The hugely anticipated run of “Six” at Chicago’s Broadway Playhouse in October has been canceled, replaced by the show’s national tour launch in 2022, it was announced Tuesday.
The critically acclaimed musical will now kick off its national tour in Chicago at the CIBC Theatre, March 29-July 3, 2022.
All subscribers and groups who previously purchased tickets for the 2021 dates will be notified by Broadway In Chicago directly with information about rebooking.
Single ticket holders will receive refunds at point of purchase by Sept. 1 and will receive priority access before tickets go on sale for the new dates.
The musical, with book and music by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss, is a pop-rock concert reimagining of the story of the six wives of Henry the VIII. It received its Chicago premiere in 2019 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.
Any questions about single tickets/refunds or exchanges, should be directed to [email protected]
I never thought I’d carry a pager. I had decided against medical school and being a drug dealer long ago. Who else carries a pager? I thought. Who else needs to be reached and told that their specific skills and goods are needed stat?
Most of my pages come in all caps, which adds to the felt urgency of the request. One might read, “pt expired family at bedside.” This means a patient died and there are family members in the room grieving their loss. Then there’s “cardiac arrest,” which means a patient is having a heart attack and may not make it — and if family is present, watching the CPR could be difficult. “family meeting for pt in 9904” means that the medical team is about to meet with next of kin and will probably be giving them bad news. The protocols for death, potential death, grief, loss, and bad news at the South Side hospital where I work all conclude with “Page the chaplain.”
We’ve sometimes been referred to as “God on call,” but the God part isn’t always clear. That said, people in distress do tend to spontaneously ask questions that might be called theological. After a recent “pt transition to comfort care” page, I sat with a self-identified atheist who asked me, “Where is he now?” after we watched his father’s blood pressure and heart rate fade to zeros on the monitors. Before that moment, the son had shared stories about his father and had told me why he, the son, didn’t believe in God — it was the general irrationality of it all — and had marveled at the monitors as a way to measure the presence of life.
“He’s in your memories,” I answered. “And he’s in the spaces where you share stories about him, and in the relationships that he helped you create.” I paused as we looked together at the presence of his father’s body and felt the absence of his father. Mustering all the wisdom from my toes to my graying hairs, I said, “You’ll have to find a new way to love him.” My voice cracked as I said it, but there are no cracks in my belief that what I said was true. We keep loving the people who are gone, and the pain of grief is our adjustment to figuring out how to love them in their new state. As I left, the son gave me a hug and thanked me for staying with him so that he didn’t have to be alone as he watched his father die. Maybe not having to be alone is the God part.
Sometimes I think the patient brings the God part. At one visit, a woman in her 60s from South Shore, one of the neighborhoods my hospital serves, prophetically said, “You should get some Easy Spirit shoes. God told me to tell you that.” She nodded, convinced that she was giving me a divine message. Turns out it was good advice. In my first year on the job, I went through two pairs of walking shoes.
Some of that walking was answering “pt requesting bible” pages. Now, this may seem like the God part showing up, but sometimes a Bible is just a Bible. Or sometimes it is an invitation to sit and hear about marriage troubles, or about this thing their minister said that has been bothering them, or about the ghost that keeps them awake at night by walking up and down the stairs in their house. In these cases, the request for a Bible, divine communication from the past, creates a conversation without my even having to open the book. Often I carry the Bible in and hand it to the patient, who then puts it on the table by the bed. It sits there while we talk about the patient’s various issues. Asking for a Bible is summoning someone to listen.
What counts as a conversation with God is sometimes hard to judge. Once, I came back to the office space I share with the hospital’s nine other chaplains and found a couple of them pondering a page: “pt in 497 wants prayer with chaplain who speaks in tongues.” We looked at each other, a bit stunned. One of us said, “At least we know that the patient is religious.” Another said, “Yes, and she knows what she wants.” We looked up videos of speaking in tongues to see if it was something any of us could even do. I wondered aloud, “Does the patient think that speaking in tongues happens by request?” I called the nurse back and told her that we didn’t have a chaplain who could speak in tongues, but that one of us would come and see the patient anyhow. Ultimately, the patient just wanted to talk about her hospital bills and whether she’d be able to take care of her husband when she was discharged.
