Theater Reviews

Against the backdrop of today, seeing Kenneth Lonergan’s story about young people adrift in Reagan era America probably made this play darker than intended.  Or it may have simply proven an odd reminder of how much some things don’t change regardless of the setting or the time. Often for very compelling reasons, there will always be people who find it hard to face the work of growing up.  Unlike Dennis (Tommy Montgomery) in this adaptation of Lonergan’s This is Our Youth, most don’t have the choice not to. 

The son of a famous painter, his parents can and do pay for his apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan so that no one has the need to suffer the physical presence of the other.  Although he mentions being a bicycle messenger until he decides what he wants to do, you’re left with the impression that what he really wants to do is what he is doing; getting high and dabbling in the sale of drugs.  His depth of knowledge about in the appearance and smell of marijuana is consummate as is the scope of his network to score.  Domineering, brash and egotistical, Dennis’s brand of confidence is far too callous to be considered attractive.    

Characteristic of sycophants, his friend Warren (Jack Rento) is his radical opposite.   19 years old, tried college and decided no, he lives at home with his wealthy father and spends his days stoned.  When we meet them, Warren’s just been kicked out of the house and landed at Dennis’s. In tow, $15,000 in cash he’s stolen from his father.  “Proceeds from my unhappy childhood.”

In a very short time we get a deep feel for the nature of this friendship.  One in awe of the other, emulating and appeasing.  The other using humiliation and derision to insure no one confuses the hierarchy.  As disquieting as that may sound, it isn’t.  The air of reality hangs too heavy in this highly competent production to get bogged down in a single impression.  These characters may be exaggerated, but they have many incarnations in the real world.  It’s that reality that makes This Is Your Youth so appealing.  Warren’s willing to absorb torrents of verbal abuse for friendship; even friendship as caustic as this. 

Wit is the saving grace that runs thick throughout this interesting play. Both guys are funny.  Dennis is simply comically gauche.  But Warren is another animal all together.  His wit is sharper, much more refined and there’s always a little bit of poison on the tip of his jabs.  Despite the seeming imbalance of their relationship, they constantly challenge one another verbally.  Still, in and of themselves, they’re not intriguing.  That doesn’t happen until a woman enters the fray.

High-strung, sensitive, smart and hot, Jessica (Megan Wilcox), a friend of Dennis’s girlfriend, drops by unexpectedly.  Warren has already mentioned her and let’s Dennis know he thinks she’s “really cute”. It’s clearly a full-fledged crush. One that’s of course ridiculed by Dennis.  But when he and Jessica are left alone together, a different Warren tries to break out of the chrysalis.  This one could almost be a player. Almost. 

It’s here we see some fine acting.  Rento’s performance was already on a soft glow up to this point.  But this scene exposed the potential of his depth.  The timing and the shadings of emotions you read from the slightest shifts in body language as well as his deft delivery were all handled with disarming mastery.  Not to be outclassed, Wilcox’s Megan was also sniffing the edges of formidable.  It was her character who suggested we don’t have to settle for what we are today.  That our adult selves could be the antithesis of who we are now.   It’s not until Dennis and Warren see that the paths they’ve on can lead to no more tomorrows do they stop to reconsider who they are and what they want. 

Some aspects of This is Our Youth are troubling.  The casual racism built into the dialogue may be ugly but it carries the ring of what you might hear when unintended ears aren’t listening.  The unconsciously vile language of intimates. In that sense, it’s truthful and an accurate depiction of who we are.

That this production is the realized dream of two acting majors going into their junior year of college is astounding. Presented in Evanston’s Piven Theater, the play’s low budget would never allow the polish of a professional endeavor. Which is not to say the set or other technical components were lacking.  On the contrary, each was credible and solid.  But what This is Our Youth does have, it has in abundance.   The purity and pleasure of exceptional theater.

This is Our Youth

The Quarry Theatre Company

Aug 16 – 18    2019

The Piven Theater Workshop

Noyes Cultural Arts Center

927 Noyes St.

Evanston, IL   60201

You’d think the meaty new production, The Recommendation, currently playing at Windy City Playhouse was tailor made for immersive theater.  With a few accommodating revisions from playwright Johnathan Caren, director Jonathan Wilson and his creative team fused a suspenseful story of trust and friendship on a kinetic “living” stage; making the combined effect more powerful than you’d likely expect.

Windy City was the first theater to successfully introduce the immersive theater concept to Chicago audiences early last year with their monster hit Southern Gothic. Then the set was a full scale multi-room house and the story examined the personal intrigues of friends living in a small southern town.  An audience of about 30 people occupied the same physical space as the actors in each room of the house.  You could find yourself standing next to an actor as he or she delivered dialogue or watch from across the room as one actor confronted another in the heat of dramatic conflict.   The story was compelling but it was the set that was the star.  It’s also the main reason the show is still running at the theater’s South Loop extension these many months later.

