Bachelorette

At the Profiles Theatre

by Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – Attend the Profiles Theatre production of Leslye Headland’s “Bachelorette” and meet Gena, Katie, and Regan--three foul-mouthed, pot smoking, cocaine sniffing, pill popping young ladies the audience can accept as funny, pathetic, repulsive, or tragic.

        The maidens spend about 70 minutes of stage time doing their drugs, backstabbing every back in sight, and generally raising bitchiness to a new plateau. The play doesn’t have much plot, riding on the raucous, destructive (and sometimes self destructive) conduct of its manic female characters.

        The play’s locale is a luxury suite in a fancy New York City hotel. Regan occupies the suite with the consent of Becky, who is about to be married to a wealthy young man. Regan is the maid of honor. To help pass the pre nuptial hours, Regan invites Katie and Gena, a pair of wanton young women alleged friends of the bride (Becky specifically instructed Regan not to invite them to the hotel, aware they are likely to explode out of control). The three young women immediately start doing drugs, drinking Becky’s booze, graphically discussing their sex lives, and backstabbing each other and especially Becky.

      

                                                                    Photo credit Shawn Cagle

     The single 70-minute act is basically a nonstop farrago of screaming insults and obscenities fueled by drugs and alcohol and a deep-seated desperation that afflicts all the gals. Katie, Gena, and Regan are coming to the end of their partying years with little to show for their past and nothing positive to anticipate in their future. They resent Becky for marrying first, an undeserving Becky who is fat, for heaven’s sake, and marrying a rich guy. Where is the justice in that?

        Katie is the most manic of the threesome and the most self destructive, repeatedly talking of suicide. Regan superficially is in the best shape, with a degree from Princeton,  a job in a hospital, and a boyfriend about to become a physician. But Regan’s discontent is boundless. She enters the play after spending several hours with two young men she picked up earlier in the day who figure in the action later on. Gena wants to party but she recoils when things get out of hand, especially when Katie and Regan threaten to burn Becky’s oversized and expensive wedding gown.

        The atmosphere grows increasingly intense and ferocious, ending with the two men and Gena taking the overdosed Katie to the hospital, leaving Regan and Becky to end the play in a frenzy of recriminations. The suite is in a shambles, and so are the four women. The play resolves nothing, it just stops. But the audience has seen enough to recognize they have eavesdropped on four young females doomed by their own disappointment, frustration, jealousy, and uncontrolled appetites rooted for sex and drugs.

        Under Darrell W. Cox’s high energy directing, the characters hit the stage running and they never flag in their desperation and vulgarity. At times the play turns into a door slamming farce, and much of the evening can be construed as comic. The play was a runaway hit in New York City with many commendations for its humor. But the Profiles production veers into an intensity that makes the comedy double-edged at best. The audience may laugh at the antics of the women, but it’s a nervous laughter. These are women on the emotional edge and their furious and cruel conduct is no joke.

  

                                                                                                                                                               Photo credit Shawn Cagle

        The Profiles has a genius for finding talented but little known young actresses and casting them in challenging roles that promotes them into instant stars. And so it is in “Bachelorette.” All four actresses are making their Profiles debut and all four are stunning. Linda Augusta Orr is terrific as the  over-the-top Katie, whose insistence that she wants to kill herself probably will be realized in short order. Hillary Marren is likewise outstanding as Regan, superficially the woman with the most going for her but maybe the most desperate. Amanda Powell keeps Gena on the boil throughout the play. A sensitive, decent woman may lurk beneath all her bad behavior.

Rakisha Pollard makes a late entrance as the much vilified and overweight Becky. It’s a tough role, with Becky first appearing after the other three women characters have already staked out considerable emotional and psychological territory. But Pollard’s Becky fits right in and carries the action to its tumultuous conclusion, never mind the final moment of pseudo reconciliation.

Adam Soule and Eric Burgher play the two young women who think they have fallen into a fantasy of available sex with the three girls, and in a luxury hotel to boot. But they actually have stepped into a maelstrom of overwrought and unpredictable females who mean trouble. Burgher is especially good as a guileless young man in over his head amid these volcanic young women.

Technical credits are excellent, as usual, in the Profiles intimate playing space. Scott Davis designed the suite setting, Bekki Lambrecht the lighting, Erica Griese the costumes, and Jeffrey Levin the sound (and original music).

Audience opinions may differ on “Bachelorette.” Some viewers will love the play as an incisive set of character studies buoyed by razor sharp writing. Others will dismiss the play as a noisy and vulgar evening spent with disagreeable, pointless characters. But like it or hate it, the spectator has got to be blown away by the acting.

“Bachelorette” runs through March 11 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 773 549 1815.

            The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.

             Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.  February 2012

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A Behanding in Spokane

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – “A Behanding in Spokane” isn’t a very good play but the Profiles Theatre production definitely will keep the audience nailed to their seats during its 90 minutes of improbable action.

    The play was written by Martin McDonagh, an English dramatist known for his quirky and violent plays set in rural Ireland. “A Behanding in Spokane” is McDonagh’s first play set in the United States and the setting hasn’t inspired him to create the rich ethnic canvas that makes his Irish plays such vivid playgoing experiences. The American play does share a couple of characteristics with its superior Gaelic brethren. Both are loaded with black humor and both are intense and disturbing enough to make the spectators nervous and unsettled.

       “Spokane” is set in a seedy hotel room in an unnamed small American town. A man named Carmichael lost his hand 27 years earlier in a grotesque prank inflicted on him by a group of  rednecks in Spokane, Washington (at least, that’s how Carmichael tells the story). For the last 27 years Carmichael has been criss-crossing the country trying to locate his missing hand, an obsession that possibly parallels Captain Ahab’s search for Moby Dick.

       A young couple named Marilyn (white) and Toby (African American) had concocted a con, offering to sell Carmichael his missing hand for $500. Their hand is bogus and the two find out soon enough they are out of their depth with the homicidal Carmichael, a bad man to mess with.  The fourth character on stage is Mervyn, the hotel’s weirdo receptionist who may have a death wish. If so, he’s come to the right man in the homicidal, gun-toting Carmichael. There is a fifth character we know only through phone calls, Carmichael’s elderly mother, a peculiar lady who has fallen out of a tree while trying to rescue a balloon ensnared in the branches.

“Spokane” is not a play for delicate ears or sensibilities. Carmichael is a racist and the use of the “n” word is prominent throughout the play. He’s also homophobic and joins Marilyn and Toby in delivering overheated dialogue drenched in obscenities.

On the positive side, “Spokane” is often very funny, its dark humor mostly emerging from the offbeat situation in the hotel room. Mervyn delivers a long monologue that may make no logical sense but its comical blend of the surreal and the realistic is a hoot. Marilyn and Toby’s desperation as their con game explodes in their faces provides some hilarious moments. Even Carmichael is funny when he isn’t scary.

The other positive is the intensity of the basic storyline. The constant presence of Carmichael’s gun on stage will make spectators edgy. The man is a ticking time bomb and the audience is just as fretful as the characters that he may detonate.

On the negative side, the play’s premise is preposterous and the characters are mostly two-dimensional. They exist to establish an off-the-wall situation for the intermissionless hour and a half running time. The tension will grab the spectators during the performance, but once the show is over the tension drains away, exposing a comedy drama that is paper thin in its characters and story development. A menacing atmosphere can sustain a viewing experience just so much.

I suspect that the Profiles production is more effective than the version that had a brief run on Broadway last season. “A Behanding in Spokane” will not be comfortable on a large Broadway stage. It’s a claustrophobic story that belongs in the intimate Profiles acting space.