And then one day the plague came and chaplains were declared essential workers. Suddenly all the pages were “transition to comfort care 743” or “pt death 992” or “cardiac arrest covid+ pt 1215” or “family in lobby for end of life visit.” Patients were dying, families were grieving, and everyone was alone. Now we had to keep the grieving family members at a distance. We were used to caring for others, but now that care required us to calculate distances and weigh the costs and benefits to getting just a little closer — to be a human with another human in need. And now the spaces we had previously used for talking with families— those rooms where you get bad medical news—were filled not only with grief but also with tears and gasps and exhalations that felt dangerous. Did anyone in this room have the virus? Would grief literally become contagious?
The operator paged me. It was just a callback number — the rare page that meant someone outside of the hospital was trying to get in touch with a chaplain. With no other context, I picked up the phone and dialed the number. The woman on the other end had heard that patients in hospitals were dying alone and she thought it was so horrible. She wondered if she could bring her hunting gear — flannel jacket, hat with earflaps, rubber waders — to the hospital for the chaplains to wear as protection against the virus so that we could go into the COVID patients’ rooms and be with them at the end. Apparently, she’d been hearing about PPE shortages but didn’t quite grasp that flannel and wool didn’t count as such. I politely declined her offer. The image of chaplains in hunting gear made me laugh for days. I was glad I took the page.
Our beloved ChicagoBulls won’t win an NBA Championship this year, didn’t find luck in the NBA Draft Lottery, nor did they make the playoffs. But, that doesn’t mean they aren’t number 1 in something. Because when it comes to NBA pregame outfits, the Chicago Bulls rank at the top of the list.
RushOrderTees is a custom apparel maker with roots in Philadelphia who recently polled 1,117 NBA fans to gauge their opinions on the increasingly popular NBA pregame outfit. We definitely weren’t surprised to see the Chicago Bulls beat out every other team in the league given how stylish the Chicago sports scene is. From best dressed teams, worst dressed players, and rankings for the “Most Questionable” and “Most Trash” outfits, let’s dive into what RushOrderTees found in their survey feedback.
RushOrderTees evaluated NBA pregame outfits at both the individual player and overall team level. When it came to the players, Garrett Temple of our very own Chicago Bulls ranked at the top of the list after all the number crunching. Temple received an average score of 7.3/10 for his pregame outfits. Fans used different words and phrases to describe the players outfits, and 28.7% labeled Temple’s as fresh, while 32.7% indicated them as vibrant. RJ Barrett came in at a close second with an average score of 7.1/10. Jamal Murray followed him at third, and then Lauri Markannen managed to sneak his way into the top 5 in a three-way tie with Rudy Gobert and Bojan Bogdanovic.
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When it came to the overall team scores, the Bulls saw themselves earn the number 1 ranking in the league thanks to Temple and Markannen’s high scores. They lead the pack with an average outfit rating of 6.56, followed by the Denver Nuggets at 6.32 and the Atlanta Hawks at 6.31
Some players and teams didn’t find themselves quite as lucky as the Bulls with their fashion scores. According to the survey data, James Harden ranked at the top of the list for worst dressed NBA players with his average score only reaching 5.2/10. Serge Ibaka came in second place on that list at 5.3/10, followed by Kyle Kuzma and Gary Trent Jr. at 5.4/10.
The survey also asked fans to rank players’ outfits by how questionable and trash they were. When it came to “Most Questionable”, Terrence Ross and Gary Trent Jr. received the highest scores with 18.4% indicating they felt their NBA pregame outfits were questionable. OG Anunoby had one outfit score the highest in the questionable category at 44%. For “Most Trash”, James Harden led that list as 22.8% of respondents labeled his outfits as trash. The most trash pregame outfit overall went to Gary Trent Jr. again. That guy just can’t catch a break.