The Recommendation ups the game on all fronts.  What initially looks like will evolve into a casual buddy play between guys from vastly different backgrounds turns into something much more interesting and intense.  Thanks to some top flight acting, killer sets, and a story that builds heat like a pressure cooker; the performance is one that intrigues as well as satisfies.

Opening the first scene in the theater’s lobby proved wonderfully clever and provided an unorthodox way to meet two the story’s main characters; a boy of ambition and one of privilege.  It also gave the audience a taste of how the regular rules of theater weren’t going to be applicable here.

To enhance the sense of involvement and play up the audience’s physical proximity to the cast, food and drink are often offered during the performance.  And because the action doesn’t take place in a single contained space, guides are always on hand to usher you from set to set as the action and story develop.

The first stop, a college dorm at Brown where the boy of ambition, Iskinder (Issy) Iodouku, and the boy of privilege, Aaron Feldman (Julian Hester) meet as roommates during their freshman year.  One the son of an Ethiopian immigrant and the other is a Callie kid whose prosperous father houses his family in Brentwood. The match is not well balanced.

They’re both open, smart and ready to win.  Throughout the play, the differences in their backgrounds and prospects are repeatedly emphasized.  One takes his access, options and position for granted as the matter of fact consequences of some natural order.  The other observes the machinations of privilege in quiet awe, mildly resentful and hesitantly envious of the comfort Feldman’s life provides and the doors it opens.  Because of their acceptance of one another, their friendship seems to grow into something genuine and it doesn’t surprise when Feldman offers to have his father send a letter recommendation to a prestigious law school on Issy’s (Michael Aaron Pogue) behalf. 

Following them as they become young men, still close and settling into their lives; it’s Issy who seems more poised to reach his golden ring than his friend; whose place among the elite begins to appear more tenuous.  He still moves in the world of the entitled; but more as a supporting player; not the lead.

A chance traffic stop rips away all of Feldman’s protective shields.  Not knowing why he’s been detained and fearing that a heinous secret has caught up with him, it’s in a holding cell that the story flips into a gripping mind game.  The emotional tension ratchets up to inferno levels when Feldman finds himself in alone in the cell with Dwight (Brian Keys).  It’s hard for him to figure out if this crudely eloquent slightly delusional ersatz confidante is on a hustle or genuinely trying to help him. Fear had already compelled him to divulge his damning secret.  Tatted and muscled, Dwight’s a jail savvy recidivist who’d make a formidable protector.  They make a pact.  Dwight will help Feldman survive county and; once he’s free, Feldman will use his connections to secure Dwight’s release.  Feldman’s reneging on that promise reveals the play’s heart, discloses how friends will try to right the wrongs of people they care about and reminds us that good intentions can backfire in profound ways. 

Moving from the wholesomeness of a college dorm to the forlorn suspense of a holding cell, from a bewitchingly intimate café where Feldman tries to rationalize his betrayal to the sauna of a high-end health club; we witness the moral stakes keep rising for all three men.  It’s in the sauna that each of them is forced to own who they are and what they’re made of through physical confrontation and self-examination.  Some of what we learn deserves admiration.  Other things dismay.  Throughout, the craft Keys, Hester and Pogue display convinces us of the sincerity of their characters to pursue their individual sense of right and responsibility.

A year in the making, with the objective of insuring easy audience flow from scene to scene as well as provide dramatic visual interest, Lauren Nigri’s sets were often stunning in the way they defined atmosphere and retained compositional richness.

The Recommendation shows how this experimental, not quite interactive take on staging continues to evolve.  As the line between audience and cast becomes more and more faint, can more empathetic theater happen?  As time and methods advance, it’ll be interesting to find out.

The Recommendation

Through September 22^nd, 2019

Windy City Playhouse (Flagship)

3014 W. Irving Park Rd.

Chicago, IL    60618

773-891-8985

It’s hard to imagine that Beyond Therapy, the delightfully outlandish farce Eclipse Theatre now has running at the Athenaeum, could be nearly as endearing under the charge of any other director.  Rachel Lambert in her staging of Christopher Durang’s 1981 lampoon on the dating game has overseen the production of a little jewel.  

Originally presented back when Lady Di tied that fateful knot with Prince Charles and Sally Ride blasted off and became the first American woman to enter space, this iteration of Beyond Therapy stays true to the look and feel of the times.  Warm harvest colors on the set and costumes that carried whiffs of Saturday Night Fever made the tone comfortably nostalgic.

In Durang’s sly wrangling of a story, Bruce (Nick Freed) and Prudence (Devi Reisenfeld) find each other through a personal ad and decide to meet for a date.  Arriving early, anxious and more than a little nervous, Bruce’s fastidiousness in making sure his appearance delivered looked as ridiculous as it was meticulous.  Bizarre and very funny.  Without saying a word, he let you know this was going to be an interesting ride.  When Prudence shows up; just as anxious, judgmental, hungry for affection and riddled with her own feelings of inadequacy, it was clear the chemistry between them might prove to be more than just a little volatile.

