Angels In America

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago –When Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” plays opened locally at the Royal George Theatre in 1994 they provided a stunning viewing experience. In two sprawling works Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, mixing raw naturalism with fantasy, dreams, visions, and hallucinations It was a dazzling achievement that was worth every minute of nearly seven hours of cumulative playing time.

    The Court Theatre has accepted the enormous challenge of reviving the Kushner plays in a brilliant production that showcases the best in Chicagoland acting and stagecraft. The two plays still require that massive audience investment of time if seen on the same day. The only question is, Do the plays hold up after that astonishing 1994 Royal George premiere. The equivocal answer is, Sometimes but not always.

                                                                                                                                                       Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

      Kushner subtitled the two “Angel” plays “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” All the male characters in both plays—“Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and “Angels in America: “Perestroika”—are homosexual, though a couple of them are initially in denial. The plays are heavily weighted toward gay love affairs, often sexually graphic, but Kushner also injects trenchant observations on race and politics in America along with explorations of the nature of God and the topography of heaven, neither exploration very favorable toward their subjects.

The core characters are a mix of real life and fictional figures. The dominant real life character is lawyer Roy Cohn, one of the most powerful and detested figures of the McCarthy era of the 1950’s. The major fictional character is a drag queen named Prior Walter, with his tangled romantic relations with politically liberal Louis Ironson and an arch conservative Republic Mormon named Joe Pitt. The other key characters are Joe Pitt’s mentally unstable wife Harper, Joe’s mother Hannah, an angel who ascends periodically from the rafters in a blinding and deafening crescendo of light and sound, and a black gay hospital nurse named Belize.

The action takes place during the period of 1985 and 1986 with an epilogue set in January 1990. The play consists of a series of short scenes usually confined to two or three characters. The location centers mostly in Washington, D.C., but in the fantasy scenes the scene shifts to Antarctica and even heaven.

When the two plays first appeared in the early 1990’s, AIDS was a dominant and traumatic topic in American life, with the disease scourging the gay community. Prior Walter has AIDS and his death seems inevitable and imminent. Roy Cohn also has AIDS but refuses to consider himself a homosexual and insists that he is really suffering from liver cancer.

Kushner wears his liberalism on his dramatic sleeve. His commentary on the personalities of the conservative Regan years is satiric and biting. In “Angels,” the Republicans of the Regan administration are smug, power-hungry, greedy, and intolerant, and Roy Cohn is their poster boy. Cohn is a fascinating character study, a brutal, corrupt, hateful figure but a man with the wit and intelligence to entertain the audience his every moment on stage. In Larry Yando’s breathtakingly virtuoso performance, Cohn is almost endearing in his single minded lust for power and his open disregard for the niceties of the law.

        The twin themes of AIDS and the Regan years have retreated in the past two decades from national preoccupations to national history. Kushner’s plays exploded on the American scene 20 years ago to rub the country’s noses in the horror of the AIDS epidemic and the sleaze of right wing political manipulations. The language was raw and the visual images of gay sex were startling and controversial for the time.

       Today, the immediacy of the “Angels” themes has diminished and that may cost something in audience emotional response. References to Kate Smith, Shirley Booth, and Jean Kirkpatrick likely will draw a blank for a large percentage of spectators. In addition, scenes, especially in “Perestroika,” have a mystical quality that I found very elusive in 1994 and even more elusive at the Court. “Perestroika” appears in a newly revised version, but the ambiguities remain and its long first act scene between Prior and the Angel is awash in apocalyptic purple prose that sounds eloquent and profound but makes little sense.

        In spite of the murkiness of the fantasy scenes the writing holds the viewer, even as the clock ticks toward midnight in “Perestroika.” There is a literacy and an urgency and a quirky humor in Kushner’s writing that will fascinate the attentive viewer. The shifts from reality to a surreal atmosphere flow naturally. “Perestroika” runs about 45 minutes longer than “Millennium,” and could profit from blue penciling. But there wasn’t a moment in either play when I was bored, and given the density of the material, that’s quite a tribute.

    Charles Newell’s direction is fluid, resourceful, and in full control of the script. If there are scenes that are cloudy in their meaning, blame the writing and not Newell’s insightful guidance. He uses the entire theater, from the aisles (with the actors scooting across the back of the house to position themselves for their next entrance) to the bi-level set designed by John Culbert. Both plays are mostly talk, but the staging injects a feeling of movement that keeps the shows buoyant and energized.

      Newell has assembled a flawless cast of eight, all playing multiple roles. First among equals is Yando, from his cynical early scenes to his frightful death throes as the play concludes. But the story gradually focuses on Prior, a young man terrified by his agonizing approaching death and bitter at the departure of his lover Louis Ironson when Prior needs him the most. Rob Lindley’s performance is a delicate balance of fear, anger, vulnerability, and finally, strength.

                             

                                                                                                                                                               Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow

        Heidi Kettenring superbly manages Harper Pitt’s shifts from reality into fantasy. Harper is trapped in a loveless marriage and her release into a world of Vallium-induced fantasy is credible, funny, and painful.

        Geoff Packard is outstanding as Joe Pitt, the model of pristine Mormon conservatism who finally finds emotional liberation by recognizing he is a gay man imprisoned in a hyper-straight lifestyle. Mary Beth Fisher is a stylish Angel among other roles, confidently floating in mid air by barely visibly cables. Eddie Bennett is a tragi-comic figure of Jewish guilt and political passion as Louis Aronson. Hollis Resnik is excellent as Joe Pitt’s no-nonsense Mormon mother from Salt Lake City, and Michael Pogue is terrific as the cynical Belize, especially in his verbal sparring with the bigoted and hospitalized Roy Cohn

    The designers are required to make essential contributions to the production and they all come up big. In addition to Culbert, they consist of Nan Cibula Jenkins (costumes), Keith Parham (lighting), Joshua Horvath and Kevin O’Donnell (sound), and Mike Tutaj and Rasean Davonte Johnson (projections).

     The “Angel in America” storyline may meander and Kushner’s more spiritual ideas are a long way from clear, but the shows still form some kind of masterpiece, for their ambition, their invention, and their vibrant writing. The plays can be enjoyed separately, but for the maximum impact, patrons should set aside those seven hours to absorb the experience in one shot. We may not see a production at this level again for a long time, so the moment should be seized.

        “Angels in America” runs through June 3 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Tickets are $45 to $65 for each play. Performance dates vary. For schedule information, call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.  April 2012

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Invisible Man

At the Court Theatre

by Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” is a complex, panoramic, symbolic novel that’s an unlikely candidate for adaptation to the stage. It’s a sprawling work crowded with characters and incidents and drenched in the author’s densely textured prose and his elusive view of the plight of black people in American society. That makes for a daunting and possibly unwinnable challenge for an adapter. “Invisible Man” is a classic on the printed page but it struggles for coherence in live action, at least in the Court Theatre’s ambitious presentation.

      The Court‘s world premiere version runs three hours with two intermissions. It’s a brave try that should please patrons familiar with the original. For others, the play can be murky, confusing, and ultimately tedious. But the most vociferous critic of the adaptation will have nothing but praise for the heroic performance by Teagle Bougere in the title role.

      

                                                                                                                                                        Photo by: Michael Brosilow      

    “Invisible Man” traces an unnamed young African American’s search for his identity in modern American society. The man is the narrator and chief character in the story, which begins in the Deep South and travels to the Harlem district in New York City.

     The invisible man tells his story as a flashback as he nests in his bizarre home beneath the streets of New York City, a large room illuminated by hundreds of lights powered by electric current stolen from the city power company.

The man’s story begins on the campus of a black college in the South. The man is brimming with youthful optimism and wholesome hopes for the future, but he is betrayed by the unscrupulous president of the university, who sends him North with sealed letters of introduction that will ruin any changes for employment.

   In New York City, the invisible man is manipulated by both white and black forces. He ends up as a spokesman for a Communist-style organization and competes against a militant black nationalist group. Finally, disillusioned and bitter, the man burrows into his hole beneath the ground where he tells his story directly to the audience.

        Adaptor Oren Jacoby cherry-picks major incidents from the novel. Many of the episodes are portrayed with considerable dramatic power and vivid stagecraft, but they lack connective narrative tissue. It’s difficult to follow the story as the man is buffeted by social forces beyond his control and often beyond his understanding. The dramatic arc largely fails to coherently trace the invisible man from naïve optimist to eloquent orator and finally a person who buries himself in his hole. Much happens but little makes overall narrative sense. The invisible man’s continual references to his search for identity are difficult to grasp, though his identity crisis forms the crux of the novel.

