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ROMEO AND JULIET Unfortunately, it does not. Michael Maggio’s staging falls short of the grievous grandeur summoned up in the script’s ringing poetry and suggested in Maggio’s own stated emphasis on the notion of fate as a key element in the tragedy. Maggio’s directorial choices are never less than interesting; his visual presentation of Juliet in the tomb as a study in white and black–her pale skin and white gown contrasting with her dark hair and the black bag in which she carries the potion that makes her appear dead–is particularly striking....

Where you can celebrate World Vegetarian Day, which is on October 1: the Chicago Vegetarian (July/August 1990) lists just 11 completely vegetarian restaurants in the city–four on West Devon and one each on North Halsted, North Lincoln, North Clark, North Glenwood, West Erie, West Belmont, and East 75th. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “To the downtown residents, the heart of the city is a playground–exciting, convenient and fun....

A few years back, no one gave the two mansions at Granville Avenue on North Sheridan Road much chance for survival, stuck as they were on a thoroughfare lined with high rises. It will offer classes in portrait painting, puppetry, poetry, watercolors, improvisational theater, basic drawing, photography, and Chinese cooking, and at relatively low tuition (with scholarships available). There will be seminars on art, film, and poetry, as well as special programs for children and senior citizens....

Why are rainbows always curved? –David, San Francisco Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » It takes something of an intuitive leap to see why this should be so, but let’s give it a crack. Water droplets reflect light at an angle of between 40 and 42 degrees, depending on the wavelength. (The difference in wavelengths is what separates rainbows into different colors. But that’s a story for another day....

They are sometimes looked down on as the stepchildren of Chicago journalism: weeklies (or irregularlies) with inexperienced reporters, biased editors, buffoonish editorial policies, exaggerated circulation claims, and ink that clings more to the fingers than the paper. At their worst, community newspapers prove all these claims. A check of three random Municipal Reference Library aldermanic files backs up that claim. The most recent file on Bernard Hansen shows two stories each from the Tribune and Sun-Times, one from the Evergreen Gazette–and eleven from the Booster papers....

Tuning Les Violins: Rittenberg Pitches a Little Lower Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » When asked what Les Violins is all about, Rittenberg refers back to the Consort Room, a chichi supper club atop the Michigan Avenue Westin Hotel that closed six years ago. Rittenberg believes he can resurrect the Consort Room’s special-occasion aura and make it popular once more. But at a time when diners (even those over 35 years old) seem to be demanding more of everything for less money, Rittenberg is working the very high end of the price scale....

“Nobody hustles me. I don’t get hustled. I’m a New Yorker.” “So, I want to walk by him real quick because I know he’s gonna be asking for some spare change and I’m sick as hell of bums coming up to me asking for change. They’re on every fucking block in New York. Guys friggin’ have to get up early so they can get the good corners to stand on.”...

THE CHRISTMAS BROTHERS: A COUPLE OF SNOW FLAKES Bailiwick Repertory Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Brian McCann and Philip E. Johnson are such a team. Though their two-person variety show, The Christmas Brothers: A Couple of Snow Flakes, is no exercise in nostalgia–it depends upon such modern devices as video and synthesizers–McCann and Johnson’s collaboration has a touch of vaudevillian warmth. In the tradition of the Smothers Brothers, Rowan and Martin, and Martin and Lewis (in the early years, at least), these two really seem to enjoy each other’s company onstage....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » And we do want to bring to your attention the fact that the Chicago Defender does run the CHICAGO TV 19 program schedule, a real public service. We hope that the other dailies will soon follow suit, and, of course, we appreciate anything the Reader can do to draw attention to our unique program services on cable channels 19, 21, 27, 42, and–later this year, 36....

Hardly anyone–except perhaps a Chicago Teachers Union lifer–would dispute that providing alternatives to the Chicago public schools is of major importance, particularly for non-Catholics. But the new state fire-alarm code for private day-care centers and preschools is so strict that it could well cause the closing of some of the schools and centers that provide the best alternatives to public-school education in the city. Many of these little independent schools are in church buildings....

Jazz artists have to be versatile these days, and Douglas Ewart has taken versatility to new heights. Not only does he play every woodwind instrument he can get his hands on–saxophone, flute, clarinet, double-reed horn–he’s been making his own woodwinds for over two decades. You may well have heard Ewart, Henry Threadgill, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, or a number of others playing Ewart’s woody-sounding, handsomely decorated bamboo flutes; he’s also crafted didgeridoos, those huge, long, low woodwinds that native Australians play....