With his dearth of filters and wealth of peculiarities, Bruce complimented Prudence on her breasts as well as her eyes, casually mentioned his boyfriend, Bob, and confessed to crying easily; all within the first ten minutes of the date. 

Shocked, dismayed and finally exasperated, Prudence flees the restaurant, goes back to her life with her cat and laments her plight with her therapist.

She also tries her luck with other personal ads.  It’s easy to empathize with her chagrin when she finds herself on another date with Bruce who’s been clocking in time with his own therapist about his dilemmas with love. 

This will become a cycle.  One in which restaurants with no waiters and therapists with no sense become crucial elements of the plot. 

And then there’s Bob.  Up to this point, all the characters toyed with flashes of brilliance and managed to ingratiate themselves to us with impressive ease.  Freed in his role as Bruce sustained a genuineness that superseded his buffoonery.  And Reisenfeld’s Prudence was resolute in making sure her character’s good sense protected her insecurities.  In this story, her vigilance proved a crucial defense.

Her therapist, Stuart (Joe McCauley); absurdly macho, vain and cursed with a tendency of arriving early during sex sees Prudence more as sexual conquest than patient. And Lynne Baker as Bruce’s therapist Charlotte electrified her performance as a slightly daffy mental health professional who never can remember the right word for anything and probably knew a good place to score some good bud.  Despite all that, the clarity of her instincts never faltered. 

But none of them surpassed the specialness of Bob, played a little over the top but still magnificently by Siddhatha Rajan.  Well, a lot over the top.  Thin as a strand of linguine with a massive shock of black hair and thick mustache, moving in what looked to be something between a seductive slither and a rolling stroll, Bob got and kept your attention.  But that’s the nature of farce when elevated to champagne level.  Take the absurdity all the way to the wall but do it with true panache. 

Suitably alarmed at Bruce’s sudden and serious interest in women and not content to be the “boyfriend living over the garage”, he pouts, swoons, snipes and enchants in equal measure. 

Encased in Samantha Rausch’s cozy set, Beyond Therapy felt and looked perfect for an age still carrying the residue of psychedelic free love.  The restraint Zachary Wagner displayed in his costumes proved wonderfully canny and worked beautifully to enhance the show.

By the time the final scene arrived, you couldn’t help but be a little disheartened that this rollicking tryst would be coming to an end.  Reminding us with laughter that there are as many roads to love as there are kinds of love, Beyond Therapy did its job well.

Beyond Therapy

July 11 – August 18, 2019

Eclipse Theatre Company

Athenaeum Theatre

2936 N. Southport Ave.

Chicago, IL    60657

773-935-6875

www.eclipsetheatre.com

Tolstoy had it right.  Happy families are all the same but every unhappy family has its own special brand of sad.  He didn’t mention the broad middle ground.  That space where families skew one way or the other but can’t truly be called either happy or unhappy.  Because of their unpredictability, these are the families that can’t help but fascinate because you never know which way they’ll tilt when adversity strikes.  Will they stick together or will they crumble?

If I Forget, closing soon at Victory Gardens, scrutinizes one of those families by exposing its strengths as well as its weaknesses during crisis.  Something about it reminds you of Arthur Miller and his ability to tell a story plainly and beautifully so that you had a genuine sense of the souls inside the characters.  Always told in a straight line with tension building elegantly and dramatically to the inevitable climax, the only question left to be answered is what side of the moral divide will they fall. 

Here individual commitment to conviction dictate behavior and we see strong wills rubbing against one another like tectonic plates. Concentrating its focus on three siblings, two sisters and a brother, we watch as necessity leads them down a road that could end in family fracture. 

Their Jewishness plays as central a role as any character.  For the brother and one of his sisters, it defined how they see and relate to the world.  The radical difference in how Michael (Daniel Cantor) and his sister Sharon (Elizabeth Ledo) view the relevance of their heritage determined how the action of the play would progress.  One rabid about leading a completely secular life governed by the pursuits of the mind and moral integrity.  The other, devout and steeped in her culture, has no qualms in letting her Jewish identity direct her responses politically and socially.

An academic teaching university level Judaic studies and on the threshold of tenure, things appear to be looking good for Michael.  He’s also close to publishing a book grounded in his field of study.  This is where ominous clouds begin to gather.  Flying in the face of convention thought, he suggests Jews cleave too blindly to the tragedy of the Holocaust and should, in essence, forget it.  In the book who flies in the face of convention and declares Jews but also ominously threatening because of its stance on contemporary Jewish thought relating to the Holocaust.  It’s precisely the kind of progressive thought that translates to intellectual blasphemy. 

