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SCAPIN Working from a hip but weak translation and adaptation by Shelley Berc and Andrei Belgrader, Magee has written ten more or less forgettable songs, most of them clumsy spoofs of better stuff; their sole strength is that they’re too brief to slow down Moliere’s mayhem. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Moliere’s flimsy plot centers around the wily servant Scapin, a rogue who shrewdly serves his own interests by aiding two unhappy young men whose love interests go against the wishes of their selfish, greedy fathers....

To the editors: The driver was drunk and refused to produce a license. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Witnesses claim the vehicle was traveling at speeds of 15-30 MPH, surely the prospect of being smashed between two cars or into a fixed object at this speed qualifies as a life-threatening act. It appears that Officer Martin reacted properly and the drunk motorist did not....

The 20 companies in this first-time event (presented in conjunction with the fifth annual Bucktown Arts Fest) may not define the state of avant-garde theater on Chicago, but they offer a look at the diverse visions that operate under that very loose category. Performances are held at three venues: the Garage, 1843 W. North; the Firehouse, 1625 N. Damen; and the Society for New Things, 1573 N. Milwaukee. The festival climaxes this weekend with an afternoon Free Theatre Festival on August 25 and 26 at the Holstein Park field house, 2200 N....

Silos leaders Walter Salas-Humara and Bob Rupe closed their recent show at Cabaret Metro with a strange cover–a thumping, cheerfully undifferentiated take on “One After 909,” the very early (1963) Lennon-McCartney composition the Beatles disinterred for Let It Be. A lot of what the Silos are about these days is the Salas-Humara-Rupe partnership: their rhythm section is a pair of hired hands who are treated that way. “One After 909” was a nice (and modest, really–the song is nothing special) tip o’ the hat to another, earlier friendship....

My mail is deluged with worthless credit card solicitations and pleas for donations, all bearing telltale stamps of odd denomination: “Tractor 7.1 cents nonprofit,” “Oilwagon 10.1 cents bulk rate,” “Railroad Mail Car 21 cents presorted,” etc. These stamps are almost never cancelled. Can I reuse them for my own (nobler) epistles, provided they add up to 29 cents? –Gary Schwartz, Chapel Hill, North Carolina Best of Chicago voting is live now....

I heard about a strange sexual practice the other day that I hope you can tell me more about. It seems a boy was found dead with a rope around his neck, but he hadn’t purposely killed himself. Apparently he was masturbating at the time of his death and hanged himself in order to heighten the sexual sensation. The radio announcer called it an autoerotic suicide and said it is not uncommon....

PASSION PLAY To expose these complications, Peter Nichols provides the husband and wife, James and Eleanor, with, well, not exactly alter egos, but ids, named Jim and Nell. Anyway, Jim and Nell have full license to say what goes on in James and Nell’s heads. This device allows for a good deal of comic interjection, particularly in the first act, when Jim has lines like, “Her tongue has been in my mouth....

When last we left Trip Shakespeare, these four gentle moon children from Minneapolis had defied expectations by recording a minor pop masterpiece, Across the Universe. Their fourth album, it was all Beatlesy harmonies, talkative guitars, and irresistible charm, whether they were singing about the joys of a car wreck or how drummers get no respect. Lulu, their new one, does similar things with the gently ironic, thoroughly rockin’ “Bachelorette” (a love note to the fans) and a “Wake Up Little Susie” rewrite called “Bonneville....

“Fear Nothing–Be Down for the Whole Thing Tour” was emblazoned at the top of the leaflet. Underneath that: “Carl Dix, National Spokesperson for the Revolutionary Communist Party, Delivers an Urgent Message to the Youth.” The tour was to hit Detroit, LA, New York, and other cities. Late last month was Chicago’s turn, at the United Electrical Workers’ hall on Ashland near the Eisenhower. Besides Dix, speakers were to include Joey Johnson, the man whose flag-burning case resulted in the 1988 Supreme Court decision that touched off the still-current flag desecration furor, and Sasha, described as “a ferocious female revolutionary who is driving the Los Angeles police department crazy....

To the editors. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Let’s stop pandering to archaic notions about women,” pleads Illinois NOW “Action V.P.” (!) Kim Villanueva in her attack on Matt Freedman’s “You Are a Centerfold Sex Object” cartoon in the 11/25 Reader. Good to know that there’s one archaic notion that Villanueva has brought back to vibrant new life for our time: that the women’s movement has no sense of humor....