                                                                                                                                                            Photo by: Michael Brosilow

        Ellison published his novel in 1952 and the action time frame, though unspecified, takes place during the 1930’s and 1940’s. That gave the story a certain immediacy when it first came out. But much of that immediacy is dissipated six decades later. The flood of more than 20 characters often becomes a blur as the viewer tries to follow the many episodes, some naturalistic and some hallucinatory and nightmarish. For some audiences the play will be exciting, and for others boring and pointless.

        The Court has assembled a cast of 10 to portray the multiple characterizations and ensemble. Teagle Bougere is remarkable as the invisible man. He is on stage virtually the entire play and delivers a majority of the play’s lines (all the words come from Ellison’s novel). The role is immensely demanding from a physical standpoint and requires enormous skill in articulating the invisible man’s transformation from gullible young idealist to cynical dropout. If the man’s many character permutations don’t coalesce, it’s not Bougere’s fault. He gives a resourceful, dynamic performance, as good as we’ll see all season

Christopher McElroen’s directing keeps the pace brisk, sometimes dizzying, especially when the performers move portable doorways around the stage in a high energy square dance of props. McElroen guides the complex production smoothly from scene to scene, fighting an ultimately losing battle against the herky-jerky nature of the adaptation.

The supporting cast does flow from character to character and location to location with commendable precision. The ensemble consists of Lance Stuart Baker, Kimm Beavers, Tracey Bonner,Chris Boykin, Kenn E. Head, Bill McGough, Paul Oakley Stoval, A. C. Smith, and Julia Watt. They all have highlight moments, they all work well together, and they all seem to understand what’s happening on stage even when the audience is struggling to make sense of the fragmented narrative.

 The designers include Troy Hourie (sets), Jacqueline Firkins (costumes), John Culbert (lighting), and Josh Horvath (sound). They have combined to create a production of considerable visual and aural dynamism.

This is the first time “Invisible Man” has been dramatized and it’s understandable why it’s taken this long for a theater to take on the novel. Possibly a production a couple of hours longer would clarify the narrative thrust of the story, but where is the audience for a five-hour play? Bougere’s performance will be enticement enough to bring in connoisseurs of fine acting. And the play does supply those fine individual moments, but not enough to sustain an entire evening.

  “Invisible Man” runs through February 19 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of three stars, largely for Bougere’s performance.   January 2012

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An Iliad

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – The spectator is likely to leave the Court Theatre after Timothy Edward Kane’s stunning performance in “An Iliad” marveling how the actor can do this show seven times a week. One-actor shows are by their nature demanding, but “An Iliad” is an exceptionally staggering test of a performer’s physical and emotional resources—90 uninterrupted minutes of the most volcanic storytelling.

        “An Iliad” is a retelling of the famous epic “The Iliad” attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. The epic has been adapted by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson from a highly praised modern translation by Robert Fagles.

        Homer’s epic portrays the last days of the Trojan War between the invading Greek armies and the city of Troy. At the time the poem opens the two warring sides had been at it for nine bloody and exhausting years. Homer tells how the Greeks, led by their hero warrior Achilles, finally overwhelmed the Trojans.

        The adaptation is not a straight reading of “The Iliad,” or at least what can be accommodated in a 90-minute play. For “Iliad” idolaters, the Court sponsored a 24-hour “Homerathon,” a 24-hour reading of the complete epic on the Court stage.

The adaptation mixes excerpts from the poem with modern interjections, a few of them comic and flippant but most of them stark contemporary commentaries on the hell that is warfare.

        Kane plays a nameless poet dressed in grungy modern clothes. Todd Rosenthal’s set conveys the crumbling ramparts of a city wall, two levels separated by a steep incline. Kane frequently dashes up and down the incline at some hazard, never missing a beat in his narration.

Kane addresses the audience directly throughout the evening, starting with some banter (and a few quotations from the ancient Greek) before launching into his story. Kane covers the essential narrative points in the epic, how Achilles petulantly retired to his tent and refused to fight after being insulted by the Greek military leader Agamemnon. With Achilles removed from the action, the Trojans, led by Hector, drive the Greek forces to the edge of the sea. But after his friend Patroclus dies in battle, the enraged Achilles returns to fight and leads a massacre of the Trojans and the death of Hector.

    The final scene portrays King Priam’s supplication to Achilles for the body of his son Hector so the man could receive an honorable Trojan burial. It’s a beacon of humanity in a story largely devoted to carnage and political infighting.

        The adaptation extends Homer’s story into a condemnation of mankind’s insatiable lust for war throughout human history. The most remarkable moment in the play comes when Kane recites a litany of wars from ancient times to today’s conflict in Afghanistan. It’s an astounding feat of memory as well as a stirring cautionary statement that war has always been with us, in all times and in all places.

        Kane has thoroughly invested himself in the story as he roams around the stage, shouting and whispering and gesticulating as the narrative shifts in mood, and occasionally pausing to drink from a canteen while he collects himself emotionally. Kane brings the story alive in all its sweep and violence. In the process. he makes the story of “The Iliad” both accessible and relevant to the modern spectator. For middle school and high school students, Kane’s performance would be a wonderful introduction to one of the great works of world literature.

   Kane operates within a striking physical production of theatrical lighting and mood-enhancing sound. The lighting varies from a single match flickering in a darkened theater to a blinding searchlight and dramatic expressionist effects.  Kane is in continual motion. Often he descends to the front of the stage, talking intimately to the audience.  Another time he retreats to the rear of the stage, speaking from halfway up an iron ladder. This is the most animated one-person play I’ve ever seen.

        Charles Newell directs the show. How much of the action comes from Newell and how much emerges directly from Kane is impossible for the spectator to identify. But the performance comes across as a seamless whole, unfolding with riveting inevitability. It’s a marvel of commitment from a talented actor at the top of his game. The Court has captured theatrical lightning in a bottle in this extraordinary merging of a brilliant performance with one of literature’s great stories.

        For the record, Keith Parham designed the extraordinary and complex lighting, Andre Pluess the haunting sound, and Rachel Healy the costume. They all share honorably in one of the events of the season in Chicagoland theater.

        “An Iliad” runs through December 11 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Spunk

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – First “Porgy and Bess” in the spring and now “Spunk.” The Court Theatre really knows how to nail stories about poor black folks in the Deep South during the last century.

 “Spunk” consists of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston as adapted for the stage by George C. Wolfe. Hurston did write a story called “Spunk” but it’s not included in the threesome at the Court Theatre. The plays are small and intimate but they come up big on the Court stage with their irresistible blend of blues singing and guitar playing, warmth, humor, and sentiment, leavened with moments of high drama.

     All three short plays explore male-female relationships in some manner. In “Sweat,” the first and most serious of the trio, a poor woman physically and emotionally abused by her lay-about husband struggles to find the strength to carry on. The third play, “The Gilded Six-Bits,” is another domestic drama about a loving young husband and wife. The marriage comes apart after the wife allows herself to be seduced. Both plays take place in the all-black town of Eatonville in rural Florida, the locale of much of Hurston’s fiction and her birthplace.

                      

The middle play is the purely comic “Story in Harlem Slang” about two fast talking zoot suiters in Harlem trying to mooch a free meal from a black maid on her afternoon off. The play is really an extended vaudeville sketch as the two men trade jive insults and braggadocio to hide their poverty and all-round lack of prospects.

The production, smartly directed by Seret Scott, is deceptively uncomplicated. There are two named characters, Guitar Man (Kelvyn Bell) and Blues Speak Woman (Alexis J. Rogers) and a chorus consisting of three men (Chris Boykin, Kenn E. Head, and Michael Pogue) and a woman (Patrese D. McClain). Bell provides the bluesy musical accompaniment and Rogers belts out the exuberant blues and sashays through the action. Head and McClain play the dysfunctional married couple in “Sweat,” Head and Pogue are the Harlem hipsters trying to sweet talk McClain in the middle play, and McClain and Boykin are the young married couple in the finale.

The ensemble does a superb job of evoking the language and dialect (occasionally impenetrable) of the characters. All three tales portray an enclosed black society with whites rarely mentioned. Hurston’s people just try to get along, not even showing the spunk of the title. There are no demands for racial justice in the plays, though heaven knows the characters suffer from institutionalized racism. The characters involve the audience on a different level—basic humanity—enriched by the blues, the music that best expresses the lives of the impoverished southern blacks.

