On Chicago Theatre

And What Next?

2011-03-29T13:19:00.005-05:00

As is its wont, the theatrical blogosphere is full of people getting angry. And that's okay--that's the purpose of theatre blogs: analyzing and decrying the failures of theatre as it is now, explaining how it should be, figuring out what areas need to be fixed, and warning of impending doom.

In this case, the furor has been over this piece by playwright Mat Smart. (I found it through Don Hall's sharp response.)

Both articles are worth reading, but in brief, Smart argues that playwrights fail because of:

our general laziness,
inability to commit,
defeatist attitude,
lack of talent,
and unwillingness to truly listen and change

He says, and Hall amplifies, this basic idea: "Stop complaining about the broken system and start making better work."

I'm not entirely in agreement with this attitude. After all, most systems that are in action today are flawed. I wouldn't say "stop being lazy" to the many victims of our desperately broken economic system, for instance. Laziness didn't sink the economy, boundless greed and nonexistent regulation did. (And while it's tempting to continue that particular rant, I'll stop here.)

So yes, I find that kind of pure "stop complaining and just do it" attitude to be limited, and often lacking in nuance and understanding of circumstances. But there's a whole lot of truth in it. Here's the attitude I'd like to see: After you've diagnosed the problems, focus on what the solutions are and how you can make them happen.

Everyone won't agree on the diagnosis, and everything isn't fixable. But there's certainly a lot you can do.

For example: Leonard Jacobs, of the fascinating, infuriating, and essential Clyde Fitch Report (whose current incarnation has ended due to his acceptance of a wonderful new job, but will hopefully continue under new management soon), was very fond of discusssing the unsustainability of the current arts funding model. Government arts funding is always a target and always shrinking, foundation support is unreliable (and in our current economic situation, also decreasing), and an attitude of entitlement and begging for huge checks won't be enough to keep arts organizations going. He made a good case, and I think a lot of what he says is true. (I haven't studied the issue enough to make a certain statement.)

But the conversation that was all too rare in discussions of the failures of funding models was a look at what a better model would look like, how we'd get from here to there, and what can be done to move that along. There was an awful lot of diagnosis, but very little treatment plan.

This is true of anything in theatre. Of course the rate of new play production is not as high as playwrights would wish it to be. Of course some playwrights get lots of attention and production while other equally good playwrights are comparatively ignored. Of course playwrights who are female and/or non-white don't have an equal playing field. Of course dramaturgs and other collaborators have their own opinions of what would make a play better, and share them. Of course critics don't always get what the play is going for, and don't always like it.

And that's just part of the litany for playwrights--actors, designers, administrators, critics, and audiences have their own long lists.

(By the way, to break my own rule, let me air this dramaturg's complaint: I am tired of people acting as if my profession is made up of uncreative hacks who bastardize precious, beautiful works of art in the pursuit of monetary gain. First off, dramaturgs have less power in the rehearsal room than assistant stage managers. We offer questions and suggestions, but not dictatorial instructions. Second of all, theatre is collaborative. If honest feedback from someone who is smart and cares deeply about the play will destroy the precious flower of your work, then the problem is with the work and/or the thin skin of its creator. Prose authors accept and appreciate editors, and welcome feedback. Why are a few people so very against the work that dramaturgs do? How can they sincerely believe that we're what's wrong with new plays in America? Alright, rant finished.)

To get back on track--the whole list above is accurate to a degree. Some of the items are serious problems, some are just the nature of how things work. (Yes, the primary consideration of a theatre is to do the best work for itself and its audience. The theatre company wouldn't be doing its job if it weren't focused on what's best for the theatre company.) But while there is a value in finding problems, there is more in finding solutions.

And solutions are being found. The National New Play Network has organized dozens of "rolling world premieres", allowing new plays to get multiple productions and avoid the problems of being unproduced after their world premieres. Victory Gardens' Ignition Festival, devoted to developing and producing new works by artists of color under the age of 40, produced The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, which proceeded to sell out, become a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, and transfer to an Off-Broadway run.

To those who respond, reasonably, that these are institutions and not individuals that are making the changes, I present one more example: Caitlin Montanye Parrish and Erica Weiss. Caitlin is primarily a playwright (in addition to being a critic and more), Erica is primarily a director (in addition to being a dramaturg--who worked on Chad Deity, incidentally--and more). Both happen to be friends of mine. And last month, after years of working together and with others, they hit the jackpot. Caitlin's play A Twist of Water, co-created and directed by Erica, opened in a Route 66 Theatre Company production to excellent reviews, then got excellent publicity due to a visit from Rahm Emanuel. After a nearly sold-out run, it's transferring to an extended run at the Mercury Theatre. Lots of factors intervened to make it the success it has become (and it's wonderful, by the way--you should really check out the Mercury run if you haven't seen it yet), but at the core is two people, believing in their art, working tirelessly, taking advantage of a productive partnership and collaborating with a large group of talented people. There are no guarantees (and nobody can predict runaway hits like that), but it can be done.

I don't say this from a position of perfection--complaint and paralysis in the face of difficulty are long-time plagues of mine, in life and in art. But in the interest of making good art and being happier people, lets broaden our vision: once we've discuss the problems, let's discuss what we can do to solve them. And then let's do it.

Towards a Definition of Terms

2011-03-09T14:23:00.001-06:00

What? A post? I'm as surprised as you, honestly. I could blame the wide variety of commitments that kept me away (day job, An Enemy of the People at Stage Left, planning LeapFest, the 2011-2012 season, and playwright residency at Stage Left), but the simple truth is that I haven't wanted to blog in the last several weeks. I'm trying to get back into it, though, so hopefully more will show up soon.

To start, here's a discussion question. What, exactly, is community theatre? I'm inspired to ask this question by an excellent post by Monica Reida just under a week ago. For those too lazy to read it, tsk tsk, but here's a brief summary: she attacked the reflexive disdain for "community theatre" among so many people in the industry. For some, the term has become a synonym for amateurish, cheap shows that are a trial to sit through. She responded that she's seen plenty of superb community theatre and plenty of awful professional stuff. It comes down to the question: what is the actual difference between community theatre and non-equity theatre that doesn't pay any of the artists?

This led to a huge conversation--54 comments, at the moment, which would be any blogger's dream. And since this is a valuable conversation, I thought it should be presented to more people.

Here's my provisional take on it: I don't entirely agree that the only criterion to distinguish among types of theatre should be pay. Community theatre does seem to have features that distinguish it from other forms.

First off, there is the obvious issue of pay: as a rule, community theatres do not pay their artists. They are of course not the only theatres of which this is true. I have only once in my career been paid to act, for instance, and I'm sure many artists have had valuable theatrical experiences for companies who are unable to afford even a token payment.

Then there is the question of season selection. As a general rule, community theatres produce less adventurous, more audience-pleasing theatre: musicals, comedies, mysteries, American classics. This is far from a constant thing. Monica gives many examples of community theatres in her home state of Iowa producing adventurous fare. To take another example, Akron, Ohio's Weathervane Playhouse has produced a wide variety of plays in recent years: in addition to standards like Pippin, The Nerd, and Children of Eden, recent seasons have seen productions of Love, Valour, Compassion, A Doll's House, The Goat, or Who Is Sylvia, and A Long Day's Journey Into Night. I have no idea how good the productions were, but that's beside the point: no theatre always succeeds, and ambition is always a laudable thing.

The question of "professionalism", while interesting, is ultimately a dead end. One could define it by the number of people involved who have training in theatre, but even the equity world is full of people who fell into theatre and made major careers of it without having a degree in it--and community theatres certainly have people with theatre degrees working there. Professionalism can be defined as a company and group of artists who have competence, class, and respect for those who work with them, but it would be foolish to say these qualities are missing from community theatre--or that they are always present in equity theatre. It's too slippery a quality to use as a good criterion.

An interesting point is one of geography: based on my observations, community theatre is most prevalent in locales that don't have paid theatre. They are usually seen in suburbs or smaller towns. When in large cities, they are often in neighborhoods underserved by larger arts organizations. It says something important about the human and societal need for art: even areas that can't support large theatres will usually make their own to serve their needs.

The difference to me seems to come down to mission. In general, community theatre's mission is right there in its name. It's for the community. What matters is involving local people in making art, having a worthwhile experience, and getting people in the community to come see it and have an experience together. This isn't to say that the excellence of the art isn't important. It is. But it's generally not a case of "great art at any cost". What matters is the community.

But I'm hardly an expert on community theatre, and as I said, this is just the definition that's running around in my head now. Does anyone have any thoughts to contribute?

Graney Steps Down

2011-01-14T16:41:00.001-06:00

Well this is news: as first broken by Eric and Andy's Reviews You Can Iews, Sean Graney will be stepping down as artistic director of The Hypocrites, the Chicago theatre company that he founded in 1997. He'll be replaced by Halena Kays, a company member at The Hypocrites and the ~~current artistic director~~ founder of Barrel of Monkeys.

(Confidential to Anderson Lawfer and Eric Roach: screw you guys, with your scoops and your good journalism! You're making the rest of us bloggers look bad!)

I've previously stated my love of the work that Graney does, both with The Hypocrites and at other theatres. (I think I went from cautious admirer to full-on fan with the fall 2008 one-two punch of The Threepenny Opera with The Hypocrites and Edward II with Chicago Shakespeare.) The good news is that this work will continue--he's slated to direct two shows a season for at least the next two seasons with The Hypocrites, and I have no doubt at other theatres as well. It's a good thing--nobody explodes a classic play and picks up the pieces quite like him, and his success rate is astonishingly high. While I don't think I've ever seen Kays' work (or, shamefully, ever gone to a Barrel of Monkeys show), I've heard nothing but good things about her. (I'd be remiss if I didn't mention tireless managing director Megan Wildebour, who will continue to be awesome and make things happen in that way that managing directors of small companies do.)

So congratulations to everyone at the Hypocrites for arranging a smooth and artistically exciting way to continue the strong work that the company does. I look forward to seeing more shows there. (This isn't just me saying that--I'm seeing "The Pirates of Penzance" tomorrow night.) And Sean, if you ever leave Chicago, I'll be very angry. Finally, readers, I leave you with two pictures.

This is what the past looks like:

And this is what the future looks like:

Both photos by Sandro

News Roundup

2011-01-12T13:47:00.000-06:00

Two pieces of good news and one very sad one:

Steppenwolf's praised production of Lisa D'Amour's Detroit is moving to Broadway in the fall. It's always good to see a new American play on Broadway, and I hope it does well. (I never got to see it, but heard great things.) Hopefully the original cast will be kept and a good play done well without stars will reach some level of Broadway success. I know, I'm an optimist.

Also in Steppenwolf news, Jon Michael Hill will appear in their production of The Hot L Baltimore. This is excellent news for two reasons: first, that Hill is a dynamic and exceptional performer, and any chance to see him onstage is a treat. Second, this indicates that, despite his role on ABC's Detroit 1-8-7, he's remaining committed to theatre and Chicago. I hope that his returns are frequent.

It's always sad to report a death, but particularly so when that death comes shockingly early. Allison Powell, an ensemble member at Filament Theatre died at the age of 28 from a sudden illness on January 2nd. There will be a memorial event for her on Friday, and Filament has announced that they are funding a gift in her memory. See the press release below for all of the details. Our profoundest thoughts and sympathies are with all of her family and friends.

*** THE FILAMENT THEATRE ENSEMBLE MOURNS THE LOSS OF ALLISON POWELL***
***Allison Powell Memorial Event and Artist's Gift***

Allison Powell of the Filament Theatre Ensemble passed away from a sudden illness on January 2, 2011 at the age of 28. In addition to serving as the company's business manager, Allison adapted Filament's most recent production, Choose Thine Own Adventure – a Shakespearean choose-your-own-adventure play which enjoyed a very successful run at the Underground Lounge through December 11, 2010.

Allison attended elementary school in Lilburn, Georgia, then moved to Maui, Hawaii, where she graduated with honors from Seabury Hall. She graduated cum laude from Colgate University in New York, majoring in religion and philosophy. She also studied at St. Andrews University, Scotland and in Melbourne, Australia, where she spent a year as an independent researcher studying Aboriginal ceremony and performance. During her college years she was active in experimental theatre and after graduation worked in the San Francisco theater community. She moved to Chicago in 2009 and joined the executive staff of the Filament Theatre Ensemble shortly thereafter. She planned on attending graduate school to study religious ritual and performance in the fall.

The Filament Theatre Ensemble is profoundly grateful for her contributions to the company, and are continuing her legacy with an annual gift to Chicago-based artists in Allison's name. Allison recognized the challenges of the lifestyle of the artist, and believed firmly that artists should be monetarily compensated for their work. The Filament Theatre Ensemble is establishing “Allie's Gift” to provide individual Chicago artists with funds to grow and support their artistic careers. This gift will be offered annually on Allison's birthday, April 26. More details will be available on the Filament Theatre Ensemble website in the coming days.

A public celebration of Allison's life will be held at 7:00pm on Friday, January 14 at the Menomonee Club located at 1535 North Dayton Street. A broadcast of her celebration event held in Marietta, GA, will be shown and will begin at 7:30, with time to share stories and memories. If you plan to attend please RSVP by emailing info@filamenttheatre.org or calling (773) 270-1660.

For more information about the service, “Allie's Gift”, or to share memories, please visit www.filamenttheatre.org or call (773) 270-1660.

--

Peter Oyloe
Filament Theatre Ensemble // Marketing Director
www.filamenttheatre.org
Till the bridge you will need, be form’d–till the ductile anchor hold;
Till the gossamer thread you fling, catch somewhere, O my Soul.
-Walt Whitman

Discussing "The Tempest"

2011-01-07T11:10:00.001-06:00

Welcome to the latest installment of the occasional collaboration between Tim Brayton, of the invaluable film blog Antagony and Ecstasy (no, I'm not exactly sure what the title means either) and myself, on the subject of film/theatre crossovers. Today's subject is Julie Taymor's film version of Shakespeare's The Tempest, with Helen Mirren, cast across gender lines as Prospera. The film has died a quick death at the box office--by its second week of release in Chicago, it was playing once a day at one movie theatre in the entire Chicagoland area, and now it seems to have disappeared entirely.

We'll explore in a little while whether it deserves this fate, but first, let's discuss the source material, William Shakespeare's play, for a bit. Tim, want to start us off there?

Tim: I know we don't agree, as I'm sure you'll point out, but I rather like the play. It's undoubtedly lesser Shakespeare, but I'd still rank it among the 24 or so of his 38 plays that I think are more excellent than not.

It's largely un-dramatic: a exiled duke/magician assembles all of the people who've wronged him on an island, toys with them, and then reveals himself and takes his title back. And that's part of what I like about it. It's a play largely about the joy of creating things for the sake of it. Four centuries of criticism have made it a cliche that the main character, Prospero, "is" William Shakespeare, but I think that's such a durable idea only because it fits so obviously well: The Tempest is about a man who controls the fates of everyone around him entirely, "writing" the events that happen to them (recall that this was one of the few Shakespearean plays with no known source for its story).

With Hamlet, King Lear, the Henriad, and so many other plays behind him, I like to suppose that the Shakespeare of 1610 didn't feel like he had anything left to prove with drama, and so set himself to a single piece of pure fancy. It's about magic and spectacle, and it is magical and spectacular, and that's it - a Jacobean precursor to a Michael Bay film, perhaps. But much more appealing than that.

Zev: I'll go on the record as saying that The Tempest is one of my least favorites of Shakespeare's plays. (I've never read Timon of Athens or The Two Gentlemen of Verona, so the bottom of my personal ranking is Cymbeline.) Even if it's not among Shakespeare's very worst, it certainly seems to command a critical respect and frequency of production way out of proportion to its quality. The Tempest may be better than something like Titus Andronicus, but as trashy as Titus is, at least it keeps the audience riveted. (Incidentally, Titus was Taymor's first film, and is one of the best filmed Shakespeares ever.) It's all too easy for an audience's attention to drift away from The Tempest.

I think our differing opinions on the play come down to something fundamental in our perspectives: narrative and storytelling are of much more importance to me than they are to you. And The Tempest's narrative is, frankly, a mess. Compare Twelfth Night, where the loss of a single scene would cause the whole plot to collapse, with the flabby storytelling on display in The Tempest, where whole swathes of the play could be cut without any effect.

The play also suffers from insipid lovers, unfunny clowns, and unthreatening villains. There are really only three characters of significant interest: Prospero, the sorcerer, Ariel, his androgynous sprite of a servant, and Caliban, the "savage" who was born on the island and is now kept by Prospero as another servant.

This isn't to say the play is a total loss. The language is among Shakespeare's most beautiful, there's an opportunity for some wondrous staging, and strong acting can make even the weaker material work. (And if Prospero is played by a beloved actor near the end of his career, as is often the case, little else matters.) It's certainly possible for The Tempest to be good. But has Taymor managed this?

Tim: Certainly, The Tempest has little enough concrete drama to it that it seems to attract all sorts of weird and experimental readings: without even glancing at its many stage versions in the last few decades, I can immediately point to the '50s sci-fi picture Forbidden Planet and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books as two versions that do things very different from any "standard" version of the play. It was for this reason that I was especially excited for Taymor's vision: as you've mentioned, Titus was a masterpiece, largely because she took a fairly stupid piece of nastiness, and made it into one of the most fascinating commentaries on the impulse towards fascism that I think I've ever seen.

And since the first thing we all learned about Taymor's Tempest was the casting of Helen Mirren as Prospero - I'm sorry, Prospera - it seemed like something pretty great was in the offing. After all, one of the few things explicit about the play is its patriarchalism: Prospero is the very model of an Alpha Male, commanding Ariel, Caliban, and Miranda all about, and his treatment of the castaways has all the feeling, to me anyway, of a dick-measuring contest. So I was pretty darn excited to see what a female director (though not an appreciably feminist one) would do with a gender flip, still one of the boldest things you can do with Shakespeare.

It turns out, she doesn't do much. The biggest effect of the change seems to be that Mirren gets to play a part with a pretty awesome monologue that she wouldn't otherwise get to recite. But there's not a single thing that would have materially changed about this film if Prospera had been a guy, just like always.

And that, in essence, seems to be the big, monolithic fact about Taymor's adaptation: it doesn't really do anything. It’s flashy and full of crazy spectacle and huge over-elaborate costumes that make look Mirren like a raven constructed out of obsidian shards, and it’s all bent towards absolutely no coherent end whatsoever. Unless you've thought of something I missed?

Zev: I'd have to agree on that. No overarching principle or metaphor is apparent, and the many choices feel arbitrary. One could argue that it's a good thing that the cross-gender casting barely registers, but think of the missed opportunities! Mirrenís capable of extraordinary work, and an actress with her fierce intelligence could have explored the power and contradictions in the character to thrilling effect. But she doesn't do anything particularly exciting here. She has the strongest command of the verse of the cast, but by the end, I was left feeling "Yeah, that was pretty good." And for a Helen Mirren performance, that counts as a major disappointment. (I'll leave the question of her relative attractiveness to you, as you're the one with the raging crush on her.)

But the character who suffers most from Taymor's approach is Caliban. The character is immensely problematic: he was born on the island, but Prospera stole it from him when she was exiled there. She and her daughter, Miranda, kept him and raised him in their home, educating him, until he tried to rape Miranda. By the time the play starts, heís exiled to a hut outside of their home, and is used only for menial tasks--carrying logs, and the like. Obviously, the character of a "savage," who attempts to rape the virginal young woman who taught him language and is now constantly insulted and kept as a slave, is immensely troubling to modern audiences. It's hard not to read the whole character as a full-throated endorsement of colonialism and slavery, and contemporary interpretations need to take care to make the character palatable and non-racist.

Remarkably, Taymor seems completely unaware of this minefield. The film's representation of Caliban is...well, let's just call it remarkably insensitive. Djimon Honsou, who plays Caliban, is the only non-white actor on screen, aside from the Boatswain, who gets maybe a minute onscreen, which makes him the "other" from the start. His physical representation is even more disturbing--he has patches of skin that are bleached white, is covered with mud and scars, and wears only a raggedy loincloth. Often when he appears, the soundtrack helpfully adds in "tribal" drums and didgeridoos. Add in the way the camera caresses his partly-exposed buttocks for a little dash of sexual exoticism, and it makes for a profoundly troubling representation.

Were you bothered by this as well? And what other choices would you say worked or didn't?

Tim: Oh, man, don't make me think about Caliban. There are only two possibilities: one is that Taymor is an utter idiot, and the other is that she hates black people, and she's too clever to be an utter idiot.

"What other choices would you say worked or didn't?" Choices? What choices? All I saw were a lot of ideas pitched at the screen with no thought for what effect they had (of which Caliban is merely the most odious), the very opposite of a creative "choice". It's like the director had a bet that she couldn't make a complete movie out of changing tones with every single new scene.

Though I guess she, or somebody, did "choose" to put Ben Whishaw's Ariel (the second-best performance in the movie, by my lights) in those terrible fake boobs. She chose to introduce Prospera with a series of jump cuts to her screaming face, like she was the villain in a slasher movie. She chose to have Russell Brand and Alfred Molina humiliate themselves as the most foppish clowns in any Shakespeare adaptation. She chose to wildly miscast Chris Cooper and David Strathairn as the Duke of Milan and King of Naples. She probably didn't choose the dodgy-ass CGI that keeps cropping up, especially in the ghost hounds sequence; but it shouldn't have come to having that CGI absolutely ruin Prospera's big monologue, one of everybody's favorite bits in the whole thing.

If I were going to defend Taymor's vision - and oh how I wish I could! She has never before failed me - it might be along these lines: since the play was originally just one big spectacle as the Globe audience might have appreciated spectacle, all she's doing is stripping the play down from any kind of "reading", and just giving us the 2010 equivalent of spectacle: lots of effects, lots of famous people, big swooping camera. But that's doing too much work for her, and ignores the fact that so much of it doesn't work: most of the acting, most of the swooping, the execrable Elliot Goldenthal score. But I tire myself; what were your least favorite bits?

Zev: I'm entirely in agreement on that awful score, the completely inappropriate introduction of Prospera, the disturbing fake boobs, and everything else you mentioned. To that, I would only add the bizarre costumes (apparently Milan is the kingdom of zippers, as every Milanese character has several dozen per garment) and Reeve Carney's performance as Ferdinand. He seems to be going for a dreamy, laid-back romanticism, which is not necessarily a bad choice for a character who has virtually no personality beyond how smitten he is. But his line delivery is a disaster. Not only does he mangle the verse, he can't even manage the words very well. Rather than dreamy romance, his slurred deliveries indicate a state somewhere between stoned and developmentally disabled. It's hands-down the worst performance in the film--and nobody is exactly doing their best work on screen, though I agree that Mirren and Whishaw give the most interesting performances. One wonders what Taymor saw in him: she also cast him in the title role of the Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark on Broadway, which makes that already notorious project look even more dire.

I think we've pretty much gotten the point across, though we could inventory the film's failings for paragraphs more if we chose. But here's my closing thought, related to what you said above: even if the film is meant to be nothing but spectacle, it doesn't succeed. The problem isn't just that the special effects are generally blah and the CGI looks bush-league, or that they frequently detract from the play's best elements. It's that the film's entire visual aesthetic is...uninspired. Taymor's first three films, whatever their flaws, were stuffed with images and moments that made you drop your jaw in wonder. But I can only remember one such moment in The Tempest: a shot, early in the film, of four of Prospera's victims walking out of the water, unscathed by their wreck. It reminds you of what the movie could have been, if Taymor had had a better handle on the material and her actors. It's all the more frustrating that she's ended up with a film that's alternately misconceived and dull.

Any final thoughts on your end?

Tim: Final thoughts? I suppose "Julie Taymor owes me $12" would just be mean.

When all is said and done, the worst thing about The Tempest is that I don't even hate it. I just felt really let down and deflated by how boring it was, and disappointed by pretty much everything on screen. Disappointed that Taymor was making the first Tempest of the CGI age, and only dreamt up the most superficial fantasies. Disappointed that the once in a lifetime chance for Helen Mirren to play one of the great boys' roles was wasted, unless some unlikely brave director decides to give us Henry IV with Lady Jane Falstaff, or Queen Lear. Disappointed that it felt so rushed and disjointed, like a college paper you write over breakfast the day it's due. Like the play or not, you have to agree that The Tempest deserves better than this.

And dammit, Julie Taymor owes me $12.

Unpopular With The Populace

2011-01-06T17:16:00.000-06:00

Happy New Year, everyone. There's a more extensive post coming later tonight, but for now, a quick thought:

In high school, I was a huge, obsessive fan of Stephen Sondheim. I bought every CD I could get my hands on. I obsessed over every song. I thought every single thing he ever touched was pure gold. I probably drove everyone I knew crazy with my obsession.

And I still love his music, but eventually, well, I had it pretty well memorized. Listening to a cast album hundreds of times pretty much ingrains it in your head. And as a result, I haven't listened to some of his shows in years. I still love his work, and will defend it to anyone, but I don't relate in nearly so obsessive a way. I'm even capable of recognizing that some of his songs aren't the greatest things ever written. It's probably a healthy development.

But as a result, that means that I haven't listened to some of his shows all the way through for literally years. They're still in my head somewhere, but I haven't actually experienced the music in a long time. Which is understandable, but still a shame.

But over my commutes last night and this morning, I listened to Anyone Can Whistle. And I had forgotten how stunning it is.

It's probably the most egregious example of a common occurence in Sondheim's career: books that undercut the score's brilliance at every turn. Arthur Laurents' book is, no question, a disaster zone: a terribly scattered satire that doesn't hit nearly enough targets, which clashes with the human love story being told within. And I'm not just saying this based on its reputation: I was lucky enough to see it when Pegasus Players produced it in 2004. While the production was variable in quality, it was still clear that no revival could make this show really work.

But the score...just wow. To choose just two moments in a string of brilliant pieces: in "Me and My Town," the opening number, the corrupt mayoress (Angela Lansbury in the original, brilliant as always) sings a jazzy lament over her town's dire situation. And then her backup singers come out, and it turns into a deranged dance number about a small town affected by economic depression. It's impossible to explain how demented the effect is, but I was walking down the street with a goofy smile plastered on my face at the sheer delightful audacious lunacy of it.

The first act ends with a sequence called "Simple". In brief, it centers on a doctor who claims that he can determine who in a mixed group is crazy and who isn't. He does so, perverting logic and confusing everyone around him, through 13 minutes of increasing musical and mental derangement. It's quite impressive as it goes along, building to a crescendo of lunacy. Then the music cuts out, the doctor tells everyone "You are all mad," and, in a burst of circus music, the entire cast appears onstage, wildly applauding and laughing at the audience. Even coming from a pair of earbuds, it sent chills up my spine.

So the moral, if there is one, is this: you know that CD you love, but haven't listened to in years? Pull it out and listen to it again. You'll remember why.

Also, you should really get a copy of Anyone Can Whistle.

And Stephen Sondheim is still God.

Ask Not For Whom The Phone Tolls

2010-12-17T13:52:00.000-06:00

A cellphone went off during the final minute of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? at Steppenwolf, at the press performance. The end of Virginia Woolf is about as intense a moment as the modern theatre has, and I can only imagine how awful and jarring it must have been for the audience and cast. And of course, since it was the press performance, it got into the papers--Hedy Weiss, in the Sun-Times, called for the offender to be tarred and feathered, and Chris Jones wrote and entire piece on the interruption and others he has suffered. (Not to mention the one he has perpetrated.) He ended with a call for forgiveness, though many of the commenters were not so charitable.

I was among the commenters, and shared my worst cellphone memory:

In 2005, I was at the Shaw Festival, in Canada, watching a production of R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End. The play is set in the trenches in World War One, and it was being produced in the Court House Theatre. The theatre has 340-some seats, but it's a very intimate space, and the design was particularly immersive. It was a wonderful production, and the audience was rapt in attention for most of the show. During one scene, the characters were discussing the worst part of living in the trenches: the awful quiet, and the attendant uncertainty. You can guess the rest--that's when the endless cellphone ringing started. To the infinite credit of the actors, they never broke character, and avoided the temptation to make a cheap joke. (I would not have been so virtuous.)

Audience rudeness, of course, extends beyond phones: Dobama Theatre in Cleveland once did a production of Sam Shepard's The Late Henry Moss. The theatre was a smallish thrust space, so you could always see the set before the show started. This particular set included a body under a blanket--the title character. At a performance I ushered, a curious audience member wandered on to the stage and pulled back the blanket, curious as to whether it was a real body. I was taking tickets, so I wasn't able to stop them--it never occured to me we'd need stage guards as well.

So what are the worst instances of audience rudeness that you've ever witnessed, with phones or otherwise? Have you ever accidentally been a perpetrator yourself?

The Dismantling of the DCA

2010-12-16T13:57:00.003-06:00

Now this is disturbing: according to this article, this past Friday saw 20 employees of the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs laid off, raising to 29 the total number laid off since October. This was apparently a result of both budget cuts and an upcoming merger with the Mayor's Office of Special Events. Jim DeRogatis, the author's article, noted that while Lois Weisberg, the city's legendary Cultural Commissioner, will lead the newly-merged department, the Mayor's Office of Special Events lost only one staff member (who was reassigned to another city department) to the DCA's 29.

