F or a surly old man in Victorian muttonchops, Henrik Ibsen has turned out to be endlessly adaptable. It seems every generation gets the Ibsen it needs. In the early aughts you couldn’t go a season without watching at least a few Hedda Gablers blow their brains out because of the patriarchy. Now we’ve got a spate of Thomas Stockmanns—courageous, tenacious, not a little nuts—blowing the whistle on small-town oligarchs in productions of An Enemy of the People....

The Reader’s archive is vast and varied, going back to 1971. Every day in Archive Dive, we’ll dig through and bring up some finds. There will be many tributes to the Fall’s Mark E. Smith, who died yesterday, including a very fine contribution by the Reader’s Peter Margasak. But there will be none more heartfelt than the one spotted more than seven years ago by the late, great Cliff Doerksen at the Berwyn YMCA on the upper left arm of a fellow gymgoer: a tattoo of Smith’s face....

Last week we gave you eight holiday-show reviews; here are eight more—including some for Hanukkah—with still more bounty to come. —Tony Adler The Christmas Schooner John Reeger and the late Julie Shannon, creators of this facile, treacly Christmas musical, implant a purportedly rhetorical question at its center: Why would Michigan sea captain Peter Stossel risk his life sailing his schooner laden with Christmas trees 300 miles to Chicago across a stormy November Lake Michigan in 1882 just so that others “can know the joy of Christmas?...

Welcome to the Reader‘s morning briefing for Monday, November 7, 2016. The Cubs parade was apparently the seventh-largest gathering in human history The Cubs World Series victory made history in more ways than one—an estimated five million people showed up for the parade and rally Friday, reportedly making it the seventh-largest gathering of humans in recorded history, according to NBC Sports. (The next-largest gathering was apparently a 1995 Rod Stewart concert in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, which reportedly drew 3....

Q: I’m a 24-year-old male, married three years, monogamous. My wife and I are religious and were both virgins when we got married. I’m sexually frustrated with two things. (1) How can I get her to give me oral sex? (She has never given, and I have never received, oral sex. I regularly give her oral sex.) She is afraid to try it, saying she’s not ready yet. About every six months, I bring it up and it leads to a fight....

Deanna Isaacs Andrew Patner, remembered at Orchestra Hall Since WFMT critic-at-large (and Chicago Sun-Times music critic) Andrew Patner’s sudden death on February 3, a number of people have confessed that they not only admired him, but actually wanted to be him—the irrepressible, erudite man-about-town with a seat at every table and a world of friends. Laura Emerick, Patner’s former editor at the Sun-Times, noted that he could also handle art, architecture, film, theater, dance, and literature....

When I first heard of local outfit Hitter coming together—with Adam Luksetich of Foul Tip on guitar, Madalyn Garcia of Lil Tits on bass, Ryan Wizniak of Meat Wave on drums, and Hanna Johnson of Lifestyles and Lil Tits on vocals—I was expecting them to be the coolest, punkest band I’d ever hear. But these four steered away from the laser-focused punk of their other bands in favor of scuzzy heavy metal and sleazy, riffed-out rock ‘n’ roll....

László Nemes’s acclaimed Holocaust drama Son of Saul opens Friday at Music Box, and longtime Reader contributor Jonathan Rosenbaum weighs in with a four-star review. We’ve also got new reviews of: Anesthesia, an indie ensemble drama featuring Kristen Stewart, Sam Waterston, Gretchen Mol, Michael K. Williams, and Tim Blake Nelson (who also directed); The Barkley Marathons: The Race That Eats Its Young, a documentary about the annual footrace that leads through Tennessee’s treacherous Frozen Head State Park; Cemetery of Splendor and Mekong Hotel, the two most recent films by Thai filmmaker (and SAIC graduate) Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who will attend the Monday screening of Cemetery; The 5th Wave, a sci-fi adventure about invading aliens that stars Chloe Grace Moretz; and The Finest Hours, a Disney drama about the daring U....