The production has a genial informality, with Bell on stage throughout the evening, contributing his guitar picking and singing to the action and occasionally tossing in a bit of commentary. Rogers pops up from a second level window or struts down the theater aisles, singing her sassy blues arias.  All the action is played out in front of Tom Burch’s weathered wood set that evokes the rough-hewn life of poor blacks. Janice Pytel’s costumes take us realistically into both dirt-poor Eatonville and the flash of the Harlem streets. Marc Stubblefield’s lighting and Joshua Horvath’s sound complete the impressive physical production.

 “Spunk” doesn’t venture into the symbol laden and intense world evoked in the plays of August Wilson, several happily presented at the Court. Hurston’s characters are outwardly simple and unsophisticated, but they feel deeply, seriously in the first and third plays and comically in the Harlem piece. They are not patronized and they aren’t treated artificially as noble savages. In their pain and joys they are audience high and they make for fine company at the Court.

Hurston died in 1960 in obscurity, her works mostly neglected. The folklore-ish nature of her fiction did not suit the aggressive civil rights mood of the mid 1900’s. But after her death her writings underwent a major reevaluation and she gained recognition for her sensitivity to the culture of poor southern blacks. She is the first black American to collect the folklore of African Americans and there is a folklore quality to scenes in “Spunk.” George Wolfe used Hurston’s own words in his adaptations, giving spectators authentic exposure to a really remarkable writer. Court patrons unfamiliar with the woman’s work are in for a revelation. Hurston zealots can rejoice in hearing so vividly some of the words they have enjoyed on the printed page.

“Spunk” runs through October 9 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.

      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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Porgy and Bess

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – No definitive version of “Porgy and Bess” exists, so the Court Theatre exercised an opportunity to carve out a personal, even idiosyncratic interpretation of the George and Ira Gershwin classic. The Court’s choices mostly work and the end result is an affecting, ultimately powerful new vision of a show that has been called an American opera, a folk opera, and a musical comedy.

“Porgy and Bess” really transcends any specific genre, a one of a kind achievement in American musical theater history presented in a one of a kind production at the Court Theatre.

“Porgy and Bess” is a simple love story about an unlikely and ill-fated love affair between a crippled beggar named Porgy and a sluttish street woman named Bess. The locale is the Gullah community in Charleston, South Carolina, a black culture that gives the show much of its atmosphere.

Court director Charles Newell establishes the novelty of his interpretation in the opening moments. The 14-member ensemble of African American performers enters dressed in white. The stage is a minimalist square with five members of the orchestra seated along one rear wall while the sixth member presides over a battery of percussion instruments along a neighboring wall. So the production sacrifices all the ambience of Catfish Row in Charleston. Visually the costumes and set provide no sense of place, a matter gradually overcome by the accents, songs, superstitions, and folkways of the characters.

Most of the performance is sung, with occasional patches of spoken dialogue. The evening starts on familiar ground with the singing of “Summertime,” maybe with “Stardust” one of the two most popular numbers in the American songbook. But this is not just a survey of the score’s greatest hits, though, of course, we do get the familiar songs—“It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Loves you, Porgy,” “I Got Plenty of “Nuttin’,” and the like.

It takes a while for the storyline to kick in and for the spectator to adjust to the unusual presentation. Gradually we become familiar with the key characters, Porgy, Bess, the villainous stevedore Crown, and the sinister if ingratiating drug dealer Sporting Life. The Court adaptation follows the main storyline of the 1935 original with some fidelity, especially its violence and passion. There are some potent set pieces, climaxed by a rendering of a hurricane portrayed with drama and grandeur by a savvy blend of lighting, sound, and the body language of the massed characters. Indeed, the brilliant manipulation of crowds is one of the hallmarks of Newell’s staging.

The women have the best of it in singing Gershwin’s score, though there are terrific performances by James Earl Jones II as Crown and Sean Blake as Sporting Life. Blake injects the show’s only moment of wry humor with his saucy interpretation of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and Jones, a menacing figure built like a muscular fireplug, displays a fine operatic voice. As Porgy, Todd Kryger had some vocal insecurity early on but gained in musical and dramatic stature as the story moved along.

But the women in the cast were the dominant performers. I’ve seen Bethany Thomas in several supporting roles in small Chicago theaters, but with her performance as Serena she instantly jumps from the category of Performer Deserving of Wider Recognition to full-fledge star. A woman of imposing physical presence, Thomas displayed a blast furnace voice and expressive acting manner that are breathtaking. Her long impassioned lament over the body of her husband murdered by Crown is stunning.

Alexis Rogers sings well as Bess, though she could have upped the wanton element in this feckless character, an essentially weak woman destined to break Porgy’s heart. There are no reservations about Harriet Nzinga Plumpp’s Clara (who sings a stirring “Summertime”), Wydetta Carter (Maria), Adrienne Walker (Annie), and Joelle Lamarre (Lily).

Matt Holzfeind provides a telling cameo as the only white character in the story, a law officer who brings home the intimidating white world that surrounds the cloistered black society of Catfish Row.

There has been some controversy over the portrayal of the denizens of Catfish Row, some critics accusing Gershwin of trivializing the Gullah culture to the point of racism. That’s a contention that musicologists and social historians can chew over. Assessing “Porgy and Bess” as a piece of musical theater, a viewer has to give the Gershwins the highest marks for their ambition and for composing one of the titanic scores in the history of American musical theater.

The orchestra is composed of an unusual instrumentation of trumpet and flugelhorn (Stephen Orejudos), woodwinds (Nick Moran), violin and viola (Chuck Bontrager), piano (Doug Peck), bass (Christian Dillingham), and percussion (the resourceful Brent Roman). Peck is the music director and wrote the new orchestrations and is one of the production’s heroes.

John Culbert’s set allows sufficient space for crowd movement and dances, and the addition of a series of screens that descend from the rafters converts the open area into abstract enclosures, especially in the stirring hurricane scene. Jacqueline Firkins designed the all white costumes.  Brian Scott (lighting) and Joshua Horvath (sound) make essential contributions to the production’s look and sound.

A number of years ago a full-scale production of “Porgy and Bess,” with detailed realistic sets, played the Auditorium Theatre. The show ran at least 31/2 hours and was one of the most tedious evenings I’ve ever spent in a theater. So “Porgy and Bess” isn’t foolproof, its wonderful score notwithstanding. The Court Theatre interpretation, which runs a bit under 21/2 hours, isn’t the only way to present the show, but it is beautifully thought out, inventively staged, and superbly sung by a half dozen big league voices. It may be a long time before any local company attempts this daunting classic, so catch it while you can.

“Porgy and Bess” runs through July 3 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Orlando

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Orlando” at the Court Theatre is a play I admired more than enjoyed. I admired the commitment of the performers and the often whimsical and clever staging. But the dramatic heft of the evening doesn’t match its visual merits. In the end, the audience reaction to the play will highly personal. Some people will be charmed and entertained, others irritated.

        “Orlando” is Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 fantasy novel about an Elizabeth nobleman named Orlando who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a woman. As a female, Orlando travels through time through the eighteen and nineteenth century to modern days, aware that she possesses the secrets and desires common to both men and women.

        The novel occupies a central place in feminist literature, advocating that women are the intellectual equal of men (Orlando is a poet both as a male and a female). The work is also drenched in a gay sensibility. The lesbian Woolf was inspired by the life of her lover, the cross-dressing Victoria Sackville West.

        The stage version under Jessica Thebus’s direction is heavy on whimsy and artificiality, sometimes tinged with camp. Orlando (Amy J. Carle) is on stage throughout the evening. A Russian princess named Sasha (Erica Elam) weaves in and out of the story as Orlando’s inconstant romantic interest. A clutch of other characters are impersonated by four men who make up the Chorus. They are dressed in a mime tradition and change costumes, usually on stage, to represent real and imaginary figures, both male and female.

        The most recognizable historical character is Queen Elizabeth 1, impressively played as a haughty drag queen by chorus member Lawrence Grimm. Orlando has a kind of love affair with the queen before his gender transformation. A Romanian archduchess, later changed in sexuality into an archduke (Thomas J. Cox), invades Orlando’s life as a relentless lover.

        The meat of the play comes in the second act. Orlando is a woman with a male’s mindset. She now sees life from the other side of the gender street and quickly recognizes she has to apply a woman’s wiles to get her way in a man’s world. She has lost the male privilege of knocking a man over the head. Instead, she must insinuate and cajole to get her way. Ultimately Orlando’s sexual desires are stirred as a woman and she marries an English aristocrat, a marriage that is an erotic success.

      

        The narrative does not travel in a straight line. Much of the action seems almost improvised, cadenzas of language and movement intended to be sufficient unto themselves. Some of the language is delivered as dialogue, but the characters often speak directly to the audience in monologues. The touch is frequently light to the point of triviality.

