The March
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago– “The March” was a fine Civil War novel and likely would make an excellent motion picture, but as a play it has problems. The ambitious adaptation at the Steppenwolf Theatre certainly gives the E. L. Doctorow book a brave try, but at 2 hours and 50 minutes the production turns out to be a pretty long sit for the audience.
“The March” describes the Union army’s slash-and-burn march through the Deep South in the waning months of the Civil War from late 1864 through early 1865. Led by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union forces lived off the land, destroying plantations and towns and appropriating livestock and crops while they moved through Georgia and North and South Carolina. As they plundered through the South, the Union army attracted a vast following crowd of freed black slaves and white refugees, adding to the chaos and suffering of Sherman’s ruthless campaign.
Doctorow told the story of Sherman’s march as a mosaic of incidents and characters. The novel touched on the lives of dozens of men and women, military and civilian and black and white, representing both the North and the South. Doctorow humanized the war by bringing it into the scale of individuals trying to survive in a maelstrom of overwhelming violence and social disruption.
The novel attracted the interest of Steppenwolf director Frank Galati, an old hand at epic storytelling for the stage. His adaptations of “The Grapes of Wrath”and “Ragtime” rank among the major works of the 1990’s in the American theater.
It’s easy to see what drew Galati to “The March,” with its many vivid personalities, dramatic episodes, and powerful sense of history in the making. Galati’s adaptation follows the Doctorow novel closely, but what was gripping on the page lacks power and narrative drive on the Steppenwolf stage. The march itself of necessity happens off stage and is recounted through narration. Badly wounded soldiers are carried on and off stage to convey the realities of battle’s savagery, but mostly the audience hears about the war but doesn’t see it, which means the viewer doesn’t sufficiently feel the fear and tension and bravery and cowardice of the conflict.
The characters crowd the stage but only a few make a real impact, notably General Sherman, a freed slave named Pearl, and a pair of petty criminals named Arly and Will who try to survive the conflict as opportunists, swinging back and forth between the two sides. These characters stimulate much the show’s best acting, from Harry Groener (Sherman), Shannon Matesky (Pearl), and Ian Barford and Stephen Louis Grush (Arly and Will).
The adaptation relies heavily on monologues that characters speak directly to the audience. The monologues work in the novel but too often they sound arch and literary in the play. Virtually all the main characters take turns delivering verbal essays we would never expect to hear from people in their stations of life. It’s the kind of stage convention that works in a Shakespeare history play but sounds contrived in “The March.”
In spite of all the characters and incidents, the narrative doesn’t grab the viewer. Things happen, one after the other, without sufficient cumulative impact. Some of the incidents are striking, as when a freed slave dreams of a happy life as a farmer with the 40 acres of farmland Sherman decreed would be allotted to all freed male slaves. With the hindsight of history, the audience knows the black man’s hopes for a good life working the land would crumble in the racist years to come in the South. There are other successful bits scattered throughout the evening, some grim, some passionate, some humorous, but they don’t add up to a cohesive and engrossing dramatic experience.
The Steppenwolf ensemble gets highest marks for quality of acting. Groener brings Sherman alive as the warrior who destroys the South with no regret during his march. Sherman is the source of the famous phrase “War is hell.” He saw his job as defeating an enemy he despised for trying to break up the union, but at the end of the play Groener’s general displays some ambiguity in his mind about the brutal costs of warfare.
Matesky is superb as the teen-age Pearl, a spunky and intelligent girl who ends up about as happy as any of the main characters. As Arly, Barford dominates the play through the sheer force of his wily personality. His Arly is a rascal with his eye continually on the main chance. But Arly’s poetic and philosophical disquisitions are at odds with a scruffy character trying to survive the war by fair means or foul. There is also solid work from Grush as Will, Philip R. Smith as a Union surgeon, and Philip James Brannon as a variety of black men. Mariann Mayberry, Carrie Coon, and Martha Lavey all flourish as the chief female characters.
The designers do their best to create a sense of the conflict through dramatic lighting (designed by James F. Ingalls), sound (designed by Josh Schmidt), and projections (designed by Stephen Mazurek). James Schuette designed the flexible set that moves fluidly between interiors and the outdoor war zone. Virgil Johnson designed the vast wardrobe of costumes that gives the production its authentic period look.
The action moves in short scenes, with characters coming and going from the rear of the stage and the wings, and occasionally the aisles. Galati does a masterful job of orchestrating the continuous movement, so visually there isn’t a dull moment in the show.But all the creative design work and fine acting don’t add up to a play that should be as compelling as the events it describes. The production falls into the “nice try” category, resourceful and committed but in the final reckoning it doesn’t quite come off.
“The March” runs through June 10 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $78. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.April 2012
Like Dan on Facebook. Become a Friend!!!
http://facebook.com/zeffdaniel
**********************************
Penelope
At the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Enda Walsh is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater. His admirers love the English dramatist’s quirky theatrical imagination and his command of language. His detractors complain that his stories are improbable, if not incomprehensible, and his scripts bloated with excesses of luxurious but ultimately tedious verbosity.
Walsh has been served locally in recent seasons by productions of “The Walworth Farce” and “The New Electric Ballroom.” Now the Steppenwolf Theatre is presenting Walsh’s “Penelope,” a 90-minute intermissionless comedy-drama that will give comfort to his fans and irritate his detractors once again.
Walsh builds “Penelope” on a portion of Homer’s ancient epic “The Odyssey.” In that long poem, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, is away fighting in the Trojan War. During his absence a flock of suitors comes to his palace, laying siege to his wife Penelope to demand that she take one of them as her husband on the expectation that Odysseus will never return from the war. The suitors are a dissolute bunch and Odysseus wipes out the last of them after he returns to Ithaca in disguise.
In “Penelope,” four suitors remain from the 100 who started to woo Penelope years earlier. But there is nothing of ancient Greece about them. The men gather around an empty swimming pool, wearing speed-o bikini brief swimming suits. To expand on the sense of chronological dislocation, the production injects frequent excerpts from recordings by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.
The men are not physically impressive, their middle- aged bodies running to fat as they posture and bicker while pondering ways to reach Penelope and pressure her to choose a new mate before Odysseus makes his way back to Ithaca and causes all of them a lot of grief.
Penelope herself makes occasional appearances, silently observing the men from her apartment above the main stage area. She never speaks, but the four men do enough talking for her. The men all carry the highly un-Homeric names of Dunne (Scott Jaeck), Quinn (Yasen Peyankov), Fitz (Tracey Letts replacing the originally cast John Mahoney), and Burns (Ian Barford).
Each of the four characters possesses a distinct personality. Quinn is a bullying and abrasive take-charge guy. Dunne is a pompous blowhard. Fitz is a bookish, mild mannered nerdy type. Burns, the youngest of the four, is in a constant state of anger and unhappiness, largely because of the recent suicide of his close friend and fellow suitor, Murray.
Spectators who don’t read the program notes before the play starts will have no idea who these men are or what their situation is until gradually they reveal their plight as desperate suitors for the aloof Penelope. There isn’t much physical action for the first two thirds of the play but plenty of speechifying, especially two interludes when first Dunne then Fitz takes a microphone and launches a long monologue (televised live to Penelope’s apartment) making their case as Odysseus’s replacement. The monologues show Walsh at his best in concocting eloquent arias of language that will captivate some listeners and pass over others as so much beautiful verbal noise.
Near the end of the play the characters suddenly launch into a silent manic dumb show that involves lots of quick costume changes off stage and has the frenzied quality of a Marx Brothers sketch. The audience has got to love the scene, even though some viewers may not understand where it’s coming from or where it’s going.
The sensibility of “Penelope” has a whiff of Samuel Beckett if Beckett was in a farcical, long winded mood. The four characters are trapped in their situation, unable to extricate themselves for all their planning. They find themselves confined to a physical space with little hope of release.
But say this for
Walsh. The man really knows how to write for his performers. Actors must love
the challenge of speaking his elaborate language and interpreting his offbeat
plots and bizarre characters. In Walsh’s plays, the major characters are star
turns for the actors, and “Penelope” is no exception. Jaeck, Peyankov, Letts,
and Barford all get at least one spotlighted monologue that displays Walsh’s
rich, not to say opulent, language. And there is genuine humor in the banter
among the four men as well as frequent moments of violent-tinged tension (one
of the characters is stabbed to death on stage in a typical out-of-left-field
Walsh plot twist). An actor has to be really good to perform in a Walsh play
and the four men in “Penelope” are exceptional.
Logan Vaughn plays as Penelope. She spends her few appearances elegantly seated, standing, or walking, showing only a bit of facial expression in the play’s final moments. She is an oasis of restraint and mystery among all the talk below her.
Director Amy Morton has done a splendid job of orchestrating the performances so they make their own internal sense, however perplexing the actions on stage might be for the audience. Walt Spangler’s bi level set and James Ingalls’s lighting give the production the visual look of a slightly seedy David Hockney painting. Ana Kuzmanic designed the beachware costumes, with their tacky bathrobes and flip-flops and swimsuits intended for much younger, more buff males. Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen provide the sound design and original music.
“Penelope,” like all of Walsh’s plays, takes the viewer on a wild, improbable ride. His admirers will thoroughly enjoy the journey while others will once again wonder what his point is. I liked the play for its imaginative riff on classical literature and even more for allowing four gifted actors to do their thing, especially when displaying themselves in unflattering bathing attire.