Still craving the approval of his father; he allows himself to become agitated with worry because it’s been six months and his father hasn’t told him what he thinks about the book’s manuscript.  Leaked by his sister Sharon to influential clergy and academics, the book initially undermines and then derails his professional career.   Eventually his need for money exposes ruinous secrets in the home of his other sister and blows away the veil of the Sharon’s clandestine and compromising love affair.  Will they cash in on the family’s sole financial legacy; property in a fast gentrifying New York neighborhood, to restore their own fiscal security but leave the next generation exposed. 

Even as they play one against the other and, when pushed, can talk to one another with enough venom to drop a rhinoceros, you admire their resiliency and determination to never forget the closeness of their blood tie. The prowess of Gail Shapiro as Holly as well as that of Cantor and Ledo sparkled and filled their performances with authenticity.  But it was Heather Townsend as Michael’s wife Ellen who brought compassion to the dance.  Very Norwegian and not Jewish, she seemed inured at the quiet slights that reminded her of her outsider status.  Both she and her husband had the additional burden of caring for a daughter whose confusion about self was resulting in functional inertia.  Drawn to her Jewish roots and raised to live a secular existence, she was becoming incapable of coping with the world at all.

Surprisingly, If I Forget raised a uniquely nagging question haunting the leftist sensibilities of some.  There’s a rage in Michael that in part stems from the direction the larger Jewish community took after the age of activism that started with Eugene Debs and ran through the civil rights era.  A time when the Jewish left was at the forefront of the union movement and the struggle for equal rights.  That fire igniting protests and demanding justice has largely been quelled by success; causing the term “red diaper babies” to age out of the lexicon. According to Michael, “Jews have become white people”.   Although spoken with anger, you can still hear the regret sitting at the declaration’s core. 

Families don’t always fall in just one of two camps as Tolstoy’s assertion implies.  The wide gray area between happy and unhappy is a landscape full of stories about families trying to keep themselves united.  If I Forget reminds you of the cost.

If I Forget

Victory Gardens Theater

2433 N. Lincoln Ave.

Chicago, IL   60614

www.victorygardens.org

773-871-3000

Inspirations, even when they spring from nowhere, can still end up remarkable artistic creations.  To hear playwright Brian Yorkey tell it, his Tony award winning Next to Normal now playing at the Writers Theater in Glencoe was just a “what about a play about” idea.  Astonishing that a mere whim could carry such force.  The play, a journey into the slow disintegrating impact of mental illness; placed in the framework of a musical, was odd at first.  Until you realize much later how much in common it has with opera.  Serious subject matter. Awash in emotion. And filled with exquisite music.  Considering how well it succeeded, calling it a tour de force wouldn’t be a stretch.

Of course, musical theater is no newbie when it comes to taking on serious topics.  Few can claim Next to Normal’s singular focus though. Diana Goodman’s descent into the morass of bipolar disorder initially shocks us because the first glimpse we have of her and her family is so ordinary.  She’s the one who come across as canny and cool as she spars and banters with her son and husband.

But that’s one of the points of the play.  Even the most normal of us can be nudged over the edge.  Often triggered by a traumatic event, it was the sudden death of her infant son that bumped Diana (Keely Vasquez) over the precipice.  And, as often happens with mental illness, it snatched up her family too like a cloaked tornado sending them all careening through episodes of uncertainty, confusion and for some, resentment.

Working with Tom Kitt who composed the play’s music, Yorkey penned the lyrics and as well as the script.  He deserves accolades for not only showing the raw torment mental illness exacts but also for revealing how love, even when it seems to be flowing only one way, can nourish and sustain the prospect of positive possibilities. 

Opening with benignly average dialogue between a mother and her teenage son, performed partially in song, the sweet cheeky exchange suddenly becomes startling when you realize she’s having this conversation with someone on the other side of the veil.  Her son, Gabe (Liam Oh), who died in infancy, lives only in her imagination.   He’s always an integral part of the performance throughout.  A character with whom only Diana interacts but who exerts tremendous force on the lives of his father Dan (David Schlumpf) and sister Natalie (Kyrie Courter); the play would be empty without him.  

Yorkey proves himself extraordinarily adept at making sure that conversations between characters is as effective in song as it is in speech and his consistency adds to the work’s brilliance. 

The audience doesn’t know what Diana’s husband and daughter already understand until we watch them catch her making sandwiches on the floor.  The scene sets loose questions about medication efficacy and their bizarre side effects; and about guilt and passive defiance.  Now we begin to understand the tension we noticed earlier between the mother and daughter.  Diana thinks Natalie is smart but weird and that her husband is good but boring.  She doesn’t seem to comprehend though how her illness distances her from them both.   All three wear the fatigue of people who’ve lived too long time in the trenches.

An overly conscientious high school kid who spends too much of her time alone and is reproachful of her parents, Courter’s Natalie is particularly intriguing. Her portrayal makes Natalie infinitely relatable by letting you see enough of the character’s vulnerability to recognize her pain.  It takes a persistent classmate and unrepentant stoner with boyfriend aspirations, Henry (Alex Levy), to keep chipping at her wall and make her realize and accept her own humanity.