There's a lot more political backstory to all of this that I won't go into here, and I highly recommend you read the story I linked and the four preceding it for a look at it all.

DeRogatis is a music writer, so perhaps it's no surprise that one very important question to Chicago theatregoers is being left unanswered: what will become of the DCA's theatre programs? They operate the Storefront and Claudia Cassidy Theatres, right in the Loop, and give some of the best companies in town a wonderful space in which to work. They consistently present really strong work--this year alone saw The Hypocrites' stunning Cabaret, one of the year's best shows. It's a beautiful space and a consistently excellent slate of shows, and it would be a serious loss to the community to have it go away. A press release indicates that shows are scheduled through July, but will these still happen with such a diminished staff? And will there be anything happening in the fall of 2011 and beyond?

Please post in the comments any thoughts you have, and especially if you know any more information.

Another Quote on the NY Times Theatre Blog

2010-12-09T16:56:00.000-06:00

And now for a moment of shameless bragging:

The New York Times periodically offers the chance to ask questions of a theatre-related figure, some of which get answered. I was fortunate to get a question answered by Charles Isherwood back in February, and I've been fortunate enough to do so again. It was one of three questions answered yesterday after the three he answered Tuesday.

You can read the whole piece over at the site, but here's the question I asked:

Is there any figure — writer, performer, director, designer — who you feel has not been given enough credit for his or her influence on musical theater, or the quality of his or her work? Similarly, is there anyone you think gets too much credit? — Zev Valancy, Oak Park, Ill.

He answered as follows:

Too little credit? Yes, but may I call attention to a category of show contributors rather than to any one figure? I speak of the musicians who create the sound of Broadway. These are the more or less unknown men and women who take the work of a show’s songwriter(s), usually written at a keyboard, and flesh it out instrumentally (and sometimes even compositionally) to arrive at the way we hear it in the theater.

Among orchestrators I’d single out for starters Hans Spialek, Don Walker, and Jonathan Tunick; among arrangers, Genevieve Pitot and, above all, Trude Rittmann. Leonard Bernstein once referred to such musicians admiringly as the “subcomposers who turn a series of songs into a unified score.”

He's completely on-target in the assertion that orchestrators and arrangers are wildly underappreciated. It's easy to give the composer all of the credit for the way a show sounds, but listen to different versions of the same song to realize how untrue this is. Jonathan Tunick's huge orchestral arrangement for the original cast of Sweeney Todd gives a powerfully different impression from Sarah Travis' lean chamber version in the 2005 revival. The different sounds are one aspect of powerfully different experiences. (The contrast of Tunick's gorgeously varied orchestrations for the original production of Nine with the painfully generic ones by Doug Besterman for the misbegotten film version are a more unpleasant example of the same principle.)

I find Stempel's phrasing a little awkward and unclear (which doesn't bode well for the book itself), and would certainly add many names to his list, but it's a wonderful thing that he's helping orchestrators and arrangers get the attention they so richly deserve.

Dimond Steps Down

2010-12-08T10:41:00.000-06:00

Here's a pretty major piece of news for the Chicago Storefront scene: Nic Dimond is stepping down as Artistic Director at Strawdog Theatre. He's been in the ensemble there since 1995, and has been Artistic Director since 2003. There's an excellent interview with him up at "Reviews You Can Iews," which details the reasons, including his impending marriage (Mazel Tov!) and the growing company's need for an AD with somewhat different skills. He'll continue to be involved with the theatre, which is good news.

Strawdog, which has been producing since 1988, has made itself into one of the most reliable storefront companies in town: they have a lot of exceptionally talented people in their ensemble, a fun and welcoming 70-seat theatre that has the grit of a classic storefront while still being a comfortable place to see a show and a place where some really spectacular productions can occur, and a consistently audacious selection of shows that work more often than not. They're unafraid to do difficult plays, and frequently ones with very large casts, which is thrilling to behold. Two of my favorite shows of the year--The Good Soul of Szechuan and Red Noses--were at Strawdog, and while I missed their fall production of State of the Union (damn you, overscheduled October-November!), I'm going to do my best to see The Master and Margarita and The Conquest of the South Pole in 2011.

So congratulations to Nic and everyone at Strawdog for the work you've done so far, and I hope you all will continue to make great shows.

An Open Letter

2010-11-07T15:07:00.000-06:00

Dear Diane Keaton,

You have a new movie coming out on Wednesday. Congratulations, and I hope it does well for you. The trailers make it look okay, if nothing worthy of your talents. And let's be honest--what movies you've made in the past 15 years have been worthy of your talents? I mean, you made Something's Gotta Give more fun than it deserved to be, but it was a pretty thin piece. And sure The First Wives Club was cute, but come on. You're Diane Keaton. You were Kay Adams. You were Sonja in Love and Death. You were effing ANNIE HALL. You deserve WAY better than Because I Said So!

So I have a suggestion for you. Do a play. Historically, playwrights have had a much better idea of what to do with women over 40 than Hollywood executives. Find something juicy and classical to do, or better yet, a new play. I'm sure playwrights would be salivating over the chance to write something for you. And a number of actresses in later middle age have found success in theatre--Annette Bening does a show in LA every few years to great success, Susan Sarandon had a major success in Exit the King on Broadway a few years ago. Phylicia Rashad has turned herself into a major stage actress over the past decade. It's fun, it's probably a better part, and it's likely to be quite successful.

So please, Diane. Theatre audiences of the world await you with open arms. Come to the theatre, where we're fans of women over than 40 60. I mean, do you really want to do more movies like Smother?

Or if not, at least knock out Meryl Streep and play Violet in the film version of August: Osage County.

Love,
Zev

Remember Me?

2010-11-03T14:44:00.002-05:00

So funny story. You know what's even harder than maintaining a blog while looking for work? Maintaining a blog while working. So the good news is that I have a job (temp for now, possibility of permanent in future, reasonably enjoyable work and quite pleasing pay), recently dramaturged a play I'm really proud of, and am acting in another play I'm really proud of. The bad news is that leaving the house every morning at 7:30 and not getting back until after 11 rather takes away the time and desire to write. (I had a few ideas that fell by the wayside--a post on the Jeffs, a piece on literary adaptations that I started and never finished. Ah well.) But I've returned to plug, and plug I shall. And hopefully then I will get back to the work of chronicling theatre in Chicago and beyond.

I was privileged to serve as the dramaturg for Kingsville, by Andrew Hinderaker, at Stage Left. It's a really stunning show. The plot imagines an America where, in the wake of a string of school shootings, children are allowed to carry guns into the classrooms. But the play's not really about gun policy--it's a more complex moral inquiry into what strength and masculinity really mean, and how to live in a dangerous world. But the structure and pace are that of a thriller, and it definitely succeeds--every time I've seen it or house managed, there have been gasps of shock from the audience. It's a show that gets people incredibly excited, and the production is really excellent--Vance Smith cast a really exceptional ensemble (and the two teens in this will be seen a lot in coming years, I promise you) and helped them to do excellent work, while creating a compelling production. It's also Stage Left's first show at Theatre Wit, and fits the space beautifully--the set is fantastic, the staging fits the larger stage beautifully, and the more comfortable seats and ample bathrooms make everyone happy. The responses from the audience have been hugely enthusiastic, and I hope you'll be able to see it between now and November 21st, when it closes. As and extra bonus, three of the upcoming performances will be part of our Symposium Series, featuring conversations with experts on elements of the play, including a professor whose work on masculinity influenced the show, a lawyer for the plaintiff in the Supreme Court case that overturned Chicago's handgun ban, and a survivor of the Virginia Tech massacre who now is a gun control and campus safety advocate. The show runs Thursday-Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM through November 21st, at Theatre Wit, 1229 West Belmont. You can get tickets and more information here.

Meanwhile, on the acting front, tonight's the press opening for Halfshut, by Randall Colburn, at The Right Brain Project. I'm hugely excited about this. I've mentioned that I'm a fan of Randall's work a few times now, so you can imagine how thrilling it is to get the chance to act in one of his plays (one of his full-length plays, that is, though I did have the time of my life in Town Our at this year's DrekFest). What makes it particularly exciting is the process we've all been a part of: Randall took stories from the cast, the crew, and himself, and combined them with a fictional narrative thread to create a gorgeous play that blurs the lines between actor and character (and cast and audience) to exciting and moving effect. We're all playing characters based at least somewhat on ourselves, with relationships at least somewhat like our own. It's risky but incredibly exciting for me as an actor, and I think it makes for a show that's uncommonly involving and funny. I am incredibly proud of this play. We run Thursdays-Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 7 PM, tonight through November 4th at the Right Brain Project, 4001 N Ravenswood, Suite 405. That's just east of the Irving Park Brown Line stop or right off the 80 Irving Park bus. Our capacity is tiny (I think 28 if we squeeze), so I highly recommend that you make reservations soon by emailing tickets@therbp.org or calling 773-750-2033.

Thanks for listening to my plugs, and I hope to see you at the shows soon. Soon, hopefully, it will be back to my regular blogging!

Transitions

2010-09-26T21:03:00.002-05:00

You could also call this post "Ch-ch-ch-changes" if you were someone who liked that kind of thing. And if you are, kudos, it's an awesome damn song.

I've been rather neglectful of this blog recently. It's a damn shame, especially since I seem to have a decent number of readers who follow the site even when I don't write anything. Which is pretty cool. I appreciate it. But there have been some changes in my life, which will lead to some changes in this site, that I thought I should discuss with y'all.

The most important change is this: on September 1st, I left theatre criticism. It was a tough decision to make: I think I was pretty good at it, I enjoyed getting my take on things out there, and I loved the free tickets. It felt cool to be at opening nights, and it helped me to see a huge amount of theatre, which has introduced me to the awesome stuff being done in the city and helped me think and talk more intelligently about how theatre is made and how it affects the audience. I loved doing it, and I'd love to keep doing it.

However, criticism was never the only thing I did. I've been working steadily to get into dramaturgy and literary management, and recently restarted an acting career that I'd left behind. And in addition to my decent success in criticism, I've been fortunate to do well in these areas. My dramaturgy got me into the ensemble of Stage Left Theatre, which has been an incredible, sustaining artistic home for me over the past year and a half. I've worked with a number of other great groups, including Theatre Mir and Marriott Theatre, not to mention a hugely educational internship with the literary department at Northlight Theatre.

A few months ago, I stepped in to the position of Co-Literary Manager at Stage Left. It's an incredibly exciting job, but also a huge commitment. And the most crucial part of the job is building relationships with playwrights. Doing this while there's always the possibility I could turn around and criticize one of their shows in public would be a significant problem. This isn't to mention sheer time commitment issues, which are significant.

And just when I was getting used to my new work at Stage Left (not to mention the new apartment, which I discussed a few posts ago), I got let go from my temp job. I'd been working as a temp at one place for 11 months, and they'd kept put off hiring me due to budgetary constraints. Two weeks ago on Friday, I got a call from my agency, telling me that the company had decided to go another direction and I wasn't to return on Monday. I never heard any complaints about my performance on the job--and apparently that wasn't the issue. Someone who had previously worked the position contacted them with an interest in returning, and they took up that offer. (I'm guessing it was cheaper for them, though I don't know for sure.) Luckily I've gotten a decent amount of shorter-term temp work since (I worked two days last week and have four this coming week), and am slowly starting to look for full-time jobs (I wish I were more self-motivated.)

And I'm keeping myself busy with plenty of theatre work--I'm dramaturging Kingsville at Stage Left (which is completely bloody brilliant and I will keep promoting as the time comes closer), acting in Randall Colburn's new play Halfshut at the Right Brain Project (which is really exciting), and in process of finding scripts for next spring's LeapFest. If only some of it paid.

And what of this blog? I'm determined it will continue. There won't be any more straight-up criticism, but I'm going to continue discussing news, analysis, and commentary. I love writing, and have no plans to stop. So thanks to all of you for reading, and let me know if there's anything you want to see on the blog some time soon!

Playing In The Woods, Part 3

2010-09-15T14:56:00.001-05:00

And now, the long-awaited (or at least long-delayed) review of Another Part of the Forest, the last show I saw at American Players Theatre. Great apologies for the delay--explanations are forthcoming.

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Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, her 1946 prequel to 1939's classic The Little Foxes, was made for a proscenium stage--preferably one inside. It was the only production we saw that was a matinee Up The Hill, and certain moments suffered from the fact that it's impossible to have a blackout when the sun is shining. (The last moment of the play, particularly, though the musical cue still gave it a nice kick.) And the fact that it was quite hot and sunny didn't help, noticeably thinning the audience after the first intermission. So it's undeniable that the show had a tougher task than any of the others in the festival. But it certainly overcame the difficulties--Lillian Hellman wrote a tasty slab of melodramatic ham, and William Brown's production was just smashing, with everyone involved having a great time and keeping the audience entertained.

The play follows the scheming Hubbard family in 1880, 20 years before the events of The Little Foxes. The play delves into how they made their money and what made them who they became. It's often quite funny, but it's full of the "Old Testament Fury" that Brown mentions in his program notes: they may be absurd, and their antics fascinating, but there's no question that the Hubbards' ruthless scheming and acquisition of money and power is horribly destructive. That doesn't mean it's not fun to watch, though.

However, the melodrama takes a little time arriving. One of the strange adjustments for a contemporary audience watching the show is the delibarateness with which Hellman sets up the story. Act 1 isn't dull, but it certainly take some patience to get through it, as the script methodically sets each part of the plot in place. Authors don't take this methodical approach to exposition any more, but after adjusting, it's fun, raising anticipation for the explosions to come. And when the plot does get moving, it's delightful watching Hellman knock down what she just set up.

The cast has a fine time with their parts, making the characters pop from the stage even when they aren't entering through the aisles. Tiffany Scott makes a grandly manipulative Regina (though not nearly so dangerous as the older version), Marcus Truschinski chills the blood as the calculating elder brother Ben, Eric Parks and Tracy Michelle Arnold are hilarious as the feckless younger brother Oscar and Laurette, his lady love (who's also a lady of the evening), and Susan Shunk brings real pathos to Birdie. But the play belongs to the parents--Jonathan Smoots' Marcus, unshakably powerful in his own home until he isn't, and Sarah Day's Lavinia, seemingly addled and powerless, but with a few aces up her sleeve.

Some just won't take to the stately pace and reliance on plot twists. But for those who like it, this is a damn fine version of a hugely entertaining show.

Playing in the Woods, Part 2

2010-09-03T16:06:00.000-05:00

Athol Fugard, the great South African playwright, attacked the apartheid system with great force in his plays. Indeed, he was one of the country's most renowned artists during that shameful period. (Chicago saw productions of three of his plays from that era earlier this year.) But his work didn't stop when Nelson Mandela was elected president. APT is presenting Exits and Entrances, his two-character play from 2004, in the Touchstone. And while it doesn't have the raw power of his earlier works, it's still and entertaining and moving play, with sterling performances from David Daniel and Ken Albers.

Exits and Entrances is a memory play, exploring the relationship between the young Fugard (Daniel) and Andre Huguenet (Albers), one of the greatest South African actors of his era. By the time the play starts, in 1956, his career is on the decline. His Capetown production of Oedipus the King has a cast of miscast locals including Fugard, only 24, a ludicrously young version of the Old Shepherd, who also serves as Huguenet's backstage assistant. In conversations through the course of the run, as well as a reunion five years later, the playwright learns about Huguenet's life, regrets, and views on theatre, and shares his own theatrical dreams, life regrets, and fierce desire to change the country's horrible injustices.

The script's real advantage is in the characters: Fugard supplies a clear-eyed version of himself as a romantic young man, and a titanic Huguenet. This is the kind of part that actors dream of--grandiosity whipsawing into insecurity, dreams and desires beaten but not destroyed. And Albers makes a meal of it, making us care about this larger-than-life man and feel for his pain and disappointment. Daniel, though clearly somewhat older than his character, provides an appealing audience surrogate, full of ideals and artistic fire.

The script isn't quite as strong plot-wise. While the characters sometimes disagree, their main conflicts are either internal or with South African society. Most of the dialogue, therefore, consists of telling stories from the past and arguing issues. It's interesting to watch, but a little short on drama. Even though the show is less than 90 minutes long, it sometimes sags.

But it's really a chance to watch two actors doing great work up close. And for those who love great acting, it's definitely worth a trip.

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As You Like It is not named after its protagonist, like King Lear or Hamlet. But like them, it's unusually dependent on one performance: a production won't get far without a wonderful Rosalind. And the production at APT has found one in Hillary Clemens. She's completely lovable and delightful, with an easy command of the language and wonderful chemistry with Matt Schwader's Orlando. She's a strong center to Tim Ocel's lovely staging of one of Shakespeare's most complex comedies. The play is by turns hilarious, melancholy, philosophical, and life-affirming, and this production nails all of its moods.

Rosalind is the daughter of Duke Senior (Brian Mani), who was overthrown by his usurping younger brother, Frederick (Mani again), and exiled to the Forest of Arden. However, due to her friendship with Celia (Tiffany Scott), she is allowed to stay in the court. Orlando (Schwader) is the younger brother of Oliver (Darragh Kennan), who denies him his inheritance or any education and keeps him as virtual slave labor. Rosalind and Orlando fall in love at first sight when he comes to court and defeats the fearsome Charles (Michael Huftile), in a wrestling match. But just afterward Rosalind finds that she is being banished from the court. She, dressed as a boy, and Celia, dressed as a farmgirl, flee to the forest, where they encounter her father and his transplanted community, a group of lovestruck shepherds, and Orlando, on the run from his murderously angry brother.

The script balances a complex, quite silly plot with deep philosophical revelations and dizzy clowning, and it's tough to get them all right. But Ocel and company do it in the simplest way--playing the characters as real people with real problems. They're immensely likable, and our laughs are of recognition at frailties we share with the characters, rather than condescension. (One occasional exception is David Daniel's Touchstone, the fool: his clowning is often hilarious, but occasionally goes way too far outside the play's world, to jarring effect.)

Clemens leads the cast (which is excellent throughout), with able support from Scott, Schwader, James Ridge as the melancholy lord Jacques, and Nicholas Harazin and Ashleigh LaThrop as an unlikely rustinc couple. It's funny, exciting, and, in the end, deeply moving.

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Check back soon for my review of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest, the last show I saw at APT.

Playing in the Woods, Part 1

2010-08-31T16:13:00.000-05:00

This past weekend, I passed a major milestone in my life as a Chicagoan. (Or, given my move, a Chicagolandian.) I visited Wisconsin for the first time. This is something that absolutely everybody in Chicago does--it's close enough for a weekend car trip, it's cheaper than a lot of vacations, and it's gorgeous. But I had never had the chance to take advantage of it, and so felt like I was missing out on an experience common to all natives of this fine city.

But no more! Adam and I visited Wisconsin this weekend, and a particularly wonderful part thereof: The American Players Theatre near Spring Green, not far from Madison. The people of APT invited me to visit this past weekend. I saw four plays over three days, and will herein be reviewing them for you, along with the experience in general.

So what is APT? It's a classical theatre, in the middle of the Wisconsin woods. The Up The Hill Theatre--so named because it is in fact a quarter-mile hike up a hill to get there--is an open-air amphiteatre with 1148 seats and excellent acoustics. The Touchstone, which opened in 2009, is a lovely 200-seat indoor space.

APT starts with an absolutely unfair advantage: When the weather is nice (and it was absolutely perfect this weekend), the entire audience is in a great mood. Particularly for the shows I saw in the evening, I have rarely been in an audience that was happier and more excited to see a show. It certainly didn't hurt that all of the shows I saw lived up to that expectation, but the setting itself is an invaluable part of the company's success.

First, a few words on food: Picnics are part of the tradition at APT--there are tables all over the place--and with good reason. It's not a first-rate food town. There are a few places with fine-but-not-exceptional diner and pub food, and some fancy restaurants that are reportedly pretty wonderful (we didn't want to pay to find out), but the only really excellent meal that we had was at the Spring Green General Store, which has a delicious menu of salads, sandwiches, and soups, very fresh and tasty. (If you want a drink and snack, though, I highly recommend the Bird of Paradise Tea Room for some tea and pie. Oh man, that was good pie. And I'd have spent so much time picking a tea if they hadn't been about to close.) Premade picnics are available to order from the box office, and there are certainly enough grocery stores around to prepare one for yourself. If we are able to return, that's certainly what we'll do.

As for lodging: we were fortunate that the theatre put us up at the House on the Rock Resort. It's a lovely hotel (all of the rooms are suites), and certainly recommended for those who have the means, or a love of golf--the resort has 27 holes. However, there are more reasonable options available as well, though none so close to the theatre.

And if you are in the area, I recommend The House on the Rock. It's a hugely popular tourist attraction, and something that really must be seen: it's the creation of a possibly mad visionary who build a gigantic house and filled it with...stuff. There's a room that extends out hundreds of feet over open air, a giant carousel, and way more. It's unlike anything you've seen, and certainly an American original.

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After The House on the Rock, we saw the first show of the weekend, Shakespeare's All's Well That Ends Well. It's often known as one of his problem plays, and with good reason: the plot can potentially be quite off-putting. Helena (Ally Carey, who is remarkably only a year out of her BFA and still non-equity), a commoner and the orphaned daughter of a great doctor, is the ward of the Countess of Rossillion (Tracy Michelle Arnold), and in love with her son, Bertram (Matt Schwader). When she uses her father's medicines to cure the King of France (Jonathan Smoots), previously thought terminal, he grants her any husband she wants in the kingdom. She chooses Bertram, but he's horrified at the thought of marrying someone below his station, and just after their wedding runs away to war, the marriage unconsummated. She follows him to war, and initiates a scheme to win him back.

It would make sense to play this as bitter comedy, but director John Langs goes a different route. He emphasizes the characters' humanity and the reconciliation that comes at the end. There are many laughs, but rarely at the characters' expense. (The one exception is Jim DeVita as Parolles, Bertram's big-talking hanger-on, whom the script thoroughly humiliates. However, even he sees some redemption at the end.)

And it did wonders for a play I thought I knew--this production was more moving than I thought possible. I'd always thought of it as an odd, bitter little show, and the previous versions I saw didn't change my mind. But by emphasizing the characters' humanity and their consequences, without ever judging or dismissing them, Langs and his cast have given the show uncommon depth.

The acting is strong throughout, as it was in all four shows--the rotating repertory format clearly ups the game of everyone involved, and I wish there were more of it to be found in Chicago. Carey leads the way with an assured performance, making Helena's seemingly self-destructive decisions understandable, while Schwader makes you understand both why she wants him and why he doesn't deserve it. Arnold and Smoots bring moral authority to the play's older generation, and DeVita and John Pribyl are just hilarious, without taking the audience out of the play.

Langs' production does sag a bit in the second half--there were several sections when it seemed to take far too long to get through each plot point--but he's created a funny and moving production of a Shakespeare that often doesn't get the credit it deserves.

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I hope you enjoyed the first installment--check back soon for the other three productions we saw in Spring Green!

Where I've Been

2010-08-24T17:25:00.000-05:00

Well, the answer is, not on this blog. To the people who read the blog (and I'm hoping some are left after this three-week absence), I'm sorry to have left for so long. I tend to get very tense when my favorite bloggers don't update daily, so I would judge my own three-week absence as utterly inexcusable.

However, I haven't been completely lazy. Most importantly, I've been moving. My boyfriend Adam and I have finally taken the plunge into domesticity, and have gotten an apartment together in Oak Park. Leaving the city limits initially met with some qualms from me, but Adam's job is in Naperville, and the commute from the north side would have been brutal. Also, seriously, the place is gorgeous, and my commute is virtually the same duration now as it was when I lived in Uptown. And I live right north of the main library and across from a park! Anyhow, as you can imagine, my time and brain have been largely occupied with that. Indeed, I still sometimes burst out with spasms of real-estate speak, despite the fact that we moved into the place on the 15th. It's hard to retrain your mind.

As a side note, one of the bizarre side effects of my lurches into adulthood is that I'm getting excited about things that I never imagined being excited about. The most recent example is cleaning products. It's sad to say, but Mr. Clean Magic Erasers had me almost giddy with joy this weekend. It's like a sponge, but you wet it and rub it on stains on a wall (i.e. from furniture--pretty prevalent at the old apartment) and they DISAPPEAR! It's amazing! And I can rationalize my excitement by the fact that it's not really the cleaning product that excited me so much as not having to scrub. Oy, I'm becoming mature whether I like it or not.

What time I didn't spend moving was occupied with the various theatrical ventures I'm working on, rather than writing about. The biggest time investment was DrekFest, which had three utterly delightful evenings, and presented eight fantastic plays, four of which went on to become semi-finalists. The grand loser was Jake Lindquist's hilarious Man Vs. Carp. The whole event was a whole lot of fun, despite a few mishaps along the way, and I can't wait for next year.

I also spearheaded my first major initiative as Co-Literary Manager at Stage Left: several valiant ensemble members and I slew the dragon that is our pile of script samples. It had grown far beyond the ability of one person to read and sort through them, so a bunch of us took piles of ten and decided which ones merit a further reading. It was huge--and still has to be followed by the huger task of letting the playwrights know if we want to read their plays or not. On into the breach.

Anyhow, more than enough personal nattering has happened. What of the wider world of theatre! Well, August is a pretty quiet time for it. Most of the more established companies are briefly dormant, and as I took the month off from Centerstage, I didn't get to see what the smaller ones were up to. The one show I did see that really stuck out was the remount of Red Noses at Strawdog. Overall, it was really wonderful--a defiant statement in favor of joy and laughter, even when perched on the edge of the abyss. The cast was fantastic and the awesome Matt Hawkins (Is he directing anything in the 2010-2011 season? If not, why not?) staged it with immense creativity and incredible passion and punch. I had some issues with it--there were apparently significant script cuts, and while they did wonders for the running time and sense of pacing, they sometimes left characters and relationships feeling a little sketched-out. But overall I really loved it. After this and The Good Soul of Szechuan, Strawdog is fast getting onto the list of my favorite companies in town. I'm excited to see what they have coming up.

And finally, a small note on the coverage of theatre in Chicago. Chris Jones has managed to make his blog at the Trib into what is probably the most-widely read single source of press coverage on Chicago theatre. It's doubtless where a lot of people turn first, and a rave review from him can seriously alter the fortunes of a show for the better. (Just ask Suicide, Incorporated or Harper Regan.) Some take issues with his critical skills and style, but that's an occupational hazard of the profession. Few would deny that he's one of the fiercest and most public advocates for Chicago theatre. And part of his professional project appears to be a promotion of Chicago theatre as a brand. Someone might reading his articles would probably use adjectives like smart, scrappy, gutsy, intimate, in-your-face, fearless, making up in quality what it sometimes lacks in flash. (Not that he only praises shows with this type of aesthetic, or finds them in shows that don't have them, but he certainly mentions them when they are present and promotes them as Chicagoan.) People could certainly argue over whether such qualities are more present in Chicago's thatre than in other cities'--a question I couldn't even begin to answer. But I still think the promotion of a Chicago brand is a good thing--especially for people whose ideas of theatre are limited to a narrow aesthetic. The coverage promotes Chicago's home-grown shows and hopefully creates interest in everything the city has to offer.

But, as with many concepts, this Chicago brand can be over-used. Another issue is the fact that the nebulous concept of the Chicago brand is often evoked with a simple phrase: "Chicago-Style." And that's unfortunate. I love theatre in this town, but when I read the phrase "Chicago-Style," I think of pizza. And hot dogs. And when you put "Chicago-Style" in both the headline and the final sentence of a review, it's awfully difficult to concentrate on Frost/Nixon and keep the mind off of Lou Malnati's.

I understand that space is at a premium and punchy phrases are hugely useful to getting across ideas, and I certainly am in favor of Chris Jones' work in helping to promote the brand of theatre in Chicago. It's a wonderful thing and I hope he continues. I just think this particular phrase doesn't quite work.

Thoughts?

DrekFest Starts Tonight!

2010-08-02T16:37:00.000-05:00

As you should know, tonight marks the first evening of DrekFest 4 at Stage Left. You really need to come. 7:30, ComedySportz at 929 W Belmont, tickets available at the door, you can bring your drinks into the theatre. And four hilariously bad new plays, not to mention the reprise of the winner from 2008. Here's tonight's program:

You Didn’t See This Coming: The play with a twist ending you won’t see coming, by Kate Black
Untitled Brilliant Play (The Title Should Sound Very Artistic if You Have any Ideas): A True Opus Worthy of All the Greats, by James Thomson
Town Our: A Post-Structuralist Deconstruction of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”, by Drekfest 2009 winner Randall Colburn
Women & Men & Women: Or, I am Totally not a Misogynist, by Robert Karol.

While the votes are tabulated, an encore reading of The Worst Play from 2008 The Frenzied Beating of the Jungle Tom-Toms Once More, Once More, by Rob Kozlowski.

Next week sees four more hilarious plays and the return of the 2009 winner, and the following sees the top two shows from each night (by popular vote), with the grand loser winning a cash prize!