        Carle’s performance is a marvel of stamina and acting chops. She is on stage the entire play and speaks a large percentage of the show’s words, often while in animated motion or prone on the stage. The solidly built Carle may not be an ideal physical representation of the androgynous Orlando, but her performance remains impressive. Carle receives fine support from Elam and the Chorus (rounded out by Adrian Danzig and Kevin Douglas). The ensemble performed in confident control of the script, assured in their performances even if some spectators were bemused by the play’s elusive.

        The production relies heavily on the complex lighting designed by Jaymi Lee Smith and Linda Roethke’s exotic costumes. Andre Pluess’s sound design provides the atmospheric musical swatches that bridge the show’s many scenes. Collette Pollard’s scenic design features an open stage, sometimes populated by furniture props, notably large four poster beds wheeled on and off by the actors.

        The feminist substance of “Orlando” may have been revolutionary back in 1928 but the concept that women are the mental equals of men in a man’s world strikes few sparks today. “Orlando” will work for the viewer as a visual extravaganza, humorous and quirky and occasionally intellectually stimulating. Props to the Court Theatre for offering the show in an imaginative and handsome production, but “Orlando” remains a niche drama, not for every taste.

        “Orlando” runs through April 10 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        Contact Dan atzeffdaniel@yahoo.co

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Three Tall Women

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Three Tall Women” restored Edward Albee to the forefront of the American theater after more than a decade of failures, earning him his third Pulitzer prize.  The play is Albee’s most personal and perhaps his most humane, especially in the luminous revival at the Court Theatre.

        “Three Tall Women” centers on Albee’s adoptive mother, a willful woman who sustained a fractious relationship with the playwright for many years. The play is autobiographical but it’s also fictional, transcending the conflict between Albee and his mother to explore the meaning of life’s various stages, from the hopes and expectations of youth through the cynicism of middle age and the calm resignation of old age with death at the doorstep.

        Both acts of “Three Tall Women” take place in a stylish bedroom, converted into a sickroom. There are three characters, labeled by the playwright only as A, B, and C. A is the elderly sick woman. B is her sardonic middle-aged paid companion. C is a young woman visiting the old lady representing A’s law firm to get some papers signed.

        The first act is mostly realistic banter. The elderly woman is prickly and demanding. She’s physically frail and mentally unstable, often losing her train of thought as she relives incidents from earlier in her life. The woman may be difficult but she touches our sympathy with her infirmities.

     At the end of the first act the elderly woman suffers a stroke. The second act remains in the bedroom. A dummy representing the incapacitated A lies on the bed. The three characters of the first act now assume the three stages of A’s life, each with her own perspective—youth, middle age, and elderly. A, B, and C each analyze life from their points of view, knowing only what they know from the standpoint of ages 26, 52, and 91. Time and experience are everything, and A has the final word, welcoming the finality of death as trumping the wide eyed enthusiasms of youth and the acerbic world weary attitudes of middle age.

        The dramatic temperature of the second act is altered subtly by the sudden appearance of the mother’s son (the Albee stand-in) who silently sits on his dying mother’s bed, thinking his own thoughts and at one time breaking into tears.

        The second act contains some of Albee’s most deeply felt and eloquent writing. It’s an extended “ages of man” survey like Jaques’s monologue in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” There is insight and humor in the various disquisitions by A, B, and C as they state their cases for life as they see it at their stages of life. The play ends with A carrying the day with her almost eager acceptance of death as the pinnacle of life’s experience.

       It’s interesting to compare the ferocity of Albee’s 1961 stunner “Who’s of Virginia Woolf?,” now receiving a brilliant revival at the Steppenwolf Theatre, with the air of acceptance and resignation put forth by A in “Three Tall Women,” which premiered 30 years later. The incendiary passions of the first play have been banked into an almost mellow view of the human condition.

       In spite of the unorthodox dramaturgy and the lofty themes, “Three Tall Women” is one of Albee’s most accessible plays once the audience absorbs the shift in style from the first act realism to the second act fantasy. And the Court Theatre production under Charles Newell’s directing underscores the humanity of Albee’s vision. I’ve seen stagings with A as a more abusive woman and Lois Markle doesn’t stint on A’s truculence. But Markle soars in the second act when A looks back on a long and turbulent life, happy to say goodbye to it all. It’s a compassionate reading of the role that could bring tears to the eyes of spectators.

        Mary Beth Fisher has played astringent and intelligent characters for years on area stages and she fits the role of the middle-aged B perfectly, climaxed by a wonderful aria of anguish and resentment in the second act. Maura Kidwell does what she can with the callow role of C, but her character is overmatched by the older, wiser, more opinionated, and better spoken A and B. Joel Gross takes the cameo of the silent young visitor.

        Leigh Breslau has designed the single set dominated by the plush sickbed. Ana Kuzmanic designed the costumes and Marc Stubblefield the lighting.

        “Three Tall Women” is singular Albee. Perhaps he has exorcized some demons with his understanding and insightful drama. He certainly has given his audiences a rich and revealing playgoing experience.

        “Three Tall Women” runs through February 13 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit wwwCourtTheatre.org.

                        The show gets a rating of four stars.

                     Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.              January 2011

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The Comedy of Errors

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago- No Shakespeare play is more abused than “The Comedy of Errors.” It’s an early farce with little of the dramatic heft of the great Bard comedies to follow. So directors have a field day fiddling with what is generally considered to be a frivolous vehicle that could stand some improvements.

        Sean Graney is one of the edgiest of the younger generation of Chicagoland directors and the Court Theatre has entrusted him with staging “The Comedy of Errors” filtered through the Graney theatrical sensibility. And Graney has answered the call. He’s shrunk the play down to 80 minutes of intermissionless playing time. The 20 characters in the play are performed by six actors. And Graney doesn’t hesitate to embroider Shakespeare’s original dialogue with very modern lines of his own.

        The Court revival will have its partisans and also its detractors. The partisans will insist the production is a laugh riot, filled with quirky verbal and physical invention. Sure it tampers with the Bard’s original script, but it’s not as if the revival was messing with a masterpiece, so lighten up.

        The detractors will counter that Graney too often strays into the realm of dumbed-down silliness, like Second City on a very bad night. Granted there are some clever comic touches, but if you throw enough shtick at a play, the law of averages states that a few bits will stick among all the mugging and pratfalls and simpering and desperate reaches for laughs.

        The reduction of the cast to six performers does work pretty well, in spite of the storyline that revolves around two sets of identical twins. At the Court the Dromio twins and the Antipholus twins are each played by a single actor, which means much split second timing in entrances and exits and speed-of-light costume changes back stage.

        The sextet of performers, given the chance, all do well with the shards of Shakespearean dialogue  allowed to stand unblemished amidst all the slapstick and self indulgence. I would be happy to see Erik Hellman, Stacy Stoltz, Steve Wilson, Alex Goodrich, Elizabeth Ledo, and Kurt Ehrmann in a legitimate presentation of the play. I think they would do well.  Hellman and Goodrich are particular effective as the two sets of twins.

        But ultimately the worthy elements in the production are drowned out by the “anything for a laugh” stabs at humor like anachronisms that attempt to reach for laughs in a can of diet Coke or the sudden utterance of a four-letter word.

        Tom Burch’s  set consists of several doors (this is a farce, after all) set among a graffiti-desecrated wall with trash littering the stage. The significance of the garbage strewn background eluded me. Jacqueline Firkins designed a wardrobe of outlandish costumes, including a pair of ball gowns for Stoltz and Ledo that couldn’t be less flattering. Heather Gilbert designed the lighting and Michael Griggs the sound.

       Revisionist productions like this disarm criticism. The spectators either go along with the director’s manic flights of fancy or they grit their teeth and look at their watch. The performers all seemed to be having a good time and expend an unstinting amount of energy in the cause of Graney’s reanimation of the play. The performance on opening night drew lots of laughs. Whether people were reacting to what they thought was funny or what was supposed to be funny is between them and their conscience. I thought the evening was a mess, with some redeeming elements--midway between a disaster and a display of creative directorial daring.

       “The Comedy of Errors” runs through October 17 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

                        The show gets a rating of 21/2 stars.

                         Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Sizwe Banzi is Dead

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – The Athol Fugard mini festival is concluding with a stunning revival of the 1972 one-act drama “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” at the Court Theatre. It’s the third Fugard drama this season, following “’Master’ Harold and the Boys…” at the TimeLine Theatre and “The Island” at the Remy Bumppo Theatre.