Perfect for You, a song sung in tandem to both Natalie and her mother by the men in their lives is made more powerful because it causes you to wonder at the resilience of love.  It’s also, uncharacteristically, a surrender song sung by guys.

Every member of this demanding and complex story stands tall and is impressive throughout.  Alex Levy in his role as Henry manages to ingratiate on first sight and becomes even more appealing as he discloses his character’s open heart, thick skin and dogged persistence.  Liam Oh’s Gabe, the boy who lived only in his mother’s unending regret, brimmed with talent and energy.  For a kid who’s still in college, Oh deserves a bright future on the stage.  The same can be said for Kyrie Courter.  Bright, brash, defiant and carrying a hurt as deep as the Grand Canyon, her Natalie balanced casualty and fighter beautifully.  By absorbing the play’s intent so well, Garcia’s Diana let you feel her journey as if it were your own.

One of the many beauties of theater is its unparalleled ability to take us just below the surface to expose what life looks and feels like behind the front door.  Wrapped in a poignancy that’s neither soft or cloying, that capacity is the play’s crowning achievement.   The operatic scope and flirtations with tragedy certainly contribute a somber patina to the performance.  But what you remember most is the way it never loses its grip on hope.

Next to Normal

through June 30, 2019

The Writer’s Theater

325 Tudor Court

Glencoe, IL  60022

www.thewriterstheater.org

847-242-6000

There was no master plan.  When the creators of the wildly successful musical Six came up with their concept to reintroduce the world to Henry the VIII’s many wives, their goal was simply to create a work that made women the centerpiece of the story and let them to flaunt their talent as if it were the Hope diamond. A rare opportunity in too many theatrical performances.  They had no idea that what they produced would take over the world.

Young and supremely gifted, Toby Marlow masterminded the concept and recruited fellow theater student Lucy Moss to work with him on the project.  Then he pitched it to the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for a slot in their 2017 theater season.  Getting in was a monstrous win.  That one month run has now turned a year and a half and probably headed to Broadway (and Hollywood) where, by rights, it should be greeted with confetti raining from rooftops.

If there wasn’t such a transformative feel to the production, calling it a pop musical would suffice.  But Six is different.  It takes the cold facts of history and drapes them in gleaming lamé simply by making the stories of these exceptional women hyper-relatable to contemporary audiences.  It then builds the persona of each of the queens around that of a reigning diva of pop music culture. Adele and Sia provided the “queenspiration” for Jane Seymour while Katherine Howard’s template was modelled after Ariana Grande and Britney Spears. It’s this focus on pop divadom and its unerring devotion to the language of pop culture, the syntax of the street and the club idioms that turn the project into not only a pop musical, but pop theater. 

Watching and listening to Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss in interviews helps to understand how the musical works as well as it does.  Exploding with youth and talent, Six looks at what happened with Henry and his wives 400 years ago with baby fresh eyes.  The audience relearns who got divorced, beheaded and who survived while the queens engage in a raucous contest to see who endured the most mistreatment from H8.  It’s a game of one-upmanship that only women can pull off with such dazzling aplomb.  Plain ole fun rests at the core of a dynamic production that feels like jet powered thrill ride.

Backed by a live all girl band that can rock just as hard as any stadium tour, every sovereign comes packed with personality, brains and can throw RuPaul grade attitude.  Any audience is going to have a hard time deciding which of the six they relish more because there’s so much to like in all of them.

No doubt Catherine of Aragon, grandly played by Adrianna Hicks and modeled after Beyoncé and Shakira will be a top contender for a lot of people.  Glowing with spectacular presence and wielding confidence so fierce you’d naturally have to call it regal, she’s as funny as she is commanding.  But she’s far from the only one with those memorable traits.  Andrea Macasaet as Anne Boleyn can rightly claim flirting as one of her many interests and never lets with a wit as sweet as it is venomous    But for many, Brittney Mack’s Anne of Cleves, the “survivor”, should easily walk away as top queen.  Channeling hip hop friendly Nicki Minaj and Rhianna, Mack’s Anne doesn’t apologize for not being as pretty as her “profile picture”.  Rather than being cowed by 8, she ends up becoming renowned for the zest and relentlessness of her palatial throw downs.

Each of the six tells her story in song, most of it bouncing in a rhythm that’s tight and swinging.  And each one of them deliver lustrous sound.  Unlike that other musical that went on to global fame and fortune for reinterpreting history through music, Six is a fast efficient 90 minutes long and leaves theatergoers so light with joy they might as well levitate.

With all the success the musical has already enjoyed, co-writer Moss was asked what she most looks forward to for the play in the future.  “I can’t wait to see a school production”, she said with a big grin.  Now that would be extra.   

Six

Chicago Shakespeare Theatre

Runs through August 4

Navy Pier

800 E. Grand

Chicago, IL  60611

www.chicagoshakespeare.com

Because so many variables can influence how it’s dispensed, lots of us question the true nature of justice.  Where you live, how much money or education you have, what you look like and how you speak can all prove potent influences on verdicts.