The Broadway production earned rave reviews for Christopher Walken as Carmichael. Walken is in his grizzled 60’s.  At the Profiles, the inimitable Darrell Cox takes the role. Nobody in Chicagoland theater surpasses Cox at playing creepy, sinister characters seething with barely suppressed violence. He’s at least 20 years younger than Walken, giving the narrative a different ambience. I’m sure Walken was excellent but sight unseen I’ll take Cox with his scruffy beard, tacky clothes, and understated fear factor. Cox’s Carmichael is a terror, but he’s also pathetic in the end, the only figure with even minimal depth in the story. The play’s narrative strength declines sharply during his absence for several minutes.

  Eric Burgher delivers a bravura performance as the unpredictable Mervyn, in his own way just as bizarre, if less overtly violent, as Carmichael. Sara Greenfield and Levenix Riddle are both very good as Marilyn and Toby, though they are both employed largely to scream out their lines in frustration and desperation.

       Guest director Rick Snyder from the Steppenwolf Theatre orchestrates the action to maximize its offbeat blend of comedy and tensions. This is the kind of play the Steppenwolf did in its early, raw years before it became a national institution. Thad Hallstein’s single set creates the proper grungy physical backdrop for the wacko narrative. David Ferguson designed the lighting, Jeffrey Levin the sound, and Joelle Beranek the thrift shop chic costumes. Greg Poljacik designed the prop hand effects that contribute the play’s single most shocking moment.

       McDonagh certainly has been more successful with his Irish plays, all of which have received first rate stagings by various area theaters. Reviewers are bound to report the play’s defects in the improbability of its story and its gratuitously rough language. But for audiences prepared to take the play as it comes, “A Behanding in Spokane” provides quite a ride.

       “A Behanding in Spokane” runs through December 4 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

   The show gets a rating of three stars.

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Fifty Words

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Take your pick. Michael Weller’s “Fifty Words” is an unsparing portrait of a modern marriage, a searing display of love and hate fighting for dominance that has the fascination of a train wreck. Or, the play is a noisy screed in which two unsympathetic people verbally and sometimes physically try to pound each other into submission, a display of sound and fury signifying very little.

      Whether spectators give the play a thumbs up or a thumbs down, there can be no dispute about the brilliance of the production at the Profiles Theatre. Audiences have gone to the Profiles for years expecting edgy, raw theater performed at a maximum visceral level. But even by Profiles standards, “Fifty Words” raises the ferocity level to new heights.

    The 80-minute one act play takes the audience into the presence of Adam and Jan, a married couple in their late 30’s who live in a brownstone in Brooklyn with their 9-year old son Greg. The boy is away from home on a sleepover, granting Adam and Jan their first night alone since the lad was born. Adam sees Greg’s absence as a cue for a night of sexual revelry, but his best laid plans of marital seduction rapidly run off the rails.

    Both characters are under considerable outside pressure. Adam’s architecture firm is facing bankruptcy. Jan is struggling to sustain a start-up company, spending long hours at her computer at the kitchen table when Adam would rather have her in the bedroom. In short order recriminations erupt from both partners--accusations and resentments and arguments which establish that we are watching a marriage of extraordinary volatility. Revelations ratchet up the tension, leading to physical violence that will send first row patrons shrinking into their seats in the intimate Profiles acting space.

Adam and Jan have no place to hide from each other’s hostility, self pity, and feelings of betrayal. Yet the couple can abruptly swerve from attack mode passionate declarations to love.  They can’t stand each other and they can’t live without each other. Enough bile spews from Adam and Jan to sink the most resilient marriage, but there is a subterranean love bond that manages to bridge all the venom, or so the playwright would have us believe. It’s difficult to imagine any relationship surviving these unrelenting toxic exchanges.

Adam and Jan are the only two characters we see, but young Greg is a strong off stage presence. Apparently the boy has some behavior issues making him a friendless loner with problems at school. Jan says that the boy needs professional help. Adam counters that outsiders are overreacting to a boy just growing up his own way.  But given Greg’s incendiary home environment, it would be miraculous if the child didn’t develop some mental health issues. Jan and Adam can take care of themselves in their savage jousting, but the household dysfunction clearly has taken its toll on poor young Greg. Your heart goes out to an obviously sensitive kid caught in the crossfire of his parents’ troubled marriage.

Assessments of the merits of “Fifty Words” may differ, but no viewer can challenge the commitment and intensity of the acting by Darrell Cox (Adam) and Katherine Keberlein (Jan). Cox’s dominating performance will come as no surprise to veteran Profiles attendees. They have been enjoying Cox’s visceral performances for years. He’s as good as we have in Chicagoland theater in taking a character by the scruff of the neck, whether the role is smarmy, menacing, sinister, romantic, manipulative, or ingratiating.

The revelation is Keberlein, who bears a striking resemblance to Joan Allen. Keberlein’s Jan stands toe to toe to Cox’s Adam,  snarling and sneering and pleading—trashing Adam at one moment and falling into an erotic clinch the next. Keberlein displays a breathtaking emotional range and physical stamina, with an amazing ability to shift emotional gears on a dime. Talk about a breakout performance!

     

Joe Jahraus orchestrates the no-holds barred-verbal and physical fireworks with an authenticity and realism that saves the production from descending into a strident and unpleasant domestic war between two not particularly likeable people. The action neatly fits within Thad Hallstein’s detailed miniature of a set, allowing just enough room for the two characters to go at it tooth and claw. Lindsey Lyddan designed the lighting, Joshua Allard the costumes, and Jeffrey Level the sound (plus the original music). Prop master Corey Weinberg has to replace a lot of crockery and pantry items after each performance.

There will be inevitable comparisons between “Fifty Words” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” as a portrait of a marriage under siege. “Fifty Words” doesn’t come close to the Albee masterpiece. George and Martha are light years wittier and more intelligent as marital adversaries than Jan and Adam. But a play needn’t be as engrossing and entertaining as “Virginia Woolf” to engage an audience’s attention. And even if viewers have little patience with the stridency of “Fifty Words,” they can take pleasure in a pair of memorable performances.

“Fifty Words” runs through June 26 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

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

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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reasons to be pretty

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Neil  LaBute’s “reasons to be pretty” is a great couples play, not because it’s romantic, which it isn’t. But the show will provide stimulating conversational fodder with “chick” and “guy” points of view confronting each other. Each gender can claim some moral high ground in this battle of the sexes and each side should be a little embarrassed by their representatives in the play.

        “reasons to be pretty” (no capital letters in the title for some arcane LaBute-ian reason) is the eighth work by the playwright to be presented by the Profiles Theatre and as usual the company has nailed it. The play was LaBute’s first show on Broadway after a much acclaimed career off Broadway. It didn’t have a long run but it left patrons who did attend much to ponder about the prickly realm of male-female relationships.

        Greg and Steph are a pair of blue collar young lovers who have lived together for four years. Shortly before the action begins Greg had made a casual remark about Steph’s appearance to some male friends that was overheard by Steph’s girlfriend Carly. Carly reports Greg’s comment back to Steph, who launches a ferocious obscenity drenched tirade against the defensive Greg. That’s how the play begins.

        Greg’s apparently offhand remark ignites Steph to the boiling point where she ends their relationship, no matter how fervently Greg’s begs for understanding and forgiveness. The conflict establishes the theme of the play, how people obsess about physical appearance. That was the topic of LaBute’s “Fat Pig,” presented earlier by the Profiles, as well as his “The Shape of Things.” Young men and woman are fixated on good looks, to an irrational level. The playwright doesn’t suggest a reason for the fixation, except possibly peer pressure in “Fat Pig,” but he does explore its damaging consequences.

   

        There is a second couple in the story, a workplace buddy of Greg’s named Kent and Kent’s wife, the woman who passed Greg’s verbal gaffe on to Steph. LaBute has created plenty of nasty men in his plays and Kent ranks among the most swinish. Behind his good-old-boy breeziness he’s a lout and a bully, and he cheats on Carly, manipulating Greg to lie for him.