          The earlier two productions were solid presentations of Fugard’s exploration of the evils of apartheid in South Africa, but “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is the real capstone of the threesome, 100 intermissionless minutes of brilliant acting in the service of engrossing and disturbing storytelling.

          Fugard, who is white, was actually co-author of both “The Island” and “Sizwe Banzi” with black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who were also the complete casts for both plays.

          “Sizwe Banzi” is set in a black township in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The first 40 minutes is a virtuoso monologue by a black man named Styles. He begins by recounting the farcical preparations his white bosses make in anticipation of a visit from the American owner of the automobile plant where Styles has a menial job. The monologue then shifts to Styles’s establishing himself as a professional photographer in a ramshackle and cockroach-infested studio.

          Enter Sizwe Banzi a diffident young black man who wants to have his portrait taken. Up to this point the play has been largely comic, though a grim picture emerges of the racial oppression black South Africans endure on a daily basis.

          The narrative then shifts to Sizwe Banzi, a diffident and frightened black man who makes the acquaintance of another black man named Buntu. Sizwe confides to Buntu that he is in trouble. His passbook, which all black Africans must carry, has a stamp that doesn’t allow him to live or work in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe must leave the city to return to his wife and four children in a desolate and drought-stricken village 150 miles away.

          One night Buntu and Sizwe stumble onto the body of a man who apparently died a violent death. Buntu urges Sizwe to swap passbooks with the dead man, thus acquiring the government stamp that would permit Sizwe, using the dead man's identity, to live and work in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe would have to give up his own identity forever, but he would be allowed to earn a living wage and save his family from possible starvation.  Sizwe agonizes over a choice between destitution and personal pride. The choice turns out to be no choice at all.

          By the end of the play, the audience is exposed to the dehumanizing effect of apartheid, especially its Kafkaesque bureaucratic snares. Sizwe and Buntu sound notes of fierce anger and defiance before Sizwe yields in humiliated capitulation. But before the high drama of the conclusion the play has offered plenty of rueful humor, including one of the few drunk scenes I’ve ever seen on a stage that worked. Both Sizwe and Buntu go into the audience to josh with the spectators, injecting a light and whimsical touch to a narrative that ultimately turns tragic.

          The cast of Chike Johnson and Allen Gilmore crawl into the skins of the three characters in the play to create indelible performances. The two are physically contrasting, Johnson solidly built like a football running back and the slender Gilmore wearing a woebegone expression as the injustices of apartheid erode his sense of self.

          The acting is all of a piece with the script, projecting a sense of immediacy and authenticity that leaves the viewers with the feeling that they are witnessing the only way the play could possibly be performed. That means director Ron OJ Parson flawlessly has his finger on the play’s emotional and theatrical pulse throughout the evening. I don’t know how much the perfection of the performances emerges from the actors and how much from the director, but it doesn’t matter. The staging is seamless—funny, poignant, bitter. It’s a stirring reminder of how monstrous apartheid was in the everyday life of black South Africa, a condition receding into the historical past now that apartheid has been gone, at least officially, since 1994.

          The production gets a boost from Jack Magaw’s functional setting, with photos of black South Africans looking down from the rear of the stage mutely observing the plight of the characters. Christine Pascual designed the costumes, Lee Keenan the lighting, and Nick Keenan the sound.

          “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is an exceptionally rich playgoing experience and the acting is superb in its commitment and artistry. It’s all there—humor, outage, frustration, poignancy, and fear. A most powerful and rewarding evening.

          “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” runs through June 13 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $56. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

          The show gets a rating of four stars.   May 2010

                      Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.                               

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The Illusion

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—“The Illusion” at the Court Theatre is a 1636 play by the French dramatist Pierre Corneille as filtered through the theatrical and intellectual sensibilities of Tony Kushner in 1988, in Kushner’s pre “Angels in America” period.  The modern version is filled with striking visual effects, an off kilter blend of comedy and seriousness, and enough themes to occupy a classroom of philosophy majors.

        The title defines the nature of the play. The audience is exposed to illusions, indeed so many layers of illusions that the Corneille-Kushner piece occasionally seems a clone of Scheherazade’s “1001 Nights” intricate ribbon of connected tales.

       The play begins in the cave in southern France, where a magician named Alcandre (Chris Sullivan) presides, assisted by a gnome-like deaf and dumb servant (Kevin Gudahl). Onto the premises comes Pridamant (John Reeger), a lawyer who 15 years earlier had kicked his son out of his house. Now Pridamant senses his death may be near and he wants to reconcile with his son to assuage his feeling of guilt. The father has exhausted all normal avenues to tracing his son and comes to the magician as a last resort.

        Alcandre reveals three illusions involving the son (Michael Mahler) to Pridamant. All three portray the son as a young man and all three are love stories. In each, the son has a different name and in each he woos the same woman (Hilary Clemens), also with three different names. The woman’s maid (Elizabeth Ledo, three names, too) plays an essential role in each illusion. The other constant characters in the illusions are two aristocrats (Kareem Bandealy and Timothy Edward Kane) who compete with the son for the love of the woman.

        The first illusion is a light and fanciful love scene but the illusions turn darker until the end, when the son (we never learn his real name) is presumably killed. There are stories within stories, some comical and some serious. The dramatic temperature is often interrupted by long passages of purple prose, and occasionally poetry, which achieve nothing in terms of character or narrative and tend to wash over the listener like beautiful white noise. There is one late scene portraying a nasty conflict between the woman and her cruel father that just takes up stage time.

        Near the end of the play the author pulls the rug out from the audience, revealing just how much “The Illusion” is really about illusions. Alcandre then delivers a long disquisition on love as the only true reality and the spectators are sent home pondering the elusive meanings of everything they have seen.

        The ensemble acting is uniformly excellent. Kane is particularly good in his comic turn as a blowhard aristocrat with a broad coward streak when matters of love threaten to turn violent.  Elizabeth Ledo, who never disappoints, is outstanding in conveying the many personalities of the lady’s maid. Reeger delivers a vivid and complex portrait of a father who wants the reconciliation, though, at the end, maybe not so much.

   In broad terms, “The Illusion” deals with fantasy versus reality and the illusions created by the theater. Parsing all the subtexts in the play lends itself more to a university seminar room than a theater but unquestionable Corneille and Kushner give the spectators plenty to chew on if they are so inclined.

        Under Charles Newell’s resourceful directing the production is almost continuously engrossing, except those passages of lyrical blather. Collette Pollard’s cave design encloses a vast space that lends the theater interior its necessary aura of mystery, abetted by John Culbert’s lighting and the sound design by Josh Horvath and Nick Keenan. The costumes by Jacqueline Firkins create the proper seventeenth century look for the show.

        The production of “The Illusion” does the Court Theatre proud. The play may not be satisfying to viewers who require plain speaking naturalism in their theatergoing, but the success of the Court staging masks the fact that in less competent hands, “The Illusion” could be confusing and tiresome. The play is a challenge, well met by Newell and his people, on stage and behind the scenes.

        “The Illusion” runs through April 11 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $56. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.             March 2010

            Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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The Mystery of Irma Vep

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

     Chicago – “The Mystery of Irma Vep” at the Court Theatre tries to parlay two jokes into a full evening’s entertainment. At its best, the show is a hilarious hoot. When it’s not at its best, the spectator has to wonder why the Court selected such a trivial and obvious work for its subscription season. Fortunately, the hoot moments trump the dead spots.

     Playwright/actor Charles Ludlam debuted “Vep” in 1984 as a production by his Ridiculous Theatre Company. The show was a considerable hit, possibly for its novelty of having all eight roles played by two performers (joke one) and for its spoofing of horror books and movies (joke two). The novelty no longer exists, so the play is forced to ride on its hit or miss artistic merit.

        The play wallows in Ludlam’s campy gay sensibility. The action starts out in the drawing room of a Gothic manor house in England out of “Rebecca”, shifts to Egypt in the second act (a salute to the movie “The Mummy”), and then returns to the manor house for a heavy dose of werewolves, vampires, and cleaver-wielding homicidal maniacs.

        Much of the entertainment value of “Vep” resides in the quick costumes changes that take place off stage as the actors morph from character to character, including three females, a mysterious Egyptian, and a one-legged handyman in the service of the manor house’s proprietor, Lord Edgar Hillcrest.

        Under Sean Graney’s high velocity, often imaginative,  and anything for a laugh directing, the production comes at the audience full tilt with an avalanche of sight gags, puns, double entendres, self references, and send-ups of pop culture and high culture from Ibsen and Shakespeare to “Gaslight” and “The Ten Commandments” (the movie), The show is a trivial pursuit lover’s dream.

