A Twist of Water

 

At the Mercury Theater

 

By Dan Zeff

 

Chicago – “A Twist of Water” opened in February and instantly became the buzz play of the season, drawing to-die-for reviews and large audiences to the Theater Wit. The drama has transferred to the larger Mercury Theater and has already announced an extension into June.

        “A Twist of Water” is presented by the Route 66 Theatre Company, which has made itself a strong presence on the local theater scene since 2008, notably by grabbing audiences by the scruff of the neck with a scalding play called “On an Average Day.” But “A Twist of Water,” written by company member Caitlin Montanye Parrish (with director Erica Weiss billed as “co-creator”), is the company’s signature play to date. I missed the original run and finally caught up with the transfer at the Mercury to see if all the original excitement was justified.

        It is!

        In its physical dimension, this is a small play, only four characters and a single multi-purpose set. But the show touches a remarkable number of bases, historical and personal. The central character is a gay high school history teacher named Noah. The 39-year old man is weighed down by twin burdens, grieving for the death of his partner, Richard, the previous year in an auto accident, and trying to raise their adopted daughter, Jira, an angry teen-ager who has built a wall of resentment that separates her from her surviving father.

 

        Much of Jira’s hostility toward Noah stems from the circumstances that surrounded Richard’s passing. The girl cannot forgive Noah for failing to force his way to Richard’s death bed after the hospital refused to admit him because he had no standing in their eyes, even as Richard’s gay partner. So Jira had to watch Richard die, alone. The issue of gay domestic rights is a subtext in the play. Curiously, nothing is made of an obvious racial component, Jira being an African American raised by two white males.

        Jira wants to locate the birth mother who gave her up for adoption 17 years ago. Jira wants more family, an implicit rejection of Noah. The man struggles to control the rebellious Jira and at the same time ponders whether to enter a relationship with Liam, a younger gay teacher at his school, a relationship eventually cemented with some explicit on-stage behavior.

        The swirling emotions peak when Jira finally meets her birth mother face to face. But the encounter doesn’t result in a fairy tale happy ending, though it does lead to some closure and reconciliation between Jira and Noah.

            

        The domestic drama is enclosed in a series of brief monologues Noah delivers to his class (and the audience) that trace Chicago’s history from its earliest days four centuries ago to the present time. With Noah as docent, the spectators are presented with a vivid brief account of where the city came from and how it reached its present condition, abetted by effective semi-abstract projections designed by John Boesche. Noah’s narration is entertaining and informative, but I missed any real connection with the domestic struggles involving Noah, Jira, and Liam.

        What is most admirable about “A Twist of Water” is its honesty. The show doesn’t lapse into melodrama or soap opera. The characters are audience-high people, decent but flawed. The play’s emotions are intense and never false. The pain is real and the conflicts credible. The narrative has its sentimental moments, but so does real life. The characters are not larger than life, but that doesn’t mean we care about them any the less. All this proves that Parrish has written a splendid script and found a sensitive and insightful director in Erica Weiss.

        “A Twist of Water” is a fine play on its own, but Stef Tovar’s performance as Noah elevates the evening to the exceptional. Tovar explores the man’s agonies and hopes without pretension. His frustrations as a single parent raising a difficult daughter, his distress over the loss of his long-time partner, his initial uncertainty over starting up with Liam, his passion as a teacher—it’s a full palette that Tovar conveys with absolute credibility. Tovar gives a master class in nuanced character exploration the viewer receives with wonder and gratitude.

        Falashay Pearson plays Jira like a genuine teen-ager grappling with a teen-ager’s barely understood emotions. Her bitterness toward the well-meaning Noah could cost her the audience’s sympathy, but she stays grounded in Jira’s emotional confusion and anger, and her tense meeting with her birth mother, and its unexpected outcome, are truly affecting.

        Alex Hugh Brown is fine as Liam, initially the aggressor in his relationship with Noah, and a compassionate if no-nonsense man in his dealings with the troubled and troublesome Jira. Lucy Sandy (replacing the regular Lili-Anne Brown at my performance) rounded out the ensemble as Jira’s birth mother.