        But the heart of the play resides in Greg and Steph. Surely Steph overreacts to Greg’s possibly insensitive but un-malicious comment about her looks. Steph must realize that while she is nice looking, she’s no beauty queen. If Greg compares her perhaps a little negatively to a clearly more glamorous woman, what’s the big deal? But that’s a male’s attitude. Obviously the remark cuts very deep with Steph, whether it simply wounds her vanity or probes much deeper issues of self esteem.

        And what impelled Carly to pass Greg’s offhand remark back to her friend? She must have known it would create a conflagration. Was Carly just making mischief or was she being loyal to her friend in conveying the perceived insult? Carly definitely wasn’t apologetic when Greg challenged her. To me, Carly was smug and self righteous. Perhaps a female viewer would insist that Carly was doing her duty to Steph, a duty that cloddish males won’t understand.

        At the end of the 95-minute one-acter, Greg delivers an epilogue speech to the audience, reflecting on how beauty is so important to so many people and musing on the difficulty of quantifying the nature of beauty. It may be an elusive idea but beauty remains critical in our culture. The monologue is interesting but superfluous. The previous action dramatically proposes that there is a chasm between men and women over physical appearance and neither gender satisfactorily connects with the other on the matter. Beauty means one thing to guys, with their locker room mentalities, and another to women, who take personal appearance very seriously, as their men folk may discover to their peril.

        On the Profiles stage Darrell W. Cox plays Greg. Cox is a preeminent interpreter of LaBute’s male characters, Greg being perhaps his most sympathetic portrayal. Greg reads early American classic literature and comes across as a well meaning, if socially clumsy young man. From what we see of Cox’s Greg, Steph’s hostility is excessive and hysterical. Darci Nalepa plays Steph full-tilt in her verbal eruptions. Nalepa is a convincing actress when it comes to spouting obscenities, though her Steph does soften up near the end of the play, and the story ends on a bittersweet note that is both sad and satisfying.

        Christian Stolte is ostentatiously convincing as the slimy Kent, and Carly (well played by Somer Benson) made a very bad bargain when she married him. Whatever opinion the spectator may have of Carly reporting Greg’s comment to Steph, she is a sympathetic figure at the end, betrayed by Kent’s adultery.

        Rick Snyder directs a high-velocity staging, with the dialogue fast and overlapping. The production skillfully balances comedy and intensity and even some threatening violence. Stephen Carmody’s set design consists of a couple of tables and chairs moved on and off stage as the scenes change. It’s minimalist (necessary on the tiny Profiles stage) but effective. Myron Elliott designed the costumes, Jess Harpenau the lighting, and Jeffrey Levin the sound as well as the original music.

        Neil LaBute’s plays are typically hard-edged, and “reasons to be pretty” certainly has its prickly side. But the play also reflects the playwright in a more touchy-feely mode. Indeed, three of the four characters shed tears by the end of the evening, possibly a record for a LaBute play. Couples, whether married or dating, will find much to chew on after the show’s conclusion. I suspect some of the discussions will be heated.

        “reasons to be pretty” runs through March 13 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

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

                            Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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Kid Sister

At the Profiles Theatre

Chicago – “Kid Sister” is the polarizing play of the season. Its supporters will praise it as visceral, gripping, and brilliantly acted. Its detractors will scorn it as a pointless, not to say vile, exercise in pornographic violence oversold by a set of bellowing performers.

It is no surprise that “Kid Sister” comes from the Profiles Theatre, the home of so many down and dirty plays dating back to its early hit staging of “Popcorn” and most recently its long-running revival of “Killer Joe.”

“Kid Sister” indeed is loaded with graphic violence and dialogue drenched in four letter words, all dispensed by characters on the lowest rung of the human food chain. It all happens in a single 80-minute act in the super intimate Profiles playing area that puts the audience just a few feet from the action, occasionally putting front row spectators in peril. A sign in the theater lobby states that the play contains violence and gunshots and more sensitive spectators should consider sitting in the rear of the theater. That’s not an idle warning.

The play’s action takes place in a cramped apartment in the Tampa area in Florida during a summer heat wave. Demi is a 19-year old single mother who plans to audition for American Idol, achieving her American dream of being rich and famous. In Demi’s feverish mind, she is beautiful and a great singer. She just needs a break.

Demi is faced with a couple of problems. One is her newborn daughter who is an impediment to the teen-ager’s climb to show business success. The other is Kendall Fritsch, the father of her child, stalking her to claim the baby, and Demi, as his human property. Demi turns to her brother Cassius for protection. Cassius is an ex con who is trying to straighten out his life, but Demi won’t leave him in peace. Cassius agrees to protect Demi from Kendall, but in return he wants her baby to raise himself. Cassius may not be the ideal father, but he’s a definite upgrade over Demi.

Babe is a young man who inexplicably loves Demi and is willing to support the girl and the baby, and endure Demi’s hostility. The final character is Greta, a neighboring young female law student with a yen for Cassius.

It spoils nothing to report that very few of the characters remain standing by the end of the play, one dying in a particularly grotesque manner that had the audience gasping in horror. But there was plenty of spectator gasping during the play, reaching a climax starting with the entrance of the unstable, and much feared, Kendall, come for Demi and the baby.

Allison Torem pulls out all the stops as the ferociously foul mouthed Demi, maniacally focused on the show business stardom she feels is hers by right. It will be a miracle if Torem’s vocal chords make it to the end of the play’s run. But beneath all the obscene ranting there is a pathetic portrait of a trailer trash teen-ager gripped by the American fascination with celebrityhood. Demi is also is lumbered by an incestuous passion for her brother and freaks out at the end of the play when she hears he may be gay.

The play’s one moving moment comes when we hear Torem actually sing a song, a performance so laughable in its ineptitude that it obliterates any idea that Demi might actually possess some talent. The recognition that her singing is really a joke sends Demi over the top emotionally and accelerates the narrative to its grisly conclusion.

If there is a character who approaches tragedy, it’s Cassius. He’s a man who wants to straighten out his life, but succumbs to the snares of his sister’s demand that he deal with the unstable Kendall. There is violence in Darrell Cox’s Cassius, but also a subtext of world weary sadness as he is sucked down by his manic sister. It’s no coincidence that Cox was a star of “Popcorn” and “Killer Joe.” The actor is a master at conveying suppressed and sinister violence leavened by an oddly perverse humanity.

Marc Singletary makes the most of his single scene as Kendall. The audience awaits Kendall’s appearance with trepidation, expecting all hell to break loose with his arrival. And sure enough.

Eric Burgher is excellent as the dorky Babe, who ironically has the last word, violence-wise in the story. Emily Vajda’s law student is the one outsider in this nest of nastiness, and she is very fine as one of the straw’s that stirs the final eruption of violence.

The relentless intensity of the play is created by the ensemble in partnership with Joe Jahraus’s no holds barred direction. Roger Wykes designed the functional set in the intimate Profiles playing area. Myron Elliott designed the grungy costumes, Mattisson Voell the lighting, and Jeffrey Levin the sound (he also composed the original music).

I left the theater not sure whether I liked the play or not. But upon further review I decided that “Kid Sister” delivers so much bang for the audience’s buck, and the acting is so committed, that the production’s power carries the evening. I’m glad I saw it, though I’m not sure I need to see it again. The play is what it is, a shocker. So don’t say you weren’t warned.

“Kid Sister” runs through December 19 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.   November 2010

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Jailbait

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – The Profiles Theatre has this knack for identifying new American plays that are literate, personal, intense, and disturbing. And usually the plays feature young actresses who give stunning performances.