Some of the visual gags are built into Ludlam’s script but Graney frequently takes matters into his own hands. He opens the second act with Lord Hillcrest and the mysterious Egyptian working their way from the top of the audience, through row after row of patrons, allowing the cast of Erik Hellman and Chris Sullivan to employ their improvisation skills to hilarious effect. The discovery of the mummy’s sarcophagus (humorously mispronounced by Sullivan’s Egyptian) is great comedy and the show builds to a rip roaring conclusion highlighted by Sullivan turning into a werewolf before our eyes, thanks to some intentionally tacky special effects.

In between the inspired moments the play is larded with sluggish action and self indulgence. The lampooning of old melodramas and horror stories and movies is an easy target, both as satire and celebration. Throwing in lines from “Macbeth” and Oscar Wilde may enhance the “nudge nudge wink wink” factor but they can’t carry the show for two hours. The play requires constant invention and imagination to keep the play afloat. The Court effort doesn’t lack for comic creativity but invention does flag, especially in the ponderous first act.

Hellman and Sullivan certainly give it their best shot, Hellman slender and fragile-looking and Sullivan hulking and coarse. They are both at their best in the Egyptian scenes but they keep the energy level high throughout. In an unconventional coup de theater, Graney brings the backstage crew onstage for the final scene, demonstrating how the actors changed costumes away from the audience’s gaze in a matter of moments. The exposure of the play’s artifice surely would have pleased Ludlam (who died in 1987 at the age of 44 from AIDS).

  It finally comes down to the maxim, If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you will like. Go with an open mind and you likely will laugh a lot more than you will fidget. Whether this is the sort of ephemera that should occupy a slot on the Court schedule remains in the eye of the ticket buyer.

The physical production is a full partner in what success the evening provides. Applause goes to Jack Magaw for his scenic design, Heather Gilbert for her lighting, Alison Siple for the costumes, and Michael  Griggs for the sound.

 “The Mystery of Irma Vep” runs through December 13 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30. Tickets are $32 to $56. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

The show gets a rating of three stars.                     December 2009

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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The Piano Lesson

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—For more than 20 years the Court Theatre and the Goodman Theatre have been local custodians of August Wilson’s 10-play cycle of plays about African American life during the twentieth century. The two theaters presented most of the cycle even before the individual plays reached Broadway.

        Now Chicagoland audiences are getting second looks at the Wilson epic. The Court is currently reviving “The Piano Lesson,” which won one of Wilson’s two Pulitzer prizes (“Fences” won the other prize and was revived recently at the Court in a stunning production).

       Each play in the cycle is set in a different decade of the last century. “The Piano Lesson” takes place in 1936 in the playwright’s favorite locality, Pittsburgh. Like many other plays in the cycle, “The Piano Lesson” blends realism with the mystical and the fantastic. It explores how the past can dominate the present, with slavery casting a long shadow over characters generations removed from this country’s slave history.

        The play’s action takes place in the home of a railroad worker named Doaker where he lives with his widowed niece Berniece and her 11-year old daughter. The central object in the home, and in the play, is an old piano carved with images of the family’s history by a slave ancestor.

        The plot is driven by the conflict between Berniece and Boy Willie, her brother come up from Mississippi with his friend Lymon to sell a truckload of watermelons. But mainly Boy Willie has traveled north to sell the piano he co-owns with Berniece so he can buy some farmland in Mississippi.

        Berniece refuses to sell the piano, claiming it preserves the family’s heritage. Boy Willie sees the piano as a way to liberate him from the family history of slavery and sharecropping. Buying the land in Mississippi would validate him as a man free from the economic and psychological domination of the white man. The confrontation is a stalemate between brother and sister that could turn violent.

        The play is populated by complementary characters, all colorful in the inimitable Wilson style. Wining Boy, another family member, is a fast talking irresponsible boozer and hustler. Avery is a middle-aged elevator operator with a dream of starting his own church and making Berniece his wife. Lymon is a simple but sympathetic young man on the run from the law in the South who wants to settle in Pittsburgh and chase women.

        All the on-stage characters are black, but one white character hovers over the narrative, the ghost of James Sutter. Back in slavery days, Sutter’s ancestor bought the piano in exchange for Berniece’s great grandmother (also named Berniece) and her nine-year-old son. The older Berniece’s husband carved the family history on the piano. The father of Berniece and Boy Willie stole the piano from the Sutter family and tried to escape in a railway car, but  he died, along with three hobos, when a lynch mob burned the car. The dead men became known in local legend as the Yellow Dog Ghosts, credited with drowning fire perpetrators in various wells.

        The latest Sutter to drown in a well is James, now haunting the piano for no clear reason. Members of the household have seen the ghost, who remains invisible to the audience.

        Like other plays in the cycle, “The Piano Lesson” is expansive in length (almost three hours) and filled with pungent and lyrical dialogue, dramatic monologues, earthy comedy, and sudden bursts of song. Boy Willie is one of the great figures in the boundless Wilson gallery of imaginatively conceived men and women—a character of limitless energy and determination, fearless and proud, funny, and fixated on owning his own land to claim his manhood and make his mark in the world. The man dominates the Court production in Ronald Conner’s robust performance.

        The entire Court ensemble under Ron OJ Parson’s directing turns in first-rate work. Give A. C. Smith an outsized emotional role and nobody in Chicagoland theater can beat him. As Doaker, Smith is passive for much of the play, but when Wilson turns the character loose, Smith is riveting, especially when he tells the gripping story behind the Yellow Dog Ghosts. There is also fine work by Tyla Abercrumbie as Berniece, Brian Weddington as Lymon, Alfred Wilson as Wining Boy, and Allen Edge as Avery.

        The superior acting only partially masks weak spots in the play. A short romantic interlude between Lymon and Berniece doesn’t work. The injection of stomping song and dance interrupts the flow of the narrative yet we wouldn’t want to be without these joyous interludes.  The play is overstuffed with plot strands. For example, Boy Willie and Lymon pick up a young woman named Grace, a character who contributes nothing to the story. When Berniece points a pistol at Boy Willie, “The Piano Lesson” briefly descends into melodrama.

        But the major difficulty is the incompatibility of the supernatural with the play’s naturalism. The final scene is an exorcism of Sutter’s ghost featuring frenzied sound and lighting effects. The tumult of the exorcism drowns out essential dialogue and stimulated giggles from the opening night audience when the mood should have been shock and terror. At the end of the scene, the play just stops. A viewer unfamiliar with the script likely will leave the theater perplexed about just what happened during and after that furious battle with Sutter’s ghost. Still, the play’s flaws are overwhelmed by the bountiful language and the vibrancy of the characters. The good news for Wilson fans is that the Court will open its 2009-2010 season with the great man’s “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.”

        Keith Pitts designed the detailed interior of Doaker’s home and Christine Pascual designed the Depression era costumes. Richard Norwood (lighting) and Nick Keenan (sound) designed the slam-bang special effects that simulate the invasion and dispatch of Sutter’s ghost. 

        “The Piano Lesson” runs through June 7 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $54. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.      May 2009

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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Radio Macbeth

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—“Radio Macbeth” recreates a broadcast of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in a 1940’s radio studio in some unnamed city by an unidentified group of actors. The concept revival is being presented at the Court Theatre by the SITI Company, one of the more enterprising permanent theater troupes in the country.

        The 90-minute production abridges the text and eliminates all the visuals so essential to a traditional staging of the tragedy. There are no grotesque witches murmuring over a boiling cauldron, no dagger coated with Duncan’s blood, no mist drenched Highlands, no swordplay and violent battle scenes.

       Instead, the play is performed by seven actors in the period clothing of the 1940’s (why this period was selected is not explained).  The set consists of the empty studio late one night, with a few tables and chairs and microphones as the only props.  For visual impact, the production relies on dramatic lighting, vivid sound effects, and mostly important, the power of Shakespeare’s text, even in an abbreviated version.

        The SITI version may be difficult to follow for spectators unfamiliar with the original “Macbeth,” though one presumes that everyone in the typical Court audience has at least a passing knowledge of the story.  The spectator disorientation could be compounded by the actors playing multiple roles, including several different players who recite Macbeth’s lines until the actor who takes on the role makes a late appearance on the stage. Thus the viewer can’t attach one actor to one character throughout the evening.