“Penelope” runs through February 5 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. (with Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. on January 18 and 25 and February 1). Tickets are $20 to $78. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
Visit Dan on Facebook. December12, 2011
*********************************
Clybourne Park
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Clybourne Park” at the Steppenwolf Theatre is another unsettling mind-churner by Bruce Norris. I suspect that the post-show discussion following a performance will be unusually well attended and argumentative. Norris touches lots of nerves in this one.
“Clybourne
Park” is about race, or about how Americans tap-dance (a term used often by the
characters) around the subject. We use evasions and euphemisms, side-stepping
our true feeling about whites and blacks in this country. We pander to
perceived sensitivities on the subject with lame liberalism, telling racist
jokes that, the teller insists, are meant to be in broad minded good fun and
not offensive. We will go around the block verbally to avoid speaking what we really
believe when it comes to race.
Norris divides “Clybourne Park” into two acts. The action takes place in the same house, separated by 50 years, in a neighborhood in Chicago. The first act, set in 1959, puts us in “A Raisin in the Sun” territory. A white family is selling their house in an all white neighborhood to a black family. A representative of the white community visits the white owners to dissuade them from selling, playing the fear card, warning that one black family will open the floodgates for more black families, driving property values into an irreversible downward spiral. The implication is that the issue here is more economic than racial prejudice, but wariness of black people is the subtext.
In the 50 years before the start of the second act, the neighborhood has indeed gone all African American, becoming a kind of historical monument to black aspirations to a better way of life. But now a young white couple has purchased the house and plans to tear it down, rebuilding it in a style that clashes with the other homes. A black woman tells the white buyers by demolishing the house, they would be violating the heritage of black achievement the house represents.
The white dialogue in 1959 is patronizing, if superficially well meaning, giving the audience some chuckles at how the white characters demonstrate their racial bias by insisting they have no racial bias. The second act portrays, amidst much comedy, how we have not advanced much in our attitudes in the last half century. The white dialogue may be more overtly polite but underneath, the feeling remain the same. “You stay on your side of the racial divide and we’ll happily stay on ours.”
Some characters in act two connect with characters in the first act. The outwardly subservient maid in 1959 becomes the aggressive young woman in 2009 who wants the white couple to consider black sensibilities before destroying the house and thus erasing a symbol of black progress. In one nifty bit of irony, Karl Lindner appears in 1959 to dissuade the white family from selling to the blacks. This is the same Lindner in “A Raisin in the Sun” who tries to convince the black Younger family not to move into the neighborhood.
The Steppenwolf ensemble is exemplary. Karen Aldridge is superb as each black female character. Cliff Chamberlain is terrific playing both sides of the racial coin. He’s Karl Lindner in the first act and the man buying the house in the second act, a character whose racial attitudes may not be as opened minded as he claims.
Stephanie Childers has a throw away role of Lindner’s pregnant deaf Swedish wife in the first act but is a prime mover in the second act as Chamberlain’s wife. John Judd is outstanding in the first act as the white seller, bitter over the death of his son, a Korean War veteran. Brendan Marshall Rashid, a minor figure in the second act, nicely plays a clergyman in the first act whose attempts to be a bridge over troubled racial waters fail miserably. And James Vincent Meredith plays the two black men in the story, self effacing in the presence of white folks in the first act and more confident and assertive in the second.
Director Amy Morton does a wonderful job of orchestrating the contrasting tones of the two acts, the tension-filled opener and the broader and more comic closer.
The final scene in the play returns the action to 1959. It’s an affecting coda to the story, but I’m not sure how it fits with the main narratives. That’s certain to be a major talking point in the post-play discussions.
The action is set in the house--middle class white realism in the first act and dilapidated in the second, both flavorfully designed by Todd Rosenthal. Nan Cibula-Jenkins designed the costumes that nail the two historical periods. Rod Milburn and Michael Bodeen designed the sound and Pat Collins the lighting.
“Clybourne Park” won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for drama and for once the prize committee got it right. This is a stimulating, challenging, funny, stirring play that will send spectators out into the night with their minds whirring with interpretations. It’s one of those rare shows where you want to go out for a beer with the playwright after the show and go over the multiple ramifications of his work.
“Clybourne Park” runs through November 6 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday and October 19, 26, and November 2 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. September 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
**************************
Middletown
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Will Eno’s “Middletown” at the Steppenwolf Theatre falls into line with a tradition of offbeat portraits of small town American life in American literature. Consider “Spoon River Anthology” by Edgar Lee Masters, “Winesburg, Ohio” by Sherwood Anderson, and, of course, “Our Town” by Thornton Wilder.
These works take an essentially pessimistic view of the narrowness of small town life in the United States during the first half of the twentieth century, life oozing with frustration and loneliness. Many of the characters are eccentrics and grotesques who don’t fit in with the community and can’t find a fulfilling place for themselves in life.
The earlier works have a strong sense of place—the Midwest in “Spoon River” and “Winesburg” and New England in “Our Town.” Eno’s “Middletown” exists in a geographical vacuum, the town’s name indicating its vague, anonymous atmosphere.
The characters in “Middletown” may not
have distinctive geographical roots but they sure like to talk a lot. Everyone
we meet is a wannabe philosopher, pondering the meaning of life and especially
death. The character may be the cop on the beat, the town librarian, a
landscaper, or just a couple of misfits, but they are all ready to pontificate
on the mysteries of existence, either to each other or directly to the
audience. 
“Middletown” has very little dramatic arc. The characters don’t develop from what we see on first meeting and there isn’t a coherent storyline. That means the play demands considerable patience and attention from the audience. Eno does have a striking way with language, even if the language drifts off into philosophical vaporings or musings that don’t take the listener anywhere. The play does have plenty of laughs that emerge from the odd comments and non sequiturs uttered by the characters rather than from jokes or comic situations.
“Middletown” is presented as a series of monologues interspersed with short scenes, usually involving two characters. There are 10 actors in the ensemble, half of them taking multiple roles. The main figure John Dodge, a middle-aged man living in physical and emotional isolation, rootless and gradually sinking into suicidal despair. He is an elusive figure brought to life by a brilliant, nuanced performance from Tracy Letts.
Another elusive character, known only as the mechanic, spends most of his stage time in his own inner world, a pleasant oddball who makes his final appearance wearing a feathered Indian headdress and roaring out Indian chants. Michael Patrick Thornton gives a droll performance of a character who, even by the town’s standards, doesn’t make much sense.
The only normal sounding person in the play is a young woman named Mary Swanson, recently moving into Middletown with her husband, a man we never see who is always someplace away from the town. Mary wants to start a family and eventually delivers a baby near the end of the play. But mostly she is a good listener for all the locals and their speculations about life and death. Brenda Barrie delivers a pleasing, understated performance that still holds its own with the more vivid personalities she encounters in Middletown.
The bottom line is that “Middletown” is not for all tastes. Some spectators will have problems getting a handhold on all the profundities and pseudo profundities uttered by the characters, especially in the absence of any narrative thrust. The play runs 21/4 hours with an intermission and would be better served going about 90 minutes straight through. The production might also benefit from a studio theater staging. Some production values may be sacrificed but the intimacy of a small space closer to the audience could be ample compensation.
The big selling point in the Goodman production is the acting. In addition to the performances by Letts, Thornton, and Barrie, there is fine work by Alana Arenas, Molly Glynn, Tim Hopper (a magician with Eno’s off-kilter language), Ora Jones, Keith Kupferer, Martha Lavey (looking splendidly dowdy as the librarian), and Danny McCarthy (as the town policeman with an occasional mean streak beneath his philosophical meanderings).
Director Les Waters opts for a leisurely pace, sometimes milking pauses to almost Pinterian density. Antje Ellermann’s set is dominated by a small town square and the facades of two small houses where Mary and John live in their individual private worlds. Janice Pytel designed the costumes, Matt Frey the lighting, and Richard Woodbury the sound.
“Middletown” runs through August 14 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday ad Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $73. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
Follow Dan on Facebook. July 2011
********************************
The Hot L Baltimore
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Lanford Wilson’s “The Hot L Baltimore” ranks high in the long tradition of saloon dramas in American drama. Those are the plays in which a motley collection of derelicts, prostitutes, dreamers, and other miscellaneous losers gather in a seedy bar and tell their sad stories. The only difference in the Wilson play is the setting: a rundown hotel instead of a rundown saloon.
The Steppenwolf Theatre is reviving the 1973 play in an intermittently effective production. Either “Hot L Baltimore” hasn’t aged well or the Steppenwolf staging doesn’t quite hit on all cylinders. Wilson has been something of a house playwright for Steppenwolf so the modest results of the company’s revival are a disappointment.
The play’s title is the name of a once elegant hotel now on its last legs. Its decline is symbolized by the burned out “e” in “Hotel” marquee. Also on their last legs are the residents of the hotel, all soon to be evicted from their shabby home because the building is scheduled for demolition.
The residents include prostitutes Suzy, April, and a teenager known only as the Girl (an innocent with a heart of gold). Millie is a pleasantly dotty old Southern lady. Jackie and Jamie are a brother and sister alone in life with each other. Jamie is slightly retarded and Jackie has a dream, owning a farm in Utah. She thinks she’s bought quality property in the state but she’s been swindled, another failure in a failed life. Mr. Morse is an elderly man who complains a lot. A young man named Paul Granger comes to the hotel looking for his vanished grandfather, the young man himself on the run from a prison farm while serving a two-year sentence for marijuana possession. An elderly woman named Mrs. Bellotti is saddled with an unstable son evicted from the hotel for his disorderly behavior, and she doesn’t know where to turn.