        And so it is with the latest Profiles grabber, “Jailbait” by Deirdre O’Connor. The play has a simple premise. Two 15-year old girls manage to gain entry to a Boston nightclub. Both hook up with men in their early 30’s cruising for an evening of no-questions-asked sex.  The two men aren’t sexual predators and neither knows his girl is only a high schooler. One isn’t even sure he wants to get into the one-night-stand scene because he’s dealing, not very well, with a breakup of a long-term relationship.

       But the hookup happens, Emmy with Mark and Claire with Robert. The males may not know their girls are under age but the audience does. The play has every opportunity to be prurient or melodramatic, but O’Connor writes with such realism and intelligence that a story that could be distasteful and uncomfortable comes out human, sometimes funny, and very honest.

        “Jailbait” delivers its story in a single 80-minute act. In the opening scene Emmy and Claire are planning a night out at a Boston club. Emmy has already lined up a date with Mark and sets up Claire with Mark’s friend Robert. Emmy is the dominant girl in the pair, presumably sexually experienced and pseudo worldly compared to the decidedly inexperienced Claire.

        The young women who play the two girls, Zoe Levin (Emmy) and Rae Gray (Claire), initially seem awkward on the stage and I feared the actresses were in over their heads. But both were accurately portraying 15-year olds, a hugely awkward and vulnerable age for a girl. As the play unfolded, both actresses were just fine.

        The action moves to the club where Emmy and Mark quickly depart, leaving Claire and Robert to make clumsy small talk on the dance floor. Director Joe Jahraus injects a nice touch in the scene. Obviously, it would be impossible to re-create the crush and turbulence of an actual club, but Jahraus has Claire and Robert shouting over loud background music to convey within the tiny Profiles playing area the raucous club ambience.

        As the play continues we get some back stories for the characters. Claire’s father recently died, wounding the girl and apparently sending her off-stage mother into a psychological tailspin. Emmy has promoted herself in her school as a sexually hip young lady. Robert has his issues with the breakup with his long-term girlfriend, issues that throw up emotional barricades to connecting with Claire, at least initially. Mark starts out as a sleaze, looking for sex with a minimum of effort and zero commitment. But by the end of the play he turns out to be a surprisingly complex character.

        At one level, “Jailbait” (a misleadingly garish title) is a cautionary story about the trouble that can engulf girls who try to crash the adult world of casual sex. Robert sets Claire straight after she indicates that she thought she was on an honorable date with Robert. “No. It’s a pick-up. It’s a dirty drunken night of f---ing followed by no phone call. No contact. No relationship. Nothing. You want to play grown-up? That’s grown-up.”

        By the end of the play Claire proves more mature than Emmy. She states that she’s ready at 15 for sex, and maybe she is. The implication is that “under age” is a legalism that doesn’t necessarily apply to all the young people the law is intended to protect.

        “Jailbait” is an adult play, though there is no on-stage sex and no nudity or violence. But by the end of the show I was convinced that this might be an appropriate play for an audience of teenage girls. In Emmy and Claire, O’Connor captures the curiosity, fascination, and fear that many girls must feel about sex. I can imagine teenage spectators eagerly responding to a play that sees a sensitive situation through their eyes.

        “Jailbait” is not a morality play. However, it does warn against girls stepping out of their league into the club scene, with its alcohol and drugs and casual sex. Claire and Emmy got off comparatively easy. It might easily have turned out tragically for both of them.

        The male half of the “Jailbait” equation is performed with credibility and insight by Shane Kenyon as Mark and Eric Burgher as Robert. Kenyon turns the initially unlikable Mark into a decent, if conflicted young man trying to look after the troubled Robert. Burgher seems to go from triumph to triumph at the Profiles. Usually he plays strident, in-your-face characters. In “Jailbait” he’s understated, sometimes confused, and always persuasive.

        Jahraus directs the play with a perfect ear for O’Connor’s spot-on dialogue. There isn’t a false note struck anywhere in the 80 minutes. It’s one of those productions where the viewer can’t imagine the play being performed any other way.

        The set design by Sotirios Livaditis shifts the settings from bedroom to club to apartment with the movement of a few props by the performers. Melissa Ng’s costumes, Jess Harpenau’s lighting, and Jeffrey Levin’s complement the action appropriately.

        There is a strong whiff of Neil LaBute (a Profiles favorite) in O’Connor’s play, especially in exploring the sometimes rough games that people play in the name of romance.  Yet O’Connor has her own style and one awaits her next play with much anticipation. But that’s true of just about every playwright who makes the Profiles schedule.

        “Jailbait” runs through October 17 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.      Sept.2010

                     Contact  Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Body Awareness

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—In the last two years Annie Baker has become a hot button playwright, with three critically acclaimed shows off Broadway which collected a bundle of awards. That’s a most promising career start for a playwright who isn’t yet 30 years old.

        The Profiles Theatre is in the midst of its own hot streak with terrific recent productions of “Graceland,” “The Mercy Seat,” and “Killer Joe.” So there is no more sympathetic theater to introduce Annie Baker to local audiences and the Profiles, unsurprisingly, serves Baker extremely well with the Midwest premiere of woman’s first play, “Body Awareness.”

        The drama isn’t a mind-blower. It’s a small work in size--four characters, a single basic set, and 80 minutes of uninterrupted playing time. But Baker is a real writer, creating four distinct characters who bounce off each other in a sequence of brief, sometimes funny and sometimes intense scenes. “Body Awareness” doesn’t have the flash and sizzle of early Albee or Mamet, but it’s still the real deal as engrossing theater.

        The action is located on the campus of a small fictional Vermont college during a weeklong arts festival called “Body Awareness.”  Phyllis is a psychology professor at the college, a lesbian living with a local high school teacher named Joyce. Jared is Joyce’s 23-year old son by a long ended marriage. Jared is a prickly young man, who may have Asperger’s syndrome, or maybe not. He definitely acts out some of the Asperger’s symptoms, especially an inability to connect socially with others.

        Frank Bonitatibus disrupts this already edgy trio as a photographer invited to participate in Body Awareness Week at the college. Frank takes pictures of naked females, of all ages, and a selection of his photos hangs for the week in the college Student Union Building.

        Frank’s photos arouse instant outrage in Phyllis, an ardent feminist.  Frank is staying with the women during the festival and Phyllis makes no secret of her disgust with the man and his career. That leads to tensions between her and Joyce, who likes Frank’s work and maybe is a little attracted to him.

     Joyce is under siege, partly from her son’s truculence, partly from Phyllis’s unconsciously patronizing and domineering attitude, and partly from her own stirred feelings for the photographer. The characters go round and round in small confrontations, and then the play stops, or maybe just suspends itself. What will become of the troubled Jared and will the relationship between Phyllis and Joyce survive? The audience can write its own final act to the narrative. Baker isn’t saying.

        Each character gets his or her moment as the play’s focal point. Jared is the strongest because he is the loudest and most belligerent. His anger is stimulated by his fear he has Asperger’s syndrome and resents Phyllis and his mother continually suggesting he carries the affliction. The lad wants to be normal, to have a girl friend, to have sex, and he’s aware enough to know normalcy may forever be beyond his reach. That makes him bitter, and afraid.

        Phyllis’s attacks on Frank and his photos may be legitimate resentment toward a man she considers a sleaze who manipulates and exploits his subjects. But she is so quick to judgment in her rejection that one wonders if there isn’t another agenda, hidden from Phyllis herself. Beneath the feminist rhetoric she may be fearful that Frank will compete for Joyce’s affections with a heterosexual sexual attraction she can’t match.

        Joyce is despairing over her son and his denial of his condition and she resents Joyce’s condescension “A public school teacher is not an academic. An academic publishes articles.” Joyce is intrigued by Frank’s casually political incorrect manner and it messes with her head.