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To dive deeper into the survey results and findings, check it out on RushOrderTees website. We’ll keep our hopes high that the Bulls can carry this winning momentum into next season!
There’s no shortage of accessibility to incredible sausage when living in Chicago. In fact, Abe Froman made his name on it. But this isn’t your standard Jim’s Original or even your standard Ferris Bueller shout out, though plenty of those are always welcome. Today our spotlight shines brightly on the West Town neighborhood, to the quirky German gem, Funkenhausen.
From the name alone, you’re probably confused. When you acknowledge the fact that it’s a German-Southern fusion restaurant, you’re likely bewildered.
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I had the opportunity to try Funkenhausen for the first time recently and let me tell you, bewilderment quickly went out the window. The entire experience could eloquently be reminisced in a way that only the Chicago Tribune could with 1000 words that flow like a nighttime drive down LSD, but that just wouldn’t be our style. Nor would it be Funkenhausen’s, and frankly, neither of us would like it any other way. From the moment you step foot into Funkenhausen, the classic beer haus vibes hit you immediately in the face. It’s badass. It smells like sausage, and beer, and pork, and the energies radiating from the artwork and Lo-Fi hip hop music drape the entire scene as the words “German Heritage, Southern Hospitality” stare you down from behind the bar. Find a more fun atmosphere in fine dining, we’ll wait.
After a stroll past the open-air kitchen and like a street sign on a dim block, our initial pass through the menu guided our eyes to two distinct places: the Big Garlicky Pretzel and the Grüne Bratwurst. Between those, and well, drinking beer out of a glass boot, you couldn’t help but feel like you were sitting at a German cafe on a cobblestone road in Munich. It made sense, and for those beginning items, it was perfect.
Creatively, Funkenhausen takes that traditional German cuisine, and honors it. Some of it. However, there’s no subtlety to some of the Southern inspired elements to the cuisine. Note, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. We applaud Chef’s that push the envelope on what’s tradition. Funkenhausen deserves that recognition. Just consider me a little sidetracked when items like the Surfenturfen completely scramble what you thought you knew. Scallops and pork belly with strawberries isn’t something you generally anticipate finding on a German menu, but again, it’s these liberties that make Funkenhausen a destination restaurant amongst West Town’s bustling dining scene.
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Moving onto the entree section of the menu could only be done with the assistance of a second boot of beer (the house pilsner brewed with Funkenhausen’s own pretzels is a must). The Porkloin Schnitzel and Short Ribs called my name like a dear friend across a crowded room. Accompanied by a side of the charred Brocollini and Fries, the entire meal from top to bottom hit each one of my German sensibilities. Albeit I needed to be wheeled out of the restaurant after, that’s the ultimate sign of a good meal.
If there’s one thing to be said about Funkenhausen it’s don’t expect to roll into a HIIT class afterward. You’re going to want the check with one giant side of your couch, and well, maybe wash it down with another beer. But regardless of how you choose your Funkenhausen adventure, the path you choose is going to deliver in a way only Chef Mark Steuer can provide. It’s authenticity remastered. You just don’t have to travel to Bavaria or Charleston for it. And to me, that’s a beautiful thing.
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At Funkenhausen, chef Mark Steuer draws inspiration from his Charleston, South Carolina, upbringing and German heritage to create unique dishes that revisit the meals of his childhood, but are reimagined with modern and innovative twists. It’s worth noting that, in the hands of Steuer, these traditionally heavy dishes become lighter versions of themselves. His food combines Southern and German flavors to create a soulful mash-up of cuisines, cultures, and memories in an expression that is deeply personal but still doesn’t take itself too seriously.
MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN – JUNE 28: Patrick Wisdom #16 of the Chicago Cubs hits a two-run home run in the seventh inning against the Milwaukee Brewers at American Family Field on June 28, 2021 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. (Photo by Patrick McDermott/Getty Images)
The Chicago Cubs had some people thinking that they are actually a contender for a while there. They still may turn it around but right now they look like the mediocre team that we thought they were. They are 3-7 in their last ten games and losers of four straight which is not good. However, despite all of that, there is one player who can be proud of the way his season has gone so far. Patrick Wisdom has been one of the best Chicago Cubs stories so far.