To see how the concept of justice looks around the world, Netherlands born Yan Duyvendak and Barcelona based Roger Bernat devised a grand experiment and presented it as theater.  What if you tried the same case nearly 170 times in 15 countries.  How much would the collective verdicts resemble one another?  To add weight, relatability and shimmer to the concept, they used characters nearly everyone on the globe has at least heard of; key figures in Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet.  Embedding one of Shakespeare’s great tragedies into the mix worked beautifully to imbue curiosity as well as heft into the project.  Global buy-in has been more than impressive.

From Thursday to Sunday, Please Consider (Hamlet) played to Chicago audiences on the Museum of Contemporary Art’s Edlis Neeson Theater stage. Presented in conjunction with Chicago Humanities Festival, deliberate care was taken to instill a sense of the sobriety and gravity commonly found in the atmosphere enveloping a real homicide trial.  As the audience filed into the theater, each was told they could be randomly chosen to act as one of the twelve jurors for the trial.  Pens and notepads were provided and detailed copies of prosecution evidence was distributed during the trial.  Only the very core of Shakespeare’s plot is retained in the production.  Hamlet is on trial for murder, but not for that of his uncle, Claudius.  Instead he stands accused of killing his girlfriend Ophelia’s father, Polonius.

Local actors took on the roles of the play’s protagonists.  Enlisting black and Latin performers for the roles of Hamlet (Edgar Miguel Sanchez), Gertrude (Lily Mijekwu), his mother, and Ophelia (Krystal Ortiz) authenticated the reality of most homicide cases in Chicago as well as much of the United States. 

The judge, defense team and prosecutor however were all the real McCoy; highly regarded legal professionals working in the city’s broiling criminal court system.  Although the same actors are used for each night’s performance, the legal team changed every evening.  Sitting Judge Anna Helen Demacopoulos of the Circuit Court of Cook County presided over the second night’s show.  Defense Attorney Patricia Bob, an elected Fellow of the American College of Trial Lawyers and Marc Kadish, Mayer Brown’s Director of Pro Bono Activities made up Hamlet’s defense team.  Completely unscripted, every effort had been made to keep the dialogue true to the language of homicide proceedings. Former federal prosecutor, Dan Collins, now a managing partner at Drinker Biddle, prosecuted for the state. 

Compressing what ordinarily would last three to five days into an approximately four-hour endeavor, the insight into the detailed thinking required to conduct a high stakes event like a murder trial in a modern urban center comes through with dazzling clarity.

As legal professionals functioning at the top of their game, each side presented their arguments convincingly and compellingly.  It was still left to a jury to determine if it was Hamlet’s intent to kill Polonius or whether he reacted on reflex to a perceived threat. 

Verdicts from city to city and country to country have varied wildly.  Hamlet was acquitted 86 times and even provided monetary compensation in Zurich.  Murder or manslaughter verdicts were handed down 78 times with sentences ranging from one month to 15 years.  On the production’s first night in Chicago, he was acquitted.  On the second night, the jury was hung.  Which has happened only once before, in Melbourne.

Chatter among the audience during jury deliberations gave some insight into the myriad ways the human mind parses complex information.  It also validated why the notion that justice is blind can completely dissolve when viewed from the vantage point of reality.

Please Continue (Hamlet)

April 25 -28, 2019

MCA

Edlis Neeson Theater

220 E. Chicago Ave.

Chicago, IL  60611

312-280-2660

www.mcachicago.org

For years Eclipse Theater has steadfastly enriched and enlivened Chicago’s theater landscape each new artistic season by focusing on the plays of a single playwright.    By providing audiences with a more complete understanding of a writer’s body of work, they can draw a deeper appreciation for his/her contributions to the culture and posterity.  Last year’s often exceptional mounting of plays by William Inge proved a high mark in that mission.

The usual live greeting to the new season this year with its brief explanation for choosing the current year’s playwright, Christopher Durang, was missing.  Instead a recorded voice opened the play declaring the name of this season’s chosen playwright while ticking off the standard etiquette reminders to mute mobiles and unwrap your candy now. 

Durang, whose plays often inhabit the worlds of comedy, satire and the absurd, is a contemporary artist who enjoys both high acclaim and popularity. Written in 1983, early in his career, Baby and the Bathwater rests firmly in the realm of the absurd.  Despite its many comedic accents, both the subject matter and the play’s absurdist foundation made this production darker than expected.  At its height during the 50’s and 60’s, and lacking in either realism or “logical development”, modern audience may find the fantastical format disconcerting; but also fascinating.    

