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Elizabeth Rex

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Timothy Findley’s “Elizabeth Rex” confines Queen Elizabeth I and William Shakespeare inside a royal barn one wintry night in February 1601. The placement of the two most luminous personalities of England’s Golden Age should set off glorious dramatic and theatrical fireworks at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.  The performers do their best to rock the CST stage emotionally, but the play ends up providing more heat than light.

        The play’s conceit centers on the queen’s turbulent reaction to the approaching execution of the Earl of Essex for treason.  Elizabeth sentenced the earl to beheading at the Tower of London early in the morning of February 25 and she is conflicted. As a queen she had to pass the death sentence on Essex as a traitor for leading a rebellion against her government. But Essex was also the queen’s lover, at least for the purposes of this play. So Elizabeth grows increasingly distraught as the moment of execution grows closer and erupts in a volcanic display of grief as she hears canon from the Tower sounding the finality Essex’s death. 

Findley took some dramatic license when Elizabeth openly admitted Essex was her lover. In real life, the relationship was only a rumor and obviously at odds with Elizabeth’s unofficially title of “the Virgin Queen.”

        The action opens with Shakespeare’s acting company, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, concluding a performance of “Much Ado About Nothing” for the entertainment of the queen and her court. The story then moves to the barn where the actors engage in some raucous and bawdy banter among themselves and with their wardrobe mistress. They are confined to the barn because the queen has levied a curfew to restrain supporters of Essex from rioting on the eve of his execution.

        In the barn Shakespeare works on his latest play, a tragedy about Antony and Cleopatra. He’s wary that resemblances between the ancient lovers and Essex and Elizabeth that might offend the queen, an absolute monarch not to be trifled with.  But not much happens in a narrative way until the queen makes an unexpected appearance, her face coated in white power and her head topped with a red wig. 

The queen remains in the barn for the rest of the play, spending much of her time in heated verbal byplay with Ned Lowenscroft, an actor who plays leading women’s roles (females were not allowed on the stage in Elizabethan times). Ned is gay and dying of syphilis, his approaching death making him extremely bold in his conversation with the queen.

        At the end of the first act, the queen and Ned make a pact. He will teach her to be a woman and she will teach him to be a man. The mutual challenge results in some incendiary exchanges of dialogue and one affecting scene in which Ned, gently crooning a song, applies makeup to the suddenly submissive queen, minus her wig, revealing her bald head.

        “Elizabeth Rex” premiered at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada in 2000 and the Chicago Shakespeare Theater is presenting a revised version that lops off about 25 minutes from the original version.  The production, under Barbara Gaines’s resourceful directing, is full of stirring moments leavened by ribald comedy, but overall the play falls short of its promise. After all, when we see Shakespeare and Elizabeth I together, we expect drama at a, well, Shakespearean level. The heated exchanges between Elizabeth and Ned are worth hearing, but one still gets the feeling that the queen is slumming in spending so much time with the raggedy acting company. Ned’s liberties with Elizabeth smack of the playwright reaching for high drama. Would the queen, even in her fragile emotional state, really seek any kind of consolation with a lowly pox-ridden dying actor? 

      The CST casts Diane D’Aquila as Elizabeth, a role she took at the Stratford premiere and it’s difficult to imagine anyone else in the part. D’Aquila renders the queen in all her complexities, her vanity and her strength of character, her iron will and her despair at the death of the man she loves mixed with her contempt for men in general. D’Aquila, with her white makeup, also bears a startling resemblance to the actual queen as portrayed in surviving paintings. Whatever the deficiencies of the play, the audience should be grateful for this actress’s powerful three-dimensional performance.

     D’Aquila’s co-star is Steven Sutcliffe, another Stratford veteran, who brings Ned alive with his fear of his approaching death and his challenge to the queen to climb down from her throne and become a woman. Sutcliffe makes considerable dramatic capital out of Ned’s blend of fear and audacity.

        Kevin Gudahl plays Shakespeare as a working writer, an urbane and intelligent man not aware, at least outwardly, that he will go down as the greatest writer in the history of the English language. It’s a well-judged performance minus any affectation. The rest of the ensemble plays robust character roles. Roderick Peeples is first rate as the rollicking and Falstaffian Luddy Beddoes. Andrew Rothenberg makes a strong impression as the Irish actor Jack Edmund, a man not afraid to show the queen that he’s an Irishman first and last and in total sympathy with Ireland’s rebellion against the queen. There is outstanding work by Eric Parks, Matt Farabee, Bradley Armacost, Mary Ann Thebus, Brenda Barrie, and Torrey Hanson in other supporting roles. And special props to Jude Roche inside a realistic furry costume as a pet bear who turns out to be one of the most sympathetic figures in the play.

        The action is played within Daniel Ostling’s detailed bi-level barn set. Mariann Verheyen designed the convincing period costumes. Philip Rosenberg’s lighting design bathes the characters in warm autumnal illumination. Lindsay Jones designed the sound, including the vivid bear growls, and Melissa Veal makes invaluable contributions with her wig and make-up designs.

        “Elizabeth Rex” runs through January 22 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.  Tickets are $44 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com/rex.

        The show gets a rating of 3 stars.

                  Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Follies

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – The Chicago Shakespeare Theater doesn’t normally present musicals on its Courtyard main stage theater. But the CST is opening its season with a high risk Courtyard revival of Stephen Sondheim’s musical “Follies,” high risk because the show is hugely expensive to produce and devilishly tricky to stage. Plus, Sondheim’s acerbic sophistication has never been an automatic attraction for the average theatergoer.

        By a quirk of scheduling, “Follies” has also just opened on Broadway, drawing rave reviews and gathering weekly ticket sales in excess of $1 million. There’s no way that the CST can approach those grosses and the musical’s limited five-week run virtually guarantees the production will not make money, even if it sells out every performance.  But the CST wanted to do the “Follies” and they have done it brilliantly. I can’t recall a better acted, sung, and danced musical on an area stage since the earliest touring version of “A Chorus Line.”

 For “Follies,” Sondheim invented a theater impresario named Dimitri Weismann who produced an annual series of spectacular theater revues in the early 1900’s very much like the Ziegfeld Follies. Now Weismann is hosting a one-time reunion of members of those revues and their spouses. The reunion is being held in the ruins of the theater where Weismann presented his revues, a theater now being demolished to make way for a parking lot.

        “Follies” has no real plot. For most of the show, veterans of the Weismann revues sing and dance numbers from their Follies performing days several decades earlier. They gossip and renew old acquaintances and then depart. The show focuses on two couples, ex chorus girls Sally Durant and Phyllis Rogers and their husbands Buddy Plummer and Ben Stone respectively. Sally and Phyllis were best friends as Weismann chorus girls wooed by the youthful Buddy and Ben. The marriages were a disaster from the beginning and two couples can barely stand each other today. Sally really loved Ben, and their romance is rekindled during the evening’s reunion.

        An aura of nostalgia permeates “Follies,” along with a sense of regret and rueful reflections of the roads in life not taken. Characters look back on the exuberant hopes of their youth and wonder where all that promise went. Mortality weighs heavily with them.  They got old, and that makes them sad and disappointed.

        Composer Sondheim and book author James Goldman connect the characters with their youth through ghost figures who drift through the action. Ben and Buddy and Sally and Phyllis appear as their younger selves back in 1941, when passions were hot and ambitions were glowing. The audience watches the seeds of their destructive marriages planted in the romantic confusions that tied the wrong young men with the wrong young women.

        Goldman wrote a tight, concise book for “Follies” but the story is told primarily through Sondheim’s music. Sondheim’s score is a pastiche of styles celebrating the great names of musical theater, from the operettas of Victor Herbert through the modern styles of giants like George Gershwin, Cole Porter, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern (Sondheim’s favorite), Rodgers and Hart, and Rodgers and Hammerstein. The result is a sequence of musical numbers of extraordinary variety in the service of character exploration.

        The CST has cast the production with a multi generational group of local performers, especially females who have entertained area audiences for decades—Nancy Voigts, Marilyn Bogetich, Ami Silvestre, Susan Moniz (Sally), Kathy Taylor, and Hollis Resnik among others. The production fills out its roster with a cluster of imports, notably Caroline O’Connor (Phyllis), Brent Barrett (Ben), and Robert Petkoff (Buddy). The sum total is an exceptional ensemble that delivers one showstopper after another.

        Director Gary Griffin works under the considerable handicap of the CST’s thrust stage, a configuration not hospitable to musicals. A proscenium stage would allow for an evocation of the ruined interior of the theater that encloses the actions and reinforces the sense of time passed. Griffin mounts the orchestra at the rear of the stage and funnels the action to the bare thrust playing area that penetrates the audience on three sides. There is little sense of place in the staging and the ghosts of past chorus girls don’t make much impact.

        Undeterred, Griffin still creates a triumphant sequence of production numbers. My favorite,  “Who’s That Woman,” gathers five matronly Weismann ladies with their young ghost counterparts in an intricate display of song and dance. Moniz, O’Connor, Resnik, Voigts, and Taylor established themselves in Chicagoland music theater with their singing and acting. Who knew they could dance up such a storm? There is a stunning duet between Linda Stephens as elderly Weismann star Heidi Schiller performing the operetta duet “One More Kiss” with her younger self, sung by Kari Sorenson, thrilling the listener with its sheer vocal brilliance.

The score explodes the canard that Sondheim is an emotional cold fish as a composer. No cold fish could have written the stirring song of survival “I’m Still Here” (sung magnificently by Resnik as Carlotta) or the aching ballad “Losing My Mind” (an exceptionally powerful rendition by Moniz).

        There are about 40 performers in the production and they all deserve the highest praise, from the principals to the chorus. The CST cast the ageless Chicagoland favorite Mike Nussbaum as Weismann, giving audiences an additional treat. The man belongs on a theatrical Mount Rushmore.

        Virgil Johnson has designed the vast wardrobe of costumes that shuttle back and forth between 1971 and 1941 and earlier. Kevin Depinet’s scenic design is minimalist but functional. Christine Binder designed the dramatic lighting and Joshua Horvath and Ray Nardelli the sound. Alex Sanchez is the choreographer. “Follies” isn’t a dancing show but where dancing is called for, Sanchez is spot-on. Brad Haak’s musical direction is first class.

        “Follies” is now established as one of the pinnacles of twentieth-century music theater, but because of its production demands it’s rarely revived. Now there are major productions on Broadway and in Chicago, which must give Sondheim a satisfying feeling of vindication. The Broadway presentation looks set for an extended run. The CST apparently is locked into its five weeks, so anyone with the merest interest in musical theater greatness needs to seize the moment.