        The audience also has to deal with an elusive subtext in the production. Along with the tragedy itself, there are emotional undercurrents within the acting company, especially surrounding the actress who plays Lady Macbeth. But these hints of tension are never explored, leaving the viewer to speculate, an annoying distraction. At the end of the production the actor who plays Macbeth is left alone on the stage, staring with a haunted look into the middle distance. What that final image is supposed to signify is anyone’s guess.

        If the viewers can set accommodate the side issues of the radio performance, they will enjoy a solid presentation of a condensed version of “Macbeth.” The SITI ensemble is very comfortable with Shakespeare’s language and the intensity of the story is captured nicely, at least for those who can follow the plot from previous exposure to the play.

        The production injects a few neat theatrical touches. For example, at the end of the play the climactic battle between Macbeth and Macduff gets so heated between the two actors that a third actor borrows “hold, enough” from Macbeth’s speech to defuse a confrontation that could turn violent between the performers.

        The production’s lighting ranges from pitch dark and shadowy to startling bursts of brilliant illumination that bathe the entire stage. The soundscape is a mix of electronic music and noises that would enhance the atmosphere of a radio broadcast and certainly enrich the staging at the Court.

        All seven members of the ensemble do well, led by Ellen Lauren as Lady Macbeth and Stephen Webber as Macbeth. They are supported in about two dozen roles by Akiko Aizawa, Will Bond, Gian-Murray Gianino, Barney O’Hanlon, and Makela Spielman. They are all good, even Aizawa with her Japanese brogue, but Spielman gets especially high marks for an eerie rendering of the single witch preserved in the adaptation.

        The production is co-directed by Darron L. West (who is also the sound designer) and SITI artistic director Anne Bogart. James Schuette designed the set and costumes and Brian H. Scott designed the lighting.

        “Radio Macbeth” may be a struggle for beginners to the play and the mysteries surrounding the radio broadcast occasionally carry a whiff of the pretentious. But for most of the evening the audience is exposed to some first rate Shakespeare, and customers open to a new take on the tragedy should come away well satisfied.

        “Radio Macbeth” runs through December 7 at the Court Theatre, 5335 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $56. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre,org.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.     November 2008

                   Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Caroline, or Change

At the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        CHICAGO-The opening night audience at the Court Theatre gave “Caroline, or Change” a raucous ovation at the curtain call. The spectators left the theater on an emotional high, and rightly so. This is an inventive, highly personal musical. The show may be some kind of quirky masterpiece, but it also carries a considerable load of thematic difficulties.

        Tony Kushner  (book and lyrics) and Jeanine Tesori (music) created the show out of Kushner’s memories of growing up in a Jewish household in Deep South Louisiana. The work opened off Broadway in 1963 and transferred to Broadway, where it had a modest and unprofitable run. It’s no surprise the show didn’t fly on Broadway. If ever there was a non-Broadway vehicle, it’s “Caroline, or Change.”

        The musical is really an upstairs-downstairs narrative about two families under stress. Caroline is a 39-year old African American maid working in the Gellman home in Lake Charles, Louisiana. The time is late 1963. It begins the day John F. Kennedy is assassinated but the more enduring news of the day is the rising voice of the civil rights movement.

        Caroline struggles to raise four children on a starvation salary, cooking and cleaning, and washing for the Gellmans. Three of her children are at home and the oldest is fighting in Vietnam. Caroline’s realm is the laundry room 16 feet below sea level. There, in the oppressive heat, she washes and irons the Gellman laundry, accompanied by a singing washing machine and a singing dryer (nearly all the show is sung). Caroline is an angry woman, embittered by her hard scrabble life of poverty, grinding work, racism, and memories of an abusive husband who abandoned his family years before.

        Above stairs is the Gellman family. Eight-year old Noah still grieves for his mother, who died of cancer shortly before the start of the musical. He visits Caroline daily, seeking the warmth and affection he can’t locate in his aloof father and his new stepmother, a woman from the North trying to adjust to the South and to Noah’s animosity.

The Gellman part of the show plays like a Philip Roth satire about middle class Jewish life. The household is visited by the father’s parents and  mother’s father, Mr. Stopnick. Together they come across as a collection of American Jewish stereotypes, like Mr. Stopnick, an old time leftist radical calling for the black people to rise up against their capitalist oppressors.

        The show is on solid theatrical and dramatic ground as long as it stays with Caroline. The “change” of the title has two meanings. It refers to the special changes in the air as civil rights demands turn militant. Then there is the change in coins that Noah leaves in his clothing pockets for Caroline to find. The small amounts would ease the maid’s impoverished life but instead she retains the money in a bleach cup, in spite of the request by Noah’s mother for Caroline to keep the money to teach the boy a lesson.

A dramatic pivot in the second act comes when Noah accidentally leaves a $20 Hanukkah gift from Mr. Stopnick in a pocket and Caroline refuses to return it. The $20 means new clothes and dental care and Christmas for her children. The boy explodes in a fury of hateful curses against the maid who responds “Hell’s so hot it makes flesh fry/ and hell’s where Jews go when they die.” The fierce exchange underscores one of the musical’s themes, the uneasy relationship between blacks and white Jews at the drawn of the civil rights era.

        The second act portrays the breach between Caroline and her teenaged daughter Emmie, one of the new breed of young black people who reject their parents’ defeatism and look optimistically to a new day of black liberation from intolerance and oppression. Normally, the end of the show would give us a new Caroline, a woman who sheds her bitterness and joins heart and mind with Emmie to face a brave new world for black people in the South. But Caroline cannot and will not change. Her life is too steeped in hard times and backbreaking labor. She ends the story still armored in her resentment. That’s who she is, for better or worse.

 Kushner and Tesori give Caroline a long second act soliloquy of enormous emotional potency, a real showcase for the powerhouse voice of E. Faye Butler, who superbly captures Caroline’s bitter outlook on her world. The number could have been a fitting conclusion to the show, which meanders on for more several minutes, almost like the creators weren’t sure how to end their work. But the final image of a grim Caroline standing behind her three children, the hopeful next black generation, is a stunner.Kushner leavens his realistic story with offbeat fantasy bits, like the singing washing machine and dryer, a singing Moon, and a black girl trio who collectively play the character of Caroline’s radio (she’s too poor to have a TV set). Tesori’s score dips into rhythm and blues, blues, rock music of the early 1960’s, and even traditional Hanukkah songs and Christmas carols. 

The musical is a triumph for Butler but the honor roll is a long one, starting with Charles Newell, who provides endlessly inventive directorial flourishes. He works terrifically within John Culbert’s set, an imaginative multi level design with a pit at center stage representing Caroline’s hellish laundry room. The excellent small orchestra, led by Adam DeGroot’s virtuoso clarinet playing, sits above the action, while the Gellman element of the story is played out on the stage level.

There is distinction everywhere in the supporting cast. Melanie Brezill delivers a magnificent vocal and acting portrayal of the rebellious Emmie. Kate Fry, as usual, is exemplary, this time as Noah’s mother, locked into an unhappy relationship with her stepson in a land she neither likes nor understands. Dennis Kelly as Mr. Stopnick, Iris Lieberman and Peter Kevoin as Noah’s grandparents, and Rob Lindley as Noah’s father are all well up to the mark.

And then there is Malcolm Durning as Noah (he alternates with Jack Mulopulos). I can’t remember seeing a more complex or physically demanding role for a child actor, but Winnetka sixth grader Durning sings and acts, and even dances a little like a real pro. He is a lynchpin of the production.

Jacqueline Williams is excellent as Caroline’s friend Dolly, a woman moving on with her life who wants Caroline to do the same. The ensemble is rounded out by Harriet Nzinga Plumpp, Starr Busby, Rebecca Lynn Davis, Donica Lynn, Byron Glen Willis, and Donavan Epison and Micah Pejon Williams as Caroline’s two younger children (alternating with Gregory Franklin.

The outstanding design credits are completed by Robert Denton (lighting), Jacqueline Firkins (costumes), and Joshua Horvath and Rick Sims (sound).

        “Caroline, or Change” runs through October 19 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.

The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.         Sept. 2008

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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First Breeze of Summer

at the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        CHICAGO—The major Chicago theaters have been presenting at least one African American play on their subscription schedule for several seasons. Typically the plays are new or recent works of varying quality but consistently serious in their purpose of exploring African American history or contemporary life.

      These theaters rarely have revived black plays from a golden age of African American theater, roughly from the late 1960’s through the 1980’s. The Court Theatre is reaching back to this era with a revival of Leslie Lee’s 1975 drama “First Breeze of Summer.” The Lee play originally opened, to much praise off Broadway and then transferred to Broadway under the sponsorship of the Negro Ensemble Theatre, the driving force in black American theater for more than two decades.