Oh, and if you want to see me act, this would be a very good chance. Especially if you want to see me as a supremely egotistical and insecure playwright attempting to win his ex-girlfriend back through pretentious theatrical deconstruction. Just saying.

Blog Exclusive Review: Les Enfants Terribles: Prom Night

2010-07-23T12:13:00.000-05:00

Sometimes Infantile, Not Terrible

(left to right) Scott Ray Merchant, Casey Kells, Chris Mueller, Alex Kyger, Eric Swanson, Brian Rad. Photo by Tom Hartmon.

When my roommate, brilliant actor/playwright/novelist Jessica Cluess, and I see a particularly strange piece of theatre or film, she generally turns to me with a shrug and says "Well, that happened." In a way it's a compliment: the art has, after all, provoked a reaction that's hard to put into words. There are many worse things a play or movie can do than weird you out. But if that's all it does, it's hard to argue that it's really effective--weirdness alone doesn't stick for long.

Well, Les Enfants Terribles: Prom Night certainly happened. What exactly was it that happened? Well, we're in a gym, decorated in patented tacky prom style (Shaun Renfro did the witty set). Just as a group of students (Jonathan Helvey, RyanLempka, and Amanda Beth Miller) are about to draw the name of the Prom King, Les Enfants burst in. Les Enfants, played by Casey Kells, Alex Kyger, Scott Ray Merchant, Christopher Paul Mueller, Brian Rad, and Eric Ryan Swanson, are a group of grotesque figures. They are wearing brownish, stained unitards, with foam-rubber growths of various kinds underneath--one has large, clunky feet, another gigantic breasts, the third a phallus that goes straight up to his sternum and what appear to be giant rabbit ears on his head. They chase out the people and proceed to enact a grotesque parody of the processes of courtship and prom royalty election, interspersed with bizarre a cappella performances of songs ranging from "All You Need Is Love" to "Tubthumping", violent beatings, and declarations of "I'm sorry. I'm really sorry." In less than an hour, it's done.

It's hard to make a recommendation on this show, because it depends so thoroughly on the taste of the audience members. For those who like aggressive, grotesque, bizarre humor, it's sidesplitting (and there were some in the audience). Others are likely to find it intensely unpleasant. I fell somewhere in between--moments made me laugh, others made me uncomfortable, and there were sections where I just got bored or felt like the show was repeating itself. The cast is clearly talented: they create clear and sharp characterizations and throw themselves into the show with complete commitment and unwavering intensity. (All are recent graduates of Roosevelt University.) It just doesn't add up to much, in the end. It's too weird to be silly, escapist comedy, but if there was any satirical point or commentary on humanity, it didn't come through to me. The show may just be going for "bizarre provocation with uncomfortable laughs", in which case it succeeds on those limited grounds--it's certainly bizarre and provocative, and often funny. It hasn't yet cohered into a compelling show, but it will be interesting to see how the group matures over time.

One important note: if you do go, dress as lightly as possible. The night we went, it was absolutely stifling in there, despite the best efforts of a few fans. Hopefully Red Tape will come up with another plan to keep the place cool, but for now, wear shorts and sandals if possible, and bring water.

Blog Exclusive Review: Hesperia at the Right Brain Project

2010-07-21T12:12:00.001-05:00

Full Disclosure: Playwright Randall Colburn is a friend of mine, and I'm friendly with director Nathan Robbel as well. I stand by the fairness and honesty of the review, but take it as you will.

Searching for Redemption

(Billy Fenderson and Katy Albert)

The desire for redemption is powerful: who hasn't felt they have sins that need to be washed away? But the drive to get away from your own sins can hurt other people horribly. That's the conflict that animates Hesperia, the second play in the Randall Colburn season at the Right Brain Project. It's not a perfect play, but it does enough things exceptionally well to be well worth a trip.

Claudia (Natalie DiCristofano) used to be a porn star named Jess. But one year ago, she fled L. A. and her old life and ran to Hesperia, a small, conservative, evangelical midwestern town near the one where she grew up. She's engaged to Trick (Nick Freed), the local youth pastor, and feels that she's gotten beyond her past. But now Ian (Billy Fenderson), her former lover and porn partner, who went to LA with her, has also come to Hesperia, looking for the same solution.

It's a plot setup ripe for sensationalism, which Colburn entirely avoids. In fact, the play does a remarkably good job at showing the appeal of religious conservatism. It was quite a surprise for someone, like myself, who has never been particularly religious--I felt the sense of belonging, of having one's toughest problems cared for, that must make an overwhelmingly religious communities so sustaining. The play is full of revelations like that--Colburn has a razor-sharp eye for the details of human behavior, and it's a joy to see moment after moment that's funny, moving, and painfully recognizable. (The production certainly helps in this respect.) It's rare for a play to have so many uncomfortably honest moments, and something special for this reason alone.

But while the truth of the characters and situations and the quality of the acting (more on that later) make the show consistently interesting to watch, the plotting doesn't always help. There isn't much plot tension to hold the show together. A plot strand that should provide an air of tension and sense of urgency feels perfunctory and is poorly devloped, such that when it gets resolved it almost doesn't register. It's not that it was ever supposed to be a highly plotty show (or at least it doesn't seem that way). But at this point it still has moments where it feels meandering, even though it's less than 90 minutes long, and the ending doesn't pack quite the punch that it should. (I'd also like another play, or a second act, to see what happens to these characters in the next few years, but that's beyond the scope of this review.)

Robbel knows Colburn's work (they collaborated on Pretty Penny a few months ago), and he leads his actors to excellent performances. DiCristofano has the least knowable character onstage (Claudia keeps a lot back), but she's always believable and sympathetic, even at her worst. Fenderson is likable, if a little frightening, as a man overwhelmed by the chance to will his past away. Freed is exceptional, making a character who could easily be a buffoon into the most sympathetic one onstage. Katy Albert, as a potential love interest for Ian, gives a hugely appealing and natural performance, despite the fact that her subplot needs more development.

Hesperia isn't a perfect play (and I think that Pretty Penny was better), but it's still damn impressive, and the folks at the RBP clearly know how to showcase Colburn's work to its best advantage. It's worth checking out for anyone interested in quality new plays, and hopefully a prelude to bigger things from all concerned.

I Write Lots of Things

2010-07-19T13:39:00.000-05:00

Here are two posts I wrote for other sites:

The first is "My Cherrywood Nights or David Cromer Stole My Childhood," a short essay on my experiences in the cast of Cherrywood that I wrote for Eric Roach and Anderson Lawfer's very funny "Cherrywatch" blog.
I've also got a new review up, of Bruised Orange Theatre's Daddy Long Legs. It's a one act noirish comic thriller performed at the on the lakefront in Rogers Park. It doesn't always work (the ending falls flat) but there's a lot of fun to be had in sitting on the beach and watching the proceedings.

Here's the Cherrywood piece:

Many of you, reading the various articles about Cherrywood (some of which are even based on fact, and interviews which actually took place) might have gotten the impression that David Cromer’s production is the Chicago premiere of Kirk Lynn’s 2004 Austin-set mindfuck. But it is not so. Shade Murray directed it as his first year directing project while getting his MFA at Northwestern. This is the production that Cromer saw, which got him interested in the script in the first place. Cromer then worked on it in a student production at Act One Studios, and now here it is at Mary-Arrchie, the Greatest Chicago Theatre Event In History.

But who remembers the previous productions? I do. I was in Shade Murray’s Cherrywood (and who hasn’t wanted to get in Shade Murray’s Cherrywood?), and I can tell the tale. Cromer used my experiences, from when I was a tender lad of 21, to create his play, and I feel used. And sort of exhilarated.

Shade chose twelve of the best and brightest—or at least twelve of the hardest to embarrass and least likely to ask “what’s the point of this?”—to be his intrepid cast. We viewpointed, we created unscripted moments, we did sun salutations, we didn’t know how the show was ending until about three nights before we opened. It was a little bit of a cult.

We had no budget for tech and no stage manager, so there were no light cues, the set was mostly made of cardboard boxes, the costumes were pulled from storage, and the sound cues came from Shade running his iPod from the booth, with speakers sitting on the back of the stage.

And it was pretty awesome. Yes, twelve people doesn’t make a realistic party, and yes, the script can get a little bogged down and/or weird. But I don’t think I’ll ever feel the same kind of ownership over a play again. We built that damn show with our bare hands. We had three performances in a hundred-some seat theatre and were done. (And it was the last show I did before my graduation the next month.)

But then Cromer saw it, and suddenly we weren’t so special any more. He just had to do it with a greater degree of difficulty: four times the cast size, an actual set, a reconfigured theatre, critics, and on and on. And of course he’s David Cromer, so he’s watched like a hawk by everyone, and doing something like this…well, that’s newsworthy.

So I’m torn between being happy that more people will get to know this show and being jealous that Cromer’s version has gotten way more attention. I’m no longer special for having in Cherrywood—in fact, theatre people in Chicago who haven’t are harder to find these days. And doubtless Cromer took some stuff from our production, or made some changes that feel wrong, or generally messed with my memories of the show. Things will doubtless drive my crazy about the production.

But fuck it. I’m still going.

And here's the review of Daddy Long Legs:

As far as set designs go, it's hard to compete with Lake Michigan. Daddy Long Legs sets up a few rows of chairs on Leone Beach in Rogers Park, overlooking the water, and unfolds a tasty little gangster story for 50 minutes. The setting sometimes bolsters the story and sometimes distracts, but even when interest flags, it's easy to enjoy an early-evening hour on the beach.

For those with a taste for noirish tales, the show's a lot of fun. It's 1929, shortly after the St. Valentine's Day Massacre. Bobby Widdle (Clint Sheffer, who also wrote the play) is meeting Mars Streznick (John Arthur Lewis) on the beach. Streznick arrives hauling a burlap sack filled with body parts — the remains of a hit. Bobby wants to find his wife, and Mars seems to know where she is. But he's not saying much, trying to convince Bobby to leave town while he can.

Sheffer does a good job teasing the audience with each morsel of information, keeping us hooked into the twisty plot. The script balances funny and suspenseful moments, while offering up some delightfully stylized dialogue and razor-sharp wordplay. He and Lewis each create compelling portraits of the feckless hoods: They are tough and dangerous, with something to hide, but aren't quite as smart or hard boiled as they think they are. Both are greatly helped by Anne Sonneville's costumes and Wes Clark's fight choreography. Unfortunately, the last 10 minutes, when the answers are revealed, manage to be both predictable and confusing. It's a disappointing end to an otherwise fun show.

And then there's the setting. The panorama is huge, and we could see everything from bright skies to dark clouds spewing lightning was visible at once. It was gorgeous and dramatic — and at its best moments, so was the play.

Blog Exclusive Interview: Nathan Robbel of the Right Brain Project

2010-07-14T23:55:00.000-05:00

The much discussed problem with the new play process in America is one of lots of development that rarely leads to actual production. Plays get workshopped to death. Well, this isn't happening at the Right Brain Project. Not only has artistic director Nathan Robbel programmed a three-play season of world premieres, they are all by the same playwright: Randall Colburn. The season started with Pretty Penny, which I really enjoyed. It now continues with Hesperia, the surprisingly tender story of a former porn star who seeks a redemptive future in the midwestern town where she was born. I talked to Robbel about why Right Brain chose to devote their season to Colburn's work and the process they've been using to bring his plays to life. I'll be seeing the show Friday, so I'll report back.

How did you first encounter Randall's work?
I was first introduced to Randall through a mutual friend of ours who felt I would take to his scripts and his style. She had been familiar with his work for some time, and I had directed her in a number of projects in the past few years. The first time I saw his work, however, was at a short play festival with Dream Theatre Company. The piece was short, obscure and non-traditional. But I remember being impressed at how quickly and efficiently he was able to create deep characters with so little.

What made you decide that he fit with Right Brain's mission and aesthetic, and how would you describe them?
The primary tenet of our mission statement has always been to find unique and unexpected ways to connect the audience to the actor. Whether that has been through breaking the fourth wall, physically touching the audience, or simply delivering something non-traditional, we've always felt that theatre should be a communal experience beyond simply sitting in the dark and watching a story unfold. It excites us when we can find ways to get the audience closer to the story, characters, and the overall "theatrical experience" than might be expected.

As far as our aesthetic is concerned... The short answer is that our aesthetic is highly influenced and dictated by our resources. We're constantly asking ourselves how can we best serve the story and deliver a satisfying, sometimes larger-than-life theatrical experience within our limitations - and how do we turn our limitations into an advantage? We've often labeled our shows (rather tongue-in-cheek) as "epic minimalism." Instead of apologizing and finding ways to hide our limitations, we choose to embrace them and find ways to weave them into the fabric of the production as a positive means to an end - which is telling a story as strongly and as emotionally truthful and resonant as possible. I would like to think that if our productions were mounted in a larger space or with significantly larger resources, that they wouldn't be nearly as effective. We strive to make choices that embrace what we have to their fullest potential.

Randall's work fits this mission and aesthetic particularly well. Take Pretty Penny, for example. While I'm always hesitant to apply labels to scripts, one could call the script grounded in realism. It could easily be done on a huge budget with multiple sets and loads of props to accurately depict the "real" world, and that may be the obvious choice. And we could have exhausted ourselves attempting to make that happen. But due to our limited budget, we chose to forgo all of those things. By committing to miming everything in the show, hopefully the audience accepted the convention from the very first scene and instead concentrated fully on these characters and their inner struggles. Suddenly Randall's characters, which are full of nuance, complex motivations, and deep-rooted issues, were a force to be reckoned with. There is literally nothing in between the audience and the psyche of these people. We watch their faces and their eyes, as there is nothing else on stage to see. Suddenly quiet moments between characters become extremely important. In fact, a scene can become ABOUT those quiet moments. And when we're forced to slow down and give over our full attention, a great actor can take us with them on their emotional journey. Randall's work is full of these tender, quiet moments, and given what we have to work with, they become the centerpiece of the production.

And from there, why a full season of his shows? It's a pretty big risk to take on someone who isn't well known to the general public.
Truth be told, it just felt right. When I saw a staged reading of Hesperia, it knocked my socks off. There was so much nuance happening just in between the lines of the script - it didn't need any bells and whistles. In fact, I can only imagine that layering in elements of that sort could only detract from what I was witnessing. I felt close to these actors, and their struggles resonated. It was powerful stuff. In an intimate space like ours and with committed, excited actors, I knew we could fully harness what I felt Randal was trying to achieve with his scripts. It just seemed right.

And as far as risk is concerned... I fully believe that if one does work they're passionate about, and does it well, the audience will eventually come. I strive to never compromise what feels right artistically for the RBP. Sure, when one considers we could be doing more established work that may draw in larger audiences, there's a risk to devoting an entire season to one local playwright. But I believe in Randall's work, and I believe that we're a worthy vehicle for his scripts. We can only hope that people catch on, and will appreciate what we're doing. I've been completely satisfied thus far, and I believe our actors and our crew feel the same.

Had you done any readings or workshops of his stuff, or did you just jump in to produce?
We held a reading of Pretty Penny for our own sake very early in the process. It was kind of an opportunity to hear it out loud, chat about it, and give Randall a chance to approach the script again with fresh eyes. But really, most of the work on the script came from Randall, our wonderful dramaturg Jamie Bragg, and me chatting about the script and what we wanted to accomplish, and what was within our means to bring to life given our resources. Because this was a new work, our rehearsal time was extended by about a week and a half or so, in case we encountered the need for re-writes. But really, that was about it. I went with my gut. I loved the script, and I loved his style, and I had to trust that our audience would as well. And I felt we could successfully work together as an ensemble to make this work efficiently. In the end, we were extremely lucky to find the cast we did, as they were highly professional, willing to play, and they jumped right in. And we've been just as lucky with the cast and crew of Hesperia. I couldn't be happier with the enthusiastic people I'm working with. It's a joy to produce with people so excited about a project.

Pretty Penny is about a young woman who starts a job at a no-limit phone sex line. It looks at desire and identity, without being exploitative. Do Hesperia and the third play of the season explore similar themes? What can we expect?
Hesperia most certainly follows a similar theme, but down a slightly different path. While it's a very different show, both in terms of story and presentation, its themes are connected, and these characters definitely feel like they exist in the same world - just very different corners of it. Pretty Penny's characters are in various stages of attempting to redefine and reinvent themselves on their own terms, to varying degrees of success - and sex and sexuality is the catalyst. Hesperia explores a woman's attempt to do the same, but more specifically she is trying to find a purity and an innocence that she feels she has strayed from. She is seeking redemption, and in many ways, a return to childhood. She latches onto the small town of Hesperia and the Evangelical Christian environment that permeates the town to do so. But like Pretty Penny, Hesperia delves into some uncomfortable places - specifically in its raw depiction of sexual desire that is refreshing and almost disturbingly innocent in a way I've never before encountered in a script.

Our third show of the season, entitled Halfshut, will hopefully go to some similar places as well. I can't outright say what to expect, except that we're striving to blur the line between actor and character more than ever before, and we hope to continue to dwell on similar themes of identity and the role that sexuality plays in that.

So give your final pitch: why is it important for you to produce a full season of Randall Colburn's plays, and why should audiences come see it?
When so many new scripts attempt to tackle big ideas, political or social trends and upsets, Randall's plays are simple and there is a familiarity to his characters that he achieves through small moments. And it's these small moments that we can all relate to. A song that was playing at our prom when we knew we were in love, or the awkward anticipation of holding someone's hand, or the remembrance of an event that touched our heart. These are good people, with their own private struggles, and our vulnerability can be seen in those small moments. While we're surrounded by large political and social issues, at the end of the day, when we look in the mirror, we're there with ourselves and those private struggles. And really, when we connect to other people, it's these small, personal struggles that we all have in common. We hope audiences will see a show, relate to the character, and by proxy, relate to the actor willing to be vulnerable in such an intimate space. All we have are each other, and if art can take us on a personal journey with another person, that's a beautiful thing.

Hesperia opens July 15th and plays through August 15th, running Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8 PM. All shows play at the Right Brain Project, 4001 N Ravenswood, which is accessible by the Irving Park Brown Line stop, the Irving Park, Damen, and Lincoln buses, and the Ravenswood Metra, as well as boasting ample street parking. Tickets are $15, $12 in a group. Tickets at 773-750-2033 or tickets@therbp.org

Goodbye, Harvey

2010-07-13T13:56:00.001-05:00

This post isn't about Chicago or theatre (though American Splendor was adapted for the stage in a production starring Dan Castellanata in the 1980's), but please read it anyway. You should know about Harvey, and might want to check his work out.

Harvey Pekar, a comic book writer best known for American Splendor, a series based on his own life, was found dead by his wife Joyce shortly before 1 AM Monday morning. Pekar was also a jazz writer of renown, writing reviews, liner notes, and pieces for anthologies. (He also wrote at least one jazz-related comic.) He and his wife lived a few blocks from the house where I grew up in Cleveland Heights, and he was a friend.

We weren't close, and I'd mostly lost touch with him and Joyce, but I hung out in the man's living room (overflowing with books and records, of course) and wanted to share a few memories.

I met Harvey and Joyce through Danielle, their foster daughter. We went to camp together (I was 13 at the time, she was a few years younger), and I ended up spending time with the then-new family. We discussed theatre, politics, music and more. They gave me copies of several issues of the comics--which let me tell you, is heady stuff for a 13 year old to read. That kind of insight into life cuts pretty deep at any age, much less when you're a mixed-up, still-sorta-closeted, unsure of how to live out your intense artistic ambitions early-adolescent. Conversations with them had the rare combination of validating my right to hold and express artistic and political opinions (not often something granted to 13 year olds by non-relatives) with challenging me to actually understand and support them. It was exasperating at times, but it helped open my mind.

And of course there was the undeniable, possibly shallow thrill of being friends with a nationally recognized artist. I got to introduce my Uncle Lou, for whom Harvey's comics and especially his jazz writing were touchstones, to him. And for a small group of in the know people, Harvey Pekar was the coolest Cleveland celebrity one could know (Drew Carey be damned).

And of course there was the movie--the 2003 film version of American Splendor, which combined interviews with Harvey and Joyce, fictional scenes in which they were played by Paul Giamatti (some of his best work ever, his lack of an Oscar nomination was shameful) and Hope Davis, and animated sequences to tell the story of his life and work. It was shot in Cleveland, and used a bunch of local actors. Harvey and Joyce generously put my name in the front of the line to audition to be an extra. I was never able to, due to school scheduling issues, but my mother (my ride to the audition) ended up getting called twice--and now appears for 7 seconds in the background of an Oscar nominee for best screenplay. (And for once the film version of a comic book completely lives up to the source material--it's well-acted, well-adapted, funny, creative, and moving. Rent it.)

And of course he meant a lot to Cleveland, especially Cleveland Heights. Cleveland gets a lot of flak (some of it deserved and some of it from me), but his stories showed the city in a much deeper light than the "mistake on the lake" taunts that get slung at it. There's a lot of beauty in Cleveland, and especially Cleveland Heights. And just about everyone in town seemed to have met him at least once, and they all liked him.

So rest in peace, Harvey. You were a brilliant man, a good soul, and a great artist. It was a pleasure to know you as well as I did, and I wish I'd done a better job at staying in contact. My city was better for having you in it, and I'm fortunate for having read your work. You went way too soon, but I hope that more people will get to know your work now. My infinite sympathies to Joyce, Danielle, and all of your family and friends. Thank you.

If any of you have memories of Harvey personally, or were touched by his work, please put them below.

Before It Hits Home

2010-07-08T09:23:00.000-05:00

I've still not been in the bloggiest of moods (it happens), but here are a few things of interest from the past week.

--This past Saturday, July 3rd, was Audra McDonald's 40th birthday. (As she was born in 1970, that means she won four Tonys before her 34th birthday. You may commence hating.) She's a truly stunning performer. Not only does she have a surpassingly beautiful voice, but she acts both songs and scenes with complete commitment and honesty. I have yet to be disappointed by her work--or indeed, be anything other than stunned. So if you have one of her discs, listen to it and wish her a happy belated birthday. If not, order a few, and watch her on youtube until they arrive. Also, hope that Private Practice, her TV show, ends soon, so that she can get back on Broadway and in the recording studio. You'll thank me.

--And this past Sunday was July 4th. A day later, I managed to get to my annual tradition for the day: listening to the original cast album of 1776. What a great play. Tuneful songs, a raft of fantastic performances (I believe that William Daniels' John Adams, which can be heard on the album and seen in the surprisingly good film adaptation, is among the greatest musical theatre performances ever.), and a stunningly crafted book, which somehow leaves the audience in nail-biting suspense as to whether the Declaration of Independence will be signed. It's a show I utterly love, and it may even be in my personal top 10 musicals list. So if you're not familiar with the show, go track it down immediately. If you are, listen to it again.

--The Hypocrites have announced their 2010-2011 season, and it looks facinating (and bizarre).Greg Allen of the Neo-Futurists is directing his own adaptation of Kafka's The Trial, called K. Based on the reputations of both Kafka and Allen, it's sure to be a brain-bender. Sean Graney, the company's artistic director (whose work I've usually loved in the past) will direct his own version of Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, a seminal, legendariy weird, 19th-century play which has been hugely influential and which I have never gotten around to seeing or reading. (It will be running concurrently with other adaptations of the work at About Face and Collaboraction next season.) Both of those, while ambitious works, sit relatively comfortably within The Hypocrites' aesthetic. The shock in the announcement is the third production: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Pirates of Penzance. Yes, the surpassingly silly and slyly satirical British operetta, filled with patter songs, soaring melodies, and ridiculous plot twists. Graney will direct, and whether or not it works, it's sure to infuriate Gilbert and Sullivan purists and be unlike anything else playing in Chicago. I'll be there.

--And finally, a poll question. The AV Club has a discussion question every Friday, which is answered by the staff members and then discussed in the comments section. This past Friday, the question was:

When have you felt like a work hit close to home for you, or almost like something was made just for you?

The staff members responded with a variety of movies, albums, and books. None of them mentioned a play. (This doesn't particularly surprise me.) So I figured I'd open the question up for you guys. What theatrical work, either seen on stage, read as a script, or listened to as a cast album, really hit home for you?

I'll start.

For me it would have to be the character of Posner in Alan Bennett's The History Boys. Few plays I've ever seen have been so accurate in their portrayal of how being an adolescent really feels, and few characters have ever felt as much like me as Posner. He's gay, Jewish, and short, he's wracked with desire for an unattainable man, and he never feels truly accepted by the people around him. Now people could argue, quite accurately, that there are significant differences between me and him: I'm not as socially awkward, able to make my way through the world reasonably well, and much more fortunate in love. But that doesn't mean that there still aren't moments--or weeks--when I feel just like him. To see a character with whom I identify so strongly onstage is spooky and moving. To learn that his life turns out badly is devastating.

How about you?

New Review Posted: Lookingglass Alice

2010-07-02T15:13:00.000-05:00

Another week of extra-blog worries, another week of no posting. (And my connection to a few of the things on which I might post is a little too personal for me to think of a good way to write on them just yet.) And when I had a review published on Monday, too! Shame on me.

Anyhow, Lookingglass Alice is pretty damn cool. It has issues in terms of storytelling and emotional heft--any version is necessarily episodic, which this doesn't fix, and few of the poignant moments really connect the way they're supposed to. But damn if it doesn't make you ooooh and aaaah over and over again. It's best for kids (and there weren't that many the night I went), but there's more than enough for adults to love. Who says we don't deserve to go oooooh and aaaahhh too?

Anyhow, here's the text:

There is one thing any adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice novels must be: full of wonders. And while "Lookingglass Alice" has some flaws, it is a stunning success by that standard. There isn't a show in town with a higher wow-to-minute ratio.
The play, adapted by David Catlin, who also directs, follows the structure of "Alice Through the Looking Glass," using material both from that novel and from "Alice in Wonderland." Using a cast of only five, it embodies scenes from the novels with stunning clowning and circus work. Everything from the Caterpillar to the mad tea party to Humpty Dumpty appears, but none just replicate the images to which we're accustomed — the production re-imagines them in a thrillingly theatrical way.

It suffers from the primary flaw that any adaptation of the source material does: the novels are episodic, lacking any compelling dramatic throughline. This is fine on the page, but can leave any live version feeling like a string of brilliant moments that don't entirely connect. Catlin's version makes connections between the story and the process of growing up, but it doesn't solve the problem. And though all of the displays of circus arts are stunning, some go on too long.

But when the show is this entertaining, it's hard to care. The cast is spectacular, with each member having multiple moments to shine while working as a flawless ensemble (all but Alice play a wide variety of parts). Alice never leaves the stage, and Lindsey Noel Whiting makes us love her while making the acrobatics look easy. Among the many great characters created by the other actors are Molly Brennan's imperious Red Queen (do not check your cell phone when she's onstage), Anthony Fleming III's sinuous Cheshire Cat, Thomas J. Cox's daffy White Knight, and Kevin Douglas' crazed Mad Hatter. All five (and the superb designers and stage crew) make the magic happen, and it's a wonder.

Lots of Writing

2010-06-25T12:44:00.001-05:00

So I've been a bit quiet on the blog recently, in part because a lot of my time has been going to acting in The Face of a Ruined Woman (See the new play by Mia McCullough! Two performances left, 6/27 at 7:30 PM and 7/3 at 2 PM! Call 773-883-8830 for tickets!), but partially because I've been doing a lot of outside writing. And now it's starting to get published, though one more review is still to come.

So first, and most exciting: I interviewed David Cromer about Cherrywood for the AV Club Chicago. You can read the interview here. Cromer's a fascinating man (though it proved rather difficult to track him down to talk), and I wish I'd gotten more time to speak with him. On the other hand, I had to cut at least 2/3 of our 20 minute conversation to get within the word count, so maybe it's for the best we spoke so briefly. Either way, I'm really proud of the piece. I wish it had gotten a response on the site, but hey, it's not too late to comment. Now I need to get my Cherrywood tickets...

By the way, if there's interest, I can share some interview outtakes.

Additionally, I've got two reviews up. (A third, for Lookingglass Alice is on the way.) These were shows I saw last Saturday and Sunday evenings:

First up was The Tallest Man at The Artistic Home. It was never boring, and there's real talent, but I found the extreme shifts in tone and focus to be extreme problems. I was confounded more than anything else. There's real talent involved, though, so I hope the next show works out better. Here's the text:

Jim Lynch, playwright of The Tallest Man, has a lot of stories to tell. Unfortunately, his new play tells all of them at once.

There’s "drunken Irishman" humor, warm-hearted satire, political commentary, bruising dysfunctional-family drama, deeply felt anguish, and a ghost story. And that’s all before the truly baffling deus ex machina ending. Sections work — some quite well — but overall, it is a confounding experience.