        Only Frank passes through the play untouched emotionally. He’s not bothered by Phyllis’s contempt. He tries to advise Jared on how to start a relationship with a woman in the play’s drollest comic scene. The advice leads to Jared’s off stage encounter with a young woman that is both laughable and pathetic.

        The ensemble, under Benjamin Thiem’s sensitive and unobtrusive directing, delivers four spot-on performances. Eric Burgher is just right as the disturbed Jared, frightened he may have Asperger’s and burdened with baggage of physical self-loathing, frustration, and anger.

        As Phyllis, Cheryl Graeff beautifully captures the woman’s feminist ardor and her vulnerability in the face of Frank’s sudden disruptive appearance in her domestic life. Barbara Stasiw is superb as Joyce, trying to juggle an abnormal son and a partner’s jealousy and subtle but insistent sense of superiority. Joe Jahraus completes the quartet as the unflappable Frank, serenely above all the emotional pyrotechnics he’s helped generate.

        Thad Hallstein has designed a realistic and effective interior set that fits snugly in the tiny Profiles performing space. Jess Harpenau designed the lighting, Melissa Ng the costumes, and Kevin O’Donnell the sound.

        There are two more recent Baker plays that clearly deserve to be seen, if not at the Profiles than some other Chicagoland theater that can do justice to a playwright of impressive warmth, insight, and intelligence. Let’s hope we don’t have to wait too long. The gal is a keeper.

        “Body Awareness” runs through June 27 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.    May 2010

                 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                       Visit Dan on Facebook.

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Killer Joe (Transfer)

By the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

CHICAGO – The Profiles Theatre revival of “Killer Joe” was too good, and too popular, to end with its original, much extended, run on North Broadway. So the show has transferred to the Royal George Cabaret Theatre on the upscale Near North Side. If anything, the production is even more grungy, shocking, funny, and scary, reaffirming its status as one of the essential adult theatrical experiences of the year.

          “Killer Joe” has assumed legendary status on the Chicago drama scene since its bombshell premiere in a tiny Evanston theater back in 1993. The play elevated an unknown local actor named Tracy Letts into a playwright of national stature, and after the show took western Europe by storm, Letts became an internationally recognized dramatist, solidifying his reputation in the new millennium by winning the Pulitzer Prize for “August: Osage County” in 2008.   

                            

          The Profiles Theatre transfer retains the flawless original cast under Rick Snyder’s bull’s-eye directing. The production fits neatly onto the Royal George Cabaret stage, the audience capacity more than doubling from the Profiles venue without losing any of the play’s mandatory intimacy.

          “Killer Joe” is a story about a trailer trash family, generically named Smith, in modern Texas. Ansel and Sharla Smith live with Ansel’s daughter Dottie, a 20-year old woman slightly brain damaged when her birth mother tried to smother her as an infant because the woman didn’t want to be bothered raising a daughter. Ansel and the woman split and now he’s remarried to the sluttish Sharla. Ansel’s 22-year old son, a loser named Chris, pops into the household periodically, usually seeking money from Ansell to bail him out of some financial scrape that threatens his health, or his life.

          That’s the back story. The play’s narrative centers on a plot by Chris, with the reluctant compliance of Ansel, to murder Dottie’s mother for insurance money. To carry out the murder, the Smith men hire Joe Cooper, a Dallas police detective who moonlights as a killer for hire. Cooper falls for Dottie in one of the weirder love stories in modern American theater. The murder plan ends in a shambles, concluding with a sensationally violent final scene that had members of the audience mentally scrambling for safety as the characters wreak physical havoc on each other a few feet away.

          Some reviewers have dismissed “Killer Joe” as a tawdry display of sensationalism with no social or dramatic merit. And indeed the play is awash in violence, nudity, profanity, and betrayal. But after seeing the play for the fourth time (the last two by the Profiles company), I’m blown away but the craftsmanship of a script that in less competent hands indeed could be a shabby display of sex and violence.

The opening scenes lull the audience into condescending laughter at the antics of the rednecks on the stage. The theater then gets very quiet during Joe’s seduction of Dottie, a mesmerizing, intensely erotic scene. In the second act the murder plot blows up and the battle royal that concludes the play had audience gasping. Even viewers who know what’s coming will be staggered by the shattering (and extraordinarily convincing) mayhem at the end.

          The Profiles cast was born to inhabit this play. Darrell W. Cox is even more commanding as the laconic and sinister Joe Cooper, an unforgettable portrait of a human being as a coiled spring of ruthless purpose. At his first appearance, the audience recognizes that this is a man nobody messes with, ever.

As Dottie, Claire Wellin starts out like a figure of childlike innocence but as the play unfolds, Wellin’s Dottie reveals layers of personality that burst into violent flower in the final scene. Kevin Bigley is even stronger now as Chris, a young man whose fierce protective affection for his sister reflects the only decent feelings in the play. Howie Johnson is the perfect redneck as the bloated Ansel. Somer Benson is spot on as Sharla the tramp, and I was filled with renewed admiration for Benson’s all-out commitment during the appalling physical and psychological violence Sharla endures during the apocalyptic final scene.

          Sotirios Livaditis designed the trailer home interior that becomes a sixth character in the action. Jess Harpenau designed the lighting, Darcy McGill the thrift shop style costumes, and Kevin O’Donnell the sound. An organization called R&D Choreography is credited with “violence design” and do they ever do their job!

          I suppose the law of averages states that out of the countless sleazy and exploitive plays written every year one will come out a classic. “Killer Joe” is a perverse kind of masterpiece that makes exceptional demands on the actors and the Profiles company superbly answers the call. By all means see this show. Just remember to fasten your sensory and emotional seat belts.

          “Killer Joe” runs through June 6 at the Royal George Cabaret Theatre, 1641 North Halsted Street. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 312 988 9000 or visit www.ticketmaster.com.

                     The show gets a rating of four stars.    April 2010

                           Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com  .

         

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At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—In 1993, about three dozen spectators gathered at the tiny Next Lab Theatre in Evanston to attend the premiere of a new play called “Killer Joe” by a little known Chicago actor and dramatist named Tracy Letts.  The audience staggered out the theater two hours later, pole axed by one of the most intense experiences of their playgoing lives.

        “Killer Joe” went on to great success in Great Britain, New York City, and many other spots around the world.  Letts ascended to the first rank of American dramatists with his Pulitzer-prizewinning play “Autumn: Osage County” and he’s now starring in a riveting revival of David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” at the Steppenwolf Theatre.

        The Profiles Theatre is reviving “Killer Joe” in what is sure to be one of the tough tickets of the season.  The play is perfectly suited to the Profiles, a company that has carved a niche for itself in Chicagoland theater for its uncompromising productions of edgy plays. So anticipation ran high on opening night and the audience wasn’t disappointed—shocked maybe, and overwhelmed, but never disappointed. “Killer Joe” is a play not to be attempted by faint-of-heart actors, or watched by audiences with delicate sensibilities. But for viewers prepared to meet the drama head on, it’s a stunning visceral experience.

   

        “Killer Joe” is a prime example of a sub genre of American playwriting called trailer trash drama, the chief proponent being Sam Shepard in his prime.  The Letts play introduces the Smith family, as sleazy a collection of characters as ever occupied the lowest rungs of the human food chain. The Smiths live in a trailer on the outskirts of Dallas. The most pressing Smith problem resides with 22-year-old Chris Smith. The lad is in deep trouble with a local drug dealer and he needs money fast, or he’s a dead man.

        The other Smiths are Chris’s redneck father Ansel, his sluttish step mother Sharla, and his spacey 20-year old sister Dottie. To raise some quick cash, Chris proposes to his father that they hire Killer Joe Cooper, a Dallas police detective who moonlights as a hit man. Killer Joe would whack Ansel’s first wife so they could collect a $50,000 insurance policy. Killer Joe gets $25,000 as his fee and the remainder is split among the surviving Smiths.

