'Black and Blue' channels Chicago's culture of baseball and bars

One brother is a Cubs fan, the other a Sox fan, and their friendly (and occasionally not-so-friendly) ribbing becomes a riff on their deeper family dynamics. The city's divided MLB loyalties become a metaphor for their own complicated bonds.

Pop (Brian Amidei) is testosterone personified in his buzz cut and mustache, a gruff, hardnose type who quite obviously loves his sons. It's a role that could have easily turned into caricature, but Amidei and his fellow cast members (including Ernest Deak as the seen-it-all bartender) are giving human-sized performances that make up for the script's deficiencies. The bar is a neighborhood joint that feels very much rooted in Chicago's drinking culture, where you won't find any Old Style. But old-timers? Plenty of those around, offering up non-sequiturs and commentary and played with just enough salt and idiocy by Zach Bloomfield and John Moran.

Channeling Andy Warhol in everything but name, the newest show from The Mammals, titled "Put My __ In Your __ aka Your 15 Minutes of Finger," gets points for its sardonic resurrection of 1960s-era poseurs. But there is little else in this show to grab your attention.

Warhol's Factory (not to be confused with the theater company referenced in the review above) was as distinctive an ecosystem as any, but what writer-director Bob Fisher aims to say about this particular moment in pop culture history remains a blur. Not quite skewering Warhol's scene so much as recreating it (Ann Sonneville's take on Edie Sedgwick is especially good), the show becomes a wearying repetition of underdeveloped characters cycling through ideas and faux-disturbing tableaux that don't add up to much more than eye candy.