The play takes place in Tourmakeady, a small town in Ireland's County Mayo, in 1895. There are many challenges: Finbar (Shane Kenyon) wants to marry Katie (Marta Evans), but her mother (Miranda Zola) refuses because he is a tinker (an itinerant racial and social minority). Finbar and his cousin Frankie (Nick Horst), who is new to town and still mourning his parents, are trying to safeguard the home of Finbar’s mother (Darrelyn Marx). Everyone is trying to avoid the attention of Thaddeus Newcombe (Eamonn McDonagh), the new representative of the town's English overlord. Well, except for Tommy Joe (Frank Nall) and Johnny (Bill Boehler), who just care that the whiskey keeps flowing.

The problem is not that there are a lot of stories, it's that they all work at cross-purposes. When a plot twist out of an old melodrama butts up against an grief-stricken description of a father’s death, followed shortly by relatives exchanging blows like something out of Martin McDonagh, none of it has impact. Lynch has a real way with dialogue, and there are some appealing performances, notably Horst and Nall.

The designs, particularly Ellen Siedel's costumes, are attractive and effective (though the uncredited fight choreography is remarkably unconvincing). The show is rarely dull, but when every scene seems to have a new tone and narrative focus, it's nearly impossible to make sense of the experience, much less be emotionally involved.

The next night was Sweet and Hot: The Songs of Harold Arlen. I'm a huge fan of Arlen's music, so it was great to hear these songs live. He really was in a class by himself, both musically and emotionally, but so many of his songs are unfamiliar. (Also, a lot of people don't realize he wrote all of the songs he wrote--he doesn't have the same name recognition as Gershwin, Rodgers, or Porter.) Hearing them sung live and unamplified, up close, was enough to make this show fantastic for me. It had definite issues, outlined below, and it never really worked as theatre (attempts to give people characters and relationships just fell flat), but the songs are just so great, and sung so well, that I'm still very glad I went. However, please note: the dinner is $20, and, while good, is not worth it. I'd recommend getting dinner elsewhere first. And as I learned, it is not included for critics. Whoops. But otherwise, by all means go. Here's the text:

There are two kinds of people: those who already love Harold Arlen’s songs, and those who will when they hear them. Arlen incorporated the harmonies and emotions of the blues into the popular and stage music of the 1930s to the '50s to create musically gorgeous and emotionally vibrant songs. He's best known for "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," but his catalog is full of gems, famous and obscure. Theo Ubique's revue, conceived by Julianne Boyd, gives us three dozen, and it's a thrill to hear each glorious tune. The production has some flaws, but when it focuses on the songs, it's transporting.

The No Exit Cafe is an odd little cabaret space, best suited to the intimate solos and duets. Nearly every production number attempted by director Fred Anzevino and choreographer David Heimann falls flat. This is a shame, but it's still an ideal space to get close to a performer and really hear the song. (The entire show is blissfully unamplified.)

The cast's three women dominate the show. Stephanie Herman is the ideal ingenue, by turns effervescent and vulnerable, with a crystalline voice. Sarah Hayes is completely honest at every moment, enlivening both comic songs and ballads. And Bethany Thomas continues to prove herself a local treasure with her huge voice and magnetic presence: When she sings "Stormy Weather" and "The Man That Got Away," they stay sung. The men don't fare as well: While Eric Lindahl is utterly lovable (and vocally gorgeous), Eric Martin doesn't get much chance to distinguish himself and Kristofer Simmons' breathy voice and peculiar interpretations simply don't fit with the rest of the show.

But in the end, it's about the songs. And they are stunning. The show does right by them far more often than not, so it's more than worthwhile for Harold Arlen fans, current and soon to be.

DrekFest Dealine Approaching! And Please Help Stage Left Win Money!

2010-06-22T09:37:00.000-05:00

Hey all you budding bad-play writers,

The deadline for DrekFest, Stage Left's nationally recognized search for the worst 10-minute play, is nearly here! You don't want to miss the chance to be performed, winning fame and (a little bit of) fortune! All of the details are here.

And speaking of Stage Left (and when am I not?), don't you want to help us win $20,000, at no cost to yourself? Well you can! If you are on Facebook, you can vote for us at Chase Community Giving. The 200 nonprofits with the most votes at the end of voting on July 12th are guaranteed the money! As of this morning, we are ranked #24, and we currently have 484 votes. But we have to keep up the momentum to win the cash. Click here to get all the instructions and do a wonderful thing!

A Big Post About Stage Left

2010-06-16T21:35:00.001-05:00

So as most of you really should know by now, I'm an ensemble member of Stage Left Theatre here in Chicago. My particular focus is on dramaturgy and literary work, and I've been working as a Literary Associate for several months to help in the office. Well, to reflect the amount of work I've been doing and allow me to pursue some of my ideas, I've officially been named Co-Literary Manager, along with Kevin Heckman, who has been Literary Manager. He's also brilliant and insanely knowledgeable about how to find and cultivate new scripts, so it's also awesome on the job training.

The two of us working together will be able to wrestle the giant piles of scripts down to manageable size, not to mention getting scripts read and responded to with a briefer lag time. We'll also be more selective about the scripts we call in, so that everyone's limited time is used as well as possible. We're also going to be more proactive about going after the great scripts that are out there and developing the ones that interest us, not to mention creating and maintaining relationships with playwrights worth knowing in Chicago and outside.

I'm incredibly excited to be working with Kevin and Artistic Director Vance Smith on this wonderful work, and personally thrilled that I actually get to put this title after my name. I can't wait.

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And now for the part plugging the whole theatre, not just me:

Tomorrow night sees the opening of LeapFest 7, Stage Left's annual festival of workshops of brand new scripts. This year has a really wonderful lineup of plays, and I can't wait to see them all. I recommend you get to as many as possible, but I have to put in a particular plug for The Face of a Ruined Woman by Mia McCullough. She's a brilliant writer, and an emeritus ensemble member at Stage Left, and she's written a play that really stretches her and the audience, exploring the relationship women have with their bodies in a way that's smart, moving, and very funny. Also, I'm performing in it--my first acting gig in 18 months--and I'm unbelievably proud that this is my return to performing. There are performances this Friday, 6/18, at 7:30, next Sunday, 6/27, at 7:30, and Saturday, 7/3, at 2:00 PM. Make sure to get tickets (only $12!) or Leap Passes, letting you into all five shows as many times as you like (only $25!) soon: performances frequently do sell out. Here's the official press release:

LeapFest is an annual series of emerging plays with socio-political themes, presented as workshop productions in rotating repertory. The festival is the culmination of Downstage Left, a multi-tiered development program with the goal to cultivate and support new and emerging voices and inspire playwrights to address the political and social issues of our day. Join us again this year to see what's next in Chicago theatre!

All performances are at Stage Left Theatre, 3408 North Sheffield Avenue in Chicago. Single tickets are $12. A LeapPass, allowing entry to all five show, is $25. For tickets, call 773-883-8830 or visit www.stagelefttheatre.com.

THE PLAYS

BEATEN
by Scott Woldman
directed by Drew Martin*
assistant directed by Jake Lindquist
starring Kate Black*, Cat Dean*, Ian Maxwell*, Morgan McCabe, and Kelsey McClarnon
Saturday, 6/19 @7:30pm
Sunday, 6/27 @ 2:00pm
Thursday, 7/1 @ 7:30pm
What do you do when your nerdy best friend wants benefits and more, your grandma intends to party until she drops (literally), and your mom is determined to see you succeed even if it kills you? Poignant, disturbing and shockingly funny, BEATEN tells the story of a young woman’s efforts to survive the best intentions of a family who has gone off the rails.

THE FACE OF A RUINED WOMAN
by Mia McCullough †
directed by Greg Werstler*
assistant directed by Gretchen Wright
starring Emi Clark, Melanie Derleth*, Kamal Hans, Jenn Pompa, Allison Torf, and Zev Valancy*
Friday, 6/18 @ 7:30pm
Sunday, 6/27 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 7/3 @ 2:00pm
In well-to-do Northshore suburb, a local spa causes controversy with a billboard ad featuring a picture of a gorgeous woman in a bikini, superimposed with arrows suggesting how she could be cosmetically enhanced. Some of the key players discuss their involvement in the image being protested, vandalized and ultimately taken down.

THE MEANING OF LUNCH
by Dan Aibel
directed by Jason Fleece*
assistant directed by Lorenzo Blackett
starring Melissa DiLeonardo, Sandy Elias, Gabe Estrada, and Mark Pracht*
Sunday, 6/20 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 6/26 @ 7:30pm
Wednesday, 6/30 @ 7:30pm
As their family business hits a dry spell, a father and son receive an intriguing offer that forces them to grapple with globalization and each other.

MOTHER BEAR
by Jayme McGhan
directed by Artistic Director Vance Smith
assistant directed by Katie Horwitz
starring Christopher Marcum, Tim Musachi, Brian Plocharczyk*, Rinska Michelle Prestinary, and Margaret Scott.
Sunday, 6/20 @ 2:00pm
Friday, 6/25 @ 7:30pm
Friday, 7/2 @ 7:30pm
A union organizer attempts to recruit a gang of truckers and their notorious leader in the Utah Desert. Mother Bear is a hard-hitting, plot-twisting, pedal-to-the-floor haul down the darkest parts of America's highways.

OUR KIND OF VIOLENCE
by Steve Spencer
directed by Rachel Edwards Harvith
assistant directed by Rachael A. Schaefer
starring Justin Cagney, Tom Lally, John Luzar, Eric Smies, and Helen Young
Thursday, 6/17 @ 7:30pm
Thursday, 6/24 @ 7:30pm
Saturday, 7/3 @ 7:30pm
Some people get to limp through life. No amount of therapy or Paxil can reach them. If you're one of these unlucky souls, sometimes you just have to kill somebody.

Production Staff:
Production Manager -- Caitlin Parrish
Production Stage Manager -- Christopher Thompson*
Set and Props Designer -- Heather Ho
Lighting Designer -- John Kohn III*
Costume Designer -- Erin Gallagher
Sound Designer -- Justin Glombicki
Fight Choreographer: Brian Plocharczyk*

* Stage Left Ensemble Member
†Stage Left Emeritus Ensemble Member

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And finally, as announced on our website, we have chosen our 29th season, the first in our beautiful new home at Theatre Wit, 1229 West Belmont in Chicago. You can read the official press release there, but here's my take on why you really want to subscribe.

Running from October 19-November 21 of this year is Kingsville by Andrew Hinderaker, whose play Suicide Incorporated just opened to great acclaim at the Gift Theatre, and directed by Artistic Director Vance Smith. It starts from the terrifying premise of a United States that, in the wake of a string of school shootings, passed a constitutional amendment allowing children to carry guns. But it's hardly a simple anti-gun tract: it searches deep into questions of what manliness, strength and morality are, and doesn't give any easy answers, all while being a superbly told story that will put a knot in your stomach and send a shiver down your spine. I couldn't be prouder to be the dramaturg.

Our spring show, running March 1-April 3 of 2011 is Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People, adapted by Arthur Miller, and directed by ensemble member Jason Fleece. It's a classic play, something we haven't done since 2002, and we are thrilled to expand our mission to allow in older scripts that still speak to contemporary audiences. And this one is just smashing. Miller respects Ibsen's brilliant play while making the stakes and motivations crystal clear for a contemporary audience. It's a big show, with a large cast of vibrant characters (many of whom will be played by our fabulous ensemble members), and a gripping story. It's going to be awesome--and I'm again thrilled to be dramaturging it.

June will see LeapFest 8. Of course we have no idea what the plays will be yet, but work on finding and selecting them will probably start shortly after LeapFest 7 ends. And it will be wonderful.

Don't you want to come see our bold jump into the future? It will be thrilling, I assure you!

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And after all that, don't you want a chance to support Stage Left, without any cost to yourself? Just log into facebook, become a fan of Chase Community Giving, and vote for Stage Left to get $20,000 in funding from Chase Bank. You can click here to be taken directly to our page. And if you're with a group that is also involved, post on our wall that you support us and we'll make sure to visit and support you as well! Thanks in advance for your help, and I can't wait to see you at Stage Left!

Tony Award Post-Mortem (Literally)

2010-06-16T00:53:00.000-05:00

Alright, I think I've recovered from Sunday night.

(And first off, sorry for the two week layoff of posting. For reasons that will become clear soon, what little creative energy I have was already taken, and blogging wasn't going to happen.)

I've been watching the Tonys yearly since 1994 (taping the show when I was too young to stay up for it), and this may be the worst ceremony I've ever seen. There are many reason, and I'll go into them, but we need to start with the primary problem:

The Tonys are a niche show. The best of that year's Broadway season will never have a wide audience, because most people simply don't care. We can try to get the word out, we can pray, but it will never have the same cultural centrality that it once did. So let go of this idea that by putting famous people with minor connections to theatre onstage, you can get people to watch. There is no fan of Will Smith rabid enough that they will watch a 3-hour award show because he is one of the presenters. Some rabid "Glee" fans might have tuned in because Matthew Morrison and Lea Michele performed, but they would probably have watched anyway. So what results is a show whose essential identity, a celebration of Broadway theatre, is constantly obscured, pissing off the people who actually care, while doing absolutely nothing to bring in people who don't give a shit. So please, CBS and producers, stop pretending. It won't work. Satisfy the people who will actually enjoy it.

(And by the way, why were they humping Green Day that hard? It's nice that they performed 2 numbers, but added to the song in the medley and the full production number, that's four in the total evening, which is pretty excessive. They fail to realize that Green Day doesn't count as edgy or revolutionary anywhere outside of 44th Street.)

But if it has to be that conceptually flawed, can't it at least be done competently? The sheer number of technical mistakes on this show was horrifying. Mikes went out repeatedly, lip-syncing got catastrophically off, shots revealed other cameras more than they did the stage, Sean Hayes sort of cut off Memphis' acceptance speech, and, in my favorite moment of the night, Katie Finneran won Best Supporting Actress in a Musical, while Karine Plantadit's name was displayed on screen.

And even when there weren't technical snafus, it was just poorly made: most of the numbers were shot in such a way as to minimize their good points (Fela! for instance had only a fraction of the electricity as its number that was on "The Colbert Report" last fall), the camera swung nauseatingly during the Play and Play Revival description segments, and the weird "scenes from plays remix" thing was just unfortunate.

The hosting was okay, I guess--Sean Hayes was a pleasant personality, and did a decent job with the lines he had. (Him showing up dressed as Billy Elliott with a gigantic bulge was a little tasteless, though.) Most of the actual laughs involved Kristin Chenoweth, his costar in Promises, Promises, who is hilarious. (Her dead faint on finding out she wasn't nominated for a Tony was priceless.) But Neil Patrick Harris was sorely missed. Presenters were a mixed bag, with Angela Lansbury, Nathan Lane, and Bebe Neuwirth being the most entertaining. Acceptance speeches were generally lovely, with Katie Finneran, Scarlett Johansson, and Viola Davis giving the highlights.

But the essence of the problem was...the season for musical sucked. There were, notoriously, only two musicals with original scores on Broadway this season: The Addams Family and Memphis. The score for the former is not as bad as its reputation (if nothing that special), but the number from the latter that we saw was sorely disappointing. The music and lyrics were so generic that I honestly can't recall them at all, except for the fact that the lyrics were dumb, and eventually just gave up and went "na na na na na na na".

And that left the jukebox shows. (And didn't we think they were on their way out?) None came off that well in performance: Million Dollar Quartet looked perfectly fine, but not that exciting (though Levi Kreis' Jerry Lee Lewis playing the piano backwards was pretty nifty), Come Fly Away looking more athletic than inspired (though my lack of fondness for Sinatra may be a factor), and Fela!, as I said above, not nearly showing off to its best advantage. American Idiot sounded good, and was certainly intense and stimulating, but I spent the whole number thinking how Spring Awakening and (especially) Passing Strange did it all way better.

As for the musical revivals, the brief number from Promises, Promises was eh, La Cage Aux Folles looked like fun and showed off Douglas Hodge, but "The Best of Times" is just not a very interesting song. Remarkably, the shortened "Back to Before" from Ragtime ended up the evening's best, simply because it didn't get fucked up by distracting camera movements.

And Catherine Zeta-Jones singing "Send in the Clowns"...well. She made strong choices. Unfortunately, they just came off weird. Perhaps because her scene partner wasn't on stage, she was whipping her head around like a lunatic, overplaying all of the emotions (and there are few songs less amenable to overplayed emotions), and generally coming off very strange. (And she gave the word "next" at least three syllables, which is an achievement of some kind, I suppose.) There was some surprise when she won Best Actress just after.

So yeah, a compromised core, an incompetent production, and a mediocre set of performances. At least I had friends over and good food. Because the show was pretty worthless

New Reviews: Neverwhere and War with the Newts

2010-06-01T15:53:00.001-05:00

And how was everyone's Memorial Day weekend? Lovely, I hope. Mine was a tad chaotic (and way too much time spent on transportation), but quite good, overall. Though it has left me at a bit of a sleep deficit.

Anyhow, I've got a couple of reviews, one informal and one formal.

First off is Neverwhere, Robert Kauzlaric's adaptation of the novel by Neil Gaiman, at Lifeline Theatre. I've read a number of Gaiman's novels and liked them quite a bit, but I had never read Neverwhere. However, several of my friends have read the novel, and love it, so I got together with a few of them and saw the show this past Thursday. (And paid for it. My word.) Overall, I had a very good time.

I think my unfamiliarity with the novel was both a help and a disadvantage to enjoying the show. On the bright side, I couldn't judge any elements by how well they lived up to my memories of the novel (or the BBC miniseries) so, for instance, the fact that the character of Door was played as somewhat more imperious and no-nonsense (as opposed to more vulnerable) didn't bother me in the least. On the other hand, I think I missed some of the jokes and references, not to mention details of character and plot.

Still, the story was always told clearly and with brio, and the performances were very strong, with Kauzlaric, sporting a flawless Scottish accent as the hero, Kyra Morris, as a truly badass warrior, and Sean Sinitski and Christopher M. Walsh, as courtly assassins, standing out. The design work was truly outstanding overall, creating a wholly convincing world and some really magical effects. (By the way, in the past few months I have seen amazing designs by the fistful in storefront theatres. The people working there really know how to make the most of limiter resources, and I salute their imagination and skill.)

I found that the show didn't always pull me along, and the ending didn't have the intensity it needed, but overall it's a very entertaining show, and there's enough that's beautiful and exciting that it's really worth a trip for those in the mood for fun and involving fantasy. For Gaiman fans (a passionate lot), I'd recommend it even higher.

(And it's clearly connecting with its fans--on the Thursday I attended, it looked to be at least 85% full. On a Thursday!)

As for official reviews: I saw War with the Newts at the sadly beleaguered Next Theatre. Suffice it to say I didn't enjoy it. Didn't have anything to do with the troubles at the theatre--the script just has serious problems. My hopes are still high for things getting restabilized over there--it's a wonderful theatre.

And for what it's worth, my view was not in the majority, so maybe I'm just an incurable grouch. Here's the text:

"War with the Newts," adapted by Justin D. M. Palmer and Jason Loewith from Czech author Karl Capek's 1936 novel, has such potential. After all, it's about a race of amphibious creatures which are discovered and enslaved by humans, until they rise up and menace the world, and the production features water, puppets and projections. Even if it didn't work, one would hope that the sheer variety and bizarreness on display would make it interesting. So it's particularly disappointing to report that, despite the ambition of the project and the obvious intelligence and skill of the creators, the show is deadly dull.

A number of factors bring about this unfortunate turn of events. First off, the script itself is fatally unfocused: the newts are a satirical stand-in for...well, just about everything, from the victims of German racial theories and American lynchings to arrogant imperial powers to illegal immigrants working for low wages. The satire is too scattered to hit any target squarely, but the historical parallels are too obvious and overdetermined to permit much insight into the general human condition. Add the repetitive and strident domestic drama surrounding protagonist Mr. Povondra (Joseph Wycoff), the lengthy descriptions of offstage action shoehorned awkwardly into the script (we don't see a representation of a newt until late in the second act, so everything they do happens offstage), and the confused structure, and the result is a script that makes it very hard to get engaged, despite individual sections that work quite well.

The design and staging are indeed quite impressive, though they often feel lost in the theater, which is much larger than Next's home base in Evanston. The actors do individually strong work but can't give the show shape and clarity. The ambition shown is laudable, but the show just doesn't hold together.

Two Broadway Items

2010-05-28T13:01:00.000-05:00

To those who don't like non-Chicago news, move along. But I just can't not report this.

As reported by Playbill, there's a chance that the current revival of A Little Night Music won't close June 20th when the contracts of its current starts, Catherina Zeta-Jones and Angela Lansbury, end. Because the producers are currently in negotiations with Bernadette Peters and Elaine Stritch.

Yes. Truly.

Now one could argue that both of them are sort of a stretch to play, respectively, Desiree and Madame Armfeldt. I have some sympathy with the idea, though I can see them both working. But more importantly, I don't care. I'm pulling my musical theatre dork card here. Both are stunning performers and utterly brilliant interpreters of Sondheim. And it's in A Little Night Music. Even if it doesn't work, it will be the awesomest train wreck ever.

Anyone want to buy me a ticket?

On a less interesting note: as Playbill also reports that the Tonys this year will open with a medley of pop songs currently featured on Broadway, describing the number thus:

Expect to hear tunes from most of the musical productions that debuted on Broadway this season, including Million Dollar Quartet (one of the 22 well-known songs featured in the production); Come Fly Away (one of the Frank Sinatra standards), Promises, Promises (one of the Burt Bacharach-Hal David classics), A Little Night Music (perhaps Stephen Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns"), American Idiot (one of the Green Day hits), Fela! (possibly the song "Zombie!") and more.

I am so tired of the efforts to make the Tony's popular with people who don't care about Broadway. It's not happening. Especially since none of those artists, with the possible exception of Green Day, is near the charts at this point. I doubt that many Bachrach/David fans are out there who will suddenly choose to watch the Tonys now. The same with the celebrity presenters. It won't work. I wish that CBS would just give up and give the Tony's to PBS, who could spend time actually getting into interesting theatre stuff. The current combination doesn't work at all.

New Review Posted: Body Awareness

2010-05-26T09:25:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of Annie Baker's Body Awareness at Profiles Theatre. It's really something special. Baker has blow up in the past couple of seasons in New York--indeed just last week she won the Obie award for best new play for both of the plays she premiered Off-Broadway last season, Circle Mirror Transformation and The Aliens. By the way, I'm shocked that neither has yet been announced for a Chicago production, particularly the former, which was extended repeatedly and made it on to multiple best of 2009 lists. (Though I notice open slots in the seasons of both the Goodman and Victory Gardens...)

Anyhow, this is very much worth checking out. Based on the evidence of this show, Baker is really a wonderful playwright, with an exceptional ear for dialogue and understanding of how people behave, blundering into ways of hurting people and moments of real beauty and caring. She definitely deserves the press she's been getting, and I hope we see more of her stuff soon.
Here's the text of the review:

It's a disconcerting and thrilling experience to watch human behavior under a microscope. Revelations that would pass unnoticed in everyday life are clear, seemingly routine conversations have huge stakes. "Body Awareness," the first play by rising playwright Annie Baker to be produced in Chicago, puts its characters under the theatrical microscope, making us care about four fascinating, flawed people while letting us see the minute ways they sabotage their own happiness. Though the play is brief in length and low on plot, it's moving and absorbing, particularly in Benjamin Thiem's sensitively acted production. It's easy to see why Baker's already so acclaimed.

Phyllis (Cheryl Graeff) is a professor at small college in Vermont, running "Body Awareness Week," and losing control of the proceedings: she didn't pay attention to all of the artists she invited. When she finds out that Frank (Joe Jahraus) takes pictures of nude women, she ignores his contention that they are non-exploitative and condemns him. Unfortunately, he's the artist staying in the home she shares with her partner Joyce (Barb Stasiw) and Joyce's son Jared (Eric Burgher), who appears to have Asperger's, despite his vehement protests to the contrary. Frank's stay causes tempers to flare and people to start the painful process of growth. It may not be groundbreaking material, but it's all presented with uncommon intelligence and heart.

While the production looks and feels completely natural, a lot of skill went into it. Baker subtly highlights important moments, giving the effect of reality with the volume just slightly raised. (Though the ending does paste an abrupt and surprisingly happy resolution on an unresolved situation.) And the ensemble is simply wonderful, effortlessly inhabiting the characters and relationships and keeping the audience enthralled, with Stasiw's performance particularly heartbreaking. It's not perfect, but it's a lovely, moving show, and reason to hope for even better work from Baker in the future.

The Plot Thickens At Next

2010-05-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

On the heels of the announcement that Jason Southerland is leaving Next Theatre comes this article in PerformInk. You should really read the whole thing, but here is the condensed version:

After the company's plans to produce Boaz Gaon's adaptation of Ghassan Kanafani's novel The Return to Haifa fell through, Next hired local playwright M. E. H. (Margaret) Lewis to write a new adaptation, only 3 months before the scheduled opening. (It's unclear from the article whether they had the rights to do that.) Late in the rehearsal process, he altered Lewis' script, adding in passages from Gaon's adaptation, without her knowledge, and without permission from or attribution to Gaon. She removed most of them, but some stayed in the show. Gaon found out and threatened suit against Southerland and Next, and the settlement will involve a press release taking responsiblity (which exonerates Lewis without quite saying that Southerland was responsible) and an agreement that Lewis' adaptation can never be produced again.

This is a shame. Margaret is a colleague of mine through Stage Left Theatre, and she is a scrupulously honest person. (She's also a fantastic playwright.) Return to Haifa was produced to great critical success and sold out houses, and it seems like it would have had a very strong chance of getting produced elsewhere. The fact that her work and reputation were damaged because of Southerland's actions is terrible. Hopefully things will only improve from here.

Next Theatre's Artistic Director Resigns

2010-05-21T14:49:00.000-05:00

Hate to distract from the news below (which is much more fun) but: Chris Jones reported today that Jason Southerland, who has been Artistic Director at Next Theatre for only 18 months, resigned this morning, citing a relationship with the board that "didn't click." Jones' article also cites financial troubles at the theatre, with staff members being asked to take pay cuts.

It's worrisome stuff. Next has been a major force in Chicago theatre for decades (indeed, the upcoming season is the 30th), and it wold be very sad to see them fall victim to these perilous times. Hopefully things will stabilize and improve for them soon.

However, all of this should make the opening of War With the Newts, which I'm reviewing on Monday, more interesting.

Cherrywood. Is. COMING.

2010-05-21T11:29:00.000-05:00

David Cromer, whose career has been on a meteoric ascent recently (Our Town is into its second year Off-Broadway, he has two shows scheduled on Broadway next season, and his production of A Streetcar Named Desire is getting raves and selling out at Writers') has not forgotten where he came from. And that would be tiny storefront theatres, like Mary-Arrchie, which has been producing for 25 years and performs above a liquor store in Lakeview.

The play they're doing is Cherrywood, a remarkable piece by Kirk Lynn, which premiered at the Rude Mechanicals in Austin, in 2004. It's written as a series of lines, with no characters listed at all. The cast and director decide who says what and the story they tell. It takes place at a party, where people who feel their lives aren't what they want gather to drink, dance, and fall in love. Except there are jello shots, a gun goes off, and people are turning into werewolves. It's pretty wild, and exactly the kind of thing that thrives in awesome Chicago storefronts.

On an interesting side note, I have a history with this show: I actually appeared in the first Chicago production, which was Shade Murray's first-year MFA project at Northwestern. I was playing a character of surpassing social awkwardness and poor fashion sense: I grew out a full, bushy beard, wore ugly, scotch-taped glasses, a too-small polo shirt tucked into too-baggy pleated courduroy pants, in clashing shades of beige, and sandals with socks. There are some awsome blackmail photos of me out there.

The show runs June 24-August 8, and Mary-Arrchie just announced the cast. Of 49 people.

Seriously, 49 actors. How will anything else in town run? I'm not sure how many seats the theatre has, but if there are more than 50, it's not by much. And while the stage is very deep, it's certainly not huge. Not to mention the storytelling difficulty--wrangling 49 people and creating an arc for all of them, not to mention telling the story coherently, is going to be a monumental task. I trust they are up to the task, and am crazy excited to see what the result is.

For those who didn't follow the Time Out link, by the way, here's the cast list:

Adam Hinkle, Aileen May, Alexander Ring, Alice Wedoff, Allison Cain, Andre LaSalle, Andrew Hanback, Anthony Demarco, Brian Hinkle, Briana De Giulio, Bries Vannon, Candice Gregg, Carlo Lorenzo Garcia, Caroline Neff, Chris Ward Blumer, Colleen Miller, Craig Cunningham, D’wayne Taylor, Dereck Garner, Derek Brummet, Ebony Wimbs, Eileen Montelione, Elliot Ivins, Gavin Robinson, Geoff Button, Jennifer Santanello, Jeremy Noll, Joseph DeBettencourt, Kasia Januszewski, Katherine Schwartz, Keely Brennan, Kevin V. Smith, Leslie Frame, Lindsey Barlag, Lindsey Pearlman, Marika Engelhardt, Michael Dice, Michele Gorman, Molly Reynolds, Nick Mikula, Noah Simon, Ramon Madrid, Raymond Shoemaker, Richard Cotovsky, Rob Fenton, Rudy Galvan, Ryan Bourque, Ryan Martin and Shannon Clausen.

