Picture this scene: I’m sitting in a long, narrow dining room with windows at one end, a kitchen at the other, and tables lined up tidily in between. Two cute boys sit at an adjacent table, and there’s a pile of pork spareribs on the table in front of me. I look at the boys. […]
Alison Hallett
Alison Hallett served nobly as the Mercury's arts editor from 2008-2014. Her proud legacy lives on.
Posted inMovies & TV
Wink, Wink
Nancy Drew Is “Clued In!” (Get it?)
Adapting classic children’s books for film is risky: If the movie violates the spirit of the book—and it usually does—it’s hard not to feel angry and betrayed (see: Bridge to Terabithia). Thank god, though, that Nancy Drew gets it right—I don’t think I could’ve handled seeing Hollywood crap all over yet another one of my […]
Posted inMovies & TV
Je Heart Paris
And So Does Everybody Else
Paris has gotten more valentines than any other city in the world. The reasons are obvious: It’s beautiful, and it makes people want to be in love. So the impulse behind Paris, Je T’Aime is nothing new—the results, though, are as stunning and varied as the city itself. Paris is comprised of 18 five-minute films, […]
Posted inUncategorized
Cat Class, Cat Style
Raising the Bar at the Country Cat Dinner House
Insofar as 82nd Avenue is regarded as a dining destination, it’s because of the many Asian restaurants and markets found up and down the strip. The area is not exactly known for high-end cuisine, and it certainly feels removed from the trend toward local, sustainable, and organic that has swamped Portland’s larger restaurant scene. Where […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Uncommon Women and Others
Profile Theatre concludes their Wendy Wasserstein series with Uncommon Women and Others, the 1977 play about a group of young women who become friends during their college years at Mount Holyoke. It’s typical Wasserstein—smart, upper-class women distilling all the neuroses and anxieties of the time (in this case, the 1970s). The bulk of the play […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Orson’s Shadow
The Artists Repertory Theatre’s production of Orson’s Shadow speculates about what may have happened when Orson Welles directed Laurence Olivier in a production of Eugène Ionesco’s Rhinocéros. The show provides plenty of arch dialogue and postmodern cleverness, all undershot with a current of nostalgia for a lost world that most people have probably never missed. […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
in apparati
In a town largely ambivalent to experimental theater, defunkt’s latest production, in apparati, is an intellectually engaging work that will reward any audience member willing to pay attention, embrace a little ambiguity, and trust that defunkt hasn’t invited you to their theater in order to waste your time. in apparati was written by defunkt co-founder […]
Posted inUncategorized
Much Ado About Ramen
Biwa’s Little Slice of Japan
Ramen is a staple in Japan (though it originated in China); recipes vary from region to region and are often closely guarded secrets. While many Americans are familiar only with the Top version, there is in fact a complex and varied ramen-verse out there, full of aromatic broths and flavorful variations. When I asked Biwa’s […]
Posted inBooks
Flight
Sherman Alexie
Sherman Alexie is an undeniably great writer: At his best, he is powerfully evocative, adept at couching complex emotions in deceptively simple prose. In his confused new novel, Flight, however, his subject matter gets away from him; the novel brims with a moral agenda so heavy handed that it borders on insulting. Flight‘s first-person narrator […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Tango
Tom Moorman’s director’s notes in the program of Theatre Vertigo’s Tango begin as follows: “This is the part of the program where I am supposed to lay out the themes of this play. Where I tell you what it means to me, what I hope you learn from it, and why it was worth the, […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Bad Dates
In the lobby after Bad Dates, I overheard an audience member saying that the show was “like a cross between Sex and the City and Bridget Jones’ Diary.” And as banal as that observation is, she was pretty much right. I mean, wow. Where am I? The community just dumped how much money into converting […]
Posted inTheater & Performance
Repeat After Me
Hand2Mouth’s Repeat After Me doesn’t need any more good press from me—they already got more column inches than any other theater company in town when I wrote a feature article about them a few weeks ago [“We Like American Music,” Feature, April 12]. When I wrote the article, though, I’d only seen one rehearsal of […]