        “Follies” runs through November 6 at he Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are priced at  $55 to $75.  Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com/follies.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com   October 2011

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The Madness of George III

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – The Chicago Shakespeare Theater is presenting a handsomely staged production of Alan Bennett’s “The Madness of George III” that features a towering performance by Harry Groener in the title role. The show looks good and Groener is terrific, but the evening will largely be of interest to patrons interested in the mental health of an English king more than 200 years ago.

        In the play, George III starts out as a droll monarch with a quirky personality. He’s still in emotional agony over the loss of the American colonies a decade earlier but overall appears to be in a normal state of mind. Then he descends into what was diagnosed at the time as madness. Today, scholars lean toward George as the victim of a little understood metabolic illness called porphyria. Among the symptoms is the loss of reason.

        The play dramatically portrays George’s bouts with the disease and especially his abuse at the hands of a group of smug and ambitious doctors who subject their patient to barbaric treatments without ever getting a handle on his ailment. Then there is the political tumult that gathers around the king’s mental condition. His son, the Prince of Wales, yearns to take over the crown from his father with the help of politicking from his allies in Parliament. Intrigue dominates court life as the king’s friends and opponents jockey for position over who will control the throne back in the days when the English king still wielded considerable power.

     

        There are more than 20 characters in the play.  Some of them are shrewd politicians. Others are fops oozing mincing affectation, caricatures who may reflect actual behavior at the English court of the day but come across as simpering low comedy turns on the CST stage.

        While there are plenty of quality performances in this production, it’s Groener’s play, just like it was Nigel Hawthorne’s show in both the stage version in 1991 and the film adaptation in 1994 (called “The Madness of King George”).

The role of King George requires almost superhuman stamina as the king shifts in and out of apparent madness. Groener is awe-inspiring, giving us a man who can be wry and witty and shrewd in one scene and a howling lunatic in another. Groener gives us the whole character—a decent family man (he and his wife Charlotte had 15 children), the shrewd politician, and the desperate victim engulfed by quack doctors and a usurping son’s machinations. The mix of physical endurance and verbal dexterity demanded by the role is daunting, but Groener is in continual command, his George dwarfing the many characters who line up to either serve the king or bring him down.

The show earns highest marks for Groener’s performance, but the play itself is more problematic. It runs far too long at nearly three hours and has problems getting to the finish line. The action felt remote to me, the brilliance of Groener’s performance apart. The show may hold considerable interest for British audiences, but for at least one American viewer the story didn’t connect emotionally. For all his suffering and sly wit, George isn’t a great or heroic man. Like many English kings, he was handed the crown by succession (from his grandfather, George II). He endured much and ended tragically, the disease incapacitating him totally for the last 10 years of his life. But he was no Henry VII or Elizabeth I as far as human or historical interest is concerned.

The playwright does neatly evoke the backroom wheeling and dealing stimulated by the king’s condition. The opposition is represented by Charles Fox and Richard Brinsley Sheridan. They may seem like opportunists and connivers, but their government platform included abolition of slavery and parliamentary reform, so perhaps they were the good guys. The king’s prime minister, William Pitt, is a savvy politico fighting a desperate battle to retain the crown for the king, and thus save his own job. But Pitt is a pillar of rectitude compared to the smarmy and officious Prince of Wales.

The CST ensemble is a blend of reliable locals and outsiders, all of them good, though one does require a tolerance for limp-wristed mannerisms to appreciate the actors playing the Duke of York and Sir Boothby Skrymshir and his ninny nephew Ramsden among others.

Nathan Hosner is outstanding as William Pitt, striving to keep the king on his throne when it’s obvious the monarch cannot govern rationally. David Lively is excellent as Edward Thurlow, the Lord Chancellor, a political realist who must pick sides between the king’s friends and enemies while protecting his own back. Richard Baird delivers a convincing rendering of the Prince of Wales as a posturing backstabber. The young man has a legitimate cause, at least in his own mind. The prince is tired of waiting for his turn at the crown, and it was maddening being obstructed by a lunatic father. Historically, the prince became regent in 1810 and King George IV in 1820. He was one of the worst kings in English history.

Among other supporting performance, there is fine work from Ora Jones as George’s queen, Jeff Cummings as Charles Fox, Brian Rooney as Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and Bradley Armacost, Patrick Clear, William Dick, and James Newcomb as the coven of brutal physicians who nearly kill the king with their pseudo cures. The scenes of the sadistic treatments inflicted on George induced shudders in the audience. Kevin Gudahl is good as a king’s equerry and Patricia Eggleston does a fine turn as a lady-in-waiting who fends off the disturbed king’s advances with face-saving decorum.

William Bloodgood designed the effective neoclassic façade that serves as a backdrop for the action. Susan Mickey designed the vast wardrobe of colorful and opulent costumes of the period. Diane Ferry Williams designed the lighting and Michael Bodeen and Rob Milburn the sound. Melissa Veal is responsible for the wigs, and some of them are doozies. Penny Metropulos is the efficient director.

“The Madness of George III” runs through June 12 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Tuesday, Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $44 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com/madness.

  The show gets a rating of three stars.

    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.   April 2011

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The Cripple of Inishmaan

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

by Dan Zeff

 

Chicago—Martin McDonagh’s Irish plays have been well served by Chicagoland theaters the past few seasons. There have been quality productions of “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,”  “The Lonesome West,” and “The Cripple of Inishmaan.” But it takes a real Irish cast to give these plays their due. Consider the production of “The Cripple of Inishmaan” as revived by Ireland’s Druid Theatre and now presented at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

        Like many of McDonagh’s plays, “The Cripple of Inishmaan” is located on a bleak island off the western coast of Ireland. The island’s residents live cramped, featureless lives that lend themselves to wounding gossip, bickering, backstabbing, and other verbal cruelties. The Inishmaan folk are uneducated people who barely get along with each other in their stifling parochial environment, but they are all they have. They are also marvelously engaging when they are portrayed by actors who know their characters down to the bone, actors like the Druid Theatre ensemble.

        McDonagh’s play is almost all talk, but that’s what his Irish men and women do best. They stand there and talk at each other, often barely moving, like mannequins with the gift of speech. And it really is a gift, laughs coming out of the most commonplace dialogue. The opening scene consists of two ramrod elderly women, Eileen and Kate, stiffly standing behind the counter of their village grocery store, making the audience laugh with their offhand chat. Part of the humor comes from the language and part because the dialogue just seems funnier when it’s spoken with an authentic Irish brogue.

     

        The title character is a malformed 18-year old boy named Billy Claven, who spends much of his time looking at cows, reading books (a much sneered at activity within the community), and hungering for affection from the abrasive young Slippy Helen, a foul mouthed lass who mocks Billy’s deformities with casual verbal cruelty. The play is character-driven rather than plot driven but the action does turn on the news that American documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty is coming to the area to make a motion picture about the lives of the islanders, the most exciting thing, maybe the only exciting thing, that’s happened to the villagers in living memory.

        For Billy, a chance to appear in a real Hollywood movie is a fantasy come true. And the lad actually gets a screen test in Hollywood. But he finally returns to Inishmaan and the arms of the doting Eileen and Kate, who raised him from infancy following the mysterious deaths of his parents by drowning. Billy finally gets to kiss Slippy Helen, but the play ends with a poignant farewell to the doomed young man.

        There is very little physical activity in “The Cripple of Inishmaan,” aside from a moment of startling physical brutality. The audience’s pleasure comes from the encounters with comic characters like JohnnyPateenMike, a middle-aged gossip who is the self-appointed news gatherer and rumormonger for the community. Some of the play’s funniest moments emerge from the irascible interplay between Johnny and his bedridden and alcoholic old mother. The encounters don’t advance the storyline, slender as it is, but the comedy is earthy and irresistible.

        The other characters are Helen’s doofus brother Bartley, the village doctor, and a local boat owner named BabbyBobby. The three characters interact with the others to recreate a perfect miniature of a community that is mean-spirited but caring and drenched in unaffected blarney.

        Tadhg Murphy delivers a sensitive, finally haunting performance as the blighted Billy, a performance that makes considerable physical demands on the actor. Dermot Crowley is a scene stealer as the garrulous JohnnyPateenMike. Dearbhla Molloy and Ingrid Craigie are delectable as the starchy Eileen and Kate, a pair of elderly spinsters who symbolize the arid lives of the Inishmaan folk. Clare Dunne adds some spice as the feisty and intimidating Slippy Helen, living in a community that offers precious few diversions for a high spirited young woman. Laurence Kinlan is Helen’s lunkhead brother, Liam Carney is BabbyBobby (these Irish names can really be delightful), Nancy E. Carroll is the boozing old lady, and Paul Vincent O’Connor is the doctor.

        Garry Hynes directs her players in a minimalist style, letting the words do all the acting. It’s a wise choice. Francis O’Connor designed the costumes and sets, Davy Cunningham the lighting, and John Leonard the sound. Colin Towns composed the original music.

        “The Cripple of Inishmaan” runs through March 27 at the Chicago Shakespeare Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $46 and $56. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.   March 2011

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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As You Like It

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – A theater season doesn’t pass without some company reviving Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” And why not? It’s one of the Bard’s most accessible plays, filled with funny and charming characters speaking mostly in prose dialogue that enters the modern audience’s ear more easily than the Bard’s highly flying Elizabethan verse.

        But even viewers totally familiar with “As You Like It,” and especially those a little tired of the play, will be won over by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s superbly staged and wonderfully acted production. This is Shakespeare at his most irresistible, presented by an ensemble of local performers who ascend to a world class level for this comedy.

        The play has two chief locations, the court of Duke Frederick, which he has usurped from his brother, and the Forest of Arden, where the rightful duke lives in bucolic contentment with a band of like-minded disaffected noblemen. Young Orlando flees to the forest from his murderous older brother. At the same time, Rosalind, the rightful duke’s daughter, is exiled on pain of death by Frederick. She escapes to the forest with Cecilia, Frederick’s daughter but Rosalind’s closest friend. Rosalind disguises herself as a young man named Ganymede and Celia takes the name of Aliana.

        Once the story shifts to the forest, the play settles into a roundelay of romances, headed by Orlando and Rosalind, and also including a clutch of forest rustics. By the end of the show the bard has married off every living thing in the woods but the chipmunks. There isn’t much physical action in the forest but plenty of delectable dialogue. Shakespeare doesn’t waste a lot of energy on extended narrative. The main characters fall in love at first sight, no questions asked. Even the two bad guys ultimately turn sympathetic in the blinking of an eye, dramatically illogical perhaps, but convenient.

        Along with the multitudinous lovers, “As You Like It” presents two of Shakespeare’s finest comic characters, the clown Touchstone, who also escapes to the forest from Frederick’s court, and the melancholy Lord Jaques, he of the familiar “All the world’s a stage” monologue.