Okay, here's one blackmail photo. Not the worst, at all.

Closing Weekends!

2010-05-20T12:47:00.000-05:00

My two favorite shows of the year thus far are both closing this weekend. If you haven't seen them yet, you should.

Tarrell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays is closing its lengthy run at Steppenwolf this weekend. It's utterly brilliant, and worth seeing one part or both, in order or out. McCraney's utterly brilliant, and I doubt Tina Landau's production can be bettered. We'll see a lot more of McCraney in the future (he's just joined the Steppenwolf but don't miss this.

The Hypocrites' production of Cabaret at the Storefront Theatre isn't brilliant because of how it's reconceived (with a female Emcee and a three-act structure and various other changes). Nearly every production of Cabaret does that. It's brilliant because it balances caring about the characters with stylized theatrical moments, and brings home the horror of a country sliding into fascism with visceral (if unsubtle) power. Plus strong design, singing, and acting. It's more that worth a trip.

Sorry, by the way, for my lack of posts--I haven't felt the need. Hopefully it returns soon.

Guy Adkins, 1968-2010

2010-05-13T12:50:00.001-05:00

I never had the privilege of seeing Guy Adkins perform onstage or meeting him, so for a tribute to his acting gifts you'll have to go to the obituary written by Chris Jones. You can also visit his personal site to learn about his career. All I can say is that he was widely respected and loved in Chicago and around the country, known as an extraordinary actor, musician, and human being. And he died of colon cancer last night at the age of 41. A death from cancer is awful at any age, but at 41, it's particularly distressing. He wrote a blog about the last months of his life. I've only read a little bit, but I bet it will make me cry.

To Guy's partner Sean and all of his family, please accept my deepest sympathies.

Those who knew Guy or saw his work, please post memories here.

To everyone, go hug your loved ones.

And to Guy, I wish I could have known you and your work, and I hope you are at peace.

New Review Posted: The Ghost Sonata

2010-05-12T13:19:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of The Ghost Sonata at Oracle. Sadly it didn't do much for me, though there was interesting stuff going on. I do want to point out something cool that Oracle is doing, though: starting next season, every single seat is going to be free, funded entirely by donations. This is something a lot of theatres have discussed, but very few do--Mike Daisey would be pleased. This is certainly worth attention and support, so those of you with cash to spare, please go help them out. Anyhow, here's the text of the review:

It's not necessarily a bad thing for a play to be confusing. Indeed, for a bizarre script like August Strindberg's "The Ghost Sonata," a clear story is entirely beside the point. So it's no criticism to say that the production directed by Max Truax is virtually impenetrable: such basic questions as who people are, what their relationships are, what they are doing, and where it's happening are only clear after much time and thought on the audience's part, and then only partially. The problem is that the audience is only rarely drawn in to the experience. Without that engagement, the evening never hits the notes of existential horror and disturbing imagery that are necessary to care. Despite the obvious theatrical intelligence of Truax and his collaborators, the audience is left in a state of mild bewilderment, leavened only by the occasional laugh or startling image.

The story, as far as can be gathered, concerns an Old Man (Rich Logan), who uses an innocent Student (Federico Rodriguez) to infiltrate the home of the Colonel (Sean Ewert). The Student loves the Daughter (Stephanie Polt), but by the time he reaches her, he has seen a world of corruption and endless frustration.

There is much to admire. The actors are completely committed (with Logan's creepy, twitchy performance particularly strong), and sometimes find the thread of horror that runs through the script. The design creates the play's skewed world, particularly Brieanne Hauger's perspective-skewing set, Jonathan Guillen's pervasive underscoring and Michael Janicki's bizarre video design. But it never goes beyond admiration. For a work pitched to this emotional intensity, it's vital that the audience be drawn in, whether by the characters' emotions, the language's potency, or the sheer weirdness of the affair. And while the production is sometimes impressive, it's stubbornly uninvolving.

DrekFest! Call For Entries!

2010-05-11T12:46:00.000-05:00

Hey there playwrights, theatre folk, and people who like to laugh,

So Stage Left Theatre, where I'm in the ensemble, decides each year to take a break from all of the good plays we do on a regular basis and produce some total crap. But since we're nice people, we produce plays that are intentionally bad. Thus: DrekFest, the national competition for the most intentionally awful 10-minute play.

But we need playwrights to do it! And you, yes you, could be our winner. Here's a full description of the festival and the entry requirements. (By the way, if you do write something, don't tell me anything about it--I'm probably going to be on the selection committee.) Happy writing!

Don't miss your chance to be part of Stage Left Theatre's annual laugh riot!

Presented in association with
The ComedySportz Theatre.

Stage Left's Forth Annual National Contest for the WORST Ten-Minute Play. This year, it’s not just a one-night engagement, it’s a

WORSTAMENT!!!!

That’s right, there’s just so much crap out there that we’ve decided to make it a bigger competition.

There will be 2 rounds of Semi-Finals one on 8/2 and one on 8/9.

Four plays will be read each night and the worst 2 from each night will go on to the Finals on 8/16!!!

The submission deadline for

DrekFest: Worstament 2010

entries is
Friday, June 25th, 2010.

All entries must be RECEIVED (not postmarked) by the entry deadline.

For clarity's sake, we are not out to make fun of writers or those who love them! What we are doing is asking good writers to intentionally write awful plays that make us laugh on the inside (especially if that's noted in the stage directions) - and out loud.

******************************************************

Submission Guidelines

If it's not already painfully clear, we want the funny! Preference will be given to scripts that make us laugh. Here are the submission guidelines:

DEADLINE: Submissions must be received by Friday, June 25th, 2010 (note, this is not postmark date, it is a "received by" date).

Plays must perform at ten minutes or less (remember that stage directions will be read aloud). Maximum of 5 actors per script (however, write as many characters as you please). There are no limitations on genre or subject matter.

Even though we're spoofing the development process, plays do NOT need to about play development. And...even though Stage Left's mission is about political and social debate, we know that bad writing knows no genre, so don't worry about adhering to the mission for this contest.

We will be using a Blind Submission process. Please include the following materials with your submission:

--A cover letter on a separate sheet of paper, included in the envelope with your play (or as a separate attachment, if emailing). Envelopes and emails will not be opened by judges, only by non-judge staff members. List your contact info, including name, phone, email & street address on your cover letter.

Cover letter should include your availability to be in Chicago on August 2, 9, and 16, 2010. Given this year's economy and the state of arts funding, Stage Left cannot provide travel support. You do not need to be able to travel to Chicago in order to send a submission to DrekFest; however, most of the fun is in being there!

--Your resume.

--Your play(s). Do NOT include your name, by-line or contact info on the play itself. If mailed, plays must be clipped or bound in such a way that the pages can be easily separated for copying - no spiral bindings.

--Your submission fee of $10.00 per play (e.g., $20.00 if you submit two plays). All submission fees will go towards the cash prizes awarded to the winners - we won't make a dime off your dimes.If mailing, include a check made out to "Stage Left Theatre." If emailing, call us at 773-883-8830 by Friday, June 25th to charge your fee to a Visa or MasterCard.

A Note About Cash Prizes:
One hundred percent of the submission fees received are paid out as cash prizes. Therefore, the amount of the prizes will depend on the number of submissions we get. All 8 of the plays chosen will receive something, the 4 finalists will receive a bit more and the winner will receive the BIG check. In past years, the Grand Prize has ranged from $300.00 to $400.00, and may be less or more as submissions warrant.

Please mail your submissions to:
Stage Left Theatre
Attn: DrekFest
3408 N. Sheffield Ave.
Chicago, IL 60657

-- OR --

Email your submissions to:
drekfest@stagelefttheatre.com

New Review Posted: The Love of the Nightingale

2010-05-07T08:06:00.001-05:00

Centerstage has posted my new review of The Love of the Nightingale, performed by Red Tape Theatre at St. Peter's Church. There's a lot to recommend it, even if the script's quality is variable. Still, James Palmer directs his cast to some really exceptional moments, and the design is working at an extremely high level for storefront theatre. Comparing this to Mouse in a Jar, the previous show of theirs I saw in that space, is quite impressive--the spaces are completely different. (This is yet another of William Anderson's fantastic sets. I don't know how long he'll be working in storefronts.) Now if only they were working with a script that didn't descend into obviousness with such frequency (or if they cut the bits that did), this would be an even more impressive experience. Here's the text:

Young authors are always instructed to show, rather than tell. Timberlake Wertenbaker's "The Love of the Nightingale," as directed by James Palmer, is a perfect example of why: when it is showing, through theatrical metaphor, stage pictures, music, movement and action, it's often breathtaking. But when the invention pauses for characters to tell us exactly what the story means and underline every point, the audience interest flags severely. It's not enough to wipe out the play's many impressive points, but it keeps the show from living up to its own potential.

The story is adapted from Greek myth: Thracian king Tereus (Vic May), after saving Athens in battle, chooses as his bride Procne (Kathleen Romond), the elder daughter of King Pandion (John Rushing). Years later, bringing Procne's sister Philomele (Meghan Reardon) to Thrace for a visit, he is overcome by desire and rapes her. In an effort to keep her quiet, he cuts out her tongue, which leads to an even more disturbing ending.

Wertenbaker's adaptation never sits still, moving from realism to dreamlike scenes, lyrical monologues to dance. The refusal to stick to one style is exhilarating, but is undercut by the sections of obvious speechifying. When the script works, Palmer's production is stunning, with images and scenes of immense power and thrilling theatricality. (The unfortunate exception to this is an ecstatic celebration of Bacchus that plays like a theme night at a rave club.) Full credit should go to the cast, an eye-popping 23, who commit fully to a challenging script and complex staging. But despite the strong acting and superb designs, especially William Anderson's immersive set and Miles Polaski's discomfiting sound, Palmer's production can't do anything when the play insists on explaining exactly what it means. And it's a shame, because when the show is good, it's wonderful.

This Movie Has To Open NOW

2010-05-04T15:21:00.001-05:00

I read this (and thanks to Robby Karol for passing it along!) and still don't quite believe it: Roland Emmerich, film director famed for repeatedly destroying the world's major landmarks (2012, Independence Day, and Godzilla are among his credits) has started making his next film--and it's about Shakespeare.

Well, not exactly. In fact, it's about how Shakespeare's plays were not written by Shakespeare himself, but by Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. (A frequently repeated, if generally discredited, theory.) Additionally (and this is a new bit), according to the movie, de Vere was the secret son of Elizabeth I! So secret, indeed, that when he grew to adulthood, he became her lover! And they sired Henry Wriothesley, who was the "young man" to whom the sonnets were addressed!

I generally take a dim view of the arguments against Shakespeare having written his own plays--they seem founded on equal parts classism (How could a provincial actor who never traveled the world possibly have the experience needed to write such great plays? It must have beena nobleman!) and wild conspiracy theorizing. I have yet to find a really convincing argument.

More to the point, I think it's a blind alley. Who cares who wrote them? They were written! That's amazing! And there is so much to find in them, and get from them. This also ties into my belief that far too much energy is spent analyzing them as literary artifacts, rather than theatre. Far too much Shakespeare scholarship mummifies the work, and I'm much more interested in lines of inquiry that bring it to life. But the "who wrote Shakespeare" argument is worse: it makes the work itself almost beside the point: why plumb Hamlet's sould when you can play Da Vinci Code?

All that aside though: Roland Emmerich directing a costume drama! With a plot that loony! And Vanessa Redgrave as Elizabeth I, not to mention the super-human Mark Rylance as one of the Globe's actors! This is going to be an amazing train wreck. (Armada wreck?)

I don't know if I can stand waiting another year

Good News/Bad News

2010-05-03T12:50:00.000-05:00

Before my longer post on How Theatre Failed America, I wanted to pass along two pieces of news, one very good and one very sad.

On a good note: the Tony Awards committee has announced that the 2010 Regional Theatre Tony will be going to the Eugene O'Neill Center in Waterford, CT. This is gratifying on a professional level--few theatres have a comparably stellar record for new works, particularly those which go on to production and acclaim elsewhere. But it's also a pleasure personally--I spent two weeks at the O'Neill in 2008 at the National Critic's Institute, which was the genesis of this blog and a major influence on my writing and career. It's a wonderful place to be and work, where you can focus on theatre while surrounded by gorgeous scenery and eating edible cafeteria food. In addition to seeing (and reviewing) at least ten shows in two weeks, I also treasure the friendships I established with the other critics and the way that members of every segment of the festival mixed and had fun. It didn't matter who were the playwrights, the actors, the critics, the interns, the National Theatre Institute students--we all hung out at Blue Gene's, the gloriously cheap bar, played cards and Mafia, and went swimming, before hopping the van to return to our dorm rooms. It was a wonderful experience, and I would love to go back some day. So congratulations to Executive Director Preston Whiteway, the heads of the various divisions, and the entire staff, and thank you to Leonard Jacobs, Dan Sullivan, Helene Goldfarb, and Mark Charney for letting me into the Critics' Institute and making my experience so wonderful.

However, in very sad news, Playbill reports that famed British actress Lynn Redgrave has died at the age of 67. It's not explicitly stated what the cause of death was, but she was treated for breast cancer in 2003, and last fall, when performing her solo show Nightingale, she announced that she was receiving treatments for Stage IV cancer at Sloan-Kettering. (She performed Nightingale seated and with a script in front of her.) She was nominated for the Tony three times and the Oscar twice, and occasionally appeared with her sister, Vanessa, and brother, Corin. Corin died only a few weeks ago, and Vanessa's daughter Natasha Richardson famously died last winter, so this has been a really horrible year for the Redgrave clan. I wish them all comfort, and hope that the family stays intact for a while.

How Zev Failed To Get To Sleep

2010-05-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

I just got back from Mike Daisey's How Theatre Failed America at Victory Gardens, which was followed by a panel discussion, which was followed by people talking in small groups. It's midnight, my alarm goes off at 5:30, and I'm not sure if I'll be able to fall asleep. I'm absolutely buzzing with responses and questions and more, and I plan to work them out on this blog over the next few days. The first response will hopefully be up some time during the day on Monday. Anyway, watch this space. Because if I start writing now, I will sleep even less than I am going to anyway. Those who already saw it and have thoughts are welcome to put them in the comments below--I will join you shortly.

Don't Tease Us, Adam

2010-04-30T15:01:00.000-05:00

Playbill reports that a recent auction benefitting Playwrights Horizons offered as an item a page of music, signed by Adam Guettel. It's from RIP, his newest work, an opera based on Washington Irving's Rip Van Winkle. There is no information, thus far, on when or where it might premiere, though he does have a commission from Signature Theatre in Arlington, VA, for the 2011-2012 season. (Though Wikipedia claims that the musical at Signature will be an adaptation of the Danny Boyle film Millions.)

Guettel has created a reputation as one of the best young composers in musical theatre. (Or youngish. How sad is it for the art form that a 45 year old is considered to be an exciting new voice?) But that reputation rests on a remarkably small body of work: two musicals Floyd Collins and The Light in the Piazza and one song cycle, Saturn Returns (recorded under the title Myths and Hymns). Since Piazza in 2005, Guettel spent two years working on a stage adaptation of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, scuttled because of a royalty dispute (Goldman wanted 75%, as he was the author of the original novel and screenplay as well as the book, even though Guettel was writing music and lyrics), a few bits of incidental music and scattered songs, and a lot of silence. It's awful that a man with the ability to write such stunning songs hasn't given an adoring public another taste. (In a 2003 profile he mention that addiction issues had hampered his work in the past. I hope this is no longer true.)

So what I'm saying is this: Adam, if you are putting out signs that we might get more of your music soon, follow through, dammit. Finish the show, make it brilliant, and make sure it gets produced and recorded. You're too damn good to keep us on the hook like this, and musical theatre fans need your brilliance.

Blog Exclusive Review: The Wreck of the Medusa

2010-04-26T16:16:00.000-05:00

(Full disclosure: I went to The Plagiarists' Salon last Monday. They're a very friendly group, and I like them. But rest assured, this is an honest review.)

Nobody can ever accuse The Plagiarists of lacking ambition. The Wreck of the Medusa, their new play, written by Gregory Peters (though Ian Miller is credited as co-creator) and directed by Jack Tamburri, explores the worst naval disaster of the 19th Century from a dizzying variety of perspectives and styles. There are scenes from before the journey, leading up to the wreck, and the years after, pieces of an overblown melodrama based on the disaster, and a look at the creation of Theodore Gericault's famous painting about the disaster, and scenes are played as realism, parody, direct address, and even horror. Nearly everything onstage is interesting, and some is really fantastic, but the diffuse focus makes the play seems longer than its two hours and 20 minutes. It's hard to follow something that goes so many directions at once.

The story of the wreck itself is a grisly one--the Medusa was the head of a convoy going towards Senegal (a colony just being returned to French control in 1816) which took an unsafe course to save time, and was guided even worse by a charlatan (Steven Wilson) who convinced the incompetent captain (Andrew Marchetti) he was an expert in navigation. The ship struck a sandbar, and 150 of the 600 sailors and passengers were left on an overcrowded raft with minimal provisions. After insufficient efforts to tow the raft it was abandoned. When accidentally rescued 13 days later, only 15 survived, who had resorted to cannibalism to survive. Afterwards, the French government attempted to cover up the criminal negligence that led to the disaster and discredit those who told the truth, but Alexandre Corréard (Greg Hess) and Henri de Sevigny (Kevin V. Smith) published an account of the shipwreck which became a huge success.

No scenes take place on the raft, and this is wise--what stage depiction could live up to the actual horrors, or the ones we could imagine? But aside from that, the play seems determined to tell us everything about the wreck. It's like spending an evening with someone who recently became obsessed with the topic and read a bunch of books on it--everything said is fascinating, but the scattered nature makes it a little tough to follow.

But so much of it is really worth watching. The end of the first act, leading up to the wreck and the abandonment of the raft is riveting (I was reminded of the incompetence, before and after the storm, that made Hurricane Katrina such a disaster), and it is full of scenes and moments that are horrifying or beautiful. As a collection of scenes, performances, and ideas, it provides a lot of food for thought and feeling. The acting is on a consistently high level, with Hess, Smith, Griffin Sharps, and Wilson particularly strong. And the design is brilliant--William Anderson again makes a stunning set in a small space (full disclosure: he did the same for Here Where It's Safe at Stage Left), Anna Glowacki's costumes blend the period-accurate and the expressionistic, and Christopher Kriz's sound design is so evocative as to be almost physical, especially during the shipwreck.

For those of us hungry for new plays with real scope and ambition, The Wreck of the Medusa is very encouraging. If the creators got a little too excited by the possibilities and let the show get away from them, who can blame them?

The Wreck of the Medusa runs Fridays-Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 3 PM at Angel Island, 735 W Sheridan Road, through May 9th. Tickets, $15-20, at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/98799

Neil LaBute Stays Classy

2010-04-23T15:41:00.000-05:00

Many reasons to visit Time Out Chicago this week. The first is Kris Vire's review of Cabaret, which is remarkably similar to mine--great minds clearly think alike. The show has gotten a surprisingly mixed response (disappointingly including the Tribune), but it's good to have the validation that someone who's reviewed and seen way more plays than I have basically shares my opinion.

But even more awesome is Caitlin Montanye Parrish's review of Chicago Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew. This version famously has a framing device written by well known contemporary scribe Neil LaBute, a playwright whose misogyny and misanthropy know few bounds, and whose movie career includes such classics as The Wicker Man. The response to the new material has been generally mixed to negative, but for some reason LaBute (or someone claiming to be him), went on the warpath against Parrish. The initial comment was this:

"and the crazy thing is, ms. parrish, they PAID me to do it! i got to spew all that 'predictable bile' and they wrote me a check for the privilege. probably lots more than you got paid for your review. that hardly seems fair and yet there it is. the way of the world. you spew your bile, i spew mine, and may the best man (or whatever) win. "fuck this!" may not be a thesis or a revelation, but it's exactly what i was thinking when i read your sorry excuse for theatrical criticism."

And we were off to the races, with "LaBute" (we still have no proof whether it is really him) tossing nasty ad hominem attacks at Parrish (suggesting she see the show again and stop paying attention to the codpieces) and critics in general ("critics are the one element that is of little or no use to the creative process (and one of the very few who don't ever pay for a ticket!) even the audience lends some creative element to the experience of theater--the critic will always be reactive and parasitic. i didn't make it that way, it's just the way it goes.") and generally flinging vitriolic and nonsensical attacks at everyone. (Granted, people eventually started baiting him, because it was just so damn funny.)

Then this hilarious blog post was published by Eric Roach and Anderson Lawfer, and now LaBute has started attacking them as well ("Have fun being stuck in Chicago forever you talentless fucks," said he). So the joy will doubtless continue.

My main purpose here was to alert you all to the hilarity and assholery, but here are a few of my thoughts on this, for free.

1) Nice review, Caitlin. Clear, intelligent, made a persuasive case, fun to read.
2) Neil, do you really have nothing better to do? Really? If you got the "gigantic check" you said you did, why are you bothering yourself with this particular review? (And why didn't you attack the negative review in, say, the Tribune?) Why not just laugh all the way to the bank?
3) Are all critics parasites? Really? Even the ones who creamed their jeans over your early plays, and the ones who still do? Or just the ones who speak ill of your shows?
4) To end on a positive note: thank you for The Wicker Man. It is one of the most intensely entertaining movies I have ever seen. Granted, that is because it is howlingly misogynistic, ludicrously plotted, completely devoid of scares, and features Nicolas Cage at his looniest, but entertaining is entertaining.

Anyone else have a thought or two on this?

New Review Posted: Cabaret

2010-04-21T16:34:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of the new production of Cabaret that The Hypocrites are doing at the Storefront Theatre in the Loop. This one was particularly hard to fit into 300 words, so you all get the things I left out.

I'm wondering at this point whether Cabaret has an actual text left. Aside from possibly Candide, no show has had more significant alterations taking place. After the 1972 movie, most productions have dropped "The Telephone Song" (which is so much fun) and the original "Money Song" (it was called "Sitting Pretty" and featured only the Emcee--"Money Makes The World Go Around" was added for the film). Only about half of the productions use "Why Should I Wake Up?" and many add "Mein Herr," "Maybe This Time," and the new "Money Song" from the movie, not to mention "I Don't Care Much" a song that didn't make it in to the original production, and a song that I think is called "Don't Go Sally," whose provenance is unknown to me. (It's also probably the weakest in the score, though this production made me like it more than I remembered.) Meanwhile, different characters sing the creepily lovely Nazi anthem "Tomorrow Belongs To Me," depending on the version. This one actually sings it twice--the first time for the invented character of the Boy, the second in the familiar spot in the engagement party, while the production I saw in London used it as a pretext for a naked ballet, with no plot context whatsoever. (Yes, naked ballet. This was the nakedest show I've ever seen, and even that couldn't save it.)

The point being, Cabaret seems to have become a director's show--an opportunity for directors to use a play to make a statement. The fact that all four productions I've seen have used a different script is rather stunning--and I'm sure there are more versions out there. And just once, I'd like to see the original script. In a few years, I hope someone will have the anthropological courage to do the original version (maybe in 2016 for the 50th anniversary?). At this point, it would be a piece of theatrical restoration similar to what ATC will be doing next season with the original Chicago version of Grease.

That aside, however, this production is really wonderful. (Indeed, it's the first of those four productions I've seen that has been better than mediocre.) What's important is that in the initial scenes, it makes the Kit Kat Club looks like a lot of fun. The first act really is delightful (and genuinely sexy). This is a problem that so many productions face: the club doesn't just look seedy, it looks like a hellhole, with hostile Emcee and junkie dancers. (This became the default position after Sam Mendes' famed staging in the 1990's.) The problem is that if it looks so unappealing, it makes no sense that Cliff would stay more than a few minutes, that Sally would desperately want to return, or that the audience would have any investment in the place. It goes part and parcel with playing the end of the show at the beginning--too many versions make it impossible to ignore the Nazis from the start, which undercuts the power of the show at the end. The manic, sexy first act in this version doesn't even mention Nazis.

To respond to some criticism I've seen elsewhere: yes, it's unsubtle. I imagine if they didn't pull it off, the third act would feel like being bludgeoned repeatedly. But what can I say? It absolutely worked for me. One critic's pummeling is another's ballsy awesomeness, I suppose.

Anyhow, enough nattering. Here's the text of my review:

Few musicals have been altered more frequently than "Cabaret." Ever since Bob Fosse's 1972 movie radically rewrote the 1966 musical, it seems that every major production has made significant changes to the songs performed, their order, the book and more. And Matt Hawkins' new production makes some significant changes — making the Emcee into a woman (Jessie Fisher) and dividing the action into three acts, for instance. Purists could easily object, but what matters is whether the show works. And this bold, go-for-broke "Cabaret" works, spectacularly.

The story takes place in Berlin on the eve of the Nazi ascendancy: Cliff (Michael Peters), an American would-be novelist, falls in love with Sally (Lindsay Leopold), a self-destructive entertainer at the Kit Kat Club, which is overseen by the Emcee (Fisher). Their landlady (Kate Harris) falls in love with a boarder (Jim Heatherly), but politics and religion prove insurmountable boundaries.

The revolution of "Cabaret" is the way it balances traditional book songs with numbers in the club that comment on the action, and the most important reason that this production succeeds is that both halves work gorgeously. The cabaret numbers are surreal, dazzling and theatrical, and Fisher is marvelous, with a vibrant voice, wicked grin and real depth, but we also genuinely care about these people and their problems. We like the characters through the light and sexy first act and worry for them in the shadowed second, and so the third is absolutely devastating.

The cast is a huge help in this: Leopold, stripping away the showbiz melodrama that sometimes accrues to the character, is particularly riveting, and the entire ensemble of cabaret girls and boys (in Alison Siple's delightful costumes) provide excellent support to Fisher and create a compelling world. There's more good to point out (and a few small flaws, including inconsistent accents and pronunciations), but I think by now the point is clear — this is an exceptional production of a great musical. Go see it.

New Review Posted: The Meat Locker

2010-04-20T13:37:00.001-05:00

Centerstage put up my review of The Mammals' The Meat Locker. It has a lot going for it, but works only occasionally. Apparently Breed With Me, their previous show, was very effective, but this one didn't quite do it. Ah well, still some worthwhile stuff up there, and probably worth a trip for lovers of noir, boxing, and claustrophobic basements. Here's the text:

No matter how far you run, or how hard you fight, death will catch up. And what do you lose trying to outrun it? That's the question explored in writer/director Bob Fisher's fascinating, disturbing and ultimately frustrating new play "The Meat Locker."
Meatlocker (Dave Goss), called “Meat,” is a traveling boxer, burdened by visions of the demonic Stitch (Adam Dodds), who threatens that if he ever goes down for the count, he'll die. Manny the Manager (David Lykins) doesn't share Meat's delusion, but does what he can to help them get by, touring from city to city. But they've still ended up in Bumville, where Benny the Bookie (Roy Gonzales) decides who takes a dive in the ring, and when. He won't take no for an answer, and neither will his enforcer, Rudy the Rhino (Gabe Garza).

This is a dark, pulpy tale, full of noirish paranoia, but with more explicit violence. Fisher has a way with disturbing characters - the seedy Radio Howard (Vinny Lacey) and Gonzalez's twitchy Benny are particularly memorable - and there are scenes where the tension and disgust he creates in the audience are palpable. The low-ceilinged basement space and the truly unsettling sound design (uncredited) help significantly.

But these are only isolated moments. The show's impact is hurt by the fact that the central ideas are never really developed over the course of the play, leading to a lot of repetition, and the characters have a few too many poetic monologues whose connection to the main action is hazy at best. And the many lengthy blackouts between scenes don't help.

It's a real shame, because the sections that work are exceptionally effective. With some editing this could be an evening that really gets under your skin, but right now boredom and fascination fight to a draw.

New Review Posted: The Literati

2010-04-18T15:22:00.000-05:00

Centerstage posted my review of Chicago dell'Arte's The Literati a few days ago. I just didn't get around to posting it. (I'm also behind on my season postings. Sorry Time/Life Line(s)!)

Anyhow, the show is lots of fun, and the fact that each night they pick 5 of the 25 books to stage gives it definite repeat value. While it still doesn't quite match the first show I saw from Chicago dell'Arte, A Commedia Christmas Carol, it shows they're still the best at mating the arty and the extremely silly. The show won't change your life, but it's a really fun night out, and certainly worth the $15. (And if you're in party mood, you could do worse than the 10:30 shows on Friday and Saturday.) And the free parking doesn't hurt at all.

Here's the text:

Victor Hugo's Les Miserables performed as a French farce by three men, replete with bad drag and cheesy accents, probably either strikes audience members as sacrilegious, pointless or totally brilliant. For those who fall into the last category (and I'm among them), "The Literati" is lots of fun - never less than amusing, and occasionally hysterical.

The premise is simple, yet fiendishly difficult: three actors have memorized comic versions of 25 great works of literature. Each night, audience members roll a gigantic die and one work from each of five categories is performed. It's a remarkable feat, and makes it possible that the performance I attended will have almost nothing in common with the one future audience members see.