In the performance, the plunge into realm of implausibility happens quickly as new parents John (Tyler Anthony Smith) and Helen (Elise Marie Davis) gaze starry eyed into the carriage of their new born.  When the baby starts to whimper, both panic and make it clear neither of them have the faintest idea how to be the caregiver of an infant.  They don’t know how to either comfort or sooth it and are so demure that they can’t bring themselves to even change it and thereby determine its sex.  Not knowing the sex and faced with the task of naming the baby, they take a guess and name it, Daisy.  It is the wrong guess.

Throughout, the dialogue between the husband and wife divulges much.  The alcohol and drug dependency, the absence of financial stability, the penchant for entertaining the delusional and their complete lack of awareness of the appropriate. 

An underlying dictum of the absurdist philosophy is that all of mankind lives in a world “devoid of purpose”.  Helen and John’s exaggerated removal from the norm fits snugly into this principle and does not improve as the story progresses.

When a Mary Poppins styled nanny shows up to right the ship, she turns out to be just as detached from the pragmatic as the baby’s parents. sexually seducing John and instilling Helen’s with unrealistic fantasies.  Cavalier to the point of endangerment in her care for the infant, she’s an eloquent monster played with disarming effect by Jamie Bragg.   

Kirby Gibson whose multiple supporting roles help glue the continuity of the play does more than an admirable job of helping the performance maintain an even flow without altering the show’s core intent.  Two of her characters, Miss Pringle and Susan, allow her to play the roles straight; heightening the fantastical conceit of both the play and the other actors.  Her scene as Miss Pringle sharing her concern with the Principal (Jamie Bragg) about the now teenage Daisy’s emotional state proved a performance highlight.  As Principal, Bragg exudes twisted delight in her take on omnipotent power; relishing in her inability to understand the concern being presented to her.  She also uses the episode as an excuse to abuse her authority by breezily firing the messenger for inappropriately disturbing her.  Here, the melding of satire to the inane worked.

All of the performances were strong. It was the context that also made many of them jarring.  The incessant co-dependent inanity between Helen and John strained endurance.  You can only imagine what it would do to a child.  Daisy, a boy so accustomed to wearing dresses that he suffers a form of separation anxiety about them in his late teens, takes 5 years to complete his freshman year of college, even more to finish his second year and becomes as promiscuous as a high demand sex worker who clocks in thousands of hours on a therapist’s couch in between.    Jose Cervantes as Daisy, and a host of male names he gives himself, is easily the most sympathetic character of all. 

Eventually after meeting and marrying someone who embodies enough of the normal to gain a toehold on a conventional life, he too becomes a parent who shows signs of slipping into the same maleficent caregiving his own parents exhibited.  There are signs he will prevail and escape such an abyss.

Baby and the Bathwater, for all of its many flights into the inconceivable finally touches down in the land of hope.  An odd and fitting endpoint to a story so fraught with the impossible.

Baby and the Bathwater

April 11 – May 19, 2019

Eclipse Theatre Company

2936 N. Southport

The Athenaeum Theatre

Chicago, IL  60657

312-625-0422

www.eclipsetheatre.com

 

Created from a Russian fairy tale and set to music by Tchaikovsky in the early 1890’s, the indispensable Christmas classic, The Nutcracker, wasn’t performed in the United States until 1944.  Today, many consider it as much a part of the holiday season as a Christmas tree.  Despite its unflagging popularity, the innocence and purity of romance the ballet embodies is not familiar to everyone.  A + A Ballet’s appealing and refined production at the Studebaker Theater over the weekend counts as one of the most endearing introductions to this classic as you’re likely to find.  For those who’ve seen this holiday staple performed countless times, the A + A performance was so suffuse with youth and impressive dance talent that it would win over even the most critical eye.

 

Products of the Bolshoi, where elegance and technical perfection remain paramount, both A + A Ballet’s President and Director, Alexei Kremnev and Anna Reznik, bring that indefinable something that permeates Russian ballet to the company’s The Art Deco Nutcracker.  Kremnev arranged the choreography and must be commended not only for the purity and simplicity that saturated the production but also for injecting just enough dramatic interest to not only enliven but also excite.

 

Characterized by restrained beauty, the evening’s visuals glowed with an ethereal quality that’s so well suited to fantasy.  Enhanced by choreography that accentuated the softness of illusion and mounted on a stage that evoked a bygone past, the ballet took on a life of its own and seemed to make time disappear.

Seeing so many young dancers ply their natural gifts and dance training so beautifully and confidently made the two-hour performance whiz by and kept the sense of anticipation pleasingly high.  Invariably that anticipation would be rewarded with one treat after another.   Both Grace Curry as Clara and Katherine Williams as Sugar Plum were ideal in their dance sequences and wonderfully matched with their respective dance partners, Michael Sayre and Jose Sebastian.  Jasmine Wheeler’s Arabian solo in the second act deserves special mention as well for its flawless poetry of movement.