It’s a rich brew of characters, led by Orlando and Rosalind with their romantic manipulations. Typically, Orlando comes across as something of a ninny, a likeable doofus but under qualified as a match for the nimble-witted and intelligent Rosalind. One of the chief merits of Gary Griffin’s directing is balancing the two young people on a level romantic playing field. Matt Schwader’s Orlando has the grit and presence to match Kate Fry’s winsome Rosalind. For once the two characters are portrayed as equals--equally silly, equally attractive, equally entertaining, and equally in love.

Without turning the play into a revisionist exercise, Griffin illuminates the other major characters. Cecilia normally is a pale figure who walks in Rosalind’s shadow. But Chaon Cross endows the young woman with a feisty spirit that enriches the production every moment she is on stage. The forest bumpkins too often are a tiresome lot, lumbered with their romantic confusions. Too often Phoebe and Audrey and William and Silvius just seem to take up space in the play as they go through their wearisome mating rituals. But in this production they are all clearly etched personalities, led by Elizabeth Ledo’s saucy and willful Phoebe, and abetted by Steve Haggard’s sympathetic performance as her love struck swain. The same can be said for Nathan Hosner’s mooncalf William and Hillary Clemens’s ultra earthy Audrey. Hosner pulls of a striking dual performance, first appearing as Charles, the wrestler bent on killing Orlando in the match at court.

Ross Lehman is a one-of-a-kind Jaques. The character is normally portrayed as a self aware gloomy Gus wallowing in affected melancholy. But Lehman is a natural clown and he delivers the most animated Jaques I’ve ever seen. This isn’t the most profound Jaques I’ve ever seen but he’s the most energetic and outgoing. How well Lehman’s interpretation works resides in the eye of the beholder.

The rest of the ensemble is unfailingly up to the mark, starting with Phillip James Brannon’s Touchstone, a droll courtier who will have his hands full with the lusty Audrey as his wife. Matt DeCaro makes an especially strong impression as the villainous usurping Frederick. Jeff Parker is fine in the thankless role of Orlando’s nasty older brother who reforms quickly enough to win Celia as his bride. The production also profits from Patrick Clear, Dennis Kelly, Kevin Gudahl, and Andrew Neiman in small but significant roles.

Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes give the story an early nineteenth century Jane Austen look, an appropriate connection with the novelist who was the mistress of marrying off attractive young men and women after a series of usually comic difficulties. Kevin Depinet’s set morphs effectively from the court to the Forest of Arden (which looks a little like a design from a Tim Burton motion picture). A giant pendulum swings back and forth at the rear of the stage throughout the performance, its significance eluding me.

There are also valuable contributions from Christopher Akerlind (lighting), Joshua Horvath and Ray Nardelli (sound), and Jenny Giering (original music). David Woolley directed the exceptionally persuasive wrestling match between Orlando and Charles. Matt Raftery provides the smidgeon of choreography.

The real hero of the occasion is Gary Griffin, who cast the show so flawlessly and shaped the personalities of the leading characters with such humor and individuality. He even contrives some vertical action, especially devising some risky athletic moves for Schwader above the stage.

“As You Like It” runs through March 6 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $44 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com

The show gets a rating of four stars.  January 2011

              Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Romeo and Juliet

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

Chicago--The Chicago Shakespeare Theater production of “Romeo and Juliet” is loaded with positives. The staging tells the story with clarity and propulsive force. The modern dress setting, often pointless or distracting in a Shakespeare revival, contributes mightily to the engrossing tense and edgy atmosphere. Guest director Gail Edwards has injected some original insights into the characterizations that freshen up this most familiar story.

        There is only one problem—Romeo and Juliet. The famous young lovers aren’t tragic, a considerable fault in this most passionate of doomed romances,

        Jeff Lillico’s Romeo is too boyish for a concept that leans heavily on the macho for its young male characters. He certainly doesn’t seem strong enough to take down the uber-macho Tybalt. This Romeo is a nice lad who got in over his head by falling for the wrong girl.  

         

        Joy Farmer-Clary looks a little old for a Juliet who has just entered her teens, but there aren’t many 14-year old actresses who can handle the role so we can cut Farmer-Clary some slack. But for all the love language Shakespeare provides to express Juliet’s love for Romeo, the actress never sent off any sparks. The death of the young lovers at the end of the play lacks the emotional power that should leave the audience moist eyed and much moved.

        Part of the difficulty lies with director Edwards. Her interpretation of the play is filled with illuminating touches, but she makes a major misfire at the Capulet ball, where Romeo and Juliet first meet. Traditionally this fateful encounter occurs during a dance and it’s love at first sight. But at the CST, the two meet each other across an empty space. They barely make eye contact yet we are expected to believe that this distant accidental occurrence immediately strikes incendiary sparks of love and lust. The moment is over so quickly that the audience has no opportunity to share in that flashpoint moment when Romeo and Juliet fall madly in love.

        The limited impact of the central love story doesn’t invalidate the dramatic riches that still make this a production well worth seeing. Edwards sustains an atmosphere of barely suppressed violence and hair-trigger tempers, subtle underscored by Brian Sidney Bembridge’s set, which resembles a baroque arcade now gone to seed. This is not a pretty “Romeo and Juliet.” It’s drenched in enough intensity to keep the spectator continually involved, even though we all know the story and its tragic conclusion.

        The swordfights choreographed by Rick Sordelet are stunning in their ferocity. In the opening brawl between the Montague and Capulet families, even Lady Montague and Lady Capulet get into a hair-pulling fight. I’ve never seen the animosity between the two families displayed with more ferocity.

        Tybalt (Zach Appelman) and Mercutio are poster boys for the violence that infects the Verona society. The factional hatred is palpable. The only nice supporting characters are Romeo’s friend Benvolio (Steve Haggard) and Juliet’s nurse (Ora Jones). Everyone else seems angry and touchy.

        The “Queen Mab” speech by Mercutio (a superb performance by Ariel Shafir) is delivered with a rawness that gives new meaning to a monologue normally tossed off as a poetic cadenza showing off the actor’s verbal dexterity. The production finds marital estrangement between Lord and Lady Capulet and tensions between Lady Capulet and her daughter that flesh out these normally shadow parents.

        Ana Kuzmanic’s contemporary costumes give the story an “On the Waterfront” sensibility. The sound and originals music by Lindsay Jones and John Culbert’s lighting further enhance the sensibility of menace and danger. These characters are not figures in Elizabethan tights spouting fancy poetry. This is an earthy reading of the play that should go over big with younger audiences.

        Among the other fine performances, John Judd gets high marks as the imperious Lord Capulet. David Lively is an exceptionally down to earth Friar Laurence. Judy Blue provides some effective shadings as Lady Capulet, a woman shut out of the lives of her distant husband and troublesome daughter. And Brendan Marshall-Rashid delivers a telling portrait of Paris as a decent young man, impatient to wed Juliet, who ends up still another victim of a love affair gone wrong.

        The overall production is so solid that it survives the lack of passion and heart from the title characters. And there doubtless will be viewers who consider Lillico and Farmer-Clary just fine. But a staging shouldn’t send the audience out of the theater with more vivid memories of Tybalt, Mercutio, the nurse, and Lord and Lady Capulet than the star-crossed lovers.

        “Romeo and Juliet” runs through November 21 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday at 8 p.m., with matinees Wednesday at 1 p.m., Saturday at 3 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $44 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

                  Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

                           Visit Dan on Facebook.

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The Taming of the Shrew

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—The big pre-opening buzz for “The Taming of the Shrew” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater was the announcement that Neil LaBute was hired to write new material for the Shakespeare comedy. LaBute was contracted to replace the original introduction to the play with fresh dialogue that presumably would bring the show’s controversial themes out of the Elizabethan era and into the new millennium.

        “The Taming of the Shrew” is the most problematic of Shakespeare’s comedies. It deals with how a man employs severe physical and psychological violence to break the spirit of his independent-minded new wife, a woman he has married for money. That storyline may have been a hoot 400 years ago but it rubs modern feminist sensibilities raw, and a generation of directors has labored to put acceptable spins on the narrative to pacify contemporary attitudes.

        “The Taming of the Shrew” invites tampering because it isn’t a great play, though it has its share of farcical laughs. A strong case could be made for Cole Porter’s musical adaptation “Kiss Me, Kate” as superior to the original.

        Shakespeare wrote an opening scene in which a drunken tinker is tricked into believing he is a lord watching a performance by a company of traveling actors. The scene is usually omitted from modern productions, which then start in Renaissance Padua where the bachelor Petruchio comes “to wive it wealthily” and agrees to marry the shrewish Katharina, for a price.

        In the CST revival, the play begins during a final rehearsal for “The Taming of the Shrew,” with LaBute injecting a conflict between the female director (Mary Beth Fisher) and the actress playing Katharina (Bianca Amato). Their long-standing lesbian affair is coming apart at the seams. Adding to the tensions is the actress’s loathing of the Shakespeare play for its misogyny.

        After several minutes of banter and bickering, the company launches into a straight-ahead reading of the Shakespeare comedy, with no excuses for the Bard’s anti-feminine slant. Petruchio (Ian Bedford) is brawny and macho, bullying Katharina without mercy or apology. Eventually the brutalized woman falls into line as a pliant wife until the production’s final moment when the actress playing Katharina, fed up with Shakespeare’s women bashing, stalks off the stage.

        LaBute’s material is entertaining and edgy. There is an extended self-pitying monologue by the director that opens the second half of the show. As a stand-alone verbal aria by the always resourceful Fisher, it’s entertaining, but as an illumination of the issues raised in “Shrew” the set piece, like the rest of LaBute’s additions, contributes little dramatic illumination.

        Presumably LaBute is trying to contrast the victimization of women in Shakespeare’s time with the spirit of open sexuality enjoyed by women today, or at least by the director and the actress. It’s amusing to observe all the bitchy backstage dialogue, but LaBute’s emendations run parallel to Shakespeare’s material without intersecting the Bard to provide fresh insights. 

        So essentially what we have at the CST is a solid, traditional reading of “The Taming of the Shrew.” The production thankfully makes short work of the tiresome subplot involving the multiple suitors for Katharina’s pliant younger sister Bianca (Katherine Cunningham) and emphasizes the unequal combat between Petruchio and Katharina.

        The ensemble features a clutch of excellent performances, starting with Ian Bedford’s dominating and domineering performance as Petruchio. Amato is better in the modern guise of the free-spirited actress than in the stock role of Katharina. Her South African accent jars at first with the American performers but that’s easily adjusted to.

