Chicagoans may remember Richard Maxwell as a founding member of the experimental company the Cook County Theater Department, known for stunts like restaging Puccini’s Tosca with nonoperatic singers, projected film clips, hand puppets, and saxophone accompaniment. But since leaving Chicago he’s won an Obie award and become the toast of the New York underground. “A genuinely original new talent,” Ben Brantley called him in the New York Times. “Watching Mr. Maxwell’s work makes you think of what it must have been like to stumble upon the baffling but seductive creations of the young Sam Shepard in the early 1960’s in the East Village.” This weekend we’ll have a chance to find out what Maxwell’s been up to when he returns with his New York City Players for a four-night engagement of his off-off-Broadway success Boxing 2000.
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Boxing 2000 will be performed at the Athenaeum Theatre, 2936 N. Southport, Thursday through Saturday, January 24 through 26, at 8 PM, and Sunday, January 27, at 4 PM. Tickets are $20, available from Performing Arts Chicago at 773-722-5432.