        The production is enhanced by Stephen H. Carmody’s set, Sean Mallary’s atmospheric lighting, Alarie Hammock’s costume design, and especially Lindsay Jones’s sound design and original music. The playbill says that Parrish is currently working on an MFA degree at the University of Southern California. Let’s hope she has another drama in her with the intensity and honesty of “A Twist of Water,” with Stef Tovar in a central role.

        “A Twist of Water” runs through June 5 at the Mercury Theater, 3745 North Southport Avenue. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 4 p.m. Tickets are $38.50 to $44.50. Call 773 325 1700 or visit www.mercurytheaterchicago.com.

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

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

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The K of D

At the Route 66 Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

          CHICAGO—“Once Upon a Time” may be the three most magical words in our culture. They instantly trigger images of fantastical events that take us to distant lands populated by wondrous people.

         Laura Schellhardt’s “The K of D” is a “once upon a time” play. She even subtitles her work “An urban legend.” But “The K of D” doesn’t transport the audience to a fairy tale world. The story takes place in a small western Ohio town called St. Marys. It may be a ghost story, but like all good ghost stories we are never really sure whether the supernatural is really at play. The drama is eerie without being scary, but mostly it’s a fine slice of storytelling.

     “The K of D” is a one-performer show that runs about 75 minutes without an intermission. An actress narrates the story and also impersonates residents of the town, both the young people and the adults. The show is being presented by the Route 66 Theatre in a tiny theater in the Old Town neighborhood. It’s a perfect venue for a tale that profits from an intimate connection with the audience.

          The cast consists of Gwendolyn Whiteside, a young woman who wears a T-shirt and cut-off jeans throughout the evening. She narrates the story like a female Tom Sawyer, and then easily morphs into the denizens of the town, starting with the small gang of teenagers led by a take-charge 15-year old named Becky who haughtily smokes bubblegum cigarettes to show everyone her superior sophistication. Quisp is the demonstrative one, with his arm swinging jive attitude. There is also a local teacher who wins the Teacher of the Year award in the community every year, possibly by murdering her competition. Some of these characters could live as easily among the grotesque residents in Sherwood Anderson’s “Winesburg, Ohio” as Schellhardt’s St. Marys.

          The central incident in the play is the death of a boy, struck down by a car driven by the town thug. The dead boy has a twin sister named Charlotte who witnesses the accident. She holds her brother as he lies dying and just before he expires he kisses her on the lips, K of D meaning “kiss of death.”  That kiss may transfer supernatural powers to the surviving twin, who immediately becomes mute.

          Schellhardt tells a leisurely story. The death of the boy is established in the opening minutes of the play but the dramatist doesn’t do much with it until the last half of the evening. For the first half hour or so the play gets the audience acquainted with the assorted characters and establishes the ground rules for an urban legend (For example, the events never happen to the teller, who narrates the legend second hand, and the story usually occurs in a rural location and not in an urban area).

          Whiteside gets plenty of help from Lindsay Jones’s sound design, which includes a whole repertoire of sound effects like animal and insect noises, water lapping, and automobile tires squealing. Jesse Klug’s lighting is always atmospheric, sometimes creepy and sometimes startling. Steve Key’s set consists of a rickety wooden boat dock at one side of the stage and a weathered wooden fence at the rear—just enough to establish the sense of a small town for the narrative.

          Meredith McDonough is the director and she obviously worked closely with Whiteside to establish the story’s many characters and create the rising sense of tension in the story. It’s the best kind of directing, where the action seems to develop naturally and inevitably.

          “The K of D” is like a good ghost story told around a flickering campfire, with the shadows concealing who knows what mysteries. The play has an agreeable ending, with the bad guy getting his comeuppance. But there is also an elegiac quality that nostalgically commemorates a vanishing world of small town America a generation or two ago. All in all, a very satisfying adventure in suggestive storytelling, and a terrific display of versatile acting.

          The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.    June 2009