3, 5, 7, and 9 p.m., $9)
Monday / March 10
Chemically Imbalanced Comedy team needles theater critics in their latest show, Bad Review. Each week the team selects a negative review from the Chicago Reader and improvises the show they think the critic wanted to see. (1420 West Irving Park, 8 p.m., $10)
Chicago drone-rock collective DRMWPN pairs up with formidable opening act Samara Lubeski, who has been in about a million groups and specializes in delicate vocals underscored with complex orchestration. (2000 West Fulton #310, 9 p.m., $10)
Tuesday / March 11
Witty long-form improv show Chicagoland both entertains and educates. Some of the brightest stars in the Chicago improv establishment create onstage tableaus, then ask the audience where in Chicago the scenario occurred. (4840 North Broadway, 8 p.m., $8)
Wednesday / March 12
The recorder may have the stigma of elementary school music education hanging over its head, but Germany’s all-recorder ensemble the Quartet New Generation proves that this underrated little woodwind packs a hefty musical punch. We’re not just talking about handheld models either; the contrabass recorder is longer than a man. The quartet will play pieces by Bach, Bruchner, and a new work by Simon Fink. (77 East Randolph Street, 7 p.m., free)
Thursday / March 13
Harold Pinter’s classic The Caretaker gets a dark interpretation from director Hans Fleischmann at Mary-Arrchie Theater Co. A vagrant named Kuhlman, played by the legendary storefront theater actor Richard Cotovsky, is adopted by a pair of strange brothers in this bizarre, grimly funny, and moving play. (735 North Sheridan Road, 8 p.m., $18–22)