The show is more than just a series of literary parodies — each performer has a character (with the same first name): Derek Jarvis is the pretentious twit, Ned Record is the sarcastic everyman, and Nick Freed is the cheerful idiot. As the three blunder their way through the show, they skirt the line between improvised and scripted — it always feels like they're making it up, and a lot of the time they probably are. That freewheeling tension sustains the show through the lesser moments. Because there are jokes that don't land, moments that are either too long or rushed, and sections that are merely cute enough instead of hysterical. But the show's ragged and unpretentious aesthetic works in its favor: this isn't a slick spectacle, with every line tested and perfected. It's a bunch of very clever people being extremely silly to amuse themselves and the audience, playing off each other and threatening to fall apart at any moment. But when it's performed with this much delight and comic skill, it's easy to just let go and laugh.

"Body Snatchers" At City Lit Discussed

2010-04-13T11:49:00.000-05:00

Here's the long-awaited second collaboratioin between myself and Tim Brayton, film blogger extraordinaire over at Antagony and Ecstasy, where this article is also posted. This time, rather than a stage-based movie, we have a film-influenced play. Enjoy!

TIM: In 1954, Collier’s Magazine began serializing a science-fiction novel by Jack Finney, titled The Body Snatchers. It was fairly characteristic of the genre fiction of the ‘50s: essentially conservative, telling the story of a perfectly ordinary town that finds itself under siege by an incomprehensible alien force, and committed to the notion that human – that is, American – ingenuity and stubbornness can trump even the most implacable foe, so take that, Commies!

The crux of the tale, that the planet Earth has been invaded by alien spores that can form a perfect clone of any living being, except for their total lack of emotion, is one of amazing possibility, which is probably why Finney’s novel (published in book form in 1955, and revised in 1976) has been dramatized so many times: no fewer than four motion pictures have been adapted from the material, starting with a reasonably faithful 1956 film titled Invasion of the Body Snatchers, all the way to a remarkably shoddy Nicole Kidman popcorn movie from 2007 simply called The Invasion. And now, we have a stage version, courtesy of Chicago’s City Lit theater company and adapter-director Paul Edwards.

The confluence of Chicago theater and classic cinema doesn’t come along that often, which is why we’ve joined forces to discuss this new project. First, Zev has some words about the genesis of the play, and Paul Edwards’ specific attachment to the pop culture of the 1950s.

ZEV: Adapter/director Paul Edwards is a professor at Northwestern in the department of Performance Studies. To brutally simplify a complex field, Performance Studies is divided into two large branches. One studies performance and performativity in an anthropological and sociological perspective, in everything from religion in indigenous cultures to contemporary American politics. The other treats on the adaptation of non-theatrical texts, especially literature, to the stage. It is the latter area in which Edwards studies and teaches.

Paul Edwards was my professor at Northwestern, so I come to the play with a certain lack of objectivity. It was in his mind-blowingly awesome class on the literature and film of the 1950’s that I first saw the 1956 film version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, along with many other brilliant films. His immersion in the era is obvious in the stage version, but it gives a special kick to recognize a fair portion of the images shown on the projection screens (designed by Edwards and Daniel Carlyon) from his classroom.

So suffice it to say that I went in to the performance with high expectations and a certain sympathy for the project.

TIM: I may not know anything about Performance Studies as a discipline (indeed, what I most remember about it was the intro-level class Analysis and Performance of Literature, which everybody referred to as Anal Perf; and o how we laughed at how naughty it sounded!), but I can say this much about Edwards' treatment of the material: it's really great except when it's really not. There's a pronounced dissonance in his adaptation of the material, which is so comic and mocking in the first act, and so serious in the second. The second act I mostly love, and even the first act has some great moments, but I don't particularly like what it's doing tonally.

I know that you took Edwards' class on the pop culture of the 1950s, and I have to ask you what kind of approach he took towards the decade. Because in the first half of his Body Snatchers, I detected a not-at-all hidden level of contempt for the material. Finney's novel is determinedly serious: besides the obvious theme of anti-conformity and the need to cling to what makes us human, the book is shot through with a very definite fear of modernity. One of the key passages for me (at least, in the '76 version of the text; I don't know if it's in the original editions or not) finds the hero, Miles Bennett, waxing nostalgic over telephone operators, and grousing that direct-dial phones are robbing us of something precious. "We're refining all humanity out of our lives," is the exact way he puts it.

Now it's kind of silly, of course, to put that much emphasis on phone technology, of all things; but it represents a real concern. I might not agree with its conservatism (more pronounced by far in the book than in any of the films), but The Body Snatchers is nevertheless a credible work of horror: the horror of change, the horror of too much efficiency destroying our souls. In the beginning, Edwards doesn't seem interested in that horror: he's far too busy setting up lazy '50s signifiers and then poking fun at them, like when he makes the manly-man hero something of a buffoon. God knows I don't have any desire for society to revert to the 1950s, but I think that the play's initial refusal to treat the subject matter with any gravity at all is, while doubtlessly entertaining (I certainly laughed), kind of irritating. The Body Snatchers, in all of its previous incarnations, has been all about the horror, or at least the unease, of its scenario. This adaptation starts from a place of smugness and superiority, and I really think that cheapens what it could have been: a really unsettling fable of the loss of identity.

ZEV: Ah, Anal Perf. A great class, an even better way to make your parents and friends say "You're taking WHAT?" Memories.

The approach to the 1950's (defined for class purposes as lasting from the end of WWII to the Kennedy Assassination), as I remember, was to hold the work up to examination in the context of the era's anxieties. So much of the era was preoccupied with fears over the bomb, conformity, the rise of the suburbs, race, gender, and more, and it was easy to see these fears in the art.

I think that anxiety is apparent in the stage version of Body Snatchers, but the work runs into a tricky problem: it's one thing to read novels or watch films from the 1950's, pointing out their aesthetic and social preoccupations, it's quite another to represent the era onstage. And Body Snatchers is a particularly tough text. It is, by its nature, so filled with the signifiers of the era that it's hard to shake off a sense silliness, particularly in the early stages. After all, when we watched the 1956 movie in preparation for the play, we laughed through a pretty good portion of it. So how do you strike that balance?

This production apparently made the choice of playing for chuckles for most of the first act (and it definitely didn't go as far into burlesque as it could have), until a really fantastic scare effect near the end of the act, and playing for scares in the second. This doesn't work as well as it could--it entirely ignores the simmering fears of the early parts of the story, when Miles is still unsure what's going on, and it makes it a little harder to care about the characters. I'm not sure if taking it seriously from the beginning would have worked better, but this approach was seriously flawed.

There are many ways the adaptation works though--the scares are very effective, with an excellent use of suggestion and metaphor instead of explicitly showing the pods. The cast is generally strong, with Brian Pastor overcoming the jokey start to make a believably uptight Miles, Jerry Bloom as the deliciously sinister psychiatrist Mannie Kaufman, and June Eubanks, making the most of the tricky role of Dr. Budlong, made into a female and given a creepily flirtatious scene with Miles. Sheila Willis, as love interest Becky, doesn't quite work--she plays all of the character's sharp edges and short temper. The purpose may be to expose the shadows in a relationship that reads as an odd parody of a typical romance, but it too often makes the character simply unlikable.

And the fundamental act of adaptation for the stage is done with great skill--a clever mixture of dialogue, action, and narration spoken in the scene (with the exception of a few jokes early on where other characters appear to hear the narration). The plotting is tight and clever, cutting some of the novel's plot twists due to time, and others due to budget (I did miss the scene with the skeletons), but telling a clear and involving story. Indeed, the second act is quite tense until near the end, when the plot is on the verge of resolution but stops dead for a pair of lengthy monologues, not found in either novel or film, that explain the production's subtext in far too literal a form. The show gets back on track for an effectively shivery ending, but the impact has been blunted.

TIM: Oh God, those monologues. I think a show with absolutely no other flaws would have had a hard time surviving that kind of grinding momentum-killer so close to the end.

But I've aired my complaints with the show, and you've done the same (I agree with every word you said about the cast), so let me switch over to the things I rather liked about it. Which are not inconsiderable. In fact, on balance, I'd still say that I liked the show, despite my misgivings about the way the plot develops.

The set was tremendously minimal: two large backdrops just a few black lines and blocks of color, a couple of phones, a small bar, two large projection screens. And virtually all of the action was done in pantomime: if a character opens a door, he just swings his arm out in midair. It took a little while for me to get used to it, but once I had, it was kind of thrilling. The emptiness of the space emphasises the degree to which the story's conflict is between people - or rather, between people and pod clones. Body Snatchers, in all of its incarnations, is primarily about what makes humans human, and Edwards' stripped-down approach doesn't give us anything to focus on besides those humans: their actions, their words.

Like you, I missed the skeleton scene, but the staging was so efficient on the whole that I don't really mind the lack of big theatrical moments (which also makes the two big theatrical moments we got - at the end of the two acts - that much more effective). For example, representing the snatched people by having them wear sunglasses: it's quick, it tells us all we need to know, and it looks just "off" enough to be creepy, even in the jokey first act. But in the second act, when there aren't sarcastic asides to distract us from the gravity of the scenario, that's when all of that minimalist staging really popped. Watching those two people trapped in an empty, mostly dark space, wondering what was going to happen them, was genuinely tense; there was a certain existential horror to it, with nothing grounding the characters but each other.

As for the projection screens, which worked really quite well to provide an almost subliminal context for what was going on, all I really want to point out is that the use of clips from the 1956 film in one scene near the end - just about the only time the play acknowledged the film more than the novel - was absolutely brilliant: both a cute in-joke, and an opportunity to show us the aliens in a way that didn't break the play's focus on the characters, rather than the sci-fi trappings of the plot.

ZEV: It's funny, I'm so used to a stripped-down style of performance, the budgets of small Chicago theatres being what they are, that it didn't stick out to me as much as it could. But the more I think about it, the more I like it. A particular aid here was Jeff Glass' lighting design, which did an excellent job at creating the play's world, especially in the second act: as the story got more serious, there was less and less light onstage, forcing us further into the claustrophobic circumstances of people rapidly running out of options. The projections screens gave suggestions of the world outside while everything else focused us more tightly in, and it worked wonderfully.

And the sunglasses were exactly what a theatrical metaphor needs to be: clear and simple, while still visually interesting, jarring in the world of the play without being ridiculous, and fertile ground for some wonderfully shivery moments.

What was particularly gratifying about the show was how theatrical it was: there was one quote from the film and a fair amount of dialogue and narration from the novel, but the focus was firmly on what was happening in the present tense and in front of us. It was a fundamentally theatrical experience and definitely one worth having. Though we found definite flaws (and we're critics, how could we not?) it was still quite worth a trip, whether you know the novel, one of the films, or neither.

The Body Snatchers runs Fridays and Saturdays at 8 PM and Sundays at 3 PM through May 9th at City Lit Theatre, 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue, in Chicago. Tickets, $25, and information are available at (773) 293-3682 or www.citylit.org

Pulitzers Announced! Chatter Ensues!

2010-04-12T20:14:00.000-05:00

As has been announced and discussed all over, the Pulitzers were awarded this afternoon. The award went to Next To Normal, the musical about bipolar disorder by Tom Kitt and Brian Yorkey currently running on Broadway. The runners up were The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity by Kristoffer Diaz, which had its world premiere at Victory Gardens (and which I didn't see because I'm a bloody idiot) and is starting previews at Second Stage at the end of this month, Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, by Rajiv Joseph, who is an alumnus of my high school (and also an awesome playwright, from the little I've read), and In The Next Room or the vibrator play by oft-produced Sarah Ruhl, possessor of both one of the most enviable careers and most ferocious backlashes in the contemporary American theatre. Also of interest: one of the runners-up in the criticism category is Michael Feingold, theatre critic for the Village Voice. He was one of the guest lecturers at the National Critic's Institute in 2008 when I was a fellow there, and, while he's a distinguished critic indeed, it's fair to say that he was not awarded the Pulitzer for charm.

Sharp readers, however, doubtless noted a strange thing above: the usual method is for the main board to choose one winner from the three finalists presented by the Drama jury. However this year (as in 2007 when Rabbit Hole was chosen), the main jury chose a play that was not in the top three. Various theories were floated, though the most prominent were middlebrow, mainstream tastes and a hopelessly pro-New York bias. Charles McNulty, drama critic at the LA Times and a member of the jury, mentions both in his stinging critique of the decision. It sets the theatreosphere talking, at least.

On a personal note, while all the honored plays are doubtless worthy (I do need to play the copy of Next To Normal I ripped from a friend), I was sorry to see no recognition for Tarrell Alvin McCraney's The Brother/Sister Plays, which are magnificent. However, McCraney is young, and he'll write more. It's only a matter of time before he gets his Pulitzer.

New Review Posted: Chekhov Kegstand

2010-04-09T17:09:00.000-05:00

Centerstage put up a new review, Chekhov Kegstand at Gorilla Tango. It works better than an adaptation of Uncle Vanya set in a dorm room should--especially since it's not really an adaptation of the plot so much as some of the themes and ideas. The combination of comedy and drama doesn't quite work, and the plotting is pretty confused, but there's potential there. Here's the text:

While the differences are many, there are some profound similarities between the characters in Anton Chekhov's plays and college students: fear of the future, an inability to act, and a love for drinking vodka. Lots and lots of vodka. This is the idea for Bryan Cohen's flawed but promising new play, "Chekhov Kegstand," and for all the things that don't work, it's still better than a play called "Chekhov Kegstand" has any right to be.

The play takes place in the dorm room shared by Aaron (Joe Schlotter) and Greg (Stuart Berberich), best friends and roommates at the start of their senior year at an unidentified college. (The soundtrack appears to place the action in the late 1990s.) Aaron is trying to decide whether to pursue physics or music while Greg struggles with his lines in the soon-to-open production of "Uncle Vanya." There are of course many other complications, involving Lanie (Kimberly Franck), Greg's former girlfriend, currently dating Aaron; Greg's attempts to date stage manager Kelly (Colleen Sketch); and the trials of Jenny (Allison Schaffer), a timid girl taking Greg's dating advice.

The show's representation of college isn't documentary realism, but it's great fun to watch, and gets the crazed emotional essence of those four years. The performances are generally engaging and fun to watch, and there is some excellent verbal and physical comedy. The problem is the plot. It is riddled with implausibility for most of the show (Local critics attending a college production? Student actors being replaced during tech? Really?) and then abruptly resolves the various plot lines, capped with a strange shrug of an ending.

But there's something real and likable here. It's not quite successful yet, but there's enough talent in the writing onstage to make the next show from Cohen and his collaborators worth a look.

This Is Very Funny

2010-04-08T11:11:00.000-05:00

Go visit this site right now. It is, as the title suggests, a series of fake postings for arts jobs that are painfully close to the real thing. For anyone who's ever worked in the field, or attempted to, it's brilliant.

Risky New Plays

2010-04-06T08:24:00.000-05:00

Some background: a couple of weeks ago, the Goodman opened the world premiere of Rebecca Gilman's A True History of the Johnstown Flood, directed by Goodman artistic director Robert Falls. The response was not particularly strong. Chris Jones, in the Tribune, gave it two stars. The reviews in general were mixed to negative, with some being better than Jones' and others being much worse. Shortly after opening I started getting offers for significantly discounted tickets in my email, so it's easy to guess that the show isn't doing very well for the Goodman. (I haven't seen the show, so I can't comment on its quality.)

A few days ago, Jones published a reconsideration of the play. After conversation and a few nights spent mulling over it, he came to the determination that there was more to the play than he initially said, and that, despite its flaws, it was worth checking out for the ambition and ideas onstage. This angered a lot of people. There were rumblings that perhaps it was the result of a stern phone call from Falls, which he has been known to do before, but nobody has yet produced evidence that this happened. Monica Reida was bothered that Jones said that people who didn't like the show maybe didn't understand it--not to mention callin the Goodman Chicago's "flagship" theatre and Falls the city's "essential" director, which are pretty sweeping claims. Bob Bullen also took strong exception to the fawning tone of Jones' post, the "flagship" designation, and the Goodman's own policies and behavior. Rob Kozlowski first put up a very funny April Fools post on the Goodman's upcoming season, then an excellent piece on his high expectations of the companies who charge the most for tickets, and whose leadership make the most money.

As he said, when that much money is being charged (and the top ticket price for Johnstown Flood is a staggering $76!) audiences have a right to expect excellence. Jones himself made a similar point a few months ago when discussing Outrageous Fortune: while audiences should be encouraged to take risks, they should also be warned away from bad plays.

So we find ourselves in a bit of a bind: it's good for theatre to have large companies such at the Goodman taking a significant risk by doing world premieres of large-scale plays on the mainstage. This happens all too rarely, and it's vital for the health of theatre in America, particularly the livelihood of playwrights. But while theatre companies taking risks is something that should be rewarded, when those risks belly flop (as this one apparently has), critics and, more importantly, word of mouth will rightly keep people away, and the company will take a severe financial hit.

So what to do? Well, the Goodman will keep going despite this show, and with four of the six plays thus far announced in their 2010-2011 season being world premieres, it's safe to say their commitment to new work is undiminished. And this is a very good thing--what good are large institutions if they don't consistently risk big? But other companies don't have the same security, and a similar situation could severely hurt them or constrain their programming abilities. It's not hard to understand why so many theatres seem allergic to risk, never producing new plays or producing only those with tiny cast sizes.

So how about this: there are a lot of nonprofits, foundations, and charities out there devoted to developing new works: grants, residencies, festivals, readings, etc, etc. But too often great scripts, particularly the big ones, can wither on the vine, never seeing the stage. So how about some of these groups take on a new mission: production of big new plays. These groups will take on some portion of the cost for full-scale productions of new works (premieres or early productions), particularly those with large casts. The financial risk for theatres will be lessened, more new plays will be produced, and the chance of great new plays showing up will increase.

Because even if A True History of the Johnstown Flood doesn't work, the impulse that created it is a very good one. Hopefully the resources are out there for it to continue. Any thoughts?

Seth Gordon to Leave the Cleveland Play House

2010-04-02T11:55:00.000-05:00

So usually I write about Chicago (and sometimes New York, I know), but bear with me for what I think is a rather big news out of my hometown of Cleveland. As The Plain Dealer reported, Cleveland Play House Associate Artistic Director Seth Gordon is leaving to take the same position at the Repertory Theatre of St Louis. However, the St. Louis position will have a greater element of new play development (and presumably greater pay, though it was not mentioned). His wife, Elizabeth Townsend, a really exceptional actor, will be going with him.

I was lucky enough to be his intern at the Play House in 2005, and it was a wonderful time. I got my first real script-reading experience, which has been the basis for my literary management career, researched the first few plays of the season, helped cast the kids for the company's first production of A Christmas Story (Seven kid's parts. It was a challenge.), and prepared text and photos for a lobby exhibit on the theatre's 90th anniversary. It was Seth who had the trust in me and my work to give me real responsibility. By the end of the summer, I felt like part of the artistic team of a major regional theatre. Which is pretty cool. The work he gave me at the Play House gave me the basis and confidence to do what I've done so far. (And his letter of recommendation has also helped a whole lot.)

But he's done a lot for Cleveland that wasn't for me. He is an excellent director, at the Play House and smaller venues. His shows were always among the highlights of their respective seasons--an outdoor production of Twelfth Night that he directed remains the high-water-mark for that play in my mind. And he's a genuinely wonderful guy, who treats everyone he encounters with great respect and friendliness. I don't know anyone who has met him and doesn't hugely admire him and like him. I know I'm not the only artist who he has given a leg up in Cleveland--he was well known for hiring local actors for mainstage shows, which gained him a whole lot of loyalty. Elizabeth, continuing the trend, is also an exceptionally good actor and a truly lovely human being. They'll be a big loss to Cleveland's theatre community.

So St. Louis, enjoy Seth and Elizabeth.

Cleveland, I'm truly sorry for the loss--he's the best.

Chicago, the next time an opening on the artistic staff comes up, steal him from St. Louis. It's a shame he's never worked here. At least give him a guest director slot.

And Seth, thank you. And please hire me for something.

New Review Posted: Code of Ethnics

2010-03-31T09:40:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of Code of Ethnics, a new sketch show. It's only got a few good sketches, but there's reason to hope they'll improve.

Also, I was struck by how different the sketch and theatre audiences are. Very raucous, plenty of drinking. Maybe theatre could use a little more of that energy...

Anyhow, here's the text:

The Chicago sketch-comedy scene is vibrant but rarely reflects the diversity of the city. So the existence of Urban Indigenous, a multi-ethnic sketch troupe, is good news in and of itself. Unfortunately, "Code of Ethnics," the group's first full-length show, only rarely capitalizes on its potential: there are some great laughs, but too often the clever ideas fail to pay off.

Some of the sketches hinge on the exploitation of ethnic stereotypes: the fight between Asian and Latino gangs for the loyalty of a mixed-race man, or an Asian math team captain belittling any non-Asian who wants to be on the team, and hounding the Asian man who got only a 97 on his last test. They are great setups, but too many of the jokes come from simply repeating stereotypes, without any surprises or new insights. Other sketches don't address matters of ethnicity at all, with varying results: a sketch set in an elementary school classroom is more confusing than funny, but a sketch with beverages at the grocery store arguing over which is the best was the funniest of the night. There's clearly talent in the performing and writing, but at the moment there's not enough discipline: directors Josie Dykas and Eduardo N. Martinez need to be ruthless about cutting unfunny sketches and keeping the performers at their best. In all fairness, the audience was having a raucous good time, and I hadn't had anything to drink, which might not have made me the target audience. But for such a young group, there's real potential. Hopefully in their next show, they'll live up to their funniest material and produce great shows.

Catching Up On Seasons

2010-03-25T11:43:00.000-05:00

Five more theatres announced their seasons recently. I am shamefully behind on reporting them, but here they are. For those not up for reading the whole thing, the companies, in order, are: Porchlight, Chicago Shakespeare, Writers' Theatre, American Theatre Company, and Northlight.

Porchlight Theatre, performing at Theatre Building Chicago, has four shows in 2010-2011:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Sunday in the Park with George is the moving study of the enigmatic painter Georges Seurat. The inarticulate Seurat fights a losing battle to maintain a relationship with his mistress Dot as he creates his painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” amid the scorn of the artistic community. Almost 100 years later, his American descendant, also an artist, is burned out and uncertain of the path he must take. The show will run from September 10 to October 31, 2010.

Quite a show. Not completely successful (especially Act II), but some of Sondheim's most beautiful music, and not that frequently produced. Expect competition for the roles to be fierce.

As an added holiday attraction, Porchlight will revisit the traditional holiday favorite, Miracle on 34th Street from November 19, 2010 to January 2, 2011. This production combines the classic story from the film with traditional holiday music. When a white-bearded gentleman claims to be the real Santa Claus he brings about a genuine ‘Miracle on 34th Street,’ spreading a wave of love throughout New York City. Families are encouraged to bring the kids to see Miracle on 34th Street as their first theatrical experience. Following each performance, the audience is invited to visit with Santa Claus and share a Christmas wish.

Apparently it did quite well for them this season, so they're bringing it back next. Sounds a little theatrically flimsy to me, but popular holiday shows finance a lot of good things.

Porchlight is pleased to present the Midwest premiere of Meet John Doe, a production that has become the rising star on the musical theatre scene, from March 4 to April 17, 2011. Based on the classic movie by Frank Capra, Meet John Doe follows a plucky journalist who fabricates a letter written by "John Doe," threatening suicide over unemployment and slimy politics. Reaction to the letter prompts the paper to hire a public face for the crusade, an out-of-work baseball player who quickly becomes an icon for the oppressed. This new work received seven Helen Hayes nominations in its original production.

Very interesting. I don't know the movie, but it's regarded as a classic of its time. And what better time than ours for a story of the degraded state of politics, economy, and the media?

Porchlight will present its first Rodgers and Hammerstein musical, The King and I, from April 22 to June 5, 2011. This ambitious project will feature grand storytelling in an intimate setting. As America fights its civil war, Anna, an English widow, sails to Bangkok with her young son to tutor the wives and children of the King of Siam. The King wishes Siam to have a larger role on the world stage while simultaneously maintaining its traditions, including slavery, and he increasingly turns to Anna for advice. Featuring such classics as “Shall We Dance” and “Getting to Know You,” The King and I is the story of a man and a woman with matching intelligence and strength, but clashing personalities, prejudices and politics.

Great show, and it's been a while since Chicago saw a large-scale production. I'd be interested to see it in an intimate house like that at TBC.

Next up is Chicago Shakespeare, the behemoth on Navy Pier:

Romeo and Juliet
by William Shakespeare
directed by Gale Edwards
in Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater
September 15 – November 14, 2010

Pure and hot, passionate and true—the feverish intensity of youth explodes on CST's stage in the most celebrated love story of all time. Passion stirs the blood of young lovers and feuding families, hurling their fates to destiny—and captivating an audience left breathless. World-renowned Australian director Gale Edwards, whose work has been seen at the Royal Shakespeare Company and across America, makes her CST debut with a startling landmark production—promising to ignite the Bard's poetry on Chicago Shakespeare's stage.

It's rather strange that CST is programming this show again--it was just performed there five years ago. But people will always love this show, and Edwards is a prominent director in world theatre, so it may be worth redoing so soon.

As You Like It
by William Shakespeare
directed by Gary Griffin
in Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater
January 5 – March 6, 2011

An idyllic Forest of Arden provides the lush backdrop for Shakespeare's glorious romantic comedy of courtiers, clowns, philosophers and provincials—all bewitched by the trials and triumphs of love. Disguised as a boy, Rosalind escapes the perilous Court—only to find her heart in peril, as she instructs the very man she loves on how best to woo a woman. CST's Tony-nominated Associate Director Gary Griffin stages this tale of mistaken identity and misguided affection, following his wildly successful CST productions of Private Lives and Amadeus.

I've always had a real affection for this show, and it's been ten years since it was seen on the pier (though it was seen at Writers' in 2008). Still, it's a gorgeous show, and not produced quite as frequently as some of Shakespeare's other classic comedies. I'm very excited.

The Madness of George III
by Alan Bennett
directed by Penny Metropulos
in Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater
April 13 – June 12, 2011

Tony Award-winning British playwright Alan Bennett (The History Boys) has garnered worldwide acclaim as "arguably the best playwright in England" (The New York Times). This sharply witty, surprisingly heartfelt story chronicles the palace intrigue surrounding King George III's struggle to maintain political power, aided by the love of his devoted queen. The monarch's endearing exultations and fiery rage evoke an 18th-century King Lear. Celebrated director Penny Metropulos, who spent 19 seasons with Oregon Shakespeare Festival, stages this marvelously intelligent masterpiece.

The play has a very good reputation, and was quite popular in the early 1990s (spawning a movie, retitled The Madness of King George), but is rarely performed anymore, probably for money reasons. I'm very excited to see it, particularly after loving Bennett's The History Boys so much. Also, CST always puts plenty into the technical aspects, which will make the pretty costume lover in me salivate.

There will also apparently be a play in the Upstairs Theatre, directed by Artistic Director Barbara Gaines (all still TBA), as well as the World's Stage series, bringing Omphile Molusi's Itsoseng from South Africa, the spectacular Aurelia's Oratorio, from France's Aurelia Thierree, and Martin McDonagh's The Cripple of Inishmaan, from the Druid Theatre in Galway, Ireland, directed by Garry Hynes. The Children's Theatre series will include a new adaptation of The Emperor's New Clothes, score by Alan Schmuckler, book by David Holstein, this summer and a Short Shakespeare version of Macbeth in January.

Writers' Theatre, up in Glencoe, has announced a particularly ambitious season:

She Loves Me
Book by JOE MASTEROFF
Music by JERRY BOCK
Lyrics by SHELDON HARNICK
Musical Direction by BEN JOHNSON
Directed by Artistic Director MICHAEL HALBERSTAM
September 14 – November 21, 2010 | Performed at 325 Tudor Court

Set in a 1930’s European perfumery, we meet shop clerks Amalia and Georg, who more often than not, don’t see eye to eye. After both respond to a “lonely hearts" advertisement in the newspaper, they now live for the love letters they exchange, but the identity of their admirers remains unknown. Discover with Amalia and Georg the identity of their true loves and all the twists and turns along the way!

This is high on my list of favorite musicals ever: Bock and Harnick's most gorgeous music, an utterly charming book, and deliciously romantic. It's the kind of show that turns cynical theatre experts into gushing romantics. Not gonna lie, I can't wait.

Do the Hustle
By BRETT NEVEU
Directed by WILLIAM BROWN
January 25 – March 20, 2011 | Performed at 325 Tudor Court

Sam and Eddie Sisson are more than just father and son, they’re a crack team of hustlers always looking for the next mark. Sam, just a teenager who has practically raised himself, now wants to distinguish himself from his father and strike out on his own. Eddie doesn’t want to let his son go without one final hustle, which could bring in their biggest take yet—but could ultimately tear them apart.