        Larry Yando is a joy as Katharina’s droll and long suffering father and Mike Nussbaum, God bless him, at age 86 is a hoot as a rich old codger who fancies himself a legitimate wooer for Bianca. Stephen Ouimette, a veteran of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Ontario, is fine as Petruchio’s servant and Brian Sills makes a real character out of the servant-turned–master Tranio. William Dick is smooth as the stage manager during the rehearsal. There is also good work from local veterans Sean Fortunato (Hortensio), Erik Hellman (Lucentio), Alex Goodrich (Biondello), and Marc Grapey (Vincentio).

        For this show, the CST has again imported Josie Rourke from England. Rourke was responsible for the recent CST staging of “Twelfth Night” built around, and in, a large pool of water on stage. I guess if you want a daring new vision of a Shakespeare play, Rourke is a director of choice. Thus it’s surprising that her interpretation of “Shrew” is so traditional, the LaBute additions notwithstanding.

        Lucy Osborne, Rourke’s British colleague, designed the set and the costumes, notable for some flamboyant codpieces for the men and an outrageous mock wedding dress for Petruchio that runs counter to the detailed description in the script. Osborne’s design for Bianca’s feathery pink wedding dress is something out of an opium dream. Philip Rosenberg designed the lighting and Lindsay Jones the sound.

        The CST “Taming of the Shrew” isn’t exactly a disappointment, but the audience had been primed for something special from the union of Rourke, LaBute, and Shakespeare. They have combined for an entertaining evening, but as a breakthrough concept, the production doesn’t quite deliver.

        “The Taming of the Shrew” runs through June 6 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m., with Tuesday performances at 7:30 May 18 through June 1. Tickets are $55 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.     April 2010

                     Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

         

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Uncle Vanya

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—When a celebrated Russian acting company comes to town to perform Anton Chekhov, local theatergoers have a right to anticipate something special. And we do get something special in the Maly Drama Theatre’s production of Chekhov’s “Uncle Vanya.”

        The Maly is presenting “Uncle Vanya” for only five performances through Sunday at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre. So serious Chekhov fans (and serious theater fans in general) should seize the opportunity to enjoy and ponder an interpretation that will have patrons rethinking their impressions of the drama.

        The Maly company is performing “Uncle Vanya” in Russian, with English translations flashing on screens above and to the sides of the stage. The translations reproduce only a percentage of the script, but enough to allow spectators to get the gist of the dialogue without feeling they are reading rather than seeing the play.  The translations are a worthwhile trade-off, allowing audiences to experience the drama in Chekhov’s original language with its melancholy cadences.

        For this production, the Chicago Shakespeare stage has been converted into a proscenium. The set is simple but conveys the rural atmosphere that encloses the Serebriakov estate in the Russian provinces.

        “Uncle Vanya” has flashes of farcical humor, but it isn’t a happy play, and I don’t think I have ever seen a staging that was so drenched in unhappiness, frustration, disillusionment, and thwarted hopes. There aren’t many plays in western drama that end so bleakly. And yet “Uncle Vanya” isn’t a downer for audiences willing to accept the playwright’s sympathetic and humane view of his hapless characters.

        The core figures in the play are Vanya, a 47-year old bachelor, and Sonya, his niece. For years they have labored wearily to operate the family estate for the benefit of Vanya’s brother-in-law, an academic named Alexander Serebriakov. The professor is now visiting the estate with his young second wife Elena, his first wife, and Sonya’s mother, having died years ago.  The fifth major character is Astrov, an idealistic and visionary doctor and a forerunner of the ecologists of our own time.

        Vanya and Astrov both love the languid and bored Elena, while Sonya loves Astrov. All love in vain, and the marriage between the young and beautiful Elena and the elderly and demanding professor has its own discontents.

        The Maly production is long on pauses and tableaus of characters sitting in silence, emotionally cut off from each other. The play runs a full three hours including one intermission, thanks to the silent spaces that separate the dialogue and the play’s frequent soliloquies. The characters seldom raise their voices, as if recognizing that cries of anger or dismay are pointless. Indeed, Russian speakers in the audience likely had trouble understanding some of the dialogue. The actors, especially Igor Ivanov as the professor, often speak so softly they are inaudible. That may be a reflection of the introspective Stanislavsky-inspired Russian acting style, or perhaps the acting company hadn’t vocally adjusted to the Chicago Shakespeare acting space.

        Director Lev Dodin’s major innovation lies in the interpretation of the professor, the only unsympathetic figure in the play. Serebriakov is normally played as a pompous blowhard, oozing ingratitude and selfishness. Ivanov plays the professor as a stoic, perhaps inwardly recognizing that his claims to brilliance as a writer on art are empty, as Vanya accuses. The professor sees the end of his life looming while a young wife yearns to be free of his self indulgence and self pity. In a striking early scene, the professor erupts with real passion for Elena and exposes by extension, his terror that he might lose her. The production elevates a cartoon villain into a figure of complexity who may not earn our approval but does earn some understanding.

        Dodin extends the scene in which Elena and Sonya come together as females in mutual emotional need. The scene normally ends immediately after Sonya returns with the professor’s refusal to allow Elena to play the piano. Instead, for several more minutes the two women mime their individual reactions to the professor’s callousness, reinforcing their personal feelings of privation and unhappiness.

        The casting is not exactly to type. Sergei Kurishev looks a little too virile and youthful for the beaten-down and yearning Vanya, but his acting is a model of understated anguish and loss. Elena Kalinina is attractive enough to call into question Sonya’s plainness, but her performance is filled with quiet longing and a heartbreaking acceptance of the reality that Astrov will never love her. Yet Kalina puts a brave face on Sonya. The woman will soldier on, linked with her uncle in suffering, enduring a life that denies her everything of importance.

        As Elena, Ksenia Rappoport creates a character with surprising dramatic weight, an interesting departure from the emotionally empty young woman who is too bored to take charge of her life. Her Elena seems doomed to exist as a reluctant temptress, creating emotional turbulence among men with her beauty and natural charm. Igor Chernevich is super as Astrov, an intelligent and caring man whose spirit has been eroded by the pettiness and vulgarity of his provincial life.

        In supporting roles, Alexander Zavialov is fine as the pathetic and ineffectual Waffles. Vera Bikova is affecting as the family’s loving old nurse, as is Tatiana Shuko as Vanya’s elderly mother, a woman who irrationally dotes on the fraudulent professor.

        The Maly revival probably won’t make converts out of spectators who find Chekhov undramatic and his characters annoying in their complaining and lack of spunk. But this is a staging of exceptional sensitivity, insight, and daring (in the rethinking of the professor). It’s a connoisseur’s production and we are fortunate to have it in town, if for only five performances.

        “Uncle Vanya” runs through Sunday at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Daily performances are at 7:30 p.m. except for a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets are $65 and $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.      March 2010

                   Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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Private Lives

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

                                  By Dan Zeff                

 

        CHICAGO—Noel Coward’s comedy of manners “Private Lives” is witty, sophisticated, cynical, and very English. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater has assembled a quartet of North American actors who, posh British accents rippingly in place, give this modern classic a commendable run for its money.

        If “commendable” sounds like faint praise, it’s because I saw a revival of “Private Lives” starring Brian Bedford and that production raised the bar on high comedy performance that lingers in the mind for a lifetime. Only Bedford could stop the show by simply reciting the words “The world?”

        As Coward himself concedes, “Private Lives” is a slender reed of a comedy. It’s basically a one-joke tale about an upper class, snobbish, independent, self-dramatizing, and high-spirited couple named Elyot and Amanda. The two can’t live with each other and they can’t live without each other. The playwright runs the pair through a series of comic hoops that rely entirely on the author’s droll wit and the performers’ style and charm. Coward himself played Elyot when the play opened in 1930 opposite Gertrude Lawrence’s Amanda and the results were said to be celestial.

        Elyot and Amanda had been married, and then divorced five years before the start of the play, unable to stand each other’s volatile temperaments. They love each other, they just can’t get along. The play opens with a coincidence that repeals the laws of probability. Elyot and Amanda find themselves in adjoining rooms in a French Riviera hotel, each celebrating a honeymoon with a new spouse, Elyot having married Sybil and Amanda having married Victor.

        As soon as Elyot and Amanda encounter each other on the hotel terrace, they panic, and then recognize they are still in love. They decide to run away to Paris, leaving their new marriage partners in the lurch. End of act one. The last two acts take place in a Paris apartment where Elyot and Amanda re-create old times, alternating between passionate lovemaking and verbal and physical hostilities. And that’s about all there is to the plot.

        “Private Lives” is essentially a two-character play, with Victor and Sybil as add-ons--comic devices to give the story some variety. As Coward conceded in a preface to the play “These, poor things, are little better than ninepins, lightly wooden, and only there at all in order to be repeatedly knocked down and stood up again.”

        Obviously, casting is everything in succeeding with “Private Lives.” The Chicago Shakespeare Theater employs Tracy Michelle Arnold as Amanda and Robert Sella as Elyot. They do very nicely by Coward’s urbane, bitchy, and stylish dialogue, though I didn’t detect a whole lot of chemistry between the two as passionate lovers.

        As Sybil, Chaon Cross delivers a persuasive rendering of a spunky young woman really in pain over Elyot’s caddish behavior. It’s refreshing to see Cross elevate Sybil above the conventional rendering of a pretty but dim young thing who serves as canon fodder for the more worldly Amanda. Canadian actor Campbell has less to work with as Victor, the character being mostly overbearing and pompous. The burly Campbell and the gaunt Sella don’t match up well visually, and the prospect of Sella’s Elyot fighting Campbell’s Victor looked distinctly unpromising from Elyot’s standpoint. Wendy Robie rounds out the cast with a cameo appearance as a French maid.

        For this production, the theater thrust stage has been reconfigured into a theater-in-the-round, lending the staging an appropriate feeling of intimacy. Neil Patel’s scenic design of the hotel terrace and the apartment interior nicely evoke a sense of place. The set slowly revolves throughout the performance on the stage turntable, which can be a bit distracting.

        Paul Tazewell’s costumes are very much in the mode of 1930’s elegance, though I thought Arnold’s various outfits and gowns, though stylish, were unflattering. Melissa Veal’s wig and makeup design nail the 1930’s look. Robert Wierzel designed the lighting, and Rod Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound. Chuck Coyl is credited as fight director. The climactic rough-and-tumble brawl between Elyot and Amanda at the end of act two is unpersuasive and stagy.

        Gary Griffin directs with a leisurely sense of pace. He injects a full rendition of Coward’s song “Let’s Do It” as a duet for Arnold and Sella, a delightful interpolation. And Griffin gives the final blackout a twist involving Victor and Sybil, though startling, deftly rounds off the play’s romantic fireworks.

        Beneath the script’s flippancy, there lurk hidden and perhaps sober truths, like sex and marital harmony aren’t necessarily synonymous. And there is a vulnerability to Elyot and especially Amanda that is only partially masked by their deliberately superficial banter. If the play has a moral, it’s that life is best lived in all its turbulent richness. Why waste it playing safe in love and marriage?

