Killer Joe Moves Downtown

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.

Steppenwolf's New Season

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.

Review-a-Palooza, Part Two

Centerstage has published my review of Tracy Letts' first play, Killer Joe, being revived at Profiles after its world premiere in Chicago 15 years ago. You can read it here.

A personal note on the show: the second production, after Chicago was at the Cleveland Public Theatre. My family friend and theatrical mentor Lynna Snyder (now Metrisin) played Sharla. Since I was ten and the first scene had her in nothing but a t-shirt, I was not permitted to attend. How very wise my parents were.

Also, this seeing Killer Joe means that only Bug stands between me and seeing all of Letts' produced plays. (August on Broadway, Superior Donuts and Man From Nebraska at Steppenwolf.) Anyone want to revive Bug for me?

Anyhow, here's the text of the review.

It's all fun and games until...but that would be giving too much away. Nobody loses an eye in "Killer Joe," the first play by Tracy Letts, now in its first Chicago revival at Profiles Theatre, but what starts as a nastily entertaining black comedy in the first act turns just plain nasty in the second. It's frighteningly convincing, but it takes a high tolerance for close-range violence and disturbing sleaze. If such things turn your stomach, you'll want to flee, but those up for a visceral evening will be thrilled and horrified.


Chris Smith (Kevin Bigley) needs $6,000 or his shady creditors will kill him. The only way he can think of to get the cash is killing his hateful, alcoholic mother to collect her insurance policy, whose beneficiary is his brain-damaged sister, Dottie (Claire Wellin). He quickly gets his father (Howie Johnson) and stepmother (Somer Benson) on board, but they realize that none of them have the courage or skill to pull the trigger. So they hire sheriff/hit man Killer Joe Cooper (Darrell W. Cox). When Joe takes an interest in Dottie, things go wrong very fast.


This is nasty, exploitative stuff, and it's to the credit of director Rick Snyder, the cast, and the designers, that it's presented with intense commitment. Even in the funnier first half, there's no winking at these characters, and no gentling their awful qualities. So when things get violent, it's hard to watch—but hard to turn away. Cox stands out for his toxic, fascinating combination of sleaze and menace, but he fits seamlessly into the exceptionally strong cast. Aside from the pacing sagging a bit in the middle of the first act, everything in the production works together wonderfully. It's just up to you whether it's a journey you want to take.

August Ends In June

As has been reported elsewhere, the Broadway production on August: Osage County will be closing on June 28th. The grosses have been anemic for quite a while--especially since it's not a cheap show to run--and apparently Phylicia Rashad's stepping into the role of Violet a few weeks back wasn't enough to push them into sellout status.

Still, it's a very impressive run--648 performances. The only nonmusical play to run longer in recent years was Proof (900-some), and that had a cast of four and a runtime of 90 minutes--as opposed to August's 13, all of whom had to be paid overtime because the show is over 3 hours in length. The show is leaving on tour next month, which was mentioned as one reason for its closing--now the touring production will be able to use elements of the designs from the Broadway version. Very clever.

So it looks like the local boy made pretty damn good. I wonder if the Broadway run of Superior Donuts, his followup, will manage similar success? The tour of August is heading back to Chicago in February of 2010--I'm very excited to see it again.

Three Interesting Tidbits

Three very interesting things have come to light recently, one with national implications, two others more Chicago-based.

1) According to The New York Times and many others, the nominee for the new head of the National Endowment for the Arts is Broadway producer Rocco Landesman. Landesman, the ehad of the Jujamcyn theatre chain, which owns five Broadway houses, is seen by many as a surprise choice. First off, he comes from the world of commercial theatre, not non-profit. I'm also not aware of his having done significant work as an activist beforehand. However, I'm very pleased by this news. First off, someone from the theatre world might end up giving theatre a bit of a leg up. Second of all, Landesman is known for being extremely strong-willed and combative. He gets things done. We need that a hell of a lot more than we need a bureaucrat who'll be polite to everyone. The arts doesn't need someone to beg and make deals, we need a very prominent, very fiery person who will stand up and demand that the nation start to support the arts in the same way that the arts support the nation. Plus, this is one piece of news that actually made Leonard Jacobs happy about something related to government arts funding. And that's a feat in and of itself. Perhaps the much-ballyhooed "new models" will finally start appearing? (L--I tease because I love.)

Also, Landesman got his PhD in criticism and dramatic literature. Who'd have imagined that a critic would get so far? I wonder if it will do anything for us tireless scribblers...

2) As reported by Chris Jones and others, Tracy Letts' Superior Donuts, which had its premiere last summer at Steppenwolf, is in talks for a Broadway move. I really enjoyed the show, but I have some doubts about its commercial possibilities: the critical response, while strong, was not unanimous raves (I was probably one of the strongest supporters), and it is very Chicago-centric--indeed, one of the reasons I loved it so much is that it takes place in my own neighborhood of Uptown, and I could recognize many of the references in the script and production. However, I'm still glad for the move, especially if they maintain the original cast. If it does make the transfer, Jon Hill is certain to get some attention--he's just exceptional. And it is, in fact, a wonderful play, and one that I think has a lot of universal appeal. We'll see if it works!

3) The Goodman's Desire Under The Elms is not doing well in its Broadway run. Reviews were decent, but they are currently filling only 35% of seats at the St James (a theatre usually reseved for big musicals--I still don't understand why they chose such a gigantic house for a revival of a somewhat obscure O'Neill play) and they came up empty at the Tony nominations, even for actress Carla Gugino and Walt Spangler's set. The Times pegs May 24th as the early closing date.

So, thoughts on the NEA and Broadway? Things are interesting, no?