There is no narrative line in “Hot L Baltimore,” just a series of conversations and confrontations interspersed with reveries and confessions. This is a tacky group of people, but Wilson sentimentalizes them into heartwarming stereotypes trying to survive in a world that gives them no breaks. None of them has a future but they soldier on, buttressed by their illusions and their pluck and their stubbornness.
The play is realistic in tone, notwithstanding its tendency to romanticize some of the characters. Director Tina Landau attempts to break up the naturalism of the setting and characters with moody interjections. A well-dressed man invisible to the characters visible to the audience meanders through the hotel, never saying a word. Late in the play he joins with Millie (who claims she has the power to see ghosts) to sing an elegiac duet version of “Stardust.” We never learn the identity of the man, but presumably he is the shade of the grandfather Paul Granger so urgently seeks. The audience is left to speculate, and be distracted, by his presence throughout the play.
The play’s numerous mini-dramas are played out within an architecturally imposing two-level set designed by James Schuette. The sheer magnitude and detail of the set are impressive, and a little overwhelming. I remember back in the 1970’s seeing a brilliant production of “Hot L Baltimore” at the long-gone Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago. The large ensemble operated within a theater-in-the-round setting and their proximity to the audience was a major plus in bringing to life the characters with their overlapping dialogue. Schuette’s set is a stunner but I wonder if the production might not have worked better in the intimacy of the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre.
The teenager known as the Girl tends to dominate the play with her innocence, energy, sympathy, optimism, and eagerness to engage everyone around her. It’s a tough role and Allison Torem gives it a commendable effort, but this rising young actress needs a little more experience to carry off such a central role. As her fellow hookers, Kate Arrington (the hard on the outside naïve on the inside Suzy) and de’Adre Aziza (the brassy and cynical April) fare better.
Among the men folk, Yasen Peyankov is splendid as the gruff Mr. Morse and his clear, stentorian voice was a blessed relief for the audience ear. Some of the other performers need to project more fully. Alana Arenas and Namir Smallwood are an affecting brother and sister, perhaps the most doomed characters in the play. Samuel Taylor is fine as the questing Paul Granger. Sean Allan Krill makes a nicely spectral figure wandering about the set, perplexing the spectators with his unexplained presence. Jacqueline Williams is painfully effective as the distraught Mrs. Bellotti trying to deal with a mentally disturbed adult son who has no place in the world. Molly Regan is superb as the dreamy Millie and displays a first rate singing voice in her “Stardust” duet with Krill.
The hotel staff, mostly preoccupied with their own problems as the eviction notices are circulated, are well played by Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, and TaRon Patton.
Ana Kuzmanic designed the costumes, Scott Zielinski the lighting, and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound.
“The Hot L Baltimore” runs through May 29 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 P.M. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $73. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. April 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
Visit Dan on Facebook.
******************************
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Edward Albee was in Chicago checking out the rehearsal of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Steppenwolf Theatre. The playwright must have left town well satisfied. It’s hard to imagine a better acted, more powerful production of Albee’s classic drama of middle-class marriage gone off the rails.
The drama is a masterpiece of modern American theater but it isn’t to everyone’s taste. Many people find the venomous infighting between George and Martha distasteful and they sit through the three-hour play in acute discomfort. For these spectators, “Virginia Woolf?” is an unpleasant exercise in sadomasochistic viciousness, never mind how well written.
The play may be brutal in its verbal (and occasionally physical) violence, but it’s mesmerizing in its intensity. But it is often very funny, a quality sometimes ignored amidst all the cutthroat ferocity of the savage “games” George and Martha play with and against each other during that one booze-soaked late night.
George and Martha have entered the pantheon of American pop culture, symbols of married life at its most disagreeable. George is an associate history professor at a small New England college. Martha is his wife of 23 years and the daughter of the college president, who never appears on stage but nevertheless is a strong felt presence. For Martha, George is a failure as a teacher, as a husband, as a human being, a “flop.” She heaps on the abuse while George battles back as best he can. We pick up on their conflict in the first minutes of the play. Their running antagonism apparently is an every night event. But on this night Martha has invited Nick and Honey, a new young biology professor and his neurotic young wife, over to their house for a post-midnight nightcap. The interaction between the two couples sends the strife between George and Martha over the brink.
“Virginia Woolf?” has no plot. It’s just an alcohol-soaked fugue of bashing, with George and Martha fighting for the psychological high ground. Nick considers himself a young man with a future in academe. He has a plan to ascend the college faculty ladder with strategic politicking and “plowing a few faculty wives.” He’s cocky and smug, but he’s in way over his head competing against a pair of demolition experts like George and Martha.
Albee called the first act “Fun and Games” and the second act “Walpurgisnacht.” In both acts George and Martha carve each other up, delivering emotional body blows to Nick and Honey along the way. The third act is called “The Exorcism” and gives a new spin to the George-Martha relationship. The previous two acts dealt marginally in truth versus illusion, a theme that consumes the final act.
The concluding act centers on a fictional son produced by George and Martha, a fantasy that tenuously holds the marriage together. I’ve never been able to accept the son as anything other than a dramatist’s device to wind up the play, though the Steppenwolf staging gives the son a more credible place in George and Martha’s marriage universe than I’ve ever seen. The outing of the son as a fantasy figure leads to a concluding note of bleak reconciliation I found obscure and unconvincing.
In every
“Virginia Woolf? production I’ve seen, beginning with a preview of the original
Broadway version in 1962, it’s basically been Martha’s play. The foul-mouthed
and frustrated woman has the showier role that dominates the more passive and
defensive George, a man who acts rather than reacts to his wife’s onslaughts.
It takes nothing away from Amy Morton’s brilliant performance as Martha to cede
the dominant performance to Tracy Letts, a George who gives as good as he gets
and maybe even emerges as the winner, if there is such a thing as a victory
amid all the carnage. As George, Letts is astringent and combative, not a
personality to take his wife’s depredations lying down. His assertive
performance shifts the play’s balance of power from wife to husband, revealing
depths in Albee’s writing that had eluded me in previous viewings.
Madison Dirks as Nick and Carrie Coons as Honey hold their own against the volcanic George and Martha, a considerable achievement. Dirks effectively creates a portrait of a smarmy, self confidence young man on the make. But Nick is locked into a bad marriage with an unstable, alcoholic young woman, played with convincing pathos by Coons. “Virginia Woolf?” then is really a portrait of two marriages that don’t work.
The play is presented within Todd Rosenthal’s detailed, authentic living room set. Nan Cibula-Jenkins designed the costumes, Allen Lee Hughes the lighting, and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound. Director Pam MacKinnon injects no bright ideas into the play. A director and the cast have their hands full just bringing the densely textured script to life as written, even without the playwright looking over their shoulders during rehearsal. Whether the stronger George is MacKinnon’s contribution or the natural result of Letts’s potency as an actor doesn’t matter. The shift elevates an already incendiary viewing experience into a richer, even more dramatic audience experience. Third act problems notwithstanding, this is a stunning theater event.
“Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” runs through February 13 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (no Sunday evening performances after January 16) with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. and some Wednesday matinees in January and February. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. December 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
Visit Dan on Facebook.
*************************
Detroit
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Lisa D’Amour’s new play “Detroit” introduces the audience to four troubled characters enduring lives of not so quiet desperation in an aging and unnamed suburb. That suburb may or may not be near Detroit but it certainly is somewhere in the Midwest, based on the architectural style of the two houses that fill the Steppenwolf stage.
The play is receiving a high energy production at the Steppenwolf featuring an A list cast that includes Laurie Metcalf, Ian Barford, Kate Arrington, and Kevin Anderson. The four play two neighboring couples in a state of economic stress and emotional turbulence.
Mary (Metcalf) and Ben (Barford) are established residents in their home. Their new next door neighbors are Kenny (Anderson) and Sharon (Arrington) who are renting the house that once belonged to Kenny’s deceased aunt. Kenny and Sharon are slightly younger than Mary and Ben and unstable and rootless. The two got together while committed to a drug rehab facility. Both have low paying jobs but are only a couple of rungs above trailer trash, though neither is menacing. Everyone drinks too much and swears too often.
The 95-minute play consists of a sequence of scenes that take place in the connecting back yards of both houses. In the first scene Mary and Ben are hosting their new neighbors in a patio barbeque. As the play moves along, the action often turns farcical in its humor, though there are moments of soul bearing and not so subtle sexual byplay.
Ben has recently been laid off from his job as a bank loan officer and he sets a goal of reinventing himself as an online financial adviser. Mary imbibes too much, her alcoholism stimulated by Ben’s daily clueless meandering around the house, with his severance package from the bank due to expire in a month.
The play’s climax comes near the end when the two couples engage in a drunken backyard revel (choreographed by Tommy Rapley) that ends with Kevin setting fire to patio furniture that result in Ben and Mary’s home burning down. In a kind of epilogue, an elderly neighbor (played by Robert Breuler) appears to provide a back story for the now departed Kenny and Sharon. Mary and Ben mention they are considering moving to England and the play stops.