        The opening night audience seemed to thoroughly enjoy the production. I suspect that those getting the most pleasure from the evening were seeing the play for the first time.  The presentation isn’t the last word in charm and verbal sizzle, but it is plenty good enough to joyously introduce newcomers to one of the scintillating comic entertainments in twentieth century theater.

        “Private Lives” runs through March 7 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $55 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.    January 2010

            Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Richard III

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—There are dozens of characters in Shakespeare’s “Richard III,” but only one who counts, Richard himself. A revival that provides a solid Richard is in good shape. So much the better if the staging has a strong supporting cast, imaginative directing, and a creative physical production.

        The Chicago Shakespeare Theater presentation of “Richard III” has it all, starting with Wallace Acton in the title role. The CST recruited Acton from Washington, D.C., and he is brilliant. In the first two scenes, Acton establishes his credentials for the role by rendering Richard in all his diabolical villainy. He’s clever, charming, intelligent, and a lip-smacking personification of evil, taking the audience into his confidence in his opening monologue and allowing us to tag along on his murderous ascent to the crown of England.

        Acton is a handsome man, which goes against the grain of the misshapen Richard’s ugliness. Acton expresses the man’s physical deformity with a limp, a hump on his back, and a withered arm pressed close to his body. But the viewer adjusts quickly to the outer physical disability. It’s the inner man who fascinates.

        Acton’s Richard nimbly plays a double role, advising us of his evil plans to gain the throne of England and murder anyone in his way, whether it be brother, wife, or children. At the same time, he sells his sincerity to the English court, a group of aristocrats well versed in politics and backstabbing but out of their depth against Richard’s ambition. The man is a monster but you have to admire his cynical sense of humor and his skill at manipulation.

        We know Acton is the man for the role after the success of the famous early scene with Lady Anne. The Duke of Gloucester (he’s not yet King Richard) woos Anne over the dead body of her father-in-law, King Henry VI, who the duke has killed (he had previously killed her husband). Anne loathes Gloucester but he insinuates himself into her confidence with a dazzling display of guile and chutzpah.

        CST patrons who have been a little uneasy with some of the more eccentric recent Shakespeare productions should rejoice with this “Richard III.” Under Barbara Gaines’s shrewd directing, this is straight ahead Shakespeare, clearly spoken and handsomely cast. The visuals complement the action rather than distract. The stage is mostly bare, relying on dramatic lighting effects to punctuate much of the action. The costumes run from Elizabethan to the 18th century.

        Gaines excels in staging the production’s big set pieces. The scene in which Richard fakes his reluctance to accept the crown is played with an adroit blend of comedy and sinister dramatic impact. Richard poses on a balcony while his thugs menacingly mix among the crowd at stage level, looking for dissenters. Richard’s dream scene before the battle of Bosworth Field mixes fog and lighting, combined with an elevator that carries Richard’s many victims to stage level to haunt him with their “despair and die” curse. In the concluding sword fight between Richard and the Earl of Richmond (the future Henry VII), Richard is about to dispatch his adversary when the shades of the king’s victims materialize before him. Richard stands transfixed, allowing Richmond to recover and run him through with a sword.

        The best part of the play comes before the single intermission. Richard is much more entertaining as he connives and kills his way to the crown. Once he installs himself as king, Richard loses most of his disingenuous veneer and the viciousness and paranoia take over, but Acton accomplishes the personality transition without missing a beat. The second half also gets bogged down agonized lamentations against Richard from the play’s four female characters. It’s all persuasively delivered but the ranting gets bit repetitious, however genuine the grievances among the ladies.

        Quality supporting performances abound. Phillip James Brannon is superb as the Duke of Clarence in his death scene, incredulous to the last that his beloved brother could actually be the author of his doom. Jennifer Harmon is outstanding as Queen Margaret, who weaves through the play as a shrill avenging angel. Angela Ingersoll is a fine foil for Acton in the wooing scene. John Lister contributes maybe the most dominating supporting performance as Lord Hastings, just one of the court personages who miscalculate Richard’s true nature, to their doom. Brendan Marshall-Rashid comes on late as a convincing heroic Richmond.

        But this is Acton’s show. Hopefully he’ll be invited back. With the insinuating charm and malevolence he displays as Richard, he would make a magnificent Iago if the CST contemplates reviving “Othello.”

        Neil Patel designed the minimalist set, punctuated at the appropriate dramatic moment with blood red draperies. Susan Mickey designed the costumes, Robert Wierzel the lighting, and Lindsay Jones the sound and original music that effectively bring a heavy metal rock sound to mirror the turbulence on stage.

        “Richard III” runs through November 22 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $55 to $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.    Oct. 2009

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

       

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Twelfth Night

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—The current production of “Twelfth Night” may go down in Chicago Shakespeare Theater annals as “the swimming pool show.” The CST stage is dominated by a 7,000-gallon pool that covers almost all the playing area. Throughout the show the actors wade, swim, cavort, belly flop, and generally splash around, occasionally dousing the front row spectators.

        Guest British director Josie Rourke takes a huge risk in her pool concept, but what starts out as a novelty soon becomes an accepted, sometimes valuable, theatrical and dramatic tool in the story, where funny, playful, occasionally serious things happen.

        Aside from the pool designed by Lucy Osborne, Rourke takes a traditional approach to the comedy. Osborne’s costumes are generic Elizabethan and there are no high concept games played with the characters. The result is a presentation that is lucidly spoken and inventively staged, everything a spectator expects from a CST show and almost always gets.

        The storyline is the customary Shakespearean comic tushery of mistaken identities, gender confusions, and happy endings. Viola is shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, ruled by Duke Orsino. She disguises herself as a young man and enters the service of the Duke who thinks he is in love with the Countess Olivia. That lady is in mourning for her recently deceased brother and sequestered herself from the company of men for seven years. Orsino sends Viola, renamed Cesario, to woo Viola in his name. In the blinking of an eye Viola falls in love with Cesario who has already fallen in love with Orsino.

        That’s the romantic portion of the narrative. But the play really belongs, at least in the CST production, to Sir Toby Belch, Olivia’s boozing rascal cousin, and Malvolio, her prudish and arrogant steward. Scott Jaeck makes Sir Toby a larger than life Falstaffian comic figure, though with more malice and less of Falstaff’s wit. Sir Toby’s adversary is the pompous, puritanical, and self-deluded Malvolio, performed with chilly brilliance by Larry Yando. Malvolio’s letter reading scene, with Sir Toby and his cohorts lurking behind a hedge, is the best I’ve ever seen. Almost everyone in the ensemble is very good but Jaeck and Yando are exceptional.

        There are more than a dozen interlocking characters in “Twelfth Night,” most of them under some form of delusion. The most clear-headed character is Feste, Olivia’s fool, played with his usual comic flair by Ross Lehman, who owns the patent on playing Shakespearean clowns in local productions and sings the Bard’s wistful songs with charm and poignancy.

        I am grateful to Dan Kenney for his comic moderation in playing the flamboyantly foolish country bumpkin Sir Andrew Aguecheek. Kenney renders the man in all his silliness without tipping over into low comedy shtick. Special recognition goes to Chris Sullivan, who gives the normally minor role of Viola’s friend Antonio unusual presence and dramatic heft. Sullivan previously delivered searing performances in “Requiem for a Heavyweight” and “The Hairy Ape” in Chicago second tier theaters. Featured roles absolutely must be found on the area’s major stages for this gifted actor.

        The lovers are led by Michelle Beck’s fetching performance as Violia/Cesario. Mark Montgomery is a commanding Orsino, an agreeable departure from frequently effete, self-absorbed interpretations of the character. Karen Aldridge tends to shriek a lot as Olivia, but her animated take on the character certainly adds energy to the production. Ora Jones is first rate as Maria, Olivia’s waiting gentlewoman and the brains of the Belch-Aguecheek-Feste gang seeking Malvolio’s humiliation. Peterson Townsend comes in late in the action as Viola’s supposedly drowned twin brother to roil the narrative with all those identity confusions. His Sebastian really looks like he could be mistaken for his sister by the perplexed characters in the courts of Olivia and Orsino.

        The pool occupies the stage area with characters entering and exiting from the rear through a giant heart-shaped framework of wooden slats like an oversized valentine. The playing area is extended vertically at times, especially with the imprisoned Malvolio is lowered from the rafters in a harness contraption to represent the dark room where he is incarcerated.    

        “Twelfth Night” isn’t a profound play but it’s loaded with fun characters entertaining us with their amusing, if improbable, antics. Veteran viewers of the play should enjoy the pool ingredient as an agreeably variation on the standard presentation of the show. First time spectators may wonder how the play can be performed without the pool.

        The bottom line is that the CST has delivered its fun with intelligence, humor, and creativity. Even people intimated by Shakespeare will find this production accessible and loaded with visual and verbal felicities.  

        “Twelfth Night” runs through June 7 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $54 to $70. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com/twelfth.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.   April 2009

                      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Macbeth

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—A fine line separates a Shakespeare production that illuminates the play and one that intrudes itself between the drama and the audience. Barbara Gaines’s startling high concept “Macbeth” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater definitely churns the senses with unexpected and often disturbing sights and sounds. But too often the staging trumps the play.

        For veteran “Macbeth” watchers, Gaines does give the audience much to savor. Most spectators will be familiar with the plot and its best-known lines and soliloquies. For them, the CST version will be an adventure. Patrons seeing the play for the first time are likely to struggle, though the innovative staging might be enough to compensate for a drama often lost in the sound and fury of the presentation.

        Gaines sets the Scottish play in very modern times. Characters wear tuxedos and cocktail dresses. White House-style press conferences are held. The scenes move from penthouse parties (with an off-stage jazz trio playing “Witchcraft”) to a strip club to the battlefield.  The audience hears the sound of aircraft buzz ominously overhead and camcorders frequently appear.

        Unfortunately, the contemporary setting is at odds with the medieval roots of the play. “Macbeth” is drenched in superstition. There are witches, spells, incantations, and curses. It’s a dark, savage world that doesn’t jibe with the glossy steel and glass environment established on the CST stage. And while nobody can deny we live in a brutal world, it’s not the “Macbeth” style of brutality, with its gory beheadings.

        “Macbeth” requires countless directorial decisions. How do you play the dagger scene with Macbeth? In the CST staging, the weapon is purely in the mind of Macbeth. On the other hand, the appearance of the recently murdered Banquo at the banquet is a Grand Guignol feast of bloody dismemberment. The witches are shape shifters, blending (sometimes confusingly) into the setting of the moment. The weird sisters include 85-year old Mike Nussbaum, who also does a hilarious comic turn as the porter. Instead of the blasted heaths of Scotland, we see projections of the striking nighttime Chicago skyline.

