MAY
If you sometimes catch yourself murmuring something about “poisoning pigeons in the park,” you’re probably an unrepentant fan of Tom Lehrer, the Harvard math professor who established an unlikely second career writing and singing smart and funny songs at the piano. Chicago’s Close Call Theatre has exhumed a 1980 musical tribute to Lehrer, Tomfoolery, originally staged by Les Miserables impresario Cameron Mackintosh. The show debuts tonight at 10:45 at the Red Bones Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway, and will run Fridays and Saturdays at that time and Sundays at 2:30 PM through June 11. It’s $14; call 409-3274 for more.
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Call it Potapalooza. At the annual Windy City Weed Festival lovers of the aromatic hemp congregate to groove to live music and cheer speeches promoting marijuana decriminalization. It runs from 11 AM to 10 PM today and tomorrow at Lincoln Park’s Cricket Hill, Montrose and the lake, and it’s free. Call 561-8337 for more.
Carta al Artista Adolescente, an adaptation of James Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man by Mexico City’s Teatro de Arena, has its U.S. premiere tonight at the Bailiwick Arts Center, 1229 W. Belmont, where it’s being performed alternately in English and Spanish through next Sunday, May 21. Tonight’s show, the English-language version, starts at 8:30; tickets are $15. See theater listing in Section Two for details or call 883-1090.
“Because we love this game and the kids who play it” the White Sox are trying to entice kids and families to lay out a cool $159 for summer baseball and softball camps known as White Sox Training Centers. Open to boys and girls aged 7 to 14, the camps will take place at 11 Chicago-area parks and at dozens of others in outlying areas. You save $10 if you register at least a month in advance. For a complete schedule or more information, call 708-752-9225.
Alexander Cockburn, perhaps the last of the great ptomaine-tongued leftist journalists, makes a free appearance tonight to promote his latest book, The Golden Age Is in Us: Travels and Encounters, 1987-1994. The former Village Voice polemicist and current columnist for the Nation will also talk about a book by his friend the late Andrew Kopkind–The Thirty Years’ War: Dispatches and Diversions of a Radical Journalist 1965-1995. It starts at 7:30 in Breasted Hall of the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, 1155 E. 58th. Call 752-4381 for more.