The only character who connected with me beyond an entertainment level was Ben. He represents those middle class professionals suddenly rudderless after their layoff. They not only lost their jobs and their paychecks, they lost their sense of purpose and their dignity. Ben deludes himself with fantasies about an Internet financial advisor business, but he’s really a lost soul facing a bleak future. Barford’s performance poignantly coats the character’s inner confusion with a veneer of confidence.
Breuler delivers a monologue that expresses his nostalgia for a happier time a generation ago, when the suburb was new and neighbors interacted. Children played out of doors instead of occupying themselves in front TV sets inside their homes. But the sense of optimism and confidence that colored the 1950’s and 1960’s has been replaced by decaying homes and equally decaying hopes.
Breuler’s wistful speech suggests the dramatic direction that would make “Detroit” a more insightful play. If the playwright wants to strengthen her observations about the socio-economic agonies of modern American society, she needs to make her story darker and more focused. It was fun watching the talented cast cavort and dance and look and talk silly, but that’s not the road to a probing commentary on the problematic present state of the union in this country. As the play stands now, beyond the poignant figure of the laid off Ben, the audience may wonder, What’s the point?
Still, it’s always a pleasure watching Laurie Metcalf, this time ringing all the changes in Mary’s character from desperation and bitterness to frantic exuberance. Arrington is terrific as the hyper emotional and foul mouthed Sharon and Kevin Anderson is fine as the beer swilling and lumpish Kenny.
Austin Pendleton’s directing does not skimp on the kinetic heat provided by the two couples. Kevin Depinet’s set design of the two houses is brilliant, one house made of white clapboard and the other of brick. The looming facades are silent, dominating presences throughout the play. The physical production is also enhanced by Rachel Healy’s costumes, Josh Schmidt’s sound and original music, and Kevin Rigdon’s lighting.
“Detroit” runs through November 7 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (no Sunday evening performances after October 17) and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $73. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. Sept. 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
Visit Dan on Facebook.
************************
A Parallelogram
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Watching Bruce Norris’s “A Parallelogram” is like revisiting an old “Twilight Zone” TV drama from the 1960’s. There is some science fiction, a little social commentary, and plenty of plot twists. But Norris spins these conventions into a fresh comedy-drama that only enhances his stature as the most original and challenging playwright on the local scene.
The
central character in “A Parallelogram” is a thirty-something woman named Bee
who is currently in a live-in relationship with a slightly older man named Jay,
who has left his wife and two children to move in with Bee.
But there are actually two Bee characters in the play. One is the young woman. The other is an alter ego, an elderly lady who first appears looking like a bag lady and later appears as a doctor in a hospital and finally as the Hispanic grandmother of Bee’s yard boy. The two Bees converse throughout the play but only the younger Bee can see and hear the older one. Jay understandably thinks his lover may be crazy.
The older Bee has the ability to show
young Bee the future, stopping and starting action through a small gadget that
resembles a television set zapper. The older Bee explains to young Bee how the
past, present, and future can interconnect through some physics process I
couldn’t begin to understand. The narrative moves back and forth in time as the
younger Bee tries to use her foreknowledge of coming events to change the
future. The older Bee wonders why she bothers.
It sounds a little dense but the storyline is both engrossing and funny. The play’s theme can be summarized in Bee’s question “If someone could tell you in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?”
That’s heady stuff and Norris takes no firm position on the matter, which is part of the play’s fascination. The spectators have to come up with their own answers. There is the possibility that young Bee is delusional and her conversations with the other Bee are all in her head, sort of like Elwood Dowd in “Harvey.” Young Bee recently underwent a hysterectomy that may have created emotional stress unraveling her mind. Or maybe the older Bee really exists but on a plane only young Bee can connect with.
The older Bee delivers some wry and disturbing observations about human nature: “If there was an earthquake tomorrow in Bangladesh and a million people died, would you really care?” The knee jerk response would be, “Of course.” Our actual feelings likely would be much less compassionate. So spectators should expect the play to occasionally to knock down their self-esteem a notch.
The Steppenwolf production serves Norris’s play with four perfect-pitch performances. Kate Arrington, almost unrecognizable with her normal blonde hair turned brunette, plays young Bee with a superb mixture of confusion, indignation, and tranquility. Tom Irwin gives another spot-on performance as a basically decent man who is also a smug jerk (described somewhat more pungently by the older Bee). A Roosevelt University student named Tom Bickel is just right as the Hispanic yard boy who weaves in and out of young Bee’s life.
For the audience, the play’s most delectable performance comes from Marylouise Burke as the older Bee. Her character has the play’s funniest, and wisest, lines and Burke brings them home with a casual flair that is irresistible.
Time travel stories are normally filled with exciting scenes leading to a dramatic finale.
“A Parallelogram” takes the “less is more” approach. Norris doesn’t force feed a lot of philosophical pseudo profundities into his time travel narrative. If there is a moral to the story, it’s that life goes on and probably it’s better that way. Not a very dramatic conclusion, perhaps, but there is enough humor and fantasy and humanity in the play to keep the thoughtful observer’s mind continuously engaged, and entertained.
Thanks to Anna Shapiro’s directing, the production flows naturally and credibly. Todd Rosenthal’s sets provide the proper atmosphere for the story’s three locations, assisted by James Ingalls’s lighting. The mechanical change in setting from home interior to hospital room at the end of the first act in full view of the audience is stunning.
“A Parallelogram” runs through August 29
at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There will be 2 p.m. performances on August 11, 18, and 25. Sunday evening performances end August 15. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars. July 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
Visit Dan on Facebook.
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Yes, Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” is bleak, pessimistic, and dramatically inert. But at the Steppenwolf Theatre, the play is surprisingly accessible. What the drama means is anyone’s guess, but audiences should have no problem following the 75-moinute play from moment to moment.
Beckett sets “Endgame” in a claustrophobic interior where the tyrannical and self-pitying Hamm presides, blind and paralyzed, confined to his throne-like chair. His servant is Clov, wants to leave, but can’t. Hamm is unable to stand and Clov cannot sit. Hamm’s aged and senile parents Nagg and Nell reside in two garbage cans at one side of the stage, both having lost their legs in a bicycle accident many years ago.
The four characters are enclosed in the barren room, with two small windows looking out, into what? The outside world is desolate, implying that Hamm, Clov, Nell, and Nagg are the last people on earth. What’s happened to everyone else? Maybe there was a plague or a nuclear war. Beckett isn’t saying, but the four characters in the room likely are the pitiful remnants of the human race.
There is almost no physical action in the play, not a surprise considering that only Clov can move about. The dialogue alternates between minimalist verbal exchanges and extended monologues. The characters reminisce, bicker, and lapse into silence.
What dramatic tension the play provides emerges from the fractious relationship between Hamm and Clov. Apparently Hamm took in Clov when the servant was an infant. Clov ministers to Hamm’s whiney demands and oozes hostility toward his master. But the pair has a symbiotic connection. Hamm relies on Clov to feed him and provide his medicine. If Clov leaves, Hamm dies. But where does Clov go if he does leave? Hamm may have the only food supply left on earth, so Clov’s departure would amount to suicide.
Late in the play Clov looks through one of the windows and claims he sees a little boy on the seashore. But does the boy actually exist, and if he does, could he represent a new beginning for the human race?
Beckett’s plays and fiction have created the biggest academic cottage industry of the last 60 years. Scholars and critics have poured forth countless interpretations of “Endgame.”—autobiographical, religious, philosophical, even theatrical (the play includes many references to the stage and even uses a line from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest). For those with an overpowering need to grasp Beckett’s intentions, the selection of explanatory theories is unlimited.
Probably the best strategy for watching “Endgame,” or any Beckett play, is not to analyze the show while it’s happening. There is an understandable temptation to seize on a symbolic line or image and proclaim “Aha, so that’s what the play is about.” But the viewer’s mind could end up making so much mental noise that the play itself gets drowned out. It’s best to avoid parsing the significance of Hamm’s toy three-legged dog or those two windows that serve as eyes to a blasted world and engage the play as a whole.
Let it suffice that “Endgame” paints a melancholy picture of the human condition’s futility. A joyless and meaningless life concludes in an evitable death. Beckett’s famous “Waiting for Godot” offered a glimmer of hope at the end. Not so in “Endgame.”
Nobody would confuse Beckett with Neil Simon, but “Endgame” does have some humor, not hilarious jokes but verbal exchanges that do evoke a chuckle from the audience. The language is spare, but realistic. The attentive viewer should not get bogged down in linguistic obscurities. Considering the absence of conventional narrative and characterization, the play is continually engrossing. The meaning may be elusive but the fascination is there.
The Steppenwolf revival under Frank Galati’s directing is refreshingly straightforward. Galati clearly has a firm grasp of “Endgame” and refrains from directorial grandstanding. The staging does not wallow in profundities that could intimidate, or bore, the spectators.
The ensemble consists of William Petersen as Hamm, Ian Barford as Clov, Martha Lavey as Nell, and Francis Guinan as Nagg. Lavey and Guinan appear in brief cameo roles. The play really belongs to Petersen and Barford, not really ideal casting. Hamm is supposed to be an old man, the surrogate father to the adult Clov. Petersen and Barford look about the same age and that costs the play much of its tension between the patriarchal and domineering Hamm and the younger and rebellious Clov. Petersen also gives a laid back performance, nicely done within its own parameters, but his interpretation doesn’t give Barford much to play off emotionally in expressing Clov’s resentment and anger.