Neveu's a highly respected Chicago playwright, though I've never seen one of his plays, shame on me. Writers' produced his Old Glory in 2009 to good responses, and the premise is fascinating, so I'm intrigued.

Heartbreak House
By GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
Directed by WILLIAM BROWN
April 19 – June 26, 2011 | Performed at 325 Tudor Court

In the English countryside on the estate of Captain Shotover, an extraordinary assemblage of guests gather to reunite. Affairs begin, engagements end and hearts and minds become irreparably ensnared in a young women’s dilemma—whether to marry for love or for money. George Bernard Shaw—the master of wit and social thought—bitingly chronicles the demise of the leisure class in his favorite play, Heartbreak House.

I'm pretty damn excited about this as well. Heartbreak House is in my top three favorite Shaw plays (Saint Joan and Man and Superman are the others, if you're curious), and Shaw himself ranks very highly in my personal pantheon. This play's a stunner--funny, but very dark. It's basically a portrait of Britain in decline and the world about to explode into World War One. It was at the Goodman a few years back and I missed it, so I very much want to see it now.

The regular season will also include one show to be announced--in the 50-seat Books on Vernon space--and this intriguing special event, currently available to be purchased only for subscribers:

The Detective's Wife
By KEITH HUFF
Directed by GARY GRIFFIN
June 7 – July 31, 2011 | Performed at 664 Vernon Avenue

Alice Conroy is the mother of two grown children, owner of a frame shop and wife of a Chicago homicide detective. When her husband is gunned down on the job, she sets out to find out who did it...and why.

Only Subscribers and Members have the exclusive opportunity to guarantee their seats now for The Detective's Wife by Keith Huff, one of Chicago’s hottest playwrights, fresh from his record-breaking Broadway premiere!

This looks quite interesting--Huff had a significant success in Chicago with A Steady Rain (also about Chicago cops), which went on to break records in the Daniel Craig/Hugh Jackman Broadway run. Robertson is one of Chicago's most beloved actresses and Griffin one of the town's most successful directors (though generally with larger-scale shows). And it's a limited engagement in a 50-seat theatre, so tickets will probably be all but impossible to get. If it works, though, it'll be spectacular.

Next up is the ever-controversial American Theatre Company, headed by lovable scamp PJ Papparelli.

the Mamet Repertory
Oleanna
Written by David Mamet
Directed by Rick Snyder
With Darrell W. Cox as John and Mattie Hawkinson as Carol

New England. 1995. A university professor’s tenure dissolves when a student claims sexual harassment. Mamet pits the genders in a moral minefield in his most controversial and provocative play.

Speed-the-Plow
Written by David Mamet
Directed by Jaime Castañeda
With Lance Baker as Charlie Fox, Darrell W. Cox as Bobby Gould, and Mattie Hawkinson as Karen

Hollywood. 1985. Two Hollywood producers hit meltdown when their idealistic secretary turns the tables on their plans to make the next blockbuster. Mamet cracks open the ultimate choice for any artist in America: social change or financial gain.

Sigh. More Mamet. I know he's an original voice in American theatre, but I've never thought the voice actually had much to say, aside from a sort of generalized cynicism about people in general and women in particular. Oleanna is one of his most obnoxious plays, a supposed battle of the sexes that the guy wins easily. It plays a lot more like a hit job on feminism and political correctness. Speed-the-Plow, which I've only read, is a funny Hollywood satire, if not terribly penetrating. The cast is great though: Baker was smashing in last spring's Mauritius at Northlight, Hawkinson tore it up opposite William Petersen in Blackbird, and Cox is the city's leading interpreter of skeevy guys, as can be seen in the current Profiles Theatre production of Killer Joe.

a Chicago holiday tradition
It’s a Wonderful Life: The Radio Play
Based on the Frank Capra film
Directed by Jason W. Gerace

Bedford Falls. 1948. Back for its ninth year, ATC transforms its space into a 1940’s radio studio to tell Capra’s classic story of one man’s effect on his community. Free milk and cookies are served after every show.

The theatre's holiday show. Apparently it's quite charming and delightful. Hopefully it also gets into the weird and uncomfortable dark side of the story as well--it isn't the shiny happy movie that many people remember.

world premiere
The Big Meal
Written by Dan LeFranc
Directed by Dexter Bullard

An American Restaurant. Today. In an electrifying 80-minute theatrical ride, eight actors present the quintessential dinner moments from five generations of a modern American family. From their first kiss to their secret affairs, this strangely recognizable family explores life, love and loss over chicken fingers and mac ‘n’ cheese at America’s dinner table.

A strong idea for a show--if reminiscent of A. R. Gurney's The Dining Room--so it should be interesting. I know nothing about the playwright, but it has potential.

the musical event of the season
The Original Grease
Book, music and lyrics by Jim Jacobs and Warren Casey
Directed by PJ Paparelli

Chicago. 1959. Before two movies and three Broadway productions, Summer Nights happened on Foster Beach and the rule-the-school T-Birds were a group of working class outsiders living on Chicago’s Northwest Side. Including never-before-heard music, lyrics and scenes, author Jim Jacobs teams up with Artistic Director PJ Paparelli to bring to life for the first time since 1971 the original R-Rated version of the world’s most famous movie musical.

I never in my life thought I'd say this but: I am extremely excited to see this new production of Grease. The original Chicago version, nearly 40 years ago (!), was apparently much darker and lewder, with a sharper satirical edge. Hopefully it will also avoid the creepiness of the version we currently know, which basically puts a big smiley-face on the idea that girls should give up their principles and identities in order to make men happy by conforming. Plus, Chicago references are always fun. So yes, I'm very excited for this production.

And finally we have Northlight Theatre in Skokie, where I interned in fall 2008, with a very intriguing slate.

Daddy Long Legs
Based on the novel by Jean Webster | Book by John Caird | Music & Lyrics by Paul Gordon
Directed by John Caird
Presented in co-production with Rubicon Theatre Company, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park and TheatreWorks.
September 16 - October 24, 2010
A NEW MUSICAL FROM THE TONY AND OLIVIER AWARD-WINNING DIRECTOR OF LES MISERABLES AND THE CREATORS OF JANE EYRE

Jerusha Abbott's prayers seem answered when the generosity of an anonymous gentleman allows her to move from orphanage to university. Through her grateful letters, Jerusha shares her life with her mysterious benefactor as she grows into an intelligent, independent New American Woman and discovers a budding romance with a wealthy young suitor. Yet there is one startling fact that Jerusha has yet to uncover-one that will change her life forever. A charming and unique musical love story!

This is a much adapted story (at least one previous stage version and at least four films), and this production has been making the rounds (I believe this is the third production). I don't know much about the show, but Caird has had some major hits. (Though Caird and Gordon's last big show, Jane Eyre, was not terribly successful.) I'm still excited though--it could really be something.

A Civil War Christmas: An American Musical Celebration
By Paula Vogel
Directed by Henry Godinez
November 11 - December 19, 2010

On Christmas Eve in 1864, a fugitive from slavery and her young daughter have become separated in unfamiliar Washington DC. As the desperate mother searches the snowy streets for her child and Mary Todd Lincoln searches for the perfect Christmas tree for the White House, familiar faces from our nation's history cross paths and storylines in this uplifting epic filled with traditional music and themes of family, reconciliation and communal hope. The perfect holiday fare for all ages and faiths!

I've been fascinated by this one since I first read about the initial regional productions a couple of seasons ago. Fertile setting, lots of music, and what looks like an original perspective on history--and Vogel's work is always worth a look.

Eclipsed
By Danai Gurira
January 13 - February 20, 2011

Amid the wreckage of the Liberian civil war, the "wives" of a rebel officer band together to form a fragile community-until the balance of their lives is upset by the arrival of two newcomers, and the return of a former "wife" turned rebel soldier. As the war draws to a close, each must discover her own personal means of survival in this deeply felt portrait of women finding and testing their own strength.

This one has gotten very strong responses in other productions, so I'm excited to see it. One could say that this is riding on Ruined's coat tails, but even if it is (which I don't believe), that can be a good thing--we certainly don't see very many stories from Africa, especially women's stories. And Gurira's work has been very highly praised before, so more of her plays onstage is always good.

Sense and Sensibility
By Jon Jory | Adapted from the novel by Jane Austen
Directed by Jon Jory
March 10 - April 17, 2011
World Premiere!
A lack of family fortune means difficult marriage prospects for the Dashwood sisters- two girls who couldn't be more different. Both are seeking a husband, but find that neither Elinor's common sense nor Marianne's passion offer a key to happiness. Startling secrets and unexpected twists line the path to true love in this tale of flirtation and folly, based on Jane Austen's first novel.

Northlight had a big hit with an adaptation of Austen's Pride and Prejudice in 2005, and Jory is a legend in American theatre--he ran the Actor's Theatre of Louisville for many years and founded the Humana Festival of new plays while there. Looks like it will be a delightful show.

The Outgoing Tide
By Bruce Graham
Directed by BJ Jones
Featuring John Mahoney
May 12 - June 19, 2011
World Premiere!

In a summer cottage on the bank of Chesapeake Bay, Gunner has hatched an unorthodox plan to secure his family's future but meets with resistance from his wife and son, who have plans of their own. As winter approaches, the three must quickly find common ground and come to an understanding-before the tide goes out. This new drama hums with dark humor and powerful emotion.

The description doesn't give much away, and I'm not familiar with Graham's work, but hey, a world premiere starring John Mahoney. I'm intrigued.

So that's all until the next announcement--let's hope the season lives up to its potential!

Killer Joe Moves Downtown

2010-03-24T16:27:00.000-05:00

As Chris Jones reported, Profiles Theatre's production of Killer Joe, Tracy Letts' first play, is transferring to the Royal George cabaret space on April 15th. It's a much larger theatre, and a pretty lengthy run. Profiles seems to have the winning combination, in the past year Graceland and The Mercy Seat both saw highly successful, extended runs.

Killer Joe is definitely an acquired taste--it's extremely nasty and exploitative, and full of violence, much of which has a sexualized edge. I thought it was quite powerful, but some really didn't enjoy the experience. My original review is here.

New Review Posted: Les Liaisons Dangereuses

2010-03-24T15:02:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons), which Remy Bumppo is doing at the Greenhouse Theatre Center. This play (and the film adaptation) is one of my very favorites, and it was great to finally see it live. It wasn't perfect, true, but it's still a smashing entertainment. It's not to everyone's taste, but I had a wonderful time. If you enjoy pretty clothes and ugly souls, go. Here's the text:

For some theatergoers, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses," adapted by Christopher Hampton from Pierre Choderlos de Laclos' notorious 1782 novel, is irresistible: witty people in gorgeous clothes behaving horribly toward each other. It's tremendously malicious entertainment, great fun until the human cost becomes distressingly clear. Some argue that it's all a little hollow, or that the moral reckoning comes too late, but in a strong production — and despite a few problems, this is a very strong production — the play just works. It's hard to argue with a show this tasty.

Le Vicomte de Valmont (Nick Sandys) and Mme. De Merteuil (Rebecca Spence), friends and former lovers in prerevolutionary France, pass their time by seducing, manipulating, and destroying unsuspecting victims. Merteuil, seeking revenge on a man who spurned her, sets Valmont the task of deflowering Cecile (Margaret Katch), 15 and just out of the convent, while he aims for Mme. De Tourvel (Linda Gillum), famed for her happy marriage and strong religious convictions. The plans work at first, but soon go wrong, with ghastly consequences.

Hampton's adaptation remains a wonder; the plotting is clear and frequently gripping, it's full of hilarious, quotable lines, and it generally handles the transition from comedy to tragedy well (though the Valmont/Tourvel relationship doesn't quite work). Embracing the story's excesses, director David Darlow keeps the action fast and fluid (the play feels far shorter than its 2:45 running time), and is helped by superb designs, with Emily Waecker's sumptuous costumes particularly standing out. With one unfortunate exception (Gillum, oddly flat), the performances capture the play's arch, barbed tone perfectly, with Sandys, languid and deadly as a coiled snake, Spence, steely behind her sweet facade, and Katch, far more than the silly girl she appears, particularly standing out.

There's little redeeming social value, but it would be hard to find a more seductive look at humanity's very worst impulses.

The Stephen Sondheim Theatre

2010-03-23T08:06:00.000-05:00

Joining the ranks of artists like O'Neill, Rodgers, Gershwin, and Hirschfield (and producers and money men like Golden, Minskoff, Schoenfeld, and Jacobs), Stephen Sondheim will have a theatre named for him on Broadway. As Playbill reported, the Roundabout will name the theatre currently known as the Henry Miller's Theatre (a Broadway actor and theatre owner little known today) for Sondheim after the current tenant, Dame Edna and Michael Feinstein's All About Me closes. (While the Roundabout has a long-term lease on the recently-renovated theatre, they are renting it to commercial producers for the current production.) The renaming was announced last night at a Roundabout gala honoring Sondheim on his 80th birthday. Roundabout has said that the renaming is due to a gift from a group of musical lovers to the theatre. The names of the group and the size of the gift have not been announced.

I'm personally pleased--more honors for Sondheim are always a good thing. And if I ever see a show there, you can bet I'll say "I'm going to spend the night at Stephen Sondheim's."

Happy Birthday Mr. Sondheim

2010-03-22T08:52:00.000-05:00

Today marks the 80th birthday of Stephen Sondheim. I doubt it causes much controversy any more to call him the greatest living musical theatre artist. Hell, aside from the odd Edward Albee partisan, I imagine calling him the greatest living theatre artist would not raise many eyebrows any more. He has been lucky enough to see his status go from fringe figure to great man of the theatre in his own lifetime.

I'm not going to go into a lengthy discussion of why he's the best, because others have done it far better than I. I can just say that discovering his musicals made me fall even more in love with the art form, and they've brought me great joy, intense feelings that run the gamut, and real moments of transcendence throughout my life. He's an artist, one of the great ones in theatre history, and I'm so grateful that he exists.

So if you own his cast albums, go listen to them today. If you don't, borrow and copy them from a friend, or look up Company or Follies or A Little Night Music or Sweeney Todd on youtube. It will be worth the effort.

And happy birthday, Steve. My wish is that you give us much more to hear and see. Blow out the candles.

New Review Posted: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

2010-03-18T17:01:00.000-05:00

Centerstage has posted my review of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest at Gift. It's an odd one. I mention it at the start of my review, but this play outdoes itself in castration references and descriptions of women dominating and destroying men. You could practically make a drinking game from it. And this production, while well-acted, gave the time to think about these elements. It didn't quite have enough electricity...er, that's the wrong metaphor. It didn't grab you by the throat...that's no better. It didn't cut deep enough...crap,. forget it.

Here's the text:

There isn't space to write about the many bizarre elements in the script of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," Dale Wasserman's 1963 stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel from a year earlier: there's distrust of psychiatry and all authority, a rather troubling "magical Indian Chief" character, and an extremely skewed attitude toward women (with a disturbing focus on castration), among many others. It makes watching the play in 2010 an odd experience.

Theaters still produce the play today, however, because of the rich acting roles and potential for hugely entertaining theatrical fireworks. John Kelly Connolly's Gift Theatre staging is moderately successful in that regard; there are many strong performances, but it falls short of gripping.

The play takes place at an Oregon mental hospital in 1959, ruled absolutely by the calm, sadistic Nurse Ratched (Alexandra Main). Randle P. McMurphy (Paul D'Addario), arrives from the work farm, committed after faking insanity to get an easier sentence. He soon discovers how wrong he is, and leads the inmates in a revolt against Ratched's authority.

Everyone in the cast of 20 is doing strong work: D'Addario brings a seedy edge to his iconic role, Main hides her nastiness behind a nearly implacable reserve, though we never really get a sense of what makes the character tick (that may be the fault of the writing), and Guy Massey, as the most articulate of the inmates, is delightful to watch.

But it never quite coheres into drama. Though rarely boring, it's also rarely compelling, and the stakes never get that high. It's always a pleasure to see a small company doing such an ambitious show, and there's lots of great stuff to see, but in the end it's too hard to get deeply involved.

If Only I Had a Research Grant

2010-03-16T23:42:00.001-05:00

Okay, maybe it's just me, but have you ever been struck by a topic and thought of what an awesome topic it would make for someone's Master's thesis? Like, I don't know, a comparison of Jewish male sexuality in Philip Roth's Goodbye, Columbus and Michael Chabon's The Mysteries of Pittsburgh, or the evolution of the dead relative appearing on stage as a character, or something like that. Because I'm sometimes struck by such ideas, and wish I had the ability to follow them to their conclusions, or hire someone to do it for me.

Which is all by way of saying: If anyone wants to write "The Nightmares Came Today": Violence, Disorder, and the Apocalypse in the Works of David Bowie, they should contact me at their earliest convenience.

Blog Exclusive Review: The Somewhat Gelatinous Blob From Beyond The Grave (And Also the Grave's in Outer Space!)

2010-03-12T16:01:00.000-06:00

So this is another one of those not-really reviews. Julia Weiss, the playwright, and I actually did a show together at the Cornservatory a couple of years ago, and we've stayed friendly since. But as I wanted to see the show (full title above, henceforth referred to as Blob) and the people at the Cornservatory wanted me to write about it, they were gracious enough to provide comps for me.

The show is a parody of 1950's-era B Movies with absurd monsters at the center. It's a genre ripe for parody--the films' cheapo productions values, confusing plots, clunky dialogue, and bizarre acting style are hilarious on their own. If done sloppily, a spoof would be more grating than funny--it's too easy to go way over the top. At its best, however, Blob simply puts one extra twist on top of the existing absurdity, and the results are sidesplitting. There are parts that go too long or get too broad, but there's more than enough of the best parts to make it a very fun show--especially for those who take advantage of the theatre's BYOB policy.

The plot involves the attack by the B.L.O.B. (Daniel Polonka), which stands for "Boogeranious Lifeform Orginating from Bylopsia X-25," we soon learn) on Washington DC. It's eating people, leaving behind only their metal jewelry, and no conventional weapons can stop it. Mr. President (Steve Thomas) and his advisors (David Kaniuk, Jim McDaniel, and Michael Schmitt) quickly come to the conclusion that the disappearing people must be the result of the "Commumicks": Irish Communists--Communist because they're destroying America, Irish because of the frequent appearance of the color green at the scene of the disappearance. They're so sure of themselves that they ignore the increasingly frantic insistences of Smittie (Kevin Anderson), a goevernment scientist, that they have a B.L.O.B. on their hands. Soon they send Smittie to rescue Midge (Katherine Schwartz), the President's daughter, from the office of the Sherriff (Matt Gripe), where she has been since seeing her boyfriend eaten by the B.L.O.B. Of course love will blossom between them as they race to the Pentagon to save America.

It's incredibly silly stuff, of course. But huge sections of it are deliriously funny. Anderson and Schwartz are just about perfect: they play the scenes straight enough to let the absurdity of the script shine through. It's also some of the best writing in the play, especially Smittie's ludicrously dramatic monologues. The rest of the play often rises to that level--McDaniel is particularly spot-on in his variety of roles. But there are sections where things are played too broadly: there are too many scenes of the B.L.O.B. wreaking destructions on innocents and they all go on for too long, a few characters are saddled with one-joke personalities, and there are points when it threatens to go off the rails.

But it doesn't. Despite the flaws, the whole thing's performed with enough commitment that it all works. (Credit director Anneliese Toft for keeping the cast mostly on the same page.) It won't change your life, but there are many moments when you'll laugh your ass off.

Blob... runs Wednesday-Saturday at 8 PM through March 27th at the Cornservatory, 4210 N Lincoln Ave. Tickets, $7-15, at 312-409-6435 or http://www.cornservatory.ord/.

New Review Posted: Lower Debt

2010-03-11T08:25:00.000-06:00

My review of LiveWire's Lower Debt is up on Centerstage. Sadly the show doesn't have much to recommend it, but I'm impressed that this is the first show I've seen this year in Chicago that wasn't worth a visit. Ah well. Anyhow, here's the text:

To give credit where it's due, Joshua Aaron Weinstein's new play "Lower Debt" is not a solemn tract about the people left behind by capitalism and forced to live in tent cities. Unfortunately it's hard to tell just what it is: poetic monologues sit next to meandering scenes, interrupted by black-and-white filmed sections, while no real plot shows up until about 20 minutes from the end. It's perplexing, to say the least, but not in a particularly interesting way. Despite some worthwhile performances, a strong staging and a few involving moments, it's mostly just dull.

After a pair of monologues with no apparent relation to the rest of the play, Claude (Malcolm Callan), his lover Val (Melissa diLeonardo) and her younger cousin (or sister - it isn't clear) Wendell (Annie Rix) discover an empty lot and claim it, charging rent for its use as a tent city. Meanwhile, CW (Brian P. Cicirello), an advertising copywriter, loses his job and is pulled into poverty by a combination of bad decisions and worse fortune. CW's scenes are shown as black-and-white movies until he arrives at the tent city — an interesting idea hampered by sound that makes it hard to understand most of the dialogue. For most of the show, though, we watch the various residents of the tent city go about their lives. There is vague rumbling about the characters' pasts and possible connections among them, but by the time revelations arrive they're too late — and too confusing — to make it worth the trouble.

There's good work here; Rebekah Scallet's staging is clear and always interesting to watch, Cicirello and Earliana McLaurin give engaging performances, and Anders Jacobson and Judy Radovsky's set is very evocative. But at this stage the script is still a bewildering muddle, and it's hard to care.

Steppenwolf's New Season

2010-03-10T10:54:00.000-06:00

Steppenwolf has announced its new season, organized around the theme of "Our Private/Public Self", to much fanfare and Facebook posting. (At least half a dozen of my friends had mentioned it online within hours of the announcement.) Shall we look into why? Full details at their website as well as the theatre blogs of the Chicago Tribune, Time Out, and just about everyone else.

Detroit
By Lisa D'Amour
Featuring ensemble members Kate Arrington and Robert Breuler
In the Downstairs Theatre
Thu. September 9, 2010 — Sun. November 7, 2010

Picture-perfect couple Ben and Mary fire up the grill to welcome the new neighbors who’ve moved into the long-empty house next door. Three barbeques later, the fledgling friendship veers out of control, shattering Ben and Mary’s carefully maintained semblance of success - with comic, unexpected consequences. Detroit is a fresh, off-beat look at what happens when we dare to open ourselves up to something new.

I'm not at all familiar with D'Amour's work--I don't believe she's ever had a Chicago production, or at least a high-profile one--so I don't know what to expect. It's gratifying to see something genuinely new. The description makes it look quite fascinating--we'll see how it goes.

Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
By Edward Albee
Directed by Pam MacKinnon
Featuring ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton
In the Downstairs Theatre
Thu. December 2, 2010 — Sun. February 13, 2011

On the campus of a small New England college, George and Martha invite a new professor and his wife home for a nightcap. As the cocktails flow, the young couple find themselves caught in the crossfire of a savage marital war where the combatants attack the self deceptions they forged for their own survival. Ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton face off as one of theatre’s most notoriously dysfunctional couples in Albee’s hilarious and harrowing masterpiece.

Did you hear that? That was the sound of every theatre nerd in Chicagoland having a spontaneous orgasm. For the less nerdy, let me explain why. Edward Albee is a leading candidate for both "Greatest Living American Playwright" and "Crankiest Old Man in the American Theatre," and Virginia Woolf is arguably his greatest play--certainly his best known. It's three-plus hours of two couples destroying each other and themselves--at once draining and exhilarating for the audience. McKinnon is a highly regarded director who's become a favorite of Albee's in recent years. And the expectations for Letts and Morton are stratospheric: he won the Pulitzer for August: Osage County and acts frequently, to great acclaim, and she gave one of the finest stage performances I have ever seen in August, only one of the 35 (!) shows she's done as actor and director at Steppenwolf. Fireworks are certain to result, and you better believe I'll be there.

Sex with Strangers
By Laura Eason
Directed by Jessica Thebus
Featuring ensemble member Sally Murphy with Stephen Louis Grush
In the Upstairs Theatre
Thu. January 20, 2011 — Sun. May 15, 2011

Ethan is a hot young writer whose online journals of "sexcapades" are the buzz of the blogosphere. Olivia is an attractive 30-something whose own writing career is fizzling. They hook up, sex turns into dating and dating into something more complicated. A break-out hit at Steppenwolf’s 2009 First Look Repertory, Sex with Strangers explores how we invent our identity - online and off - and what happens when our private lives become public domain.

This is the first production to make the jump from the First Look Festival (small-scale productions of new works in the Garage space in repertory) to the mainstage, which is certainly a good trend. The play itself got a great response upon opening, and I'm interested to see it on a larger scale. (Grush returns from the original staging while Murphy is new.)

The Hot L Baltimore
By Lanford Wilson
Directed by ensemble member Tina Landau
Featuring ensemble members Alana Arenas, K. Todd Freeman and Yasen Peyankov
In the Downstairs Theatre
Thu. March 24, 2011 — Sun. May 29, 2011

The Hotel Baltimore used to be the swankiest place in town - now it has a date with the wrecking ball. Eviction notices just went out to its residents, who live on the fringes of society and call the seedy hotel home. This acclaimed play from the author of Balm in Gilead is filled with everyday humanity - unexpectedly intimate and moving. Helmed by visionary director Tina Landau, The Hot L Baltimore reveals the private lives of an unconventional community about to be turned inside out.

Steppenwolf has a good history with Wilson--their 1980 production of Balm in Gilead was a huge hit in Chicago and New York and was one of the first to really put them on the map. I've seen a production of this play that didn't really hit me, but this has the potential to be quite good: it's a big ensemble piece, which is one of Landau's specialties, and I'm sure the cast will be filled out with a great group of people. I'm excited to see it.

Middletown
A new play by Will Eno
Directed by Les Waters
Featuring ensemble member Alana Arenas in the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
June 16–Aug. 14, 2011

Mary Swanson just moved to Middletown. About to have her first child, she is eager to enjoy the neighborly bonds a small town promises. But life in Middletown is complicated: neighbors are near strangers and moments of connection are fleeting. Middletown is a playful, poignant portrait of a town with two lives, one ordinary and visible, the other epic and mysterious.

I haven't yet managed to see any of Eno's work, but his THOM PAIN was very highly regarded, and he's generally seen as one of the bright hopes of playwriting. The Steppenwolf Downstairs is a much larger stage than most of his works are seen on--I am interested to see if he effectively scales up from the intimate, even claustrophobic, world of his biggest success.

Court Theatre Announces 2010-2011 Season

2010-03-09T12:54:00.000-06:00

As seen on their website and elsewhere, the Court Theatre in Hyde Park has announced their 2010-2011 season. Court consistently produces some of my favorite shows of the year, and they look to be continuing that tradition. One interesting note: They are marketing the hell out of directors this year--rather than a picture depicting the play, they have a big headshot of the director. Fascinating. Below are descriptions with comments.

The Comedy of Errors
September 16 – October 17

by William Shakespeare
directed by Sean Graney

Innovative director Sean Graney (The Hypocrites) re-imagines Shakespeare’s funniest farce about mistaken identity, mental illness, and xenophobia. The story of two sets of twins separated at birth, The Comedy of Errors will be a theatrical event full of energetic slapstick and lyrical comedy, performed by six virtuoso actors. This season opener represents the next step in Graney’s exploration of classic farce at Court Theatre, following What the Butler Saw and The Mystery of Irma Vep.

I'm a big fan of Graney's (as I've said a dozen times by now), and I'm fascinated to see how he tackles this one. I actually don't know the play very well, but this clearly won't resemble other versions of it--I can't imagine the play has ever been described as a farce about mental illness before. Whatever it is, it's unlikely to be dull.

Home
November 11 – December 12

by Samm-Art Williams
directed by Ron OJ Parson

Originally produced by the legendary Negro Ensemble Company in 1981, Home is an enduring and poetic story of hope and the resiliency of the human spirit told against the backdrop of the political and social upheavals of the 1960s and 70s. In 2008, Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, The Piano Lesson) directed an Audelco Award-winning production of Home at Signature Theatre Company in New York, which the New York Times called “a portrait of the black experience…that finds a homey beauty not in suffering but in carrying on.”

Another play I don't know well, but it was very highly regarded twice in New York, so I'm interested to see it. And Parson casts really well, so even if the script is flawed, it's still going to be fun to watch.

The third play, running January 13-February 13, has not yet been announced, but Newell's directing it. My educated guess is that it will be a play that falls under a traditional definition of "Classic," as The Comedy of Errors is the only currently-announced play that does.

Virginia Woolf’s Orlando
March 10, 2011 – April 10, 2011

adapted by Sarah Ruhl
directed by Jessica Thebus

Sarah Ruhl, one of American theater’s most exciting young playwrights, adapts Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending novel about sex, love, and history. Often called the longest love letter in literary history, Woolf’s Orlando tells the story of an English nobleman, Orlando, who lives for hundreds of years before falling asleep and waking up as a woman. Directed by longtime Ruhl collaborator Jessica Thebus (The Clean House at Goodman Theatre, Dead Man’s Cell Phone at Steppenwolf), Orlando demonstrates Court Theatre’s ongoing commitment to contemporary translations and adaptations of classic works.

