We've got issues.
Staff writer for Eugene Weekly, Rick Levin been airing his grievances in newspapers for the better part of two decades.
Having just watched Jonathan Glazer’s latest movie, Under the Skin, I’m now thoroughly convinced that we have entered a post-human age — an era of catastrophic reckoning in which humanity, threatened with inevitable extinction, will figure less and less as the engineer of its own destiny. Continue reading
That Puck! What an imp, what a funnin’ fool. Should any wee hint of the grave or the dour threaten to shank the shambolic ether of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, rest assured that frolicsome Puck, aka Robin Goodfellow, servant to Oberon (King of the Faeries), will hop to and eradicate all frowns with a sly spree of herkimer-jerkimer and utter tomfoolery. Nay, Puck ─ as the sprightly stand-in for Shakespeare’s bumptious side ─ will have none of our earnestness. Life, after all, is but a dream. Continue reading
The Whiteaker Community Council (WCC) got a surprise at its annual elections meeting Wednesday, April 9, when upward of 80 residents of Eugene’s hippest district packed into the small room at the Whiteaker School to air concerns about a proposed noise ordinance. Continue reading
If Rob Zombie happens to remake The Lord of the Rings trilogy, he could do worse than to hire Circle Takes the Square to provide the soundtrack. Hailing from Savannah, Ga., this assaultive group lays down a cathartic catapult of noise that is migraine heavy and druidic weird. Circle Takes the Square’s new album, Decompositions: Volume Number One, is a non-stop barrage of hammering beats, pitched vocal screaming and grinding, squealing guitars, occasionally relieved by medieval moments of slowed-down chanting and neo-classical harmonic interludes. Continue reading
Since its debut in 1964, Fiddler on the Roof has held a certain special status among Broadway shows. It is the Beastie Boys of musicals — beloved, offbeat, wise and wiseacre-ish, slapstick hip. More times than I can count, the mere mention of Fiddler has caused a friend to break out in baritone: “If I were a rich man, yubby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dibby dum…” Continue reading
Photo by Rick Levin Continue reading
British theater is heady, chewy stuff — especially British farce, which typically excels in wit and wordplay. Consider, for instance, a playwright like Sir Tom Stoppard, who included in his masterpiece Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead a scene in which the two leads play a rapid-fire “Game of Questions” that is essentially verbal Ping-Pong on speed. In general, American drama post-Tennessee Williams lacks such linguistic finery. Continue reading
These days, we’ve traded fliers for Facebook and ’zines for blogs, but the amalgamated forces of bullshit that spawned early-’80s American hardcore remain essentially unchanged: consumerism, alienation, angst. For the past 35 years, pioneering punk band D.O.A. has confronted these forces with a steady stream of conscientious hardcore. Hailing from Vancouver, B.C., and fronted by the legendary Joey Shithead (aka Joe Keithly), D.O.A. Continue reading
More so than any other theater company in town, Actors Cabaret of Eugene continues to reflect the spirit and ethos of Eugene. Led by artistic director Joe Zingo and executive director/producer Joe Roberts — and with help from the indomitable Mark Van Beever, whose music direction is always top tier — ACE channels the best of our local culture by remaining free-spirited and at the same time hewing close to a tradition that is equal parts frontier strong and renegade D.I.Y. Continue reading
Whenever Hollywood, in its infinite predictability, deigns to treat the subject of advanced middle-age, it does so in such broad terms as to skirt impropriety, if not outright offense. Basically, old people in mainstream movies are played either for comic yuks, as infantilized, sexed-up geriatric assholes, or as infantilized, de-sexualized pill-popping matrons who serve as mere placeholders in some grander drama. In neither instance is age depicted as a specific human condition of adulthood, a moment in life’s journey. Continue reading