The Chicago Cubs really need Patrick Wisdom to continue his streak of hot play.
On Thursday, the Chicago Cubs let an early 2-0 lead slip away. The Milwaukee Brewers then scored four straight to lead the game 4-2 late. In the top of the 7th inning, however, Patrick Wisdom tied the game on a two-run home run. It was a great way to give the Cubs a chance to win.
Unfortunately, the Cubs allowed Milwaukee to score 10 runs in the bottom of the 8th to win the game easily. It looks like a blowout but Wisdom’s home run gave the Cubs a chance late. It is unfortunate that the Cubs allowed the Brewers to score that much and waste another big moment from Patrick Wisdom.
Wisdom’s home run came in a pinch-hit situation as well which makes it even more impressive. He is a great player to have as an option for David Ross as either a starter or bench player. He may eventually cool way down but they should use him as much as they can. He has already technically cooled down since his red hot stretch but he does have a .277 average with a 1.039 OPS. He only has 16 RBIs and 11 of them are himself from his 11 home runs.
Chicago’s offense has been up and down so far this season. Guys like Anthony Rizzo, Kris Bryant, Javier Baez, and Willson Contreras are always going to be mostly great but the rest of the lineup leaves a lot to be desired. Wisdom has been a pleasant surprise in terms of the long ball which has helped the Cubs’ offense be a little bit better.
If the Cubs want to make a playoff run this year, Wisdom’s contributions probably need to be plentiful for the rest of the season. They don’t have a lot in the tank there so they could use as much help as possible. It would have been nice to see Wisdom’s efforts rewarded on Monday night but the pitching couldn’t get the job done.
ChicagoBears (Photo by Focus on Sport/Getty Images)
Over the course of the Chicago Bears‘ rich history, there have been many notable moves made. Whether or not they have panned out is the real topic of discussion.
Every team in the NFL has made both great trades and poor ones. Just recently, we’ve seen deals like the Houston Texans trading away All Pro wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins for next to nothing. If you’re the Arizona Cardinals, that goes down as a historically excellent trade.
If you’re Houston, on the other hand, the opposite can be said.
Even in recent history, we have seen the Bears make big and bold moves like that. A few years ago, general manager Ryan Pace shocked us all when he was able to land Khalil Mack in a blockbuster deal. Mack came in and completely leveled up the entire defense. It was worth it.
Not every significant trade has been a positive one for the Chicago Bears, though.
If you look back a little over a decade, the Bears made a huge move to acquire quarterback Jay Cutler. Now, depending on who you ask, the jury could still be out on this move.
On one hand, Cutler became the Bears’ all-time leading passer. On the other, he caused a whole lot of stress for fans game-in and game-out. The Cutler trade was by no means a bad deal. For some, it was the highlight of a rather dark time for the Bears. It provided hope.
The same cannot be said for a number of deals made by the Bears over their long history. There are five trades, specifically, that stand out as being worse than all of the others.
Does a comic strip belong on a museum wall? I ask this not to question the value of cartooning, but because I wonder whether a wall is the best place to experience what comics are designed to do. This ate at me as I wandered through “Chicago Comics: 1960s to Now,” the generous survey of 60 years of Chicago’s cartoonists currently on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago. There’s absolutely no question that much of the work on display deserves to be known and celebrated. But are the walls of a museum the right venue?
A comic strip is read as much as it’s seen. The artist/writer spends years honing their style and vision, experimenting with format and presentation, but most of the time, the ultimate destination for cartoons and comic strips is the printed page rather than a wall. Context is paramount to the audience’s experience in art, so when comics are taken out of a newspaper or book, something is inevitably lost.