James Schuette’s massive gray walls suitably define the grim environment in which the characters attempt to survive. The lighting by James Ingalls (who also designed the scruffy costumes) and the sound design by Andre Pluess reinforce the chilly and gloomy atmosphere.
In the end, I admired the Steppenwolf production but I was never moved emotionally. The pathos and despair on stage should evoke feelings of some sort in the viewer but other than admiration for the staging, I remained untouched. Still, the theater should be commended for a full-resources version of a difficult play with the possibility of considerable box office risk.
“Endgame” runs through June 6 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 p.m., with 3 p.m. performances on Saturday and Sunday. There will be Sunday evening performances at 7:30 p.m. through May 9. Wednesday matinees will be added at 2 p.m. beginning May 12. Tickets are $20 to $77. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. April 2010
Contact Dan atzeffdaniel@yahoo.com
****************************************************************************
American Buffalo
At the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—After more than 30 years, David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” still delivers a dramatic wallop of verbal ferocity and psychological and physical violence. The play is also an actor’s bonanza, and the three-man ensemble in the Steppenwolf Theatre revival seizes every opportunity to race and rant through Mamet’s obscene, intense, and sometimes comic language.
“American Buffalo” had its premiere in Chicago in 1975 and has since become an internationally recognized modern classic. But it remains a Chicago play, set in the Windy City in the mid 1970’s with a powerful blue collar Chicago sensibility.
Mamet’s play features only three characters, with several peripheral men and women mentioned but not seen. The location is the junk shop owned by the middle-aged Donny Dubrow, a small time grifter whose only friend seems to be a slow-witted young man named Bobby. The third figure in the play is Teach, a blowhard yet sometimes eloquent petty criminal who talks a good game to mask a life of futility and failure.
The American buffalo of the title is a five cent coin that is a valuable collector’s item. The sometimes ambiguous storyline centers on a plot to steal a valuable coin collection. Initially the theft is masterminded by Donny with Bobby as the designated burglar. Then Teach forces himself into the action, displacing Bobby. The theft never gets off the ground, the play’s three losers losing again.
Zealous critics and commentators have located all kinds of themes in “American Buffalo.” It’s an essay on American capitalism. It’s about friendship and loyalty and truth and fairness. Like any great play, “American Buffalo” can withstand even the most fanciful interpretations. But essentially Mamet has composed a study of two men at the lower end of the social and economic scale, puffing themselves up with dreams and scams beyond their ability to realize.
Audiences can ponder all the social and philosophical implications in the drama, but only after the play ends. During the performance the language is so too virile and the emotions too high to allow the spectator breathing room to reflect on subtexts and hidden meanings. The language is raw and has its own poetry. Teach and Donny conspire and fight and banter, focusing a linguistic spotlight on their own incompetent and seedy lives.
The Steppenwolf production stars Tracy Letts as Teach and Francis Guinan as Donny. They don’t just impersonate the two characters, Letts and Guinan crawl inside their skins. Teach being the more showy role, Letts grabs most of the audience’s attention as a vivid portrait of a chiseler trying to rise above his loser (there’s that inevitable label again) life with sheer bravado. Near the end of the play, Teach freaks out when he learns the coin heist has gone bust, trashing Donny’s junk shop in an orgy of rage and frustration.
As Donny, Guinan creates a slightly more humane figure. After all, Donny has a career of sorts as the junk shop owner and a family of sorts as the father figure for Bobby. Donny has a bit of a life. Teach has nothing.
Patrick Andrews makes a striking Bobby, speaking in a monotone that barely conceals the confused feelings churning inside him. I’ve seen the character played with a wider range of emotions but Andrews’s performance still works. Patrons fortunate enough to see him as the master of ceremonies in the recent revival of “Cabaret” at Drury Lane Oakbrook won’t recognize the actor physically but they will recognize a young actor with a stunning performance range.
Kevin Dipenet’s baroquely cluttered junk shot is a virtual fourth character on the stage. The technical production is further enhanced by the tacky costumes designed by Nan Cibula-Jenkins along with the lighting by Pat Collins and the sound by Rod Milburn and Michael Bodeen.
Amy Morton’s directing maximizes the play’s strength--its dialogue. This is a play that doesn’t allow for revisionist interpretations. The actors and director do well to present the script as written, with its foul language and overheated characters. Morton may be a female but she has orchestrated this most “guy” of plays without a false note struck.
“American Buffalo” runs through February 7 at the Steppenwolf downstairs theater 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 (no Sunday performances after January 10). Tickets are $20 to $77. Call 312 335 1650 or visit: www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. December 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
***********************
Fake
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The Piltdown hoax was one of the great deceptions in the history of archaeology. Between 1908 and 1912, parts of a jawbone and a skull were found in a gravel pit at Piltdown in Sussex, England. Some scientists believed the fossil provided the missing link between the apes and modern human beings. Other scientists called the discovery a fraud.
The Piltdown discovery remained controversial for decades until it was finally unmasked as a hoax in the 1950’s. Apparently, someone buried an orangutan’s jaw and a skull from a medieval cemetery, the jaw stained to make it look old and the teeth filed to make them look human.
Some eminent figures in British science allied themselves with the Piltdown discovery as a great breakthrough and their reputations suffered accordingly. The perpetrator of the hoax has never been definitively identified nor has the motive been explained, though there is much speculation on both questions.
Eric Simonson’s drama “Fake” takes on the Piltdown hoax and a lot of other themes. The play is receiving its world premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre with a blue ribbon cast. Unfortunately, the play is a disappointment, talky and unfocussed. The possibilities of an entertaining scientific whodunit (and whydunit) are never fully realized.
Simonson separates his narrative into two historical periods, both in England. “Fake” starts in 1914, when the Piltdown discovery is still big news. The action then leaps forward to 1953, when the hoax is about to be unmasked. The five actors in the ensemble play two sets of characters, trying unsuccessfully to establish a parallel between the happenings in 1914 and 1953.
The 1914 scenes benefit from the presence of several actual historical figures, led by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, a fervent believer in spiritualism, and equally fervent in his conviction that the Piltdown discovery is a deliberate fake.
Doyle gathers together three prominent advocates of the Piltdown discovery—amateur British archaeologist Charles Dawson, noted paleontologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, and French theologian-paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Completing Doyle’s house party is Rebecca Eastman, a fictional American journalist come to England to report on the women’s suffrage movement. Doyle’s mocking of the Piltdown discovery draws the anger of Dawson and Woodward, who depart in high dudgeon.
The play meanders along from that opening scene, the actors alternating their characters with rapid off-stage costume changes that reflect the time shift between 1914 and 1953. By a wide margin, the most interesting personalities reside in the 1914 segments. A highlight is Teilhard de Chardin delivering a vigorous and articulate defense of the compatibility of faith and science, ideas that were not welcomed by his Jesuit superiors.
The lady journalist deduces that Doyle himself concocted the hoax as revenge from the ridicule he endured from Dawson for the writer’s spiritualism convictions, and Doyle doesn’t deny it. Or maybe the hoax was inspired by Englishmen who wanted to usurp continental European scientists in the competition for a hot-button scientific discovery. What a nationalistic coup it would be for Great Britain if the missing link turned out to be an Englishman. Possibly the hoax wasn’t a hoax at all but an honest mistake by scientists who should have known better.
Charles Darwin casts a large shadow over the story, symbolized by a giant portrait of the great scientist lowered periodically from the rafters. Darwin’s evolution theories tie into Piltdown man as they do in Teilhard de Chardin’s argument that evolution is a continuing process that eventually will lead to the fulfillment of creation, the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
So there is scope here for a provocative play that mixes mystery with science and religion. But there is no real dramatic arc to the narrative. The audience knows at the outset that Piltdown is a fake (note the play’s title). Most of the good stuff resides in the 1914 segments and if Simonson decides to take a fresh look at his script, he may want to concentrate on the early historical scenes with their vivid personalities and the immediacy of the Piltdown discovery. Tom Stoppard might have made the duality work between the events and sensibilities of 1914 and 1953 but Simonson is not Tom Stoppard. The articulate program notes in the playbill examine the Piltdown story with more historical and philosophical coherence than the play.
The cast does what it can to bring the verbosity of the script alive. So high marks to Francis Guinan Alan Wilder, Kate Arrington, Coburn Goss, and Larry Yando—all more successful in the 1914 characters, especially Goss as Teilhard de Chardin and Arrington as Rebecca Eastman.
Simonson is the director, which may be a miscalculation. Possibly a director other than the playwright could have identified the discursive soft spots in the script and worked with the author to smooth them out. Todd Rosenthal designed the set, Karin Kopischke the costumes, Joe Appelt the lighting, and Barry Funderburg the sound and original music.
“Fake” runs through November 8 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of 2 1/2 stars. Sept. 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com**********************
Up
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Bridget Carpenter’s “Up” tries to be a hymn to the imagination and free spirit in a losing battle with the money grubbing and dreariness of everyday life. In the world of “Up,” the imagination is a haven for the spirit liberated from the humdrum soul draining demands of daily existence.
The imaginative character in “Up” is a middle aged man named Walter Griffin, a victim of the slings and arrows of a realistic world that he can’t accommodate into his inner life. Walter is portrayed as some kind of hero, ultimately defeated by earthbound daily life. It’s a seductive line of thought, but at least in “Up” it is all hogwash, in spite of a fine effort by the Steppenwolf Theatre.