        Ben Carlson has been imported from Canada to play the title role. No actor can do much with the early scenes, when Macbeth turns from military hero to the killer of a king in a matter of moments. But Carlson takes the role by the throat down the stretch as a man inexorably caught in a downward spiral of blood lust and slaughter.

        Karen Aldridge gives us an insinuating Lady Macbeth. She’s a slinky sex kitten, a legitimate interpretation, but her performance lacks the dramatic heft to convince us she’s the malignant engine behind her husband’s ambition for the throne. We do get a glimpse of the amorality of the woman in Aldridge’s casual rendering of the “Infirm of purpose, give me the daggers” line after the horror-struck Macbeth returns from murdering Duncan. The reading of that line provides a chilling glimpse into the heart and soul of a monstrous woman. The character needs more such moments, though part of the fault lies with Shakespeare, who writes Lady Macbeth out of the second half of the play with the exception of the sleepwalking scene.

        The large CST cast is loaded with solid supporting performances. Evan Builung makes an especially strong Macduff. But the production doesn’t do enough with Rengin Altay as Lady Macduff.  The scene in which Macbeth’s henchmen invade Lady Macduff’s household and murder the woman and her children should send a shudder of horror through the audience but the episode ends much too abruptly to extract its full dramatic impact.

        Along with Mike Nussbaum, Kate Buddeke and Angela Ingersoll make a striking trio of witches.  There are also solid performances by Patrick Clear, Danforth Comins (a fine Banquo), William Dick, and David Lively as a sympathetic and dignified Duncan.

        The designers were apparently given a blank check to do their thing and they all seized the moment to produce one attention-grabbing visual and aural moment after another. So all hail to Mark Bailey (scenic and costume design), Philip Rosenberg (for his stark lighting), Lindsay Jones (sound design and original music), and Mike Tutaj (spectacular projection designs).

        I left the theater both impressed and irritated. The production unquestionably is some kind of masterwork of invention, but too much of the staging seemed like a play by the director based on a script she once read by William Shakespeare. Yet there is something exhilarating about watching a brilliant theatrical imagination at full tilt. In that spirit, the CST “Macbeth” is well worth seeing, but the next time around the theater might try for a little less concept and a little more Shakespeare.  

        “Macbeth” runs through March 8 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sun day at 3 p.m. Tickets are $54 to $70. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.     Jan. 2009

                          Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—Anyone who thinks Shakespeare is not a universal playwright should consider the production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. It’s a show that originated in India and Sri Lanka in 2006, featuring dancers, street acrobats, and martial arts experts. The dialogue is divided between English and seven Asian languages. The staging is a true vision of East meeting West, brilliantly theatrical, and pretty good Shakespeare to boot.

        The production is visiting the CST for a brief two-week run as part of an international tour. The staging reflects the culture of Southeast Asia but it’s the inspiration of British director Tim Supple. Supple has assembled a 23-member cast from India and Sri Lanka, a collection of performers who would be at home with the Cirque du Soleil or the Lookingglass Theatre. This may be the most athletic version of the play we’ll see on this side of the Atlantic Ocean for a while, with actors climbing up and down fabric hangings and tumbling around the stage.

        The action is concentrated on a large dirt pit that covers the thrust stage. At the rear is a rough wooden latticework that extends from the floor to near the ceiling, providing openings for exits and entrances plus opportunities for performers to shinny up and down like professional rock climbers. In a recessed area in front of the stage three musicians preside over a battery of exotic drums, along with assorted flute and stringed instruments.

        The adaptation follows the original Shakespeare tale closely. Lysander and Demetrius and Hermia and Helena flee the Athenian court into an enchanted forest outside Athens. There they encounter the kingdom of the fairies ruled by Oberon and Titania. Into the mix enters Nick Bottom and his comical working class collection of bumpkins, gathered to practice a play for the wedding of Theseus, the duke of Athens, and the Amazon queen Hippolyta.

    All manner of confusion ensues, mostly orchestrated by the mischievous fairy Puck. By the end of the evening an abundance of mistaken identities are sorted out, all couples are properly matched, and Bottom and his cronies perform their preposterous play.

        For spectators who value Shakespeare’s language above everything, the CST visitors may create a problem with only half of the play spoken in English, and heavily accented English at that. The storyline is accessible to those familiar with the narrative and a detailed synopsis is available in the playbill. That may be insufficient for some patrons, which doubtless accounted for a few empty seats after the intermission.

        But for people who value a one-of-a-kind visual invention of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” the visiting interpretation is essential viewing. The mix of Asian music and dance with the ensemble’s circus skills creates an enchanting exotic conception of the play. To enhance the confusion of the four lovers in the forest, Puck entraps them in a fantastically complex arrangement of ribbons he strings on a series of posts at the rim of the stage. The desperate lovers thrash about in the ribboned enclosure in a scene that must have taken countless hours of rehearsal to produce such manic and precision spontaneity.

        Even for people who know the play well, some touches are insightful and occasionally surprising. This is an intensely erotic view of the story, with much on stage sexual passion. Kriti Pant is an exceptionally intense Helena. The burly Ajay Kumar plays the grinning Puck with irresistibly gleeful malice. Aporup Acharya is a youngish and joyfully dominating Bottom. The moment when Hermia (Vandita Vasa) is reconciled with her father (J. Jayakumar) captures a world of feeling in just a few seconds of silent gestures.

        Tim Supple follows modern convention in casting Theseus and Oberon and Hippolyta and Titania with the same two actors. P. R. Jijoy is outstanding in the male roles but it’s Archana Ramaswamy as Hippolyta and especially Titania who is the production’s star. She is beautiful and her stage presence draws all eyes to her. She can dance and act and fight, and it would be interesting to see her cast in a Western edition of the play. I suspect she’d be a showstopper.

        The production ends with a bit of exuberant Bollywood choreography to add to the evening’s ritual and mystery and broad comedy. Shakespeare would have been amazed, and pleased.

        “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” runs through December 7 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $60 and $75. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.       December 2008

            Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

       

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Amadeus

At the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—As I watched the Chicago Shakespeare Theater’s brilliant revival of Peter Shaffer’s masterpiece “Amadeus,” my mind shifted to “Othello.” The basic storyline is the same—a villain who seems honest to everyone around him destroys a trusting colleague.

        The audience never learns for certain what motivates Iago in his campaign to crush Othello, but Salieri is eager to confide his reasons for taking down Mozart. Salieri as a young man made a pact with God, promising to be a good man if God would endow him with the talent to be a great composer. But in Salieri’s eyes God didn’t keep His part of the bargain. Salieri achieved transitory fame as a composer but he was a mediocrity and he knew it. What fuels his hatred of Mozart is the galling knowledge that Salieri was cursed to be the only man of his time to recognize Mozart’s immortal genius.

        Like Iago, Salieri is the audience’s guide in charting his vengeful schemes. Salieri is secure as the court composer for Joseph II in late eighteenth century Austria. The young Mozart explodes into the court, carrying with him his reputation as a child prodigy pianist and composer.  Salieri is jealous of Mozart’s superior talent, and outraged by the younger man’s vulgar, childish actions. Mozart antagonizes the stuffy court with his ill-advised behavior while tossing off masterpieces of music without so much as a single correction to his first draft.

        And so Salieri, masquerading as Mozart’s friend and ally at court, undermines the man by denying him preferment with the emperor, virtually starving him to death as Mozart eventually dies of poverty and disease. At the beginning and end of the play (which take place 34 years after Mozart’s death), the aged Salieri claims he actually poisoned Mozart to death. It’s a self-serving admission made most likely to mollify Salieri’s feelings of guilt while cashing in on Mozart’s posthumous fame, if only as Mozart’s executioner.

        There have been few revivals of “Amadeus,” in spite of its reputation as one of the great plays of the last century. It’s a daunting work, requiring much pageantry, a large cast, and two star performances. There are lots of quality theaters in Chicago but the Chicago Shakespeare Theater is uniquely qualified to take on the play, with its classical aura. And the CST seizes the moment.

        The company has brought in two actors from out of town to portray Salieri and Mozart while filling in the supporting ensemble with prime local talent. It’s a perfect blend.  Robert Sella is an exceptional Salieri, his anguish and resentment nicely tempered by a droll wit. Sella is a lighter Salieri than I’ve seen before but his approach works. The character is responsible for a long string of monologues and only Sella knows how physically demanding the role is, but he brings an effortless inevitability to the portrait that is both ingratiating and engrossing.

        Robbie Collier Sublett is Sella’s equal as Mozart, a scamp at heart who does not suffer fools gladly, secure in his genius, and self destructive in his arrogance and rough tongue. He alienates those who could do him good and fatally places his trust in the one man who can bury him with innuendo and lies.

        Elizabeth Ledo, a local actress whose career is on the ascendancy with a bullet, is terrific as Costanze, Mozart’s feisty wife. Those old pros John Reeger, Roger Mueller, and David Lively are just right as a trio of courtiers who are variously pompous, self righteous, and humorless. And Lance Baker strikes just the right note as the dim Joseph II. The music is recorded, except for some first rate on stage singing by Kari Sorenson as young opera diva Katherina Cavalieri.

        The physical production is ravishing, led by Virgil Johnson’s opulent late eighteenth century costumes, complemented by Melissa Veal’s makeup and period wigs. Dan Ostling’s set is dominated by a giant overhead mirror that reflects the action on stage like a giant Tiepolo ceiling mural. Philip Rosenberg is responsible for the dramatic lighting design, and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen for the crucial sound design, notably the excerpts from Mozart’s compositions that punctuate the action.

        Director Gary Griffin orchestrates the production with immense taste and intelligence. He skillfully employs the theater’s thrust stage and the theater aisles to provide the essentially talky play with a sense of movement and energy.

        “Amadeus” is adult theater in the finest sense of that much abused term. It deserves a life beyond its limited CST run but most likely Chicagoland theatergoers will have to make do with the current staging, which must be seen.

        “Amadeus” runs through November 9 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $54 to $70. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com.

The show gets a rating of four stars.         Sept. 2008

Contact Dan atzeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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The Comedy of Errors

at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

        Gaines is the artistic director of the CST and directs “Comedy.” Ron West is a writer and director best known locally for his work at Second City. The two have partnered in creating an adaptation that certainly gets high marks for audacity. The success of their concept is in the eye of the beholder, but on the evidence of the gleeful reaction by the opening night audience, the CST has nailed spectators right in their funny bone. I suspect that this show will be a very tough ticket as the buzz spreads.