There’s certainly no faulting Dan Nadel, the curator of the exhibition, for the sweep and breadth of this survey. The show traces the art form’s evolution from newspaper mainstay to alt-weekly counterculture outrageousness to hermetically personal expression. Any visitor with even the most casual interest in comics should be able to find something to fall in love with here–but something still didn’t quite connect for me, no matter the quality or subject matter in the vitrines or on the walls.
Nadel was obviously aware of the challenge of displaying art created to be held in one’s lap, up close, and experienced privately. The exhibition addresses this problem with supplementary materials. In the room devoted to Ivan Brunetti, there is a shelf of his personal collection of toys and figurines. Other rooms have maquettes and other work product meant to give context to the artists’ processes. Additionally, many walls are taken up by vinyl blowups of single panels or details of drawings. These oversize copies do little to illuminate each artist’s unique vision and contribute to a chaotically busy visual presentation. The exhibition experience at times felt like being at an estate sale: having to consciously ignore a lot of noise in favor of the isolated objects of personal interest.
There’s such a polyphony of approaches and styles that it felt like artists were yelling over each other. Other times, there was a disconnect between my longtime experience of particular work and how it was presented in these rooms. Lynda Barry’s exuberant panels felt strangely muted, while Chris Ware’s obsessively ordered work suffered from a busy salon-style grab bag installation.
The highlights of the exhibition were younger artists whose work is not dependent on either narrative sequencing, nor the printed page. Edie Fake’s abstract architectural prints left a mysterious magnetic charge and Lilli Carre‘s video loop of ever-mutating female figures from art history, seemingly made of rubbery bubblegum, made me smile. I sat through the sequence four or five times and could easily have stayed longer. If I had to choose a favorite, it would be Jessica Campbell’s wall of weird acrylic carpet creatures. Their bright industrial colors and artificial turf texture were like a 21st-century update of Henri Matisse’s Jazz series. Unlike so much of the work presented here, which suffered by being ripped from its natural habitat, these funny figures absolutely owned their environment. I could stand anywhere in the gallery and they commanded attention in a way the small ink-and painted-pieces-on-paper of the others couldn’t.
This show is a love letter to comics and our city’s role in comics history. I’d never skip a chance to examine original art by longtime favorites and the inclusion of Black artists’ work going back to the 1940s is illuminating and necessary. For anyone interested in the nuts and bolts of the medium, there are countless examples of in-progress or partially completed drawings that will be especially valuable to young people looking to get into art themselves. In the absence of a more suitable venue than an art museum, I’d urge anyone interested in comics and in this city’s history and culture to visit. But afterwards, pick up Barry’s The Greatest of Marlys, Ware’s Jimmy Corrigan, and the exhibition’s accompanying reprint of It’s Life as I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980 to experience the genuine article. v
CHICAGO, IL – AUGUST 18: Exceutive Vice President and General Manager Jed Hoyer of the Chicago Cubs talks to media members before a game against the Detroit Tigers at Wrigley Field on August 18, 2015 in Chicago, Illinois. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
The Chicago Cubs have been a good team for a few years now. They rebuilt themselves well after Theo Epstein took over in 2012 and it led to a World Series championship. However, since winning that title, they have made some seriously bad decisions. One of them came during this past offseason when they decided to let Kyle Schwarber walk in free agency. He ended up with the Washington Nationals and he has been amazing.
Letting Kyle Schwarber go is proving to be a disaster of a decision by the Chicago Cubs.
Kyle Schwarber has been the hottest player in Major League Baseball lately. There is a good chance that he ends up being the player of the month for June because of how good he has been. He led off with another home run on Monday night and then added a second later in the game. Those were two of three hits on a night where he was just absolutely feeling it again.
In Schwarber’s last nine, he has four multi-home run games for 11 total blasts. That tied Frank Howard’s 11 in 9 games that he had during the 1968 season. It seems like this guy just continues to hit big and lead the Nationals to wins. A lot of this started when they moved him to the leadoff spot. For some reason, he has really clicked in that position.