ARTIST: Dan Grzeca SHOW: Alabama Shakes at Aragon Ballroom on Wed 7/20 MORE ONLINE: dangrzeca.com

This week’s featured gig poster celebrates Grammy-winning Chicago percussion quartet Third Coast Percussion. In February they hosted an online fundraiser called the TCP Family Reunion, which gathered many of the composers, performers, artists, and other collaborators who’ve worked with the group over the years. It featured live and prerecorded music written or performed by the likes of Jlin and Sérgio and Clarice Assad, as well as the world premiere of a globally crowdsourced musical montage titled Family Tree....

The Condition Inspired by a vague radio ad on her drive home, an aging actress in need of quick cash submits herself to a mysterious medical study at a seemingly normal clinic. Unaware of what she’s being examined for, Ruthie answers increasingly cryptic and personal questions asked by a furtive, too friendly physician named Dr. Kick. Joshua Fardon’s psychological two-hander benefits from dynamic performances by Erin Diamond and Bob Fisher even as the script’s plot twists get progressively tangled....

UIC student projects, clockwise from top left: ROKA, Cave, Hex-Catch, and Hum Like many aspiring product designers looking for creative support and capital from the Kickstarter community, Jonathan Owens turned his bio into his sales pitch. The video he posted on the crowd-funding site to convince backers to buy his Cave Picnic Tray, a stylish walnut carrying case for serious cheese fans, references the summers he spent working at farmers’ markets for Wisconsin’s Brunkow Cheese....

Q:I have been with my unicorn boyfriend for four months. The sexual chemistry between us is out of this world! I’m a woman who’s very open-minded when it comes to trying new things: I’ve had threesomes and foursomes, tried every toy on the market, done anal sex, BDSM, and many other things. He is sexually experienced, but he’s not open-minded. One thing he won’t do is kiss me after I’ve swallowed his load....

WE TV Brandon and Elle, post-sex box It’s impossible to fathom the number of relationships that have dissolved because a couple’s sex life wasn’t mutually gratifying. I won’t say it’s definitely the reason your parents got divorced—but the chances are pretty good, bud. The good news/bad news is that the solution has been right in front of our stupid idiot faces the whole time: all couples have to do, see, is fuck in a box on a stage....

Chicago is a lucky spot for people who like emerging and otherwise overlooked visual art. We have a bunch of college programs in the area that recruit and keep globally savvy artists in our midst, and a bevy of nonprofit institutions that work hard to support both challenging art and the artists who make it. While you can still find groupings of galleries clustered together in some neighborhoods, the global economy doesn’t sustain the “gallery scene” mythology that used to dominate the art world discourse in major cities....

Street View is a fashion series in which Isa Giallorenzo spotlights some of the coolest styles seen in Chicago. From all appearances, Andrew and Jon Landan spend hours planning their outfits. But outside of more formal engagements the social butterflies known as the Landan Twins aren’t so perfectly matched. “Some days one of us will wear lots of color while the other will wear all black. It really matters how each of us feels,” says Andrew, pictured with his brother during the opening of the Richard H....

A century ago, Krikor Sarkees‘s grandparents fled the Armenian genocide and settled in Baghdad, Iraq, where Krikor would eventually be born. A few decades later Sita Sarkees‘s father, also of Armenian Christian background, was taken by his parents from Iran to Iraq; she too would grow up in Baghdad. Six years ago, when other people their age would be thinking of retirement, Sita and Krikor left a war-torn Iraq to settle in Chicago, where Sita’s brother already lived—and earlier this year, the couple (he’s 63 and she’s 55) were naturalized as American citizens....

Here’s some of what we recommend for the week to come: Tue 10/31-Wed 11/1: The Obama Foundation Summit invites decision-makers from around the globe to discuss creative solutions to common problems, and to immerse themselves in the culture of every country represented. Join them at the eponymous Obama Foundation (5326 S. Lake Park). Various times, free For more things to do this weekend—and every day—visit our Agenda page.

On his energetic new album Three Letters From Sarajevo (Wrasse), Bosnian composer and guitarist Goran Bregović displays his broad-minded ability to express the full splendor of vintage eastern European traditional and folk music. He’s been charged with brazen acts of cultural theft in the past, such as translating the gritty sounds of a singer like Šaban Bajramović, known as the King of the Romany, for a mainstream listenership. While that remains debatable, there’s no doubt that he’s popularized music from the region, notably scoring films by Serbian director Emir Kusturica and touring the world with his Wedding and Funeral Orchestra....