The cult of the Fancy Burger has officially taken root in Portland, and every chubby yuppie with too much time on their hands seems to have an opinion on which upscale burger is the best. Now, fancy burgers—with their ciabatta rolls and sun-dried tomato relish—are well and good, but sometimes you just want an honest […]
Alison Hallett
Alison Hallett served nobly as the Mercury's arts editor from 2008-2014. Her proud legacy lives on.
Posted inBooks
The Abstinence Teacher
by Tom Perrotta (St. Martin’s Press)
“Some people enjoy it.” In Tom Perrotta’s excellent new novel, The Abstinence Teacher, these four little words, uttered by Stonewood Heights’ high school health teacher Ruth Ramsey, unleash a controversy that ultimately results in the school adopting an abstinence-based sex-ed curriculum, and Ruth getting reassigned to teach math, a subject where she will never again […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Spirits to Enforce
The Bluestockings at
Performance Works Northwest
It’s nice to see a theater company come out swinging once in a while. The Bluestockings’ decision to stage Mickle Maher’s challenging Spirits to Enforce was an ambitious one, and it pays off in a show that, while flawed, nonetheless has much to offer audience members interested in theatrical fare outside the purview of the […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Limited Engagement
Margot at the Wedding: Hooray for Family!
Those looking for the poignancy and humor of writer/director Noah Baumbach’s The Squid and the Whale will find little of either in his latest, Margot at the Wedding. While The Squid and the Whale was a brutally honest depiction of a disintegrating marriage, it also offered moments of genuine tenderness. If there’s tenderness in Margot, […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
La Carpa del Ausente
Miracle Theatre Group at the Milagro Theater
The Day of the Dead has come and gone, but it’s not too late to catch La Carpa del Ausente, the excellent Day of the Day show running at the Milagro Theatre that doubles as an homage to the Latino soldiers who fought in World War II. The conceit here sounds scattershot at first: It’s […]
Posted inBooks
Book Lovers Unite!
This Year’s Wordstock Book Festival Provides the Steak, as Well as the Sizzle
If it feels like it’s been a really long time since the last Wordstock, it’s because it sort of has been. After the departure of Director Scott Poole, the lit fest gave themselves an extra six months between events, during which they recruited Greg Netzer to run this year’s festival. Shifting Wordstock from April to […]
Posted inUncategorized
Southern Eclectica
No Po Meets Down Home at Miss Delta
I mean no disrespect toward the Delta Café when I say this, but North Mississippi’s Miss Delta, co-owned by former Delta mastermind Anastasia Corya, is like a fresher, more ambitious version of the Delta—maybe something like the Delta in its younger days, before years of hard living and Reed College students took a toll. The […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Fall of the House
Action/Adventure Theatre at Theater! Theatre!
Action/Adventure Theatre’s Fall of the House is a serialized show following a group of roommates and their friends. Each week lays out a new episode—a literal little slice of what it’s like to be a twentysomething in this city, dating and fucking around and trying to negotiate a social landscape full of borderline personalities who […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Underpants
Portland Center Stage at the Gerding Theater
The Underpants is a social satire written by Carl Sternheim in 1911, and adapted here by Steve Martin (yes, that Steve Martin, who in addition to actor, comedian, and author, can list playwright on his enviable resume as well). In Martin’s hands, what was once a commentary on the mores of the middle class becomes […]
Posted inBooks
Bridge of Sighs
by Richard Russo
Richard Russo’s Bridge of Sighs is a sprawling, warm blanket of a book that, like Russo’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, explores small town values and small town ugliness, the myth of upward mobility, and the importance of carving out a friendly corner of the world. Russo’s primary narrator and our (occasionally unreliable) guide through the […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Double Feature
I get to write this phrase so infrequently: Double Feature is a really fun night of theater. “Fun” as in surprising, goofy, creative, weird—all things that Imago long perfected with their popular show FROGZ, and that they offer here with a slightly more adult twist (read: a healthy dose of sex and a whole lot […]
Posted inUncategorized
When the Craving Strikes
Fiending for Sushi at Bara
Sushi cravings are powerful and apt to strike at strange times—like while showering, or listening to This American Life. “God, sushi sounds really good right now,” you think, as Ira introduces a story about the life-affirming power of swimming lessons. Once the thought has taken hold, it’s like there’s a sushi-shaped hole in your stomach, […]