Ray Pride

Chicago's one of the lucky cities to get Winnipeg anachronist Guy Maddin's latest rumpus as a live event. The silent "Brand Upon The Brain!", which features live music and sound effects, a male soprano, a children's choir and an "interlocutor," is narrated on the fully recorded version by Isabella Rossellini--it was narrated in San Francisco by Joan Chen and in New York at different shows by a crew including Crispin Glover, Eli Wallach, Lou Reed and the poet John Ashbery. (Allow me to take a breath: "John Ashbery?!! John. Fucking. Ashbery?!") Chicago: You got Glover. A breathless, pseudo-autobiographical story about young Guy Maddin's escape from the lighthouse where his parents perform diabolical experiments in extracting "nectar" from the young orphans in their charge, saved by the love of an androgynous duo of young adult book detectives, it will gain so much from all the theatrical meshugah. All kino delirium with a touch of sissy slap-party, it doesn't attain the heights of his small masterpiece, "Hearts of the World" (2000), but this cosmogony of visual damage and feigned decay will be an earful as well as an eyeful. 95m.

"Brand Upon The Brain!" plays the Music Box Fri-Sat 7:30pm; Sat-Sun 2:30pm. Advance tickets $25; day-of $30. Tickets available at www.musicboxtheatre.com. After May 24, the recorded version will be shown at regular prices.

(2007-05-15)

Also by Ray Pride

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The side of mashed potatoes, with supposed "Cajun" gravy satisfies, a big schoop pressed into the top, filled with a drib of gravy, a quick whiff of green pepper when you peel the plastic lid off the Styrofoam container, a hint of indeterminate meat in the mix
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