Walter Griffin is a husband and the father of a 15-year old son. The time of the play is the late 1990’s but Walter’s life peaked 15 years earlier when he ascended into the skies on a common lawn chair attached to several dozen balloons. His adventure is based on an actual ascent by a man named Larry Walters in 1982 (Walters committed suicide 11 years later).
Griffin gained considerable publicity at the time but his life has gone downhill ever since. He calls himself an inventor and entrepreneur, but he really is an unemployed drag on his family, his wife Helen providing the sole financial supper as a mail carrier, a job she detests. Walter wants to recapture the exhilaration of that lawn chair ascent but all he does is lead his family to destruction.
While the ineffectual Walter muddles through life, his son Mikey is an unhappy loner. One day at school he meets a teen-aged girl named Maria six months pregnant. Maria lives with her Aunt Chris, the girl’s alcoholic mother having kicked her out of the house.
Naturally, the love-stared and insecure Mikey falls in love with the plucky and fetching Maria. Mikey takes a job with Aunt Chris before and after school as a telephone solicitor that earns him a considerable salary in commissions. Mikey finds he enjoys selling, an occupation his father dismisses contemptuously as “bottom feeding.” Mikey’s pleasure at making money is treated as a character deficiency. Making money is bad. Dreaming and the imagination are good.
By the end of the play Maria has left for parts unknown with Aunt Chris. Walter’s family is in shambles—bankrupt and their house destroyed. Mikey is bitter and rebellious and Helen struggles to understand how her husband let it all go so wrong. So much for the glories of the life of the imagination.
This may be a sour, earthbound assessment of the play. But nothing in “Up” persuades me that Walter in anything but a loser, and a lying and cheating loser at that. There is much humor in the play but the audience likely will leave the theater feeling glum about the fate of all the characters.
“Up” benefits from a strong Steppenwolf production directed by Anna D. Shapiro. Ian Barford does what he can to make the ineffectual and pathetic Walter a sympathetic figure. Lauren Katz is fine as his wife, trying to make ends meet while her husband goes his irresponsible way. Jake Cohen is very good as the maladjusted Mikey who grows in self worth as his relationship builds with Maria and her aunt.
A newcomer named Rachel Brosnahan is outstanding as Maria, a girl with the guts and bravery that Walter Griffin lacks. The always reliable Martha Lavey is fine as Aunt Chris, who probably is a con woman but a genial and likable one. Tony Hernandez plays Philippe Petit, an actual French tightrope walker who appears in Walter’s imagination as the personification of all the daring and success Walter will never achieve.
Thanks to Dan Ostling’s set designs and Ann Wrightson’s lighting, the production delivers some striking visual images, especially of Petit miming his tightrope walking on a platform above the stage framed in blue sky. Mara Blumenfeld designed the costumes and Richard Woodbury the sound, with original music by David Singer.
“Up” runs through August 23 at the Steppenwolf downstairs theater, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday matinees will be added starting July 29. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. June 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
***********************
The Tempest
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The Steppenwolf Theatre waited 33 years before staging its first presentation of Shakespeare. But the results are worth the wait. “The Tempest” is a production to treasure, a scintillating blend of insightful and risk-taking directing, brilliantly creative designing, and first rate acting.
“The Tempest” is probably the last play Shakespeare wrote by himself and it is one of the most interpreted, and over interpreted, plays in the canon. The Steppenwolf version is dramatic, theatrical, and filled with small revelations that will make spectators wiser about the work no matter how often they have been exposed to this classic.
The play is a fantasy about a magician named Prospero who had been marooned on an island with his infant daughter Miranda 12 years before the start of the action. Prospero was the Duke of Milan, but he was usurped by his brother Antonio and confederates Sebastian and Alonso, the King of Naples. The villains set Prospero and Miranda adrift on a leaky boat and father and daughter eventually made it to the island. There Prospero displaced the witch Sycorax and her monster son Caliban and made the island his domain.
As the play begins, Prospero has created a tempest that forces a ship to run aground on his island, a ship containing his former enemies as well as his wise old counselor Gonzalo, Alonso’s decent son Ferdinand, and a couple of low comedy servants named Trinculo and Stephano.
The play’s action takes place in real time on the island. There isn’t any real plot, just the adventures of the various shipwrecked characters separated into small groups and trying to navigate among the supernatural wonders of the island.
Director Tina Landau has taken a high concept approach to the production, using film projections, aerial antics high above the stage, startling sound effects, and dazzling spectacle scenes. She even throws in a bit of delightful hip hop choreography.
“The Tempest” requires the director to make countless decisions, none more important than how to present Caliban. Caliban has been the darling of many modern critics who see him as a symbol of colonial oppression and slavery. The character is often portrayed by a black actor to underscore the point. Steppenwolf casts K. Todd Freeman, an African American actor, in the role but there is no agenda in his performance. Freeman plays Caliban as the vengeful, cowardly, pathetic, ultimately defeated character he is. Any sense that Caliban is the victim of Prospero’s colonial tyranny is strictly in the eye of the beholder.
Prospero’s sprite servant Ariel comes across as part fairy and part streetwise inner city lad in Jon Michael Hill’s hip performance. The production casts Lois Smith in the normally male role of Gonzalo and she is terrific in evoking the old man’s down to earth wisdom and decency. The clownish Trinculo and Stephano can be wearisome as they wallow in drunken foolery but Tim Hopper and Yasen Peyankov are superb in converting the stupid louts into credible, and entertaining, human beings.
The love interest resides in Ferdinand and Miranda, who fall in love at first sight, as Shakespeare’s young lovers are wont to do. The rising local actor Stephen Louis Grush adds to his resume with his performance as an affecting and genuine Ferdinand. Alana Arenas is OK as Miranda but Shakespeare’s language doesn’t come as easily to her as it does to the performers around her.
The villains are the least interesting characters in the play but Craig Spidle (Alonso), Alan Wilder (Sebastian), and James Vincent Meredith (Antonio) do what they can with the roles. It’s not their fault that the three nasty men are continuously upstaged by characters who are funnier and more fantastical than they are. There is also good work by three sprites performed with great athletic agility by Eric James Casady, Miles Fletcher, and Emma Rosenthal.
Which brings us to Frank Galati as Prospero. Galati mines all of Prospero’s complexities in his beautifully spoken performance. His Prospero is sympathetic, compassionate, irascible, tyrannical, humane, weary, vengeful, and finally forgiving. Galati’s deliveries of Prospero’s three monologues near the end of the play are models of intelligence and feeling. There is even a touch of King Lear to further enrich an indelible piece of acting.
“The Tempest” offers designers limitless opportunities for visual invention. Takeshi Kata designed a minimalist set that leaves most of the stage open except for a sloping metal ramp that connects the stage to a side balcony. The open space liberates the action, like allowing Ariel to soar high above the stage.
James Schuette’s costumes vary from thrift shop grunge to the sumptuous outfits in the banquet and masque scenes. James Cox’s lighting and Josh Schmidt’s sound and original music round out the exceptional physical production.
Tina Landau is the true hero of the event, coming up with endlessly inventive and revealing dramatic and comic touches. The ensemble clearly bought into her guidance and the result is a staging that is illuminating as well as entertaining.
The production answers one question. Does the Steppenwolf company, with its reputation for edgy modern drama, have the acting chops to handle classical Shakespeare? The company’s firm grasp of character and its lucid delivery of the dialogue answer that question beyond debate. Let’s not wait another 33 years for an encore.
“The Tempest” runs through May 31 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Dearborn Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m., with Wednesday performances at 3 p.m. in May. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. April 2009
***************************
The Seafarer
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Through some deft scheduling the Steppenwolf Theatre is presenting a two-play festival of Christmas dramas by the hot contemporary Irish writer Conor McPherson. Although both “Dublin Carol” and “The Seafarer” take place during Christmastime, don’t expect much ho-ho-ho good cheer. Neither play is a tragedy, but neither provides the touchy feely sentiment of “It’s a Wonderful Life” or “A Christmas Carol.”
Both plays are set in a world of working class booze swilling males in or near Dublin. Both display McPherson’s skill at genially foul-mouthed Irish blarney. The main separation between the two is that “Dublin Carol” is a modest work and “The Seafarer” is a modern masterpiece.
After a meandering opening 45 minutes, “The Seafarer” settles into an alcoholic poker game among five Irishmen. The game takes place in the home of Richard Harkin, an irascible old man recently blinded in a freak accident. Currently living with him is his younger brother Sharkey, a rootless man struggling with much inner angst.
Joining the brothers are Ivan Curry, a comic bumbler who treats the Harkin house as a home away from home, and Nicky Giblin, a handsome lay about now married to Sharkey’s ex wife. Nicky brings along the well-dressed and well-spoken Mr. Lockhart to join others for the evening.
Unknown to Richard, Ivan, and Nicky, Mr. Lockhart is the Devil, come to collect Sharkey’s soul for a favor rendered 20 years previously. Mr. Lockhart confidently intends to win Sharkey’s soul as the ultimate stake in a friendly card game.
The play’s premise sounds like a fantasy out of the Twilight Zone, but McPherson’s grabs the audience with the realism of his improbable tale. All the characters, including Mr. Lockhart, are so richly etched that we accept each of them as a credible individual, and the climactic poker game delivers all the suspense and tension of an engrossing supernatural mystery story.