In a contained performance like The Art Deco Nutcracker, care must necessarily be taken in what to highlight.  Here costumes were placed at the forefront projecting  all that is lush and extravagant.  As the show’s wardrobe director and costume designer, Laura Skarich applied a cleverly sophisticated touch to the entire performance; ever mindful of bringing aesthetic pleasure to young and old alike.  From William’s stunning lamé body suit in the Arabian segment to the impishly upswept white wigs children wore during the finale and the many impactful flourishes she scattered throughout the production, it was clear a very talented hand was at work.

 

Missteps were few and kept the performance gently tethered to the imperfections of real life.

 

 

The Art Deco Nutcracker

Nov 30 – Dec 2, 2018

The Studebaker Theater

401 S. Michigan Ave.

Chicago, IL   60605

aacenterfordance.org

312-545-2142

 

Eclipse Theater ends its season of William Inge with perhaps the playwright’s barest and most personal work; a rework of his first professional play with autobiographical overtones.  The Dark at the Top of the Stairs opens in tension and exists in struggle.  It’s also a journey into the unknown that’s familiar to everyone; making it both relevant and relatable.

 

Most of us have a piece of life that remains either an open question, a source of doubt or an unfulfilled hope or dream.  In Inge’s 1957 play set in the early 20’s, he reminds us that those doubts are all a part of who we are.

 

Although the play’s progression reveals the angsts and anxieties of its main characters, it orbits most intimately around the mother of an Oklahoma family who, although she married very young, is clearly devoted to and very much in love with her traveling salesman husband.  Not yet 35, with a 16-year-old daughter, Reenie (Destini Huston) and a 10-year-old boy Sonny (James Leonardi), her concerns for her family extend beyond the everyday.  Neither of her children are adapting well to life.  Rennie is introverted and seems to cower from reality’s demands.  Her 10-year brother loses himself in movies and movie stars and is the victim of incessant bullying.

 

Eclipse often rattles convention and implements non-standard casting to contemporize and reimagine works from decades past.  Here Cora Flood, very admirably played by Aneisa Hicks, is African-American.  Rather than simply place a black actor into a role that would ordinarily be assigned to one who is white and leave the plot line unaltered, the story was tweaked to acknowledge the family as mixed.   In 1922 Oklahoma, the Flood family would not only be considered highly unorthodox; it would have been illegal.  Oklahoma passed anti-miscegnation laws in 1908.

 

Strangely, race seems to play virtually no role in the difficulties the children have in adjusting to the small town’s insulated social climate.  That race may be weight in the marriage receives only a cryptic, “You didn’t want to marry me anyway”.  A claim that could stem from any number of factors.

Despite the confusing awkwardness in handling the racial component, the core of the play still shines rewardingly through thanks to the strength of its truths.

 

For the Floods those truths lie in what is valued.  What makes Cora so compelling is her clarity in understanding what she treasures:  her husband and her children.  She also wants to be accepted by the social hierarchy so that her children might enjoy smoother passage into the world.

 

Being the stay at home parent whose partner is often absent carries its own burden.  Burdens the play’s lead faces them with determined dignity. Perhaps it’s that reserve of inner strength that finally drives her to confront her husband about his infidelity.  The scene is searingly dramatic and thunders with authenticity.  When her husband Rubin (Chris Daley) strikes her and leaves, it’s not clear whether he’ll be coming back.

 

In some adaptations of The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Cora’s conflicted about whether to stay with her husband or to leave him.  Not here.  She may need to find other ways to survive if he doesn’t return, but reconciliation; one that recognizes and respects her own value is what she truly quietly craves.

 

By placing the mother’s strength opposite her daughter’s weakness and her husband’s obstinacy; the playwright makes her an unwitting yardstick for living and gifts the play moral force.

And rather than letting Reenie stew benignly in her shyness, the work shows that losing ourselves in our own regrets can have lasting and sometimes tragic consequences.  She didn’t trust the brightness and warmth a brief glimpse at what romance showed her.  Her decision to continue to coddle self became deadly.  Zachery Wagner as Sammy Goldenbaum, Reenie’s blind date convincingly wore the pain of an emotionally neglected kid exiled to boarding school.  One who still put a smile on his loneliness to give hope to those he saw carrying pain similar his own.

 

When Cora sister Lottie (Sarah-Lucy Hill) shows up with her dentist husband to provide emotional support, we also see how relationships can become so mired in routine and suffer from such a lack of vigor that they ossify and become mere shadows of what they should or could be.    Lottie’s buoyancy turns out to be nothing more than bravado hiding a moribund marriage.

 

A visual coup, Eclipse’s The Dark at the Top of the Stairs carried mood and sense of place beautifully.  The use of silhouettes to heighten anticipation added an element of drama that gave a wonderful feel of rightness to the production.  As did the accent Hicks devised in her pivotal role as Cora.  That gentle southern hill country twang rang with pleasant genuineness that translated into credibility and invited empathy.

 

The Dark at the Top of the Stairs

Eclipse Theatre Company

Nov 15 – December 16, 2018

The Athenaeum Theatre

2936 N. Southport Ave.

athenaeumtheatre.com

773-935-6875