        The production begins with the opening scenes of “The Comedy of Errors” that provide the back story to get the plot up and running. The play deals with two sets of identical twins, named Antipholus and Dromio. A shipwreck separated one Antipholus and one Dromio with Antipholus’s father from the other two twins and their mother. Each Dromio serves as the servant of each Antipholus. One pair comes from Syracuse and the other from Ephesus and that’s how they are labeled to keep their identities straight.

        The play is built on the confusion that erupts when Antipholus and Dromio of Syracuse come to Ephesus, the home of their twin brothers. Neither pair of twins is aware that the other pair survived the shipwreck. There is all manner of havoc created by mistaken identities as the locals constantly confuse one Antipholus and one Dromio for the other because they are not only identical twins but they dress identically. Although the brothers had been separated 23 years previously, Shakespeare doesn’t bother to justify how the two sets of twins could wind up in the same city at the same time after all those years and dressed in identical clothing.

                   
     The British thespians play themselves and then morph into the characters in the Shakespeare play. The 1940 storyline is filled with comical backstage intrigues fueled by ego driven actors and clandestine adulterous romantic relationships.

        The modern material is seasoned with droll wisecracks and funny in-jokes fueled by the jealousies, ambitions, and libidos of the actors. The comedy pot is further stirred by the addition of an American pop crooner and military pilot attached to the production who turns the heads of the star struck young ladies on the set.

    The shifting between Shakespeare and the motion picture project is accomplished with commendable comic symmetry. Shakespeare himself provided a precedent when he wrote “The Taming of the Shrew” as a play within a play. The CST meld of the two plays does extend the evening to almost three hours, but largely in the cause of doubling the spectator’s pleasure.

        Gaines has assembled a blue ribbon cast of CST regulars enhanced by old pros on the Chicagoland theater scene. First among equals are Ross Lehman and Kevin Gudahl. Lehman is this area’s premiere clown and he excels both as one of the Dromios and even more as the movie’s bitchy director. Gudahl has been one of our area’s finest classical actors for years and here he shows he’s also a supreme comedian, both in the foolery area as the other Dromio and as the hammy hypersensitive actor Lord Brian Hallifax, constantly reminding anyone within hearing distance of his masterful “Midsummer Night’s Dream” and launching into the Saint Crispin’s Day speech from “Henry V” at the least provocation.

        Timothy Edward Kane and Sean Allan Krill play the Antipholus twins in the Shakespeare half of the play with Kane a philandering Englishman and Krill the romantic American crooner when the action turns to 1940. Kimberly Mellon also stars as an aging English sexpot actress (1940) and the perplexed wife who can’t keep her Antipholuses straight (Shakespeare). There are also notable contributions from such reliables as Nancy Voigts, William Dick, Roger Mueller, Don Forston, Douglas Vickers, and Angela Ingersoll.

        The blemishes in the production reside in the interpretation of the Shakespeare play. The constant referencing of “Comedy of Errors” to its 1940 setting distances the audience from ever really getting into the Shakespeare work. Occasionally, Shakespeare does take over, but too often his comedy is marred by over-the-top pratfall shtick, the grimmest example being the appearance of a phony conjuror named Dr. Pinch. Granted, this is not a subtle character, but Sean Fortunato’s manic cavorting brandishing hypodermic needles is much too much.

        The physical production inventively and comically re-creates the historical environment of a 1940 motion picture set in turmoil from the oversized personalities on stage and the constant threat of German bombs from above. Neil Patel’s imaginative scenic design and Ana Kuzmanic’s garish period costumes give the audience’s eye much visual humor to absorb. The outstanding design credits are completed by Robert Wierzel’s lighting, Lindsay Jones’s sound, and some marvelously witty wigs by Melissa Veal.

        On its own terms, this production is undeniably a success and one of the most ambitious ventures in recent CST history. But some time somewhere I would like to see a theater as proficient as the CST take on “The Comedy of Errors” as a play worth reviving on its own terms, not a masterpiece certainly but a show that presents opportunities for inventive staging, much laughter, and even a certain amount of sentiment. Still, if we must have concept-driven interpretations of this farce, the CST version offers pleasures that should satisfy any audience.

        “The Comedy of Errors” runs through June 29 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 and 7 p.m. Tickets are $54 and $70. Call 312 595 5600.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.         May 2008

        For more information, contact:  www.chicagoshakes.com.

Contact Dan:  zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Othello

at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

     CHICAGO—The Chicago Shakespeare Theater production of “Othello” clocks in at a few minutes over three hours and not a minute of the time is wasted. This is Shakespeare’s most direct tragedy and the CST staging propels the action in a straight line that is engrossing, chilling, and ultimately heartbreaking.

        The story is simple. The soldier Iago hates his military commander, the Moor Othello. So he weaves a plot to destroy Othello by poisoning the man’s love for his wife, Desdemona. It may be Shakespeare’s most uncomplicated narrative, but the storytelling has enormous thrust and power, especially when explored with such insight by guest director Mardi Maraden and her exemplary cast.                                        

      I had a brief uneasy moment at the beginning of the play when Iago and his dupe Roderigo make their appearance, Roderigo dressed in a top hat and evening clothes and Iago in the uniform of a military man of roughly the World War I period. The unconventional costuming suggests a “concept” that might warp the play into a directorial self-indulgence. But as the production unfolds, it becomes clear that Maraden will respect the narrative. There are no gimmicks and every decision by the director is a bull’s-eye, dramatically and theatrically. This is not an interpretation overburdened with psychological insights. But as a feat of storytelling, it’s a remarkable achievement.

     The play may be named for the Moorish general, but it really belongs to Iago and any production rises or falls on Iago’s credibility. Here is a young man who captures the trust of all the characters he betrays. He’s relentlessly called “honest Iago” even as he shares his villainy with the audience.  The CST has imported Paul Niebanck to play the malevolent ensign. Niebanck gives Iago a pleasant, open personality that masks his inward hatred of the Moor. Niebanck’s Iago is almost bland, certainly a person even the sophisticated characters around him can comfortably accept at face value. Who could believe that such a mild-mannered and genuine-seeming individual could posses such an inexplicably evil nature?

                           

     The company has also imported Derrick Lee Weeden as its Othello. Following tradition, Othello is a black man, but Maraden wisely doesn’t play the race card except where the text makes explicit that the man is scorned by the Venetian society for his color.

     Weeden doesn’t try to give a larger than life performance. Resisting the temptation to convert the role into a star turn, he makes Othello an outsider in Venetian society who finds himself unbelievably fortunate in winning the love of the beautiful, aristocratic, and virtuous young Desdemona. But Othello is no match for the crafty Iago, who plays on the older man’s insecurity to plant the seeds of jealousy that ultimately will bring down husband and wife. Weeden’s portrayal of Othello’s descent into a jealous and finally murderous rage is logical and plausible. The Moor’s killing of Desdemona is the most convincing rendering of that horrifying scene I have ever seen.      

                                  

 

      The acting honors do not end with Niebanck and Weeden. Allison Baty first called attention to herself a couple of seasons ago for her brilliant acting in “Suddenly Last Summer” at the Shattered Globe Theatre. That performance marked Baty for greater things and she’s validated that promise with a performance of gentleness, innocence, and strength as the tragic Desdemona, a young woman who never comprehends the evil net being woven around her by the vile Iago.  Her desperate pleading for her life in her death scene with Othello had a pathos and desperation that brought tears to my eyes.

        Lesley Bevan is simply the best Emilia I have ever seen. As Iago’s wife and Desdemona’s maid, she is primarily a plot device to unwittingly assist her husband in his plot against Othello. But Bevan expands Emilia into a full-blown character with her intelligence, passion, and cynicism toward men and marriage.  Likewise, John Hoogenakker extracts exceptional dramatic, and comic, mileage out of the gullible Roderigo. The always reliable Sean Fortunato makes a fine plainspoken Michael Cassio, Othello’s loyal lieutenant, manipulated like the other characters by Iago’s villainy.

        Three of Chicagoland theater’s best actors take on minor roles—David Darlow as Desdemona’s father, Greg Vinkler as a Venetian senator, and Nick Sandys as the governor of Cyprus. They all lend additional professionalism to the production, as do Kurt Ehrmann as the Duke of Venice, John Taylor Phillips as Desdemona’s cousin, and Ginger Lee McDermott as a courtesan.

      Christina Poddubiuk’s early 20^th century costumes bring the story closer to the audience’s own time, which may be the point. The audience can easily accept the time frame rendered by the costumes, but the power of the play transcends any specific chronology. Patrick Clark has designed an uncluttered set that easily moves the story from Venice to Cyprus. Christopher Akerlind contributes the dramatic and atmospheric lighting. Marc Desormeaux composed the original music that occasionally was intrusive in its edgy mood setting like an Alfred Hitchcock soundtrack.

      “Othello” runs through April 6 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday and Thursday and 7:30 p.m., Wednesday at 1 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $54 and $70. Call 312 595 5600.

   For more information contact:         www.chicagoshakes.com

              The show gets a rating of four stars.                            Feb. 2008

                      Contact us: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Fragments

at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

            CHICAGO—“Fragments” at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater consists of five brief theater pieces by Samuel Beckett as staged by the eminent English director Peter Brook and executed by three impeccable actors. It’s a minimalist evening in every sense, with the total performance time at 55 minutes for all five bits.

            The production originated in France in 2006 to commemorate the centennial of Beckett’s birth. The Chicago visit is the only North American stop on an international tour, so Beckett idolaters should grab the chance to see these rarely presented items while they can.

            The five works in “Fragments” all carry the familiar neutral sounding Beckett titles—“Rough for Theatre I,” “Rockaby,” “Act Without Words II,” “Neither,” and “Come and Go.” They are not connected by any common narrative, not that any of them has much plot to begin with. They do share certain visual elements—shabby costumes, a bare stage, a large dark fabric backdrop, few props, and dramatic lighting designed by Philippe Vialette. Two of the bits are somber, and the other three very funny, though this being Beckett bleakness does intrude.

            The small ensemble consists of American-born and London-raised Kathryn Hunter, Jos Houben of France, and Marcello Magni of Italy. Hunter solos in the two grim monologues. In “Rockaby” she sits, dressed in black, and delivers a rambling speech that washes over the audience’s ears like beautiful noise. Later, she returns in the very brief “Neither,” which contains lines like “from the impenetrable self to the impenetrable unself by way of neither.” That’s the kind of language that transports Beckett fans into ecstasy and is the despair of playgoers trying to get a handle on what the great man is trying to get across.

            For all his reputation for negativity, Beckett can be very funny in a basic clownish manner, and in Houben and especially Magni he has a pair of perfect comedians to carry out his black humor. In the opener, “Rough for Theatre I,”  the two impersonate a pair of tramps, Magni a blind fiddler and Houben a one-legged cripple. They try to build a prickly relationship in the manner of Hamm and Clov in “Endgame” and Vladimir and Estragon in “Waiting for Godot,” the twin peaks of the Beckett canon. When asked why he just doesn’t die, the blind man glumly replies he “isn’t unhappy enough” to die, though “It’s the same stink everywhere.”