Much of McPherson’s dialogue consists of rough and tumble backchat among aging men immersed in blighted lives. Gradually we get a group portrait of four losers blunting their sensibilities with endless transfusions of beer and liquor. They are drunks, but not slobbering drunks, the type who can be unendurable to watch on stage. These men hold their booze well enough to trade insults and comic barbs to mask the despair and futility of their lives.
Mr. Lockhart is not above taking his dram or two of liquor, but he is on a mission, sinister and evil beneath his surface bland good cheer. The shaken Sharkey asks Mr. Lockhart what Hell is like. The Devil responds with one of the most riveting and haunting monologues in contemporary theater, describing Hell as a place of such spiritual desolation and self-loathing that the audience shudders.
At the end of the play, McPherson injects a surprise plot reversal that suggests man has a shot at redemption in this world. Some viewers will welcome the plot twist as a satisfying upbeat ending to the story. Others will resent it as a gimmick out of sync with the spirit of the rest of the narrative.
“The Seafarer” does require the audience’s patience for much of the opening act. Nothing much happens until Mr. Lockhart transforms the atmosphere with his appearance. Until then we are witnesses to continuous bickering and small talk among four grungy, liquor soaked men who wouldn’t be worth knowing in real life. But from Mr. Lockhart’s entrance to the end of the evening, the play is pure gold.
Four of the five members of the cast are Steppenwolf company members. I have seen all of them for decades and I’ve never enjoyed a more complete, persuasive set of performances. This is ensemble acting for the ages.
First among equals is Tom Irwin as the malevolent Mr. Lockhart. In particular, his disquisition on the horror of Hell is time capsule acting. John Mahoney has never risen to greater heights as the curmudgeonly Richard, bullying and wheedling his way through the evening.
Francis Guinan is indelible as the tortured, barely articulate Sharkey, a man adrift in a sea of his own demons. Alan Wilder is a hoot as the comic Ivan, who may be next on Mr. Lockhart’s shopping list of the damned. Randall Newsome, the only outsider in the cast, is fine as Nicky, wandering through his life without a rudder.
With acting this good and storytelling this involving, one looks to the director as the hero behind the scenes. The company has brought former artistic director Randall Arney from the West Coast. Under Arney’s sensitive orchestration, the play’s blend of naturalism and the supernatural comes across with seamless inevitability.
The action unfolds in Takeshi Kata’s terrific ramshackle domestic interior, a littered environment of seedy furniture and discarded liquor bottles and beer cans. Janice Pytel designed the just-right shabby lower class clothing. Daniel Ionazzi’s lighting and the original music and sound effects by Richard Woodbury complete the production’s superb physical presentation.
As always in an Irish play, I didn’t catch all of the brogue-laden language, but Cecille O’Reilly does a solid job as dialect coach of keeping the lines accessible for the un-Celtic ear.
“The Seafarer” runs through February 8 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There are also several Wednesday matinees. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwoldf.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. Dec.2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com************************
Kafka on the Shore
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of “Kafka on the Shore” may be this season’s play that audiences either love or hate.
Frank Galati adapted the work from the 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The program notes commented about the novel “…readers looking to interpret the action through a rationalist framework will quickly find themselves overwhelmed and exhausted.” The same will be true for many viewers at the Steppenwolf, who may also find themselves frustrated and angry. Others will leave the theater exhilarated by the show’s dreamlike images and mind bending “what next” storyline.
“Kafka on the Shore” takes place in modern Japan, both on a realistic and a fantasy level. The spine of the plot is the journey of a 15-year old lad who assumes the name of Kafka. Why he takes the name of that famously elusive Czech writer is never explained. It’s just one of countless elements in the play the audience has to accept on faith.
Kafka flees his tyrannical father, a noted Japanese sculptor, and journeys through several encounters, some of them realistic and some of them fantastical. There is a second story stream in the play that traces the journey of Satoru Nakata, a 60-year old mentally challenged man. As a boy, he was a survivor of a bizarre event immediately after World War II in which a group of 16 Japanese children picking mushrooms in a forest unaccountably fall into a trance following a mysterious flash of light in the sky.
Then there is the appearance of Johnny Walker (yes, the famous whiskey icon), who turns out to be a killer of cats and may be Kafka’s father. He cuts off the heads of the felines and does even worse to their bodies, as graphically displayed in one horrific if funny scene. In another scene, Colonel Sanders (the fried chicken man) makes an appearance as a pimp. The colonel is the key to the search for the “entrance stone,” finally located within a Japanese shrine. Chalk up the significance of the stone as one more puzzlement in the play.
Kafka spends some time working in a library, hiding from police who want to talk to him about the recent violent murder of his father. Kafka finds himself wearing a T-shirt soaked with blood and no recollection of how the blood got there. He is befriended by another worker in the library and eventually has a love affair with the library manager, who may be his long lost mother.
The play is filled with bits and scenes that are accessibly comic or dramatic on their own, but do not seem to relate to other scenes. So for spectators who want their theater coherent, “Kafka on the Shore” will be maddening. I don’t recall any play that left so many plot loose ends unresolved. But the lack of narrative resolution does not lie with any ineptness by the novelist or Galati. Both the novel and the play are visions of a world that drifts between reality and what can be termed non-reality, an open ended existence that supplies no neat endings.
I’m firmly in the camp of audience members who find “Kafka on the Shore” imaginative, theatrical, dramatic, and fascinating. Having read the novel, I was prepared for the puzzles of the narrative. People will be best served by taking the play as it comes and make no attempt to arrange the events into a conventional story that connects all the dots.
The production is a visual abundance of lighting effect and sudden burst of sound. The staging brings all the Steppenwolf theater’s high tech capabilities to the eye and ear, including an elevator that allows characters and props to ascend and descend through a trapdoor in the stage. The action is conducted at stage level and also on a balcony high above the stage, giving the action vertical as well as horizontal energy.
Galati directs like a man who is confident of what he wants to show on the stage, even if his production may baffle literal minded customers. The script does get a little abstract toward the end, like the audience didn’t have enough to get their arms around without a lot of mysticism being thrown at them. But the language is often poetic and there are moments of lyrical eroticism, as well as classical music, philosophy, and pop culture references. All in all, a considerable feast for the open-minded spectator.
The 10-member cast draws heavily on Asian performers. Some of the acting is a little artless but the players all seem to know exactly what they are doing in the play and their assurance encourages the viewers to go along for the ride. Francis Guinan is a hoot both as Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders. Christopher Larkin is Kafka, a little old for the role and he often needs to project more strongly, but overall he delivers a solid performance. The remainder of the cast, most in multiple roles, consists of Christine Bunuan, Gerson Dacanay, Mary Ann de la Cruz, Jon Michael Hill, Aiko Nakasone, Andrew Pang, David Rhee (terrific as Nakata), and Lisa Tejero.
The design plaudits go to James Schuette (scenery), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), James F. Ingalls (lighting), and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman (sound sand original music).
“Kafka on the Shore” runs through November 16 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Thursday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 3p.m. There are also some Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. Sept 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
Superior Donuts
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—It’s the misfortune of Tracy Letts’s “Superior Donuts” to open right after the playwright’s “August: OsageCounty,” now riding the wave of national acclaim. Comparisons will be inevitable, to the detraction of “Superior Donuts.” But a play can be very good and not be as good as “August: OsageCounty,” and “Superior Donuts” is very good.
Superficially, the Letts play resembles another new play that recently opened at the Goodman Theatre, Bret Neveu’s “Gas for Less.” Both dramas are rooted in Chicago, each taking place in a small store that has seen better days as the neighborhood around it changes. Both look back nostalgically to a disappearing Chicago of mom and pop stores and a strong sense of community amidst ethnic diversity. But “Superior Donuts” is a much better play and it would be a shame if its many virtues were downgraded because it’s no “August: OsageCounty.”
The play’s title refers to a seedy little donut shop in Chicago’s Uptown area. The proprietor is a second-generation Polish immigrant named Arthur Przybyszewski. Arthur also is the store’s sole employee until a 21-year old African American named Franco bumptiously enters, answering Arthur’s advertisement for a store clerk.
Much of the first act is a funny series of exchanges between the diffident Arthur, who looks like an aging hippie, and the brash Franco. There are also encounters with a pair of police officers come to inspect the damage caused by vandals who broke into the shop just before the play begins.
An outgoing Russian named Max owns a DVD store next to the donut shop and wants to buy Arthur’s place to expand his own business. A bag lady named Lady appears each morning to start her daily routine consuming one of Arthur’s donuts.
The play shifts from comedy to melodrama with the appearance of Luther and his henchman Kevin, a pair of hard-case bookies who seek payment from Franco for a huge gambling debt.
Beneath Arthur’s mild manner the man is sublimating some serious emotional baggage, partly centered on his broken marriage and his alienated daughter and partly connected to his father’s rejection after Arthur fled to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam War. Arthur suppresses his psychic wounds until he finally takes a stand to redeem his personal sense of worth with a grueling fight late in the play.
“Superior Donuts” touches a lot of theatrical bases. It’s funny, sometimes poignant, occasionally wistful, builds to a crescendo of violence, and ends with a sense of loss modified into redemption and an acceptance that the past belongs to the past.