        Killer Joe accepts the job but his business model requires full payment up front. Chris doesn’t have the money but Joe is attracted to Dottie and agrees to accept the girl as a retainer until the money is forthcoming. Chris and Ansel agree to Joe’s sordid bargain, and then all hell breaks loose, climaxing in an orgy of violence and betrayal.

        Advertising for “Killer Joe” is loaded with disclaimers. Audiences are warned that the show contains graphic violence, nudity, foul language, and strong sexual situations. No one under 17 is admitted to the show and those viewers of a sensitive nature are urged to sit at the back of the theater, as if a few rows will make a difference in confronting all the mayhem and frontal nudity.

        “Killer Joe” runs a little under two hours, including an intermission, and every minute stretches the audience’s nerves with its tension (though there is some humor of a jet black nature).  The opening night spectators sat in rapt attention as the play’s tension escalated to the Armageddon conclusion.

        The show does not accept half measures in its presentation. It’s all or nothing for the performers and the Profiles ensemble give it their all, and then some. Profiles regulars will recognize that company member Darrell Cox was born to play Killer Joe Cooper. Cox excels at playing creepy, laid back sinister characters and they don’t come any more menacing that Killer Joe. Cox’s Joe is one creepy dude and the actor brings out all the man’s chilling danger.

      The other members of the cast deliver performances of tremendous credibility. Kevin Bigley (Chris), Somer Benson (Sharla), and Howie Johnson (Ansel) are trailer trash to the highest degree. They look their roles and their all-out commitment is staggering, especially in the cataclysmic final minutes. Claire Wellin earns special commendation as the distant Dottie, who possibly lost some brain function when her natural mother tried to smother her as a baby. Dottie is the eye in the play’s hurricane of violence and emotion, quiet and detached but fascinating in her quietude as the action erupts around her.

       Director Rick Snyder, on loan from the Steppenwolf, captures the tensions of the play with perfect pitch, drawing exemplary, full tilt performances from everyone on stage. For the opening night curtain call, at least one of the performers was still so overcome by the heat of the final scene she could barely manage a wan smile.

   The set design by Sotirios Livaditis deftly shoehorns a detailed rendering of the trailer thrift-shop interior onto the Profiles tiny stage with commendable efficiency and detail. Darcy McGill’s costumes are spot-on in their low class vulgarity, especially Sharla’s slatternly outfits. Kevin O’Donnell’s sound design is noted chiefly for the incessant loud barking of a nasty off stage dog. Jess Harpenau designed the atmospheric lighting. And cheers to R&D Choreography for their “violence design.” The final battle was one of the most persuasive and frightening fight scenes I’ve ever seen on a local stage.

     “Killer Joe” obviously is not for all tastes. The viewer can’t draw any comfort from a moral embedded in Letts’s script. The play is pure potboiler, without a shred of redeeming social value. It is what it is, a mesmerizing glimpse into the lowest depths of American society, with no apologies. Taken as such, it’s a modern classic.

        “Killer Joe” runs through February 28 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8:30 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.    January 2010

             Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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The Mercy Seat

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—Only a Neil LaBute anti-hero could see the 9/11 terrorist catastrophe in New York City as an opportunity to better his life. That’s Ben Harcourt, one of the two characters in LaBute’s 2002 one-act drama “The Mercy Seat,” now at the Profiles Theatre.

        The play takes place in real time in a New York City loft about 20 hours after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. New York City is covered in ash and the death toll is estimated at 6,000.

       We first meet Ben sitting pensively alone in the apartment of Abby Prescott, his mistress, and also his boss at work and 10 years older than her lover. Abby soon enters, coated in dust from the collapse of the twin towers and carrying a bag of groceries. In a matter of moments the two start an exchange of bickering and accusation that lasts about an hour of the play’s 85-minute running time.

        Through all the back and forth recriminations, we learn that Ben and Abby have been carrying on their affair secretly for three years. Ben is married with children and his wife knows nothing of the adultery. Ben had been on his way to a meeting at the World Trade Center on September 11 when he decided to visit Abby instead in her loft and obtain some oral sex. That change in plans saved his life.

        Now Ben wants to use the 9/11 calamity as an escape to a new life with Abby. His family thinks him dead in the collapse of the twin towers. So why not use that disaster as a cover to walk into the sunset with Abby, allowing his family to think he died a hero and, by the way, saving him from a messy and expensive divorce?

        Abby wants Ben to call his wife and explain that he’s leaving her for another woman. Ben is obstinately opposed to making the call. He doesn’t have the guts. And that’s about the entire plot.

        In the Profiles production directed by Joe Jahraus, Abby is the dominant character. Cheryl Graeff delivers a performance of terrific intensity. In a distinguished career in Chicago theater, Graeff has never disappointed, but this is as good as she’s ever been. On the outside her Abby is a tough, in-control lady who’s clawed her way through the glass ceiling to a top position in her company.  Inside she’s vulnerable and a little scared. As the play marches on, Abby is variously cynical, cajoling, humorous, bitter, gentle, desperate, and shrill.  Credit the playwright with providing her with plenty of sharp, edgy dialogue.

        Darrell Cox operates in Graeff’s shadow as Ben. The character is shallow, self involved, not very articulate, and insensitive to Abby’s feelings and needs. He never looks her in the eye during their lovemaking and he doesn’t seem concerned about her pleasures in sex. As Abby repeatedly complains, “It’s always all about you.” In other words, Ben fits neatly in the LaBute gallery of unsavory males.

        Cox is a master at portraying the superficially genial Ben who sees no further than his own comfort and convenience and is emotionally immobilized by Abby’s demand that he contact his wife. Honesty in relationships does not come easily to this man. Abby’s relentless verbal assaults keep him off balance, unsettled, and resentful. But Ben still holds all the cards in the relationship through his sexual magnetism and Abby’s shame and guilt at involving herself with a younger married man in a back street affair.

        “The Mercy Seat” is good but not great LaBute. The arguing turns circular after a while as the two characters battle back and forth. Suspense does build in the final 20 minutes as a showdown looms in the relationship.  The ending is a little pat in its ambiguity but it gives the audience something to ponder as they leave the theater.

        “The Mercy Seat” is probably a boring play to read with its lack of narrative action and one-note verbal hostilities. But it does come alive on the Profiles stage, largely through Graeff’s tremendous performance. Possibly Cox’s Ben is a little too passive an adversary, costing the narrative some dramatic balance. The spectator has got to wonder what the strong and intelligent Abby sees in this poorly spoken jerk. But we may have felt the same way if Ben had been portrayed more fiercely. Any way you slice him, Ben is not a sympathetic man and it’s clear that Abby has saddled herself with a self-indulgent heel who openly confesses he’s not led a nice life. “Cheated in school…took whatever I could get from whomever I could take it from.”

        Abby is too good for Ben, and her passion for him thus lacks some credibility. Ben’s plan to simply walk away from his present life is dumb, even for his superficial thinking, so the narrative’s logic is questionable. But Graeff’s performance carries the night.

        Sotirios Livaditis’s set design converts the tiny Profiles playing space into a comfortable loft living room. Jessica Harpenau designed the lighting, Ricky Lurie the costumes, and Stephanie Sherline the sound, and composed the original music.

        “The Mercy Seat” runs through November 15 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $30 and $35. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.com.

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

            Contact Dan at  zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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Graceland

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—“Graceland” is precisely the kind of play that demonstrates why the Profiles Theatre has been such an essential force in the storefront theater scene during its 20-year history. “Graceland” is a typical Profiles show, a new play (a world premiere), concise (70 uninterrupted minutes), and staged with flawless ensemble acting.