        “First Breeze of Summer” holds up pretty well a generation after its premiere. Lee’s play is long and leisurely for the first two-third of its 2 hours and 30 minutes of running time, when it erupts into an emotional frenzy.  The drama isn’t a masterpiece, but it deserves a hearing, especially in the fine Court production directed by Ron OJ Parson.  

 

    “First Breeze of Summer” portrays three generations of an extended black family in a small Northeastern city during one hot June week in the 1970’s. The heart of the play is the family matriarch, an endearing old woman called Gremmar. The action takes place in the home of Gremmar’s son Milton with frequent, and stagy,  flashbacks to Gremmar’s life as a young woman named Lucretia.

      Lucretia has three illegitimate children by three different fathers, two black and one white, all of whom desert her. She is left to make her way in life, burdened by the multiple handicaps of being unmarried, black, and lumbered with three children (one of whom dies in infancy).  Her first lover is an angry but sympathetic young black man, followed by a rebellious young white man, and concluding with a naïve black preacher. Somehow, the sexually active and occasionally manipulative Lucretia survived to become a lovable, pious old woman, though the play never says how.

        “First Breeze of Summer” isn’t plot-driven, but we do meet a lot of interesting and entertaining characters, including Gremmar’s two surviving children, Lucretia’s three lovers, and her two grandchildren (Lou and Nathan). The sensitive Lou undergoes a spiritual crisis that touches off the extravagant emotional fireworks of the play’s final half hour, though why he freaks out is a frenzied blur that lacks preparation for audience credibility.

        Throughout the play we observe the generational conflicts, jealousies, and resentments common to all families, at least on the stage. Lee’s play touches on race, but it’s not an angry play with a racial agenda. And as in most family plays, once the emotional explosions have been detonated, a mood of reconciliation takes over, symbolized in the first breeze of summer that breaks the stifling heat wave.

        The best scene in the play comes when the local preacher leads Gremmar’s family in a living room revival meeting that erupts into some glorious testifying and gospel singing, much to the jubilation of the older characters and the embarrassment of the two grandsons. The exultant energy of the scene could have been extracted from an August Wilson play.
  

        The final scenes turn operatic in their high-pitched emotionalism, and the contrast with the preceding scenes is too abrupt. The scenery chewing at the end doesn’t invalidate the display of strong characters and vigorous dialogue that make the play work but it’s still a problem.

        Gremmar and Lucretia dominate the narrative, but they are complemented by a full-blooded set of supporting characters, starting with Milton, a plasterer struggling to carve a niche in the middle class for himself and his family. Milton’s outsized personality fills up the stage, thanks to the volcanic performance by A. C. Smith. No actor of any race in Chicagoland theater surpasses Smith in roles calling for intensity and displays of towering feeling.

        The Court production employs the cream of local African American performers, starting with A. C. Smith and Pat Bowie as the benevolent Gremmar.  There is fine work by Cynthia Kaye McWilliams as Lucretia, Taj McCord, Jonathan Eliot, and Ronald Conner as the three fathers, and Calvin Dutton and Brian Weddington as the grandsons. They are ably complemented by Marsha Estell, Jacqueline Williams, Alfred Wilson, and Ebony Wimbs.

        Jack Magaw designed the realistic and functional bi-level set. Marc Stubblefield’s lighting is effective in the flashback scenes. Christine Pascual designed the costumes and Joshua Horvath and Ray Nardelli the sound plus the original music.

        “First Breeze of Summer” runs through June 15 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $54. Call 773 753 4472.

The show gets a rating of 3 stars.         May 2008

For more information visit  www.CourtTheatre.org

Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Titus Andronicus

 at the Court Theatre

By Dan Zeff

        CHICAGO—The noted literary critic and scholar Harold Bloom once wrote that Shakespeare’s “Titus Andronicus” was unplayable unless the production treated the script as a parody of Elizabethan tragedy. Bloom commented that he didn’t think he would want to see “Titus” again unless it was directed by Mel Brooks.

        Bloom’s problem with “Titus Andronicus,” and the problem many scholars and audiences have with the work, is the story’s outrageous violence. There is rape and mutilation and barbaric cruelty that more closely resemble one of today’s “Saw” movies than a classic tragedy.

           Shakespeare set “Titus Andronicus” in a never-never land of ancient Rome. The violent deaths start in the opening minutes and don’t cease until the final blackout. All the killings and mutilations result from a cycle of revenge, beginning when the captive Goth queen Tamora seeks reprisal from the execution of her son by Titus. That triggers carnage that is climaxed by Titus killing Tamora’s two sons and serving their flesh to their mother in a pie at a banquet in her honor. By this time the audience doesn’t know whether to giggle or recoil in revulsion.

            Only one character in the play is up to Shakespeare’s standard, a Moor named Aaron. He’s one of the many villains, but he at least luxuriates in the droll self-awareness of his villainy. The other characters are mostly one-dimensional bloodletting machines.           

      The Court Theatre is reviving “Titus Andronicus,” and director-adapter Charles Newell clearly recognizes that the play presents considerable problems of credibility to an audience. So Newell imposes a concept on the story as a play within a play. The evening opens at the meeting of an unidentified elite brotherhood gathered to induct new members. The brotherhood consists mostly of young males, all dressed alike in uniforms, with a pair of handsomely gowned women as special guests.          

       As part of the induction ceremony, the brotherhood selects “Titus Andronicus” to be performed. In the early staging of the play, there is much joking around and breaking of character as the actors casually read from paperback editions of the script. This approach does earn some laughs, but it carries difficulties that trouble the production throughout the evening, which runs about two hours without an intermission. With most of the actors being the same age and dressed identically, it’s almost impossible for the viewer to figure out who is who in the story. Everyone looks the same. Gradually the central characters become more clearly delineated, but any spectator unfamiliar with the plot likely will be lost for the first half of the evening.           

      The tone dramatically shifts from comedy to stark seriousness with the rape and mutilation of Lavinia, Titus’s daughter, by Tamora’s two sons. From then on, the savagery of the play takes over, enhanced by the members of the brotherhood being absorbed into their roles so we can’t be sure if they are following Shakespeare’s script or acting out the violence on their own (for example, was the woman playing Lavinia actually raped by a couple of brotherhood members offstage?).           

      The sheer horror of the escalating tide of butchery does give “Titus Andronicus” a perverse fascination, like watching a bloody train wreck. But the play turns so powerful toward the end that one wonders why Newell didn’t direct the tragedy as written instead of putting the audience off balance with the initial facetious style. I’ve seen “Titus Andronicus” twice, and while it was no fun to watch, the show does hold the stage, and the Court ensemble demonstrates the potential to make the work a sledgehammer viewing experience without all the directorial improvements.          

        Newell deserves some credit for his audacity in imposing his concept on the play. The abrupt change of tone may be open to question, but the production is strikingly theatrical. And nobody can claim that Newell is tampering with a masterpiece. “Titus Andronicus” is a potboiler that probably would never be revived if it didn’t have Shakespeare’s name attached to it. Ultimately how well this version succeeds resides in the eye of the beholder.           

     The performances are generally first rate. Timothy Edward Kane is superb as the fiery and anguished Titus. Kevin Gudahl, the only actor who plays his role straight from the beginning, is very strong as Marcus, the closest character to a good guy in the story. Phillip James Brannon makes a commanding Aaron, though I didn’t pick up on some of his lines. Hollis Resnik is fine as the regal and vicious Tamora, and there are very good performances by Matthew Brumlow and Matt Schwader (as the monstrous and craven Emperor Saturninus). For some reason, several members of the cast rotate among the supporting roles, so some audiences may see Anish Jethmalani as Saturninus. Other members of the cast, all commendable, are Daniel Behrendt, Eddie Bennett, Erik Hellman, Andy Nagraj, and Corey Rieger.

            But the performance of the night belongs to Elizabeth Ledo as Lavinia, who opens the story as something of a party girl in a heavy romantic relationship with one of the brotherhood members. But then she morphs into Lavinia, and after the character’s rape and mutilation, Ledo must play the character silently, but with such an expressive sense of violation and suffering that it’s heartbreaking to watch her. It’s a stunning piece of acting that sticks in the mind long after the brutal excesses of the play have drained away.           

       Leigh Breslau designed the modernist two-level set. Miranda Hoffman designed the costumes, Brian Scott the lighting, and Joshua Horvath the sound.

            “Titus Andronicus” runs through February 10 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $54. Call 773 753 4472.     

                       For more information contact: www.CourtTheatre.org 

                                    The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.

Jan. 2008

Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com