“Pregnant” would not be the word to describe the present state of contraceptive research and development in this country. We’re way behind in devising new birth-control methods and in marketing those already available in other parts of the world, according to a report released last Valentine’s Day by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). In Finland, Sweden, and ten other countries, couples regularly use contraceptive implants such as the highly effective Norplant, a long-acting (three to five years) hormone-secreting device that’s implanted under the skin of a woman’s upper arm....

It happens that grain elevators explode. Every once in a while you hear about a huge silo in Minnesota or Kansas that blows up like a puffball in a summer rain. It’s not the sort of accident you’d expect–what could be more stable, more earthbound, than grain?–but it turns out that the weight of all that wheat or another crop in an elevator can generate high temperatures in which grain dust can become about as volatile as gasoline....

Expect to see William Bolcom in the news come November when his Lyric Opera-commissioned McTeague premieres. In the meantime, however, the talented composer and pianist is still better known for the act he and his wife, mezzo-soprano Joan Morris, have performed for years. When it comes to singing popular American tunesfrom Foster to Bernstein–the Morris-Bolcom partnership really brings on the nostalgia. (Only Marilyn Home can be more stirring.) Morris’s singing can be ardent and sweet and Bolcom’s accompaniment is always assured and elegant in performances that serve up both wicked insouciance and down-home appeal....

As a teen I wore padded bras to balance my figure–chest of a flapper, waist and hips of a Gibson girl. Today I shun such deceptions, opting for the blatant postmodern solution, shoulder pads. By the time Sandy turns around, the woman has disappeared into the ladies’ room. “Yep!” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Standing in the rain are two young white women, pretty, big-haired blonds with stiff rooster combs of bangs....

John Eliot Gardiner an early-music specialist? “The hell with that label,” says the controversial founder of the Monteverdi Choir and the English Baroque Soloists. Both groups will debut in Chicago this week, under Gardiner’s direction, as part of the choir’s silver jubilee tour. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “I’ve never considered myself as an early-music freak,” says Gardiner, “and I don’t live on bean sprouts and yogurt, either....

Despite the jubilant scenes captured on television, not everyone is popping champagne and dancing in the streets to celebrate the new united Germany. Old fears die hard, and the prospect of a powerful, confident Deutschland inevitably stirs second thoughts. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Originally entitled Fear and Misery in the Third Reich and first done in Paris in 1938, The Private Life of the Master Race is a series of short scenes Brecht took from daily life—and death—in Nazi Germany....

To the editors: Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » I read with interest the article on emergency foster homes [April 28] and feel the need for a few comments based on my own experiences. The National Association of Social Workers has stated that the caseload size should be 27 per worker. The State says it should be 40 and the Reader article concedes it is actually about 65....

In the late 1960s and early ’70s, the Siegel-Schwall Band was one of the hottest tickets in town. Evolving from a curiosity–a white-fronted blues band that jammed on the south side–to a cult item to a concert attraction, Siegel-Schwall played with artists ranging from Howlin’ Wolf to the Jefferson Airplane to the San Francisco Symphony. Their calling cards were Corky Siegel’s gaspingly energetic harmonica and wry, sly singing, Jim Schwall’s stinging solos on amplified acoustic guitar, the taut backing provided by bassist Rollo Radford and drummer Shelley Plotkin, and an infectious playfulness that ran through their witty originals and butt-busting covers of the classics....

Alan (Rupert Frazer), a wealthy English antique ceramics dealer, becomes smitten with a German secretary named Karin (Meg Tilly) during a business trip in Copenhagen, proposes to her, and marries her after she joins him in England. Although they’re passionately in love, a number of unsettling and seemingly supernatural events–including dreams and apparent hallucinations–begin to raise the question of Karin’s mysterious past, which continues to trouble her. Writer-director Gordon Hessler’s erotic psychological thriller, adapted from Richard Adams’s novel, isn’t an unqualified success (some choppy editing and miscalculated slow-motion occasionally interfere with the trancelike rhythms), but it shares with the memorable horror films of Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur a preference for suggestion and understatement over explicitness, developing a gripping narrative and some disquieting and evocative moods in the process, along with some fairly steamy sex....