        For its two decade history the Profiles has been the place to go for new and cutting edge plays. Relying on a core of actors (who wear hats as designers and directors), the company has filled its intimate, not to say primitive, performing space with fresh and stimulating plays like “Graceland.”

        The Profiles staff worked with playwright Ellen Fairey in developing “Graceland” and the result is a miniature gem. The narrative is wispy, but the characters are the entertaining, offbeat types that the Profiles loves to occupy its stage.

        The title refers to the famous cemetery in Chicago where the play opens. A brother and sister named Sam and Sara are visiting the grave of their recently deceased father, who we learn later committed suicide. The siblings are in an advanced state of dysfunction that preceded, but has been aggravated, by their father’s death. Their graveside visit is interrupted by a teenage boy who works half days at Graceland in some maintenance capacity.

        Later, Sara meets a middle-aged businessman named Joe at a bar and they return to his apartment for a one-night stand where she finds Miles, the Graceland teenager. Extending the long arm of coincidence to its breaking point, Miles is Joe’s son, living with his divorced father.

        From then on, the play consists of scenes, usually confrontational, among the four characters in different combinations. All of them are unhappy with their lives, both personally and professionally. Sara may or may not have slept with Miles, revealed to her surprise and horror as a mere 15-year old. Father and son have their issues, as do brother and sister, Sara and Joe, and Sara and Miles. Hovering over the story is the spirit of the deceased father, who apparently killed himself out of disgust with his life, which included an affair with a redhead half his age who was also his son’s girlfriend.

        It all sounds convoluted and drenched in soap opera, and indeed it takes a while for the audience to track where the play is going. But from scene to scene Fairey’s writing is rich with humor and emotional intensity. The play ends on an elegiac note, making no promises that Sara can get her life together but at least closing on a gently upbeat note.

        In plays like “Graceland,” the acting is everything. Opportunities for striking false notes of self-pity and emotional melodrama abound, but the Profiles production never wavers from its understated but intense naturalism. For that boon credit goes to the performers and to director Matthew Miller, who orchestrates the staging with a sure but invisible hand marked by sensitivity and intelligence.

        As Sara, Brenda Barrie delivers a superbly nuanced performance as a woman fighting her demons of guilt, anger, and desperation. Barrie made a strong impression earlier this season in the Lifeline Theatre’s “Mariette in Ecstasy” and this performance gives her a further boost toward the top of the Chicagoland acting pyramid.

        The men in the play are played by Profiles stalwarts Eric Burgher (Sam) and Darrell W. Cox (Joe). Burgher has never been better as a rudderless young man tied up in emotional knots. He’s lost his father, his girl friend, dropped out of school, and is at loggerheads with his sister. Burgher normally excels in abrasive wise guy roles but he shows a persuasive vulnerability and humanity in “Graceland.” Cox, as usual, doesn’t disappoint. No matter what the role, Cox is ready, whether he’s a creep, a doofus, or a leading man. As Joe, he creates a spot-on portrait of a middle aged man trying to raise a difficult son and still carve out some kind of life for himself, even if it’s mostly erotic one-nighters.

        The Profiles has developed a remarkable tradition of casting fresh young faces in demanding roles with terrific results. In “Graceland,” the tradition continues with Jackson Challinor, a freshman at New Trier High School, who doesn’t so much play the role of Miles as inhabit it. Precocious, overwrought teen-agers can be tiresome on the stage but Challinor captures the boy’s insecurities and search for affection with totally credible depth and sympathy. The performance would be a triumph for an experienced actor, but for a true teen-ager it’s astonishing.

        Mention should also be made of Somer Benson, who has a single cameo scene as the redhead but still manages to create an authentic character.

        The designers all contribute their share to the success of the production. Working with an acting space about the size of a patio, William Anderson manages to create an all-purpose set that takes the characters from the cemetery to Joe’s apartment interior to a skyscraper rooftop. If Anderson is also responsible for the mural scenes of Graceland and the Chicago skyline that decorate the theater walls, he deserves further commendation. Jess Harpenau designed the lighting, Ricky Lurie the costumes, and Mikhail Fiksel the sound, which consists mostly of roaring airplanes flying over Chicago as part of an air show. The flyovers may have some symbolic significance that eluded me.                       

     “Graceland” runs through June 28 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.     May 2009

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Great Falls

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

        CHICAGO—Good things happen dramatically when Darrell Cox pairs up with a teenage actress on the intimate Profiles Theatre stage. It happened in “Blackbird” and “The Glory of Living,” and it is happening now in “Great Falls.”

        In “Great Falls,” Cox plays a stepfather to Allison Torem, an actual high school senior who plays a disaffected 17-year old in Lee Blessing’s two-hander. Torem made a strong impression as a sexually precocious teenager opposite Cox in a single scene in the recent Profiles production of Neil LaBute’s “In a Dark Dark House.” Now she shares the stage with Cox for the entire 80-minutes of “Great Falls” and she is impressive.

        “Great Falls” is in the American pop culture tradition of road stories. In this play, Cox plays a middle-aged writer who escorts his stepdaughter, who calls herself the Bitch, on an automobile trip through the open spaces of the Great Plains and the West.

        The Cox character, nicknamed the Monkey Man by the girl, takes her on the trip as a semi kidnapping, though the girl has no real objections beyond bad tempered complaining.  The man wants some alone time with the stepdaughter to explain why his marriage to her mother broke up, largely through his infidelities.

        The girl is saturated with attitude. She’s foul mouthed and gratuitously obnoxious toward her step dad, a flawed man trying to explain himself to the girl and build a positive relationship. As the two make their way across the West, the girl reveals a history of early and recent sexual abuse that would make any female hostile.

        Cox is a chameleon actor who can play sleazy, sinister, and sympathetic with equal skill. In “Great Falls” his character is trying to be a nice guy, attempting to bond with his stepdaughter while justifying his personal life. The storyline pivots on a catastrophic violation against the girl that the stepfather couldn’t have known about in advance. But he takes charge of the girl in her time of dire need and literally saves her life.

        The play is a series of short scenes in the stepfather’s car, on the grounds of various scenic sights in the West, and in a motel room. Gradually, the gap of understanding closes between the two, leading up to a not entirely convincing touchy feely final scene.

     If the play has a defect, it’s in the personalities of the two characters. The girl comes off as a brat, at least until the revelation of her sexual abuse. We may then feel sorry for the lass but she still never emerges as a really likable individual. The stepfather spends much of his time trying to justify his domestic conduct but there is a whiff of self-indulgence and self-justification in his explanations. What we really hear is his account of a marriage that just didn’t work and covered neither the husband nor the offstage wife with any honor.

        In the end, “Great Falls” places us in the company of two troubled people we might not pick as friends in real life. But the writing is honest and the play is filled with moments of humor and emotional insight.

        Certainly the acting cannot be faulted. Torem is an actress who makes her teen-aged character come alive as an actual teen-ager, a girl carrying burdens no youngster should be required to bear. Cox’s stepfather defers to his stepdaughter through most of the play, until he rises with a couple of potent monologues, one about his failed marriage and another about his responsibilities to his stepdaughter, that elevate the play to genuine dramatic heights.

     Joe Jahraus directs with appropriate understatement, letting this slender story unfold with unforced realism. Chelsea Meyers aids the production immensely with her minimal set that features the cutout of an automobile and a couple of motel Murphy beds.  Kevin O’Donnell’s sound design includes the offstage eruption of Old Faithful, the play’s funniest moment. Jessica Harpenau designed the lighting and Darcy Elora Hofer the costumes.

        “Great Falls” runs through March 1 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

The show gets a rating of three stars.        January 2009

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The Thugs

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

CHICAGO—Is “The Thugs” a bona fide play or just an exercise in paranoia? Take your pick.  Either way, it’s a great 52- minute ride.