I know the Sarah Ruhl haters will be out in force, but I can't help but be excited. Woolf's novel is a glorious mindbender, and among her most accessible, and I can't imagine how it would work staged. (While the film version, starring Tilda Swinton, is pretty exceptional, it depends on a lot of visual elements that couldn't be directly reproduced onstage.) And I think Ruhl's interest in formal invention (not to say whimsy) and cheerful disregard for realistic psychology would be a good fit for it. And Jessica Thebus (who remarkably has not previously directed at Court) knows how to stage a play. So I say bring it on.

The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess
May 12, 2011 – June 19, 2011

by George Gershwin, DuBose and Dorothy Heyward, and Ira Gershwin
Directed by Charles Newell
Music Direction by Doug Peck
Artistic Consultant Ron OJ Parson

Porgy and Bess remains George Gershwin’s magnum opus, with an unforgettable score that includes songs (“Summertime,” “It Ain’t Necessarily So”) later recorded by popular musicians from Billie Holiday to Ella Fitzgerald. Coming off their 2008 Jeff Award-winning production of Caroline, or Change, Charles Newell and Doug Peck come face-to-face with one of the greatest—and most controversial—pieces of American music theater ever created. Often denounced as a racially insensitive portrayal of black southerners, Newell and Peck, in collaboration with Resident Artist Ron OJ Parson and an all-African-American cast, will present a thoughtful, never-before-seen retelling of Gershwin and Heyward’s “folk opera” Porgy and Bess, a classic but contested piece of American theater history.

And the real big deal of the season: the first musical at Court since Caroline, Or Change, with the same director and musical director, and it's one of the titans of American theatre and music. It's some of the Gershwins' greatest music and lyrics, but with a scale far beyond what most theatres can do (and you can bet this version will be a hell of a lot smaller than most opera company versions) and a portrayal of black life often seen as outdated and insensitive. It's a huge undertaking, but it's doubtless going to be something special. I can't believe they're making me wait until next May to see it.

Blog Exclusive Review: Pretty Penny at the Right Brain Project

2010-03-08T13:46:00.003-06:00

So to be clear about one thing: this isn't an official review. Randall Colburn, who wrote Pretty Penny, currently getting its world premiere at The Right Brain Project is a friend of mine: he won DrekFest, the annual contest for the most intentionally terrible play in America, at Stage Left in 2009, and we've gotten to know each other since. So while it opened a few weeks ago, when I was out of town, I was very pleased to have the chance to see Pretty Penny as a member of the press on Friday night. Some thoughts:

Early in the second act, when things have already gotten pretty complicated, one character cautions another "Don't let it get real." But of course she already has, and will only go further. Things getting real is the idea of the play--the attraction of masks and alternate identities, the power wielded through sex and lies, and the seduction and danger of breaking those barriers. The complexities of sex and identity in the modern age are dramatized with some frequency, but rarely with such intelligence, maturity, and fearless willingness to investigate consequences without sensationalizing.

The play is about Vick (Katy Albert, doing exceptionally assured work in her Chicago debut) who takes a job as an operator on a no-taboo phone sex line. Jerry (Josh Sumner), the owner, represents her phone identity, "Penny," with pictures he took of Crystal (Susan Myburgh), now a successful model, ten years before. Crystal and her boyfriend Tommy (Nick Mikula) find out, and both get very interested in Penny. Add in an obsessed caller (Buck Zachary), pining for his own missed chances, and a potential real-life date Vick keeps standing up (Stephen Gawrit), and things get really strange.

The play is structured in isolated scenes, and doesn't concern itself with matters of backstory--we never learn why Vick chose to work on a phone sex line or anything about her background and life, for instance. It trusts the audience to fill in the gaps and gives us enough to keep us totally engrossed. In this it's well matched with Robbel's production: the Right Brain Project's space is quite small, and there's just one row of benches surrounding the space on all four sides. Robbel dispenses with props and all sets but a few pieces of furniture, (mime supervisor Elizabeth Bagby makes it look completely natural) and the result is a microscopic focus on the characters and their behavior that pays off exceptionally well. He's also guided the actors to extremely strong, believable work, with Albert the first among equals.

Make no mistake, this is rough stuff. It's very funny and sharp at the beginning, but as the characters get more involved and desperate, it gets intensely uncomfortable--there are two scenes in the second act that had me squirming in my seat. And of course, it doesn't shy from sexual content, of fun and distressing varieties.

But it's not exploitative in any way--Colburn isn't rubbing our noses in depravity, just showing us real people in real situations. It's not a perfect play--I'm not sure the ending worked for me--but it's exceptionally strong, always fascinating to watch, and getting a first-rate production. It's only running two more weeks, and I highly recommend a trip to see it. But if you miss it, all is not lost--the company is doing another of Colburn's plays, Hesperia, come summer. I'll certainly be there.

Pretty Penny runs Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 8 PM, Sundays at 7 PM through March 20th at the Right Brain Project, 4001 N Ravenswood. Reservations highly recommended, call 773-750-2033 or email tickets@therbp.org. More information here.

The Season to Announce Seasons

2010-03-04T12:25:00.000-06:00

The month of March has arrived, and with it the season announcements from many of Chicago's theatres. I always love season announcement time--it's so full of possiblity. Plenty of these shows won't end up being what we hope they will, but for now, 2010-11 is a glorious maybe.

So to fuel that expectation, here are season announcements from three companies: The Goodman (which announced a few weeks ago), Lookingglass, and Remy Bumppo (both of which announced yesterday), along with some commentary from me.

First up is the Goodman, which has announced three of the five plays being done in the larger Albert and two of the three for the more intimate Owen. Here's what they have to say:

Candide
Music by Leonard Bernstein
Book Adapted from Voltaire by Hugh Wheeler
New adaptations from Voltaire by Mary Zimmerman
Lyrics by Richard Wilbur
Additional lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, John Latouche, Lillian Hellman,
Dorothy Parker and Leonard Bernstein
Directed by Mary Zimmerman
Starts September 2010
In the Albert Theatre

Tony Award and MacArthur "Genius" Award-winning director Mary Zimmerman's breathtaking new production of Candide is the theatrical event of the season. In addition to the music of Leonard Bernstein, Candide features contributions from the greatest lyricists of the 20th century, from Richard Wilbur to Stephen Sondheim. In this racy musical satire, naive Candide is banished for romancing the Baron's daughter, only to be plagued by a series of absurd hardships that challenge his optimistic outlook of life and love.

Okay, as I've mentioned previously on this blog, I don't think that Candide will ever work. Period. Too much plot, zero character depth, impossible to make the tone work. Unfortunately, Leonard Bernstein wrote some of the most gorgeous music ever for the show, so people keep trying. (Note the huge number of collaborators listed.) Mary Zimmerman is the real wildcard here: I've never seen her work on a play she didn't write that wasn't by Shakespeare (though supposedly she is adapting this one to an extent), and opera and satire are not genres she usually works in. It's an open question whether her distinctive style will mesh with the play at all. But I am certainly curious to see how it turns out. Also, you're not allowed to call something the event of the season before it opens. Hey, at least nothing is listed as "Broadway-Bound" for this season.

Rain
By Regina Taylor
Starts January 2011
In the Albert Theatre
A World Premiere

Rain is Regina Taylor's most personal and intimate work to date. Fiercely independent Iris has made a successful life for herself as a journalist in New York City, but when her marriage fails, she begins to unravel. In search of solace, Iris returns to her mother's house in Texas, but her homecoming proves more confounding than consoling when her mother makes a shocking announcement. As long-buried family secrets come to light, Iris must face her past and make some difficult decisions about the future.

Taylor has a long history with the Goodman, with some productions doing much better than others, but she generally goes for something worthwhile, even if she doesn't reach it. The plot description doesn't give much to go on, so I'm not sure what to think.

Stage Kiss
By Sarah Ruhl
Starts March 2011
In the Albert Theatre
A World Premiere Goodman Theatre commission

In this quirky new comedy by MacArthur "Genius" Award-winner Sarah Ruhl, art imitates life—or is it the other way around? When ex-lovers HE and SHE are thrown together as romantic leads in an outrageously dreadful melodrama, they quickly lose touch with reality as the story onstage begins to follow them offstage. Stage Kiss is a hilarious, off-beat fairy-tale about what happens when lovers share a stage kiss—or when actors share a real one...

Ruhl has her passionate attackers and defenders, and this looks likely to confirm their opinions. It's described as both "quirky" AND "offbeat," which may overload the whimsy for some. However, it does look like a fun idea, and Ruhl's the It Girl these days, so a premiere of hers is certainly a coup.

The Seagull
By Anton Chekhov
Directed by Robert Falls
Starts October 2010
In the Owen Theatre

Goodman Artistic Director Robert Falls directs an intimate new production of Chekhov's masterwork The Seagull, whose unforgettable characters reveal the passion and pathos of everyday life. When famed actress Irina visits her family with her young lover Trigorin in tow, they become ensnared in a tragicomic tangle of romance, intrigue and unrequited love. Don't miss this unique opportunity to experience a 20th century masterpiece, interpreted by one of America's outstanding directors.

As has been mentioned, The Seagull is not a 20th century masterpiece at all, as it was written in 1895. Chekhov is also not hard to find on Chicago stages, so I'm not sure it's a show the Goodman really needs to do. But it sure is a masterpiece, and I'd be interested to see what Falls does with it in the more intimate Owen. I'm also curious as to the translation being used.

Mary
By Thomas Bradshaw
Directed by May Adrales
Starts February 2011
In the Owen Theatre
A World Premiere Goodman Theatre Commission

Outrageous. Ruthless. Explosive. Named "Best Provocative Playwright" by The Village Voice, Thomas Bradshaw pulls no punches in his comic absurdist drama Mary. At the height of what Time magazine dubbed "AIDS hysteria" in 1983, college student David invites his boyfriend home to his parents' house in Virginia where nothing has changed since the 1800s—including the slave quarters. Confronting hypocrisy and oppression with exhilarating wit, Bradshaw's incendiary work is "likely to leave you speechless!" (The New York Times).

Bradshaw is a proud provocateur, and this looks like no exception. The description makes me really want to see what they hurl at us. I believe this is Bradshaw's first production in Chicago, so we'll either see lots more of him or never see him again. Bring it on.

Here's the three-play season just announced by Lookingglass Theatre, all to be performed at their home in Water Tower Place.

Peter Pan
Adapted for the Stage by Amanda Dehnert
From the books by J.M. Barrie
Directed by Amanda Dehnert
Begins October 20, 2010

We’ll start by igniting your childhood imaginations with the timeless story of the boy who wouldn’t grow up. Amanda Dehnert, a nationally-known director with singular vision, will direct her original adaptation of Peter Pan, based on the books by J.M. Barrie. Bombastic, playful, and darkly comic, Dehnert’s adaptation brings innovative theatricality, aerial arts, and a soulful understanding of yearning and regret to this legendary adventure of pirates, fairies and fantasy.

As Rob Kozlowski said, this is a no-brainer for Lookingglass, and it's amazing they've never done it before. Amanda Dehnert's a director with a great reputation, and a really lovely person--we knew each other slightly at Northwestern, where this play was workshopped last season. I'm pretty excited.
Ethan Frome
Written and Directed by Laura Eason
Adapted from the novel by Edith Wharton
A World Premiere Lookingglass Original
Begins February 23, 2011

In winter, we’ll warm ourselves with a smoldering adaptation of Ethan Frome, a novel by the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Age of Innocence, Edith Wharton. Ensemble Member Laura Eason, recently hailed by the Chicago Tribune as Chicago’s next breakout playwright, will direct her adaptation of this deeply poetic story about fervent desire, illicit passion, staggering regret and the irreversible choices that shape the life of a reticent farmer in Starkfield, Massachusetts.

I'm wondering how this novel, which is apparently very small-scale and psychologically acute, will work on stage, particularly such a large one, and in a company with a reputation for physical storytelling. We'll see, I'm intrigued. That said, I'd love to see a bang-up stage version of Wharton's The Age of Innocence, which has huge potential. Get on that, playwrights of Chicago.

The Last Act of Lilka Kadison
Written by Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar and Abbie Phillips
Directed by David Kersnar
Begins June 1, 2011

We close our season with an original story about a spirited woman in the twilight of her life directed and co-written by Ensemble Member David Kersnar. Now in her 87th year, Lilith Kadison (Lilka) is struggling to reconcile with her distant son, fend off ghostly visitations from her irreverent artistic partner and lover from 1939 Poland, and relinquish her independence to Menelik Moses, an Ethiopian caregiver. A classic hoarder of both objects and memories, Lilka now faces the universal dilemma of what to cling to and what to let go in this powerful piece about art and survival, The Last Act of Lilka Kadison.

Looks interesting--hopefully it will avoid the sentimentality that sometimes plagues tales of elderly people looking back on their lives. Still, it could be hugely moving if it works.

And finally Remy Bumppo, performing at the Greenhouse Theatre Center. They haven't put out an official press release that I've seen, but they've announced the titles.

First is Tom Stoppard's Night and Day, directed by Artistic Director James Bohnen. It's an interesting piece, about a woman, a journalist in a fictional African country, who finds herself in over her head. It's not often done in the United States (and when I read it years ago I didn't really get it), but Stoppard is always worth seeing, and Remy Bumppo does his work very well. I'm interested to rediscover it.

Next is Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, directed by Shaun Douglass. It's done frequently, sure, but it's been a while since it had a large-scale production in Chicago, and it's just so damn delightful. I haven't seen it recently, so I'm excited to go again.

In the spring of 2011, they're doing Edward Albee's The Goat, Or Who Is Sylvia, about the fallout when a woman discovers her husband's four-hooved mistress. It's an odd choice--the Goodman just did the show in 2003, which makes this a little soon for another large-scale revival. But mostly it's just that I'm not a huge fan of the play. Albee's language is of course gorgeously and very witty, and the dish-breaking, vase-smashing second scene is always riveting, but I just don't think there's as much to the play as many do. To me, it reads like Albee saying "goat-fucker" repeatedly and getting respect anyway because he's won three Pulitzers and is a living legend. I just don't see the profundity. But I'd be willing to have my mind changed.

That's all for now, but I'm sure more announcements are to come. When they do, meet me here.

On Not Seeing Theatre

2010-02-26T22:17:00.000-06:00

As some of you know, I haven't been in Chicago since the 14th--I've been in my hometown of Cleveland Heights, helping out my mother's after her surgery last month. (She's recovering wonderfully, I'm happy to say.) And I haven't seen a play since February 10th.

I think it's been years since I've had such a long period between shows, and it's a little odd. I did get the chance to see two movies--the Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts, which I liked quite a bit, though animation connoisseurs found them underwhelming, and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans, a truly insane and bizarre film, and worth checking out for anyone who has an appetite for extremely uncomfortable laughs and darkness. I've also eaten meals, read some scripts, and slept. Oh, sleep.

So this is basically an explanation for my lack of posting. I'm very excited to return to Chicago on Sunday, and start seeing shows soon. And we're in season announcement season (not many other than the Goodman have so far, and I do need to write them up there), so I'll be talking about those too.

How are things for you guys out in internet-land?

Critics v. Civilians

2010-02-21T18:45:00.000-06:00

This profile of Graceland playwright Ellen Fairey has gotten me thinking. My ambivalence on the show has been well documented here, as has the show's continued success. I'm not here to dump on the show more but rather to discuss the thoughts that it has provoked.

To briefly summarize: what I liked in Graceland were the dialogue, the acting, the staging, and the design. I had three major problems with the script: some of the plot developments weren't credible, I could usually guess what was going to happen in a scene shortly after it began, and the whole production felt like something I'd seen before.

But this leads to an important point: I see a lot more plays than most theatregoers. My guess for last year is 60-75 shows. (I could probably figure it out if I tried, but I don't keep records. Maybe I should.) During the period of January 13th to February 10th of this year, I saw 11 productions--12 if you count both parts of The Brother/Sister Plays separately. There are others who see more than me, certainly (I'm looking at you, Kris Vire), but it's a fair bet that most of them are other critics, industry people, or members of the Saints or the Jeff Committee.

It's not a big leap to conclude that seeing this many shows has an impact on how I watch theatre. Even when not on the job, I can't help but watch with a double consciousness--both reacting instinctively to what I see and analyzing my reactions and the craft onstage. I'm also probably more aware of how stories are told onstage, and certainly keep up with the tricks and trends in theatre. (I think this piece would not have happened if I hadn't seen and read so many plays using dead relatives onstage, for instance.) As a result, I probably get tired of certain devices, techniques, and plays before most theatregoers would. If I accept that it's a matter of taste whether Graceland's plot developments were credible (and I do), the other flaws I saw could easily not matter to someone who sees only 10 plays in a year. Quite possibly the large audience that saw and enjoyed Graceland didn't feel like they'd seen it all before because they hadn't.

I've certainly noticed that phenomenon with my friends who are aficionados of other arts. I've been to choir concerts with my boyfriend Adam (a choir teacher who knows way more about the art than I could ever hope to) and practically seen a different concert than he did. Tim Brayton's negative review of Star Trek was based to a large extent on problems he had with the cinematography and composition that I simply didn't notice when seeing it. (I like movies, but I don't think I could tell you after seeing most movies whether they had more close-ups, medium shots, or long shots, and whether those shots were unusually long or short.) I can articulate what I did or didn't like about a concert or movie and why, but I can't say it in the same way that someone educated and experienced in the workings of choir or cinema can.

So what does it mean that a critic's experience of his or her art is fundamentally different from that of the vast majority of the people reading it?

Some would argue that the critic has a responsibility to review like an average audience member would: those are the people who always comment on the audience that was having a great time when watching a show that a critic panned. (Another manifestation are those who will protest that the show was "just a good time, not a deep drama" or "made for kids, not grouchy grownups," as if either of those meant it didn't still need to be good.) This is ridiculous. A critic can't review from a perspective other than his or her own. It's tough enough for me to figure out my own reactions to a show, much less everybody else's. (This is particularly true because openings are frequently filled with those who worked on the show and their friends, who tend to react much more positively.) It would be dishonest to react with anything other than my own feelings.

But it would be just as silly to say that audiences' tastes need to catch up to critics. I don't love movies enough to become an expert in them, and most audiences could never afford to see as many plays as I do. (Ah, press seats, how I love thee.) Everyone has the right to like what they like. Tastes evolve with time and experience, certainly, but criticizing someone for what they enjoy or don't is a waste of time.

In the end, I think it comes down to the essential contract between critic and reader, which I've discussed previously: It is the critic's job to honestly and articulately describe his or her experience with the artwork and the reader's job to read the review with an understanding of his or her own tastes and the critical thinking to make a guess at the critic's tastes and interests. (Having read the critic for a while and reading multiple reviews for the production helps a whole lot.) No two people have the same tastes and reactions, but you can learn a lot with someone whose tastes are different from yours.

Any additions, disagreements, or clarifications? Comment away.

Things To See

2010-02-18T15:15:00.000-06:00

Alright, shameless plug time. I've been dramaturging two shows, and am incredibly proud of both of them. They're in previews now, and definitely worth a trip.

First off is Here Where It's Safe, at Stage Left, 3408 N Sheffield. It's a world premiere by Jeff winner M. E. H. Lewis, a moving story about an American couple, desperate to have a child, and the Indian surrogate they hire to help them. It's a gorgeous, involving play, and I couldn't be prouder of everyone involved. (The design is really stunning, too.) Previews are only $10, and they are tonight, tomorrow, Saturday, and Monday, all at 8 PM. We open Tuesday at 7:30, and the regular run is Thursday-Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM through April 3rd, with every Thursday being a "Pay What You Can" show. More info and tickets can be found at (216) 337-5281 or here.

Meanwhile, Fiddler on the Roof started previews last night at the Marriott Lincolnshire, 10 Marriott Drive in Lincolnshire, IL. You all know the story, but this is a particularly excellent production. Director David H. Bell has really led the cast to its very best work, and it's just sensational. The official opening is Wednesday the 24th, and it runs through April 25th. Tickets and info by phone at (847) 634-0200 or here.

So see these wonderful shows, with my recommendation, and let us know what you thought here.

(And I hope the lack of comments on the previous entry doesn't mean that nobody can think of a good theatre experience. That would just be too depressing.)

What Works?

2010-02-16T15:49:00.001-06:00

It's a given, it seems, that theatre people love to complain. Anywhere you look in the blogosphere you see personal attacks, crying, and anger. Outrageous Fortune is full of attacks on how new plays are produced in America, from funding to selection to production to marketing to critical response and beyond. And any time two or more theatre artists go out for drinks, bitching is soon to follow.

And honestly, I'm getting a little tired of it. There's a purpose in anatomizing what doesn't work, absolutely. We can't move forward without figuring out what has to change. But it seems like we rarely move on to discuss 1) what really is working, and how to emulate it and 2) how to fix processes and institutions that are dysfunctional.

I can make a start: I'm currently dramaturging FIddler On The Roof, directed by David H. Bell, at Marriott Lincolnshire. I'm having an absolutely wonderful time on that process, and think these are among the important factors:

Everyone is professional in behavior.
Everyone respects the artistry and time of everyone else.
It's a play the whole cast and production team believe in, and they're doing work of the highest quality.
There's enough money to make things easier than they would otherwise be.

But that's just my perspective from emails and having attended a few rehearsals. There could be all kinds of things going on I don't know about. And even if it's totally accurate, it doesn't really answer some important questions:

Is every process at Marriott this positive, or is it more true on shows David directs? (The positivity clearly emanates from him.)
Does this kind of atmosphere create great art? (I think this show will be great, though I'm hardly unbiased. But are negativity and tension productive?)
How did the organization make these values central? (Was a Marriott show 20 years ago the same?)
And how do other theatres, that aren't large commercial producers of musicals, take useful points from this organization?

So I throw it open to you:

What are experiences that have been particularly good, either specific productions or ongoing relationships with institutions?
Have any of you experiences a dysfunctional process or place that was turned around and made positive? And if so, how?
How can an organization learn from the success of a different organization?

Let's see if we can get some good ideas out there.

The Benefits of Having a Staff Page

2010-02-16T14:37:00.001-06:00

My staff page on Centerstage includes a link for people to write to me. Usually this means I get sent press releases, occasionally I get an interesting comment on a review, and once in a while I get this:

Subject Line: [StaffPage] THE DRACONIAN REPTILIANS AND THE ILLUMINATI

TO: Zev Valancy - zev[dot]n[dot]valancy[at]gmail[dot]com
They Found You From Here: http://centerstagechicago.com/writers/
:
FROM: LORD REV DYJUAN D BARNES YAHWEH PH.D
Email: LORDREVDBARNES@GMAIL.COM
:
we must stop them and expose their alien agendas now
:
:
The Last Page They Saw Was: http://centerstagechicago.com/writers/details.cfm?ID=310

A least we have a member of the nobility, who is also a Reverend, a Ph.D, and God on the job. Reptilians and Illuminati won't stand a chance.

New Review Posted: Wilson Wants It All

2010-02-15T18:33:00.001-06:00

One last review from my insane month of theatregoing. (From January 13th to February 10th, I saw twelve productions. Some more thoughts on that are to come.) Here's the House's Wilson Wants It All, a fascinating show. I didn't love it, and certainly recognized its flaws, but they didn't bother me as much as they did some other commentators, like Don and Monica. Ah well. Mostly worth a trip, in my estimation, particularly for those with a fondness for political futuristic satire and dynamic stagings. Those with no tolerance for plot holes or clunky dialogue, not so much. And I promise some thought pieces and other blogging soon. I am, as always, higher on opinions than on initiative.

Here's the text:

Popular politicians are often compared to blank screens - full of charisma, but just vague enough on policy that people of widely varied political opinions can see whatever they want in them. Michael Rohd and Phillip C. Klapperich have taken this concept to provocative and often thrilling places in "Wilson Wants It All," and while it's hardly flawless, it gives plenty of food for thought and experience.

In 2010 an idealistic young Senator and his wife were assassinated, not long before he intended to announce his candidacy for the presidency. Luckily his chief of staff, Wilson (John Henry Roberts) rescued the daughter his wife was about to have, naming her Hope and training her to take up her father's mantle. Thirty years passed, and American political culture devolved, in frighteningly plausible ways. Hope (Rebekah Ward-Hayes) is now 30, and said to be on the verge of announcing her candidacy for her father's seat. But she's chafing against Wilson's obsessive management of her life, and has no idea that her fate is about to intersect with that of Ruth (Leslie Frame), who is the same age and looks remarkably similar.

Rohd, who directed, conceived and co-wrote, and Klapperich, who co-wrote, have created a remarkably coherent and persuasive world. It's easy to imagine us living in this fragmented, gridlocked society, and desperate for something to make it better, whether or not we truly understand what it is. And Rohd staging is exquisite: on Collette Pollard's set, made entirely from projection screens, he blocks his excellent cast in consistently fascinating ways.

Unfortunately, the script doesn't use this excellent setup to the fullest; the dialogue is often unsubtle and some of the plot twists strain believability. By the end there is a distinct sense of being told the same thing over and over. But there's still a lot to be said for a thrillingly staged, cautionary look into our own futures.

What Happens When...

2010-02-12T12:55:00.000-06:00

...a conservative goes to see Rush Limbaugh! The Musical? Well, see for yourself. It's quite the nasty screed, attacking the very idea of criticizing Limbaugh, though using some rather dubious points. (Did you know he never said we shouldn't give aid to Haiti? Or that his having black friends mean he isn't racist? Staggering!) Go read it and comment. I already have.

New Review Posted: I Am A Camera

2010-02-10T12:45:00.000-06:00

Yes, another review. Only one more coming up, then I'm off for a few weeks. This was an interesting one: Allen and the Neos are always worth checking out, but this one didn't quite work. Ah well, still some good stuff to see, especially if you're interested in photos.

Here's the text:

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but not all of them are true. "I Am a Camera," conceived by director Greg Allen and written by performers Jeremy Sher and Caitlin Stainken, aims to explore the ways that photographs work, and the ways that people react to them. The explorations are frequently fascinating, funny and even moving. But too many go on for too long, and by the end it's not clear what the show's point is.

For instance: near the start of the show, Sher comes out, and a voice tells him to smile. He plasters on a fake grin as a song starts, and he attempts to maintain the expression, with increasing strain and distress, for the duration. Afterwards, Stainken comes on and does the exact same thing, again for the entirety of the song. It's a clever idea — who hasn’t suffered in trying to maintain an unnatural grin for a photo, and come off looking grotesque? But stretched to such a length it isn't really funny anymore, and the point is severely belabored.

Other segments are more effective; a sequence where the actors take pictures of audience members is delightful, and one using pieces of paper as miniature projection screens for sections of larger photos was simply beautiful. Even the sequences that don't work as well give something provocative to see or think about. But they don't really build to a conclusion. Maybe that was the intention — a series of explorations that don't really lead to an answer — but it still feels a little disappointing.

But even if the end is disappointing, the play is full of lovely moments. Sher and Stainken give honest and involving performances, and technical designers Peter Sebastian and Evelyn DeHais create some real magic onstage. There's plenty worth seeing, it just doesn't cohere into a complete picture.

New Review Posted: Rush Limbaugh! The Musical

2010-02-08T22:44:00.000-06:00

Centerstage put up my review of Rush Limbaugh! The Musical at Second City. It has flaws, yes, but to an angry lefty like me, it's pure catharsis. I laughed like crazy--though I also occasionally cringed at the overly loud sound. If you aren't a leftist hater of the conservative noise machine, I don't know how you'll react, but in my subjective opinion, it's fantastic.

Here's the text:

Rush Limbaugh (Mark Sutton) is praying: he needs some event to rally everyone behind conservatism, and give them a greater appetite for Limbaugh's brand of hate-mongering. At that moment, someone jumps in to tell him that the twin towers have been hit. Limbaugh looks to heaven, and fervently gives thanks.

As the above joke makes perfectly clear, Ed Furman and T. J. Shanoff's "Rush Limbaugh! The Musical" is not a light, funny parody, like the author's previous, lesser show, "Rod Blagojevich Superstar." This is a vicious satire, with real teeth. It's primal-scream therapy for liberals, or anyone fed up with political discourse in America. Someone who doesn't agree with the show's politics probably won't have a good time, but for those of us continually horrified by Limbaugh and his ilk, it's cathartic.

The story looks back at Limbaugh's life from 2014, narrated by Shasta (Karla Beard), who is apparently the embodiment of Limbaugh's fears about black women. The device doesn't really make sense, but it doesn't matter, as Beard is giving a spectacular performance — she's got comic timing as strong as the rest of the cast, but she's also a truly exceptional singer. Her solos blow the roof off the place. While the rest of the cast's voices range from passable to good, it hardly takes away from the show, as they all jump into the gleefully malicious material with both feet. Sutton makes a frightening Limbaugh — though he's far too healthy-looking for the part — and the other four cast members each have truly brilliant moments in a variety of roles.

The show definitely has flaws — it loses steam during the last half-hour, and the sound mix is often ear-splittingly loud — but they don't detract much from one of the sharpest political satires I've seen. See it before Limbaugh's lawyers shut it down.