At first glance they looked like an old married couple, out for an afternoon walk and coffee at McDonald’s. Both were dressed in long gray coats and black rubber boots, both moved with slow, uncertain steps. Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » “Where do you think?” she snapped, plopping herself into the open seat. They sat in silence for a few minutes, sipping their coffee, but suddenly the man began to rattle and sputter, wrapping his arms around himself in a desperate hug....

In a postconcert jam session during this year’s Chicago Jazz Festival, trumpeter Jon Faddis cleared the air (and more than a few sinuses) with three well-carbureted solos: each blended high-octane power with airborne ideas, creating a combustible compound that left his bandmates cheering along with the audience. The best news was that Faddis’s flamboyant yet brainy solos bore little trace of Dizzy Gillespie, his initial inspiration and his eventual prison. As the 19-year-old phenom who joined the bands of Charles Mingus and Thad Jones in the early 70s, Faddis wowed listeners with a raw power and splendiferous technique copped directly from vintage Gillespie....

Vulgar is perhaps too kind a word for the New Duncan Imperials. The gregarious trio–mysteriously named Skipper, Goodtime, and Pigtail Dick–seem interested primarily in oral sex, pop hooks, and good drumming; their live shows, with toxic-waste containers portentously strewn about the stage, party favors for everyone, and lots of noise, are something akin to a drunken binge crossed with an obstacle course. The band’s debut four-song EP–including NDI classics “Pensacola 99” (a monster hook cum car crash) and “Jagermeister” (an anthem)–is as puerile and rude as the band itself, with obnoxious spoken intros to each song and amp hum as a primary instrument....

At a quarter to four in the morning, a small group huddles in front of the North Park Village Nature Center on Chicago’s northwest side. Our guide, naturalist Jerry Garden, questions the young couple walking toward us: “Are you here for the owl prowl?” Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites » Jerry asks how many of us have ever seen an owl; about half the hands go up....

MOMING COMMISSIONS: NEW WORKS BY JAN ERKERT AND AMY OSGOOD Erkert and Osgood both make dances with a distinctly postmodernist slant. They very often choose movement that makes their dancers look just like the rest of us–walking, running, rolling, reaching, falling. No movement is automatically disqualified just because it’s ugly, ordinary, or strange. The choreographic structures that shape their dances–the repetitions, the canons, the reversals–stay close enough to the surface for us to feet we know what’s going on....

In a Calvin and Hobbes comic strip last fall, Calvin and his pet tiger Hobbes are seen walking across a blank landscape. “Grandpa says the comics were a lot bigger years ago when the newspapers printed them bigger,” says Calvin. “He says comics now are just a bunch of xeroxed talking heads because there’s no space to tell a decent story or to show any action. He thinks people should write to their newspapers and complain....

If you thought that Morris Zapp, the aggressively ambitious professor in David Lodge’s novel Changing Places, was a sharp operator, then you’ve yet to meet the real thing. Or so Charles Sykes would have us believe. In ProfScam, Sykes argues that today’s professorial entrepreneurs have subordinated the call of higher learning to a lust for self-aggrandizement through meaningless research, obscure publications, and savage campus politicking. They have abandoned teaching and learned to despise undergraduates....

Though there is plenty of terrific music in this performance piece–vintage tunes famously associated with such performers as Frank Sinatra, Mario Lanza, Harry James, and the Andrews Sisters–it’s the words that really matter. Not just the lyrics Cahn wrote for such songs as “Three Coins in the Fountain”, “It’s Magic,” “All the Way,” and “Call Me Irresponsible,” but the stories that the 77-year-old songwriter and schmoozer tells about his career, his craft, and the people he’s worked with....

DANCING WITH PEOPLE FROM MY BRAIN It’s not so much that Frasz tells us anything new as that she finds fresh ways of telling old stories. Eggs (1988) is about a love triangle. It begins with Frasz reciting Woody Allen’s quip about his crazy brother who thinks he’s a chicken: the family would like to put him away but they can’t do without the eggs. And so it is with relationships, we need the eggs....

THE CHOCOLATE WAR What would your prognosis be for the following movie? It’s an adaptation of a novel that has attracted a substantial cult of adolescent readers, written and directed by a young actor best known for playing nerds in Christine and Dressed to Kill, produced, on a shoestring, by a lawyer-agent (who happens to be married to Sally Kellerman), and featuring a company of little-known artists both before and behind the camera....