      The Profiles Theatre is presenting the Adam Bock mini-drama in a tight little production that fits neatly in the theater’s intimate acting space.

        “The Thugs” more of a situation than a fully worked out play and audiences of a literalist bent may depart the theater perplexed and irritated. Nearly an hour of understated dread leavened by nervous comedy is not to every playgoer’s taste.

    The play is located “on an obscure floor in a high-rise office building” according to the playbill. Seven of the eight characters are temporary office workers, slaving over menial paperwork for a law firm.

The temps, six women and a man, are not a compatible lot. They bicker and complain as they go about their drudgery jobs, stamping documents, underlining forms, stacking papers, the noise of their tasks forming a kind of subliminal rhythmic sound track. The dialogue is cryptic—broken sentences, fragmented words, unfinished thoughts, and overlapping exchanges that make a Harold Pinter play sound positively loquacious.

The audience is forced to glean bits of plot information from the staccato shards of conversation. Apparently a couple of people have died in the building, either by accident or suicide, or maybe worse. Or did they die at all? An atmosphere of tension envelops the temps as they plod through their chores. Something unspoken is in the air, engulfing the characters in a blanket of undefined fear.

    Unresolved incidents abound. The boyfriend of temp worker Daphne enters and quickly engages her in a furious muffled argument that oozes physical danger. Then he leaves and we never know what their argument was about or why Daphne now feels too threatened to go home. A senior citizen worker named Mercedes is the butt of verbal abuse by other workers, especially the supervisor Diane and her friend Elaine. Mercedes, who can barely put together a simple sentence as she speaks, is gripped by a combination of fear and resentment, about what we never know.

    Indeed, the audience never knows anything for sure. The whole sinister atmosphere may be nothing but the product of temp workers with nothing better to do than engage in bitchy gossip and speculation. Or, something vaguely monstrous may be hovering. The play ends with the action resuming on the following day, but only half of the workers are back. What happened to the others? Something chilling, or nothing at all? And why is the play called “The Thugs?”  That’s just one more element in the play the viewers can speculate on.

        Viewers may be excused for running out of patience with the playwright. Customers are entitled to insist that if the man has something to say, then he should say it and not leave his audience hanging. But I suspect that Adam Bock has written exactly the play he wanted to write, open ended and unsettling. The viewer either takes the show on the author’s terms or leaves the theater feeling frustrated and shortchanged.

        The ensemble consists primarily of performers a little light on experience, but they all get through their roles well enough to sustain the play’s mood of unease. The pick of the lot include Bob Pries as the one male temp, Greta Honold as Daphne, and Caroline Dodge Latta as Mercedes. But Tori Ulrich as Elaine, Somer Benson as the bullying supervisor, Jasmine McNeely, Annie Slivinski, and Tyler Gray as the boy friend are good enough and probably will improve with more performances under their belts. The entire ensemble does a good job of defining the personalities of their characters without much raw material to work with.

        The hero of the production is director Joe Jahraus, who strikes a nice blend between the matter of fact and the eerie in that office. He keeps the action, for want of a better word, taut and engrossing, not an easy task considering the elliptical nature of the script.

        Wayne Karl has designed a convincing workplace space for the temps in the confining stage area. Kevin O’Donnell earns special praise for his sound design, with lots of spooky and unexplained noises reinforcing the tensions among the characters. Jessica Harpenau designed the atmospheric lighting and Darcy Elora Hofer the costumes.

        Possibly “The Thugs” is a parable about the destructive effects of deadening labor, allowing the bored and restless temps to indulge in fanciful conspiracy theories. It could psychologically explore the insidious impact of gossip on idle minds. Or it could be just what it seems on the surface, nearly an hour of unexplained creepiness. I enjoyed it. Others may feel they were victims of a theatrical non-event.

        “The Thugs” runs in repertory through December 7 with “Men of Tortuga” at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Wednesday at 8 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets are $25. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.

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

                           Contact Dan at  zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

               

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In a Dark Dark House

at the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

CHICAGO—Any local playgoer who doesn’t think Neil LaBute is a major American dramatist hasn’t been paying attention to the work of the Profiles Theatre. Since 2006 the Profiles has staged six of LaBute’s plays, creating a cumulative portrait of a writer with superb skills in writing dialogue for commonplace characters who range from unsympathetic to downright detestable.

        The Profiles is capping its LaBute retrospective with the area premiere of his most recent play, the 2007 “In a Dark Dark House.” The show returns us to familiar LaBute territory, characters who appear unexceptional or even agreeable on the surface but swim in very deep waters psychologically.

        “In a Dark Dark House” runs about 90 minutes with no intermission. It’s essentially a two-hander about two ill-matched brothers, with a third character injected in the middle of the play’s three scenes. One “Dark” in the play’s title can refer to the dysfunctional household that scarred the brothers in their youth while the other “Dark” underscores the blacker aspects of the turbulent relationship between the siblings.

        In the first scene Terry visits his younger brother Drew on the grounds of an upscale psychiatric hospital, where Drew has been committed for rehab following a binge of drunken driving and drug use. Terry is a rough, open man, apparently a loner and a striking contrast to the sleek and ingratiating Drew, a man with a family, a mansion, and a lot of money made as a rather shady lawyer.

        The middle scene takes place at a miniature golf course where Terry insinuates himself with the 16-year old sexpot manager of the course. This scene seems a little out of joint with the two scenes that surround it, but the outward kidding and coyness between Terry and the girl have implications that emerge during the final scene.

        It’s difficult to itemize the storyline of “In a Dark Dark House” without giving away the play’s twists and turns. The narrative deals with possible sex abuse inflicted on one or both of the brothers by a trusted family friend. Their childhood was further blighted by a brutal father and an ineffectual mother. Now the brothers must confront their demons, peeling away one revelation after another to expose what really happened in their adolescence.

        The first two scenes are largely prologue to the emotional fireworks of the final scene. The moral high ground shifts back and forth between the two brothers and by the end of the evening the audience can’t be sure which one is manipulating the truth, presuming that the truth can ever be known. The concluding moment in the play introduces a final note of ambiguity that the audience can make of what it will.

        LaBute has not written a tidy play, but he’s written a powerful one, culminating in the white-hot final scene. The spectators leave the theater unsure about what actually happened to Drew and Terry as boys. Is Drew a canny conniver or a psychological disaster, or both? For sure the seemingly plain spoken and uncomplicated Terry has hidden depths that even surprise his self-absorbed and cagey brother.

        The production on the Profiles postage stamp stage maximizes the play’s intensity and again validates Darrell Cox as one of the most versatile actors on the area scene. Cox’s Terry can shift from shambling good old boy to volcanic avenger in a heartbeat. He can be playful with the 16-year old and murderous with his brother. I’m not quite sure what Terry is all about mentally and emotionally, but Cox brilliantly rings the many changes in the man’s personality.

        Hans Fleischmann is a perfect foil for Cox’s Terry, physically as well as emotionally. Fleischmann’s Drew is insinuating, pleading, subtle, and self-serving. His slender build next to Cox’s burly physique further underscores the contrast between the siblings, who have gone through so much together and apart and end up not liking each other very much.

        Joe Jahraus directs the play with a sure sense of the story’s rising intensity, building up to the emotional flashpoint of the final scene. Brandon Wardell designed the all-purpose intimate set, Ron Seeley the lighting, Myron Elliot Jr. the costumes, and Eric Burgher the sound.

        “In a Dark Dark House” runs through May 11 at the Profiles Theatre, 4147 North Broadway. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 7 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 773 549 1815.

        The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.                         March 2008

 For more information Contact: www.profilestheatre.org 

                     Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com