The Cubs always knew he had power but they couldn’t get much more than that out of him. Something is clicking for him right now in Washington. They looked like sellers at the trade deadline before their current hot streak but now they might go for the playoffs. It is funny because Kyle’s performance could have saved him from being traded.
When the Cubs let Schwarber walk, they replaced him with Joc Pederson. He is having a nice year as well but he isn’t even close to the level that Schwarber is at right now. It has been fun to watch but it is tough to see it in another uniform.
Would Schwarber be having this much success in a Cubs uniform? The answer will never be known but the possibility of it has to really annoy fans of the team. They struggle to score as it is but if they had Schwarber playing at this level, things might be different. They are close to being a playoff team but it feels like a year that they come up short. Letting Kyle go is part of the reason why and it is fair to admit that.
Chicago rapper and librarian Roy Kinsey has drawn national attention for his remarkable concept albums and their sensitive, piercingly thoughtful lyrics. In 2018 he dropped Blackie: A Story by Roy Kinsey, a deeply personal and thoroughly researched record about race in America that’s informed by Kinsey’s family history and the Great Migration; last year he put out Kinsey: A Memoir, which makes equally nuanced and emotionally resonant observations about Black queerness. Kinsey brings a clear vision to intense subject matter, but that’s not his whole skill set–it turns out he’s just as good at music that’s supposed to be carefree and fun. On his new EP, Juke Skywalker Vol. 1 (House of Marcell), he celebrates by nonchalantly unloading life-affirming verses atop instrumentals built for maximum joy. These songs emphasize Kinsey’s rapping rather than his storytelling–he’s talented enough on the mike that he can lock into the songs’ strict rhythms while still sounding loose. His athletic performances mirror the sweltering juke percussion, and he makes it all seem easy. v
CHICAGO, ILLINOIS – JANUARY 31: (L-R) Nikita Zadorov #16, Kevin Lankinen #32 and Connor Murphy #5 of the Chicago Blackhawks celebrate a win over the Columbus Blue Jackets at the United Center on January 31, 2021 in Chicago, Illinois. The Blackhawks defeated the Blue Jackets 3-1. (Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images)
The Chicago Blackhawks are not a very good hockey team. They fooled some people early in the 2020-21 season but they have so many flaws. It is going to take years to undo the mistakes made by Stan Bowman. However, there is one flaw that can be patched up that may put a bandaid on some of the overall problems that the team has. That would be the position of goaltender. If they can figure out how to get some help there this summer, they might be okay.
The ChicagoBlackhawks have some big decisions to make over the summer.
When Corey Crawford left in free agency to ultimately retire before the season even started, the Hawks knew they were in trouble. People saw Malcolm Subban, Collin Delia, and Kevin Lankinen as a disaster of a trio and they were right for the most part. Lankinen had a nice year but one out of three is not good enough.
Some people believe that Lankinen can be an organization’s number one goalie in the league and they may be right. With that said, the doubters also might be right as he came back down to earth as the 2020-21 season went along. The best course for the team would probably be to find someone who can share the net with him so he can continue to work on his craft.
If they go into next season with Collin Delia or Malcolm Subban as his backup, they are in big trouble. The free-agent market is actually loaded with goaltenders who can help Lankinen out. There are goalies like Frederik Anderson, Devan Dubnyk, Antti Raanta, and Jaroslav Halak amongst others to consider once the free agency period opens. If the Blackhawks added someone like that to the mix, they might have a very formidable duo.
Of course, having another good goaltender isn’t going to fix all of the problems. However, it can mask a lot of them. The Hawks play a system that doesn’t even slightly fit their roster but it may work if they get elite goaltending. It shouldn’t be too hard for them to recognize that but then again, it is Stan Bowman we are talking about here.
Any team that is confident in their goalies is confident in themselves as a hockey team. If you are solid at that position, you have a chance to win every night. The Hawks don’t do much to help out their goaltenders lately but guys like Corey Crawford and Robin Lehner have shown that it can be done. It would be nice to see the Hawks do something about this issue going forward.