            Houben and Magni return in the hilarious “Act without Words II.” Their characters live in large white sacks. Periodically, a giant pointer descends from the rafters to prod each character into activity. The pair couldn’t be less alike. Magni’s man is a grump, acting like he’s battling a perpetual case of indigestion. Houben’s character is pure happy go lucky optimism, relishing the sensation of munching on a carrot, examining a pocket compass, or utilizing a toothbrush. Houben’s man is happy as a clam while Magni’s figure grouches his way through the action. Magni is a marvelously expressive mime in this playlet. The funniest moment came spontaneously at my performance when a member of the audience left the theater in front of the actors, inspiring Magni to throw an “Am I to be spared nothing?” grimace and gesture at the spectators that was priceless.

            The production closes with “Come and Go,” in which Houben and Magni dress as old women in coats and hats and join Hunter on a bench. Sequentially, one of the three leaves the bench for the side of the stage, allowing one of the remaining two to whisper something scandalous about her absent friend into the ear of her bench partner. This goes around three times and then the ladies join hands and look blankly out at the audience. They have been friends since girlhood and now they unite in poignant old age, apparently waiting for death.

            Peter Brook has been a cutting edge director for two generations and he has honed all five pieces to their essences, sometimes departing from Beckett’s usually ironclad stage directions. Beckett might have objected to the directorial liberties but they seem to work on the stage.

            “Fragments” caters to viewers with a working knowledge of Beckett’s dramaturgy and worldview. The fragments are not the finest pieces in the Beckett oeuvre, but they are unmistakably chips off the Beckettian theatrical block. What a pleasure it would be to have these three performers in a revival of “Waiting for Godot.” Now that would be a theater event to crown any season.

            “Fragments” runs through February 9 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m, and Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $46 and $56. Call 312 595 5600.

            The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

Feb. 2008

                 For more information contact: www.chicagoshakes.com

                 Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com          

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Saint Joan

at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

^CHICAGO:“Saint Joan” is a very good play that builds up to one of the great scenes in twentieth century drama. Local audiences can savor the play, and the scene, in a terrific revival by the Shaw Festival of Canada imported by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater.

      George Bernard Shaw wrote “Saint Joan” in 1923, inspired by the canonization of Joan of Arc in 1920, almost 500 years after the young woman was burned at the stake as a heretic in France in 1431. Shaw’s Joan, like the historical Joan, was a teen-ager (either 17 or 19 years old, Joan didn’t know herself) who emerged from a rural French village on a mission from God to rid France of invading English troops.  

                                                   

      Against incredible odds, the girl wins over the French military leaders and the French aristocracy and defeats the English, leading to the crowning of the French Dauphin as Charles VII. Then things fall apart for Joan. She is captured in battle and sold to the English, who demands her execution by the church. The charge would be heresy but the English want her out of the way as a political and military nuisance. The play thus takes a dour look at how the world treats the visionary and the genius who disrupts the status quo, especially someone who speaks for the freedom of individual conscience against an establishment that views such freedom as a threat to the fabric of society.           

       In Shaw’s play, Joan is caught in the crosshairs of history. The church opposes her because she claims that she has a direct relationship with God through her divine “voices.”  If individuals can connect with God directly, they don’t need the church to serve as intermediary. Joan also stands for the nation state, ruled by an anointed king, which puts her at odds with the feudal nobles. Shaw sees her as the first Protestant and the founder of nationalism, and the enemies she makes along the way seal her doom.

            Shaw claims that “Saint Joan” is very good history. It certainly is very good Shaw, loaded with the master’s famous gift for wit and paradox. It would be easy to make the church the villain in Joan’s downfall, but Shaw gives the religious leaders a fair hearing. We may disagree with their conclusions, but we can see where they are coming from in identifying Joan as a powerful threat to church influence. And, as Shaw comments, Joan got a fairer trial from the church than she would have received from a nonreligious court.           

    Shaw doesn’t give Joan’s secular opponents a free pass, either. With a few exceptions, the English and the French aristocracy are portrayed as narrow minded, self-serving, petty, and jealous of Joan’s power over the people and her success on the battlefield. At the same time, Shaw painted Joan as a maddening mix of military genius, charismatic leader, and willful and obstinate teenager who antagonizes her elders with no regard for her own best interests.

  ^{The Shaw Festival production closely resembles the version I saw at Niagara-on-the- Lake last summer. Director Jackie Maxwell tries for modern relevance by locating the action in a World War I setting, with costumes a mix of the medieval and the early} 20th ^{century. The device does no harm but I’m not sure it expands the meaning of the play into a parable of our own time. World War I is now almost as historically remote for contemporary audiences as the French and English wars of the} 15th century.

       Tara Rosling repeats her starring role and she has deepened the character of Joan since last summer. Rosling gives us the naïve teenager in Joan, as well as the inspired and passionate leader, and the infuriating know-it-all who refuses to compromise her single-minded belief in her mission from God. It’s a performance of great intelligence, vitality, insight, and stamina (Joan is on stage six of the seven scenes) leading up to the magnificent trial scene in which Joan first bravely defies the religious court, then sorrowfully agrees to the charge of heresy, and finally angrily recants her confession when she hears she must spend the rest of her life in prison. Her furious cry of “Light your fires!” as she tears up her confession is one of the most thrilling single lines in modern drama.

           

       The all-male supporting cast is filled with exceptional performances by actors who mostly double in major roles. First among equals are Ric Reid as the Inquisitor and Ben Carlson as Peter Chauchon, Joan’s implacable and honorable ecclesiastical adversaries at her trial. Also serving with distinction are Norman Browning, Andrew Bunker, Patrick Galligan (as the Earl of Warwick), Douglas E. Hughes, Thom Marriott, Martin Happer, Harry Judge as the Dauphin, and Patrick McManus as the French commander Dunois. Special commendation also goes to Peter Krantz as chaplain John de Stogumber, a caricature of the pompous, xenophobic Englishman. Sue LePage designed the production. Kevin Lamotte designed the lighting and Paul Sportelli composed the original music.           

       Director Maxwell again starts the play with most of the epilogue. I didn’t like the alteration in Canada and I don’t like it in Chicago. The epilogue is the emotional and narrative capstone of the play. Beginning the evening with the epilogue demands that the audience be familiar with personalities and actions that are yet to be presented. Shaw knew best when he created the scene as the story’s wrap-up.           

       That quibble aside, the play and the production are a real ornament to the Chicago theater scene. The only regret is that “Saint Joan” stays in town for such a short run. But as an example of Shaw, and the festival that’s his namesake, the show is a must see event.

            “Saint Joan” plays through January 20 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, 2 p.m. on Saturday, and 3 p.m. on Sunday. Tickets are $54 and $70. Call 312 595 5600.           

  The show gets a rating of four stars.

Jan. 2008

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Farewell  Umbrella

at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater

By Dan Zeff

CHICAGO—“Farewell Umbrella” is 85 minutes of whimsy, fantasy, mime, dance, singing, comedy, and circus acts. Audiences seeking  an evening of sensory overload should try “Blue Man Group.” But people looking for a diversion that values understatement and visual surprise likely will be entranced.

               “Farewell Umbrella” is being presented for a short run by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. The show is a creation of a Frenchman named James Thierree, who wrote and directed the show and stars in it, and also is Charlie Chaplin’s grandson, which shows both in the faint facial resemblance and in the comic mime element in the production.

                Thierree leads a company of five performers, dancer Kaori  Ito from Japan,Japanese-American dancer/aerialist Satchie Noro, and singer Maria Sendow and acrobat/mime Magnus Jakobsson from Sweden. Their show has no storyline and no dialogue. Some viewers may discern a thematic subtext to the show, but for me it was a free flowing sequence of images, dance and mime, and song.  A handful of the bits are grounded in a recognizable situation, like a handyman trying to repair a disintegrating wooden chair or a hyper dancer trying to get an immobile woman to jive with him, or Thierree trying to mime complicated directions to Jakobsson. But mostly things just occur, like a performer rocking on a weird chair or riding on a bizarre wheeled contraption.

 “Farewell Umbrella” is enhanced by an original musical soundtrack that ranges from solo piano through chamber music to full orchestra.  The performers operate within a full palette of theater arts, from striking lighting effects to startling scenic props to offbeat costumes.

                Thierree might not like to hear it, but his show carries a strong whiff of “Cirque du Soleil” in its fantastical visuals and nuggets of circus performance embedded in a bizarre landscape that ranges from a forest of giant ropes hanging from a hook above the stage to what looks like a reed-filled swamp.

                “Farewell Umbrella” is both allusive and elusive. Its title sets the tone. A red umbrella appears briefly as a prop, but it isn’t connected to any farewell. All the performers are multi skilled, beginning with Thierree, who is listed in the program as an acrobat, violinist, trapezist, dancer, and mime. The list could be lengthened to include comedian and actor. Thierree and his colleagues offer short exercises in tumbling, acrobatics, the high wire, juggling, and trapeze art, though the show is not primarily a circus. If anything, it’s a clinic on mime carried to imaginative and wistful lengths by five extremely talented people who don’t need a realistic story or words to sell their wares  While “Farewell Umbrella” appears spontaneous, it’s cannily conceived, with every scene dovetailing perfectly from the opening moment to the final blackout. After Thierree, the star of the evening is Ito, a dervish of a dancer who does dangerous and skillful things with that cascade of ropes. Sendow’s singing lends a further exotic quality to the show. Her vocalizing sounds French but it could be her personal musical language.

               The show is filled with beautiful and startling visual images, a further tribute to Thierree, who gets scenic design credit. He is assisted considerably by Jerome Sabre (lighting), Victoria Thierree and Manon Gignoux (costumes), and Thomas Delot (sound).

                It’s a tribute to Thierree and his company that “Farewell Umbrella” can sustain itself so well for 85 uninterrupted minutes without the crutch of a narrative or dialogue. The audience was totally engrossed in the unbroken visual and aural river of scenes, the spectators silent in their involvement except for frequent bursts of laughter.“Farewell Umbrella” may not be suitable for viewers with a short attention span or those who demand literal storytelling in their entertainment. But for people willing to accept their theater as  lyrical, fanciful, an unexpected style performed by masters of nonverbal expression and communication, “Farewell Umbrella is loaded with delights.

                “Farewell Umbrella” runs through December 1 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $46 and $56. Call 312 595 5600.                The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.

Nov. 2007

                                             

       For more information contact:   www.chicagoshakes.com.

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