Cute or Annoying?

Just saw Sarah Ruhl’s latest, Dead Man Cell Phone, at Steppenwolf. I loved the Edward Hopper-inspired staging (one of many suggestions that Ruhl makes in her script). The premise isn’t that earth-shattering—a woman answers a stranger’s cell phone and pieces together his life post-mortem—but Ruhl injects enough of her brand of whimsy and magical realism that you’re quickly steered beyond the predictable. OK, so some weird and pretty unlikely things happen (a delish-looking make-out session in a stationery store; a monologue from the grave…

Pretty, Dilapidated Stuff

Local photog and friend of historical landmarks Carey Primeau has a knack for making crumbling walls and piles of garbage look beautiful (as displayed in our February roundup of Flickr greats with the haunting photo of a deserted classroom from Chicago’s Jacob Riis Elementary School).

Primeau recently expanded beyond Chicago’s disregarded treasures and traveled through Europe visiting abandoned buildings destined to be forgotten by history…