The play is presented realistically, but periodically Arthur addresses the audience directly from a dimmed stage, a device that could be artificial and mood breaking but in fact effectively works to allow the audience a glimpse into Arthur’s soul. It might be argued that Franco is a little too articulate and witty for a young inner city product with limited education, but the character remains credible, and his scenes with Arthur flow with assurance, humor, and some intensity.
If “August: OsageCounty” is a turbulent symphony of a drama, then “Superior Donuts” is a chamber work, smaller in scale but still with resonance beneath its deceptively simple surface. The prestige of Letts’s name and the merits of the play should earn the script a life beyond its Steppenwolf run. But future producers would do well to retain the present cast in its entirety. Under Tina Landau’s spot-on direction, the ensemble creates a set of flawless performances.
Michael McKean doesn’t play Arthur, he IS Arthur, mild manner and yielding on the outside but wrestling with his demons within. It’s an understated performance of enormous nuance and droll humor. Jon Michael Hill is McKean’s perfect foil as the ambitious and outspoken but inwardly vulnerable Franco. Yasen Peyankov is just right as the Russian with a relentless determination to acquire his portion of the American dream.
A half dozen supporting actors all make major contributions. Robert Maffia is both human and chilling as the bookie who wants his money from Franco, or else, with backup from his flunky, played by Cliff Chamberlain. Jane Alderman is funny and heartbreaking as the bag lady. Kate Buddeke is fine as the lady cop who has eyes for Arthur. James Vincent Meredith is her partner, a black man with a passion for “Star Trek.” And in a funny cameo, Michael Garvey plays the massive young Russian Max brings in to supply some muscle in the big fight scene in the second act.
All the action takes place in Loy Arcenas’s wonderfully atmospheric and detailed shop interior. The physical production is further enhanced by Christopher Akerlind’s lighting, Ana Kuzmanic’s costumes, and the sound design and original music by Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen.
“Superior Donuts” runs through August 17 at the Steppenwolf Theatre,1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $68. Call 312 335 1650.
The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2008
For more information about the show, visit www.steppenwolf.org.
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
**************************
Carter’s Way
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—In 1935, this country was bogged down in the Great Depression, but Kansas City was booming. It was a town wide open under the control of Democratic Party machine boss Tom Pendergast, who controlled the thriving entertainment scene, notably the many jazz clubs playing the swing music that was sweeping the United States, a music partly spread by live radio broadcasts from the KC clubs and by recordings of such jazz giants as Count Basie, a Kansas City home boy.
That’s the historical and cultural background of “Carter’s Way,” a new play written and directed by Eric Simonson at the Steppenwolf Theatre. At the heart of the play is Oriole Carter, a headstrong black jazz saxophone player who lives only for his music. “Carter’s Way” is thus partly a portrait of a self-destructive genius. It’s also about a doomed interracial love affair leading to the all too predictable violent ending.
Most of the play takes place in a Kansas City jazz club called the Planet Mars operated by Peewee Abernathy, a black man trying to navigate the treacherous waters between the demands of the white world of payoff-expecting gangsters and his temperamental saxophone star. Carter is so self-involved he refuses to make records or perform on those live radio hookups, an eccentric rejection of the two most prominent paths to fame and fortune for black jazz musicians in the 1930’s.
Carter’s already unsettled life takes a fatal turbulent turn with the appearance of Eunice Fey, a young white woman attached to crime henchman Johnny Russo. Eunice dreams of becoming a professional singer. She immediately falls in love with Carter in a society that sends black men to jail for the most casual contact with white women. Once Eunice enters Carter’s life, the audience knows the musician is tagged for destruction. Eunice abandons Russo for Carter and the viewer knows it’s just a matter of time before the thug appearance to take his revenge. So the narrative turns into a “when will it happen” suspense play that distracts from a more significant exploration of race and this country’s abuse of its talented artists and the artists abuse of themselves.
“Carter’s Way” starts slowly and by the intermission it hasn’t accomplished much beyond establishing the main characters. The intensity ratchets up in the final act, leading to the anticipated violent finale. The main storyline revolves around the Carter-Eunice love affair and raises the question, Why didn’t Carter leave town with Eunice before Johnny Russo realized what was happening? That would have made sense but would also leave Simonson with no second act.
The narrative may have major credibility problems, but the production does what it can to make “Carter’s Way” work. James Vincent Meredith is a sexy, dominating Oriole Carter, the man who stands alone, scorning the friendship and good advice of people who want to help him.
As Eunice, Anne Adams evokes a young woman knocked around by life while still retaining a sense of innocence. Adams’s Eunice is both winsome and determined and even sings a more than decent blues when called upon. Keith Kupferer takes on the standard thug role as Johnny Russo but creates a convincing portrait of a man who yearns to rise to the top in the rackets but lacks the imagination to win the respect of the city boss. Russo is a repellant figure but there is also a pathos to the character who ends up as consumed by events as Oriole Carter.
K. Todd Freeman is exemplary as Peewee Abernathy, a kind of Greek chorus who watches the narrative take its tragic turn with bemused resignation. Ora Jones, as always, is excellent, this time as Carter’s pianist and arranger, a woman who loves Carter futilely and angrily.
Robert Breuler plays Boss Jack Thorpe, the Pendergast figure, as a cultivated man growing weary of fighting off a crusading district attorney. Breuler’s Boss Thorpe senses that the times are changing and his crime days may be numbered. He doesn’t understand or like jazz, but if there is money to be made from the music, Thorpe will tolerate it.
The Steppenwolf production is outstanding, both visually and aurally. Neil Patel’s scenic design features an accumulation of authentic looking props to place the audience realistically back in the music joints of Kansas City during the Great Depression. The costumes by Karin Kopischke further enhance the show’s 1930’s look. Darrell Johnson composed the original jazz score, flawlessly faked by the Meredith and Carter’s on stage band.
As a slice of Americana “Carter’s Way” has its attractions. But the final tragic outcome is telegraphed so obviously that the plot undercuts what could have been a resonating exploration of America at a certain time and place when revolutionary music was being created in spite of racial prejudice and the evils of organized crime.
“Carter’s Way” runs through April 27 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with 3 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $20 to $68. Call 312 335 1650.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
For more information: www.steppenwolf.org March 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
********************************
Good Boys and True
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO- 'Good Boys and True' at the Steppenwolf Theatre is a jumble of ideas in search of a coherent drama. Once author Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa decides what kind of play he wants to write, he may come up with a meaningful play that holds together much better than the present version.
'Good Boys and True' is set in an elite Jesuit boys prep school in suburban Washington, D.C., in 1988. We learn at the outset that St. Joseph's is a very upper crust school, oozing wealth and privilege. The boys all plan to move on to Ivy League colleges and then take their place among the movers and shakers of American society, if not of the world.
Among these anointed students is Brandon Hardy, a 17-year old senior with two successful doctors as parents and an early acceptance at Dartmouth College in his pocket. Like the other lads at St. Joe's, Brandon has it made, until a videotape is discovered at the school portraying an anonymous young man having very explicit sex with a girl. The male in the video looks very much like Brandon from the rear. At first Brandon denies he¹s the guy in the cassette, but the news of the film spread throughout the school and, as copies of the video circulate, a full-blown scandal erupts.
To this point, 'Good Boys and True' seems to be a cautionary tale about the morality, or non-morality, that becomes part of the culture of the wealthy and privileged. These young men think they can get away with anything, including exploiting a female for sexual diversion, expecting their school and family and connections to form a safety net around them.
Brandon did a terrible thing, but as much as he manipulated the unknowing female partner of the video, he was manipulated by his father and was victimized by his school athletics coach. Those manipulations extract the fangs from a potentially disturbing examination of how wealth and privilege can morally corrupt young men, which was the best thing the play had going for it.
By the end of the evening, the play has descended to a family tale about a sterile marriage that passed on bogus values to the only child, leavened by a sense of injustice that had been lurking for 27 years, waiting to break out. The spectators leave the theater not sure what they were supposed to take from the play.
There are difficulties on the dramaturgical level. Brandon's best friend is a homosexual (the term 'gay' wasn't current in the late 1980's) named Justin Simmons, a tortured but articulate and cynical young man and an engaging character, but his relationship with Brandon seems muddled in the larger scheme of the play's narrative.
We meet the girl in the video twice, once in a flashback when Brandon picks her up at a mall, and then after the fact when she has been identified as the female half of the video sex escapade. Based on these two glimpses, it's difficult to accept that this savvy, blue collar girl would make the equivalent of a stag movie with a young man she's known for only a couple of hours, no matter how dazzled she was by Brandon's pedigree at St. Joseph's.
The performers give the play their best shot, led by Martha Lavey as Brandon's mother, trying to make sense out of a senseless scandal that could ruin her son's life. Kelli Simpkins gets in some nice wisecracks as the mother's sister and Kelly O'Sullivan does what she can with her two scenes as the victimized girl.
On the male side, Stephen Louis Grush looks a little old as the teen-aged preppy Brandon but he makes the lad credible enough. John Procaccino is strong as the coach until he reveals his plot twist, at which point I stopped believing in the character. Tim Rock, who bears an eerie resemblance to actor Steve Carrell, does very well as Justin Simmons, the most complex character in the play.
Pam MacKinnon directs with unforced realism but she can't paper over the potholes in the storyline. Technical credits are fine from Todd Rosenthal (set design), Nan Cibula-Jenkins (costumes), Ann G. Wrightson (lighting), and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen (original music and sound).
'Good Boys and True' runs through February 16 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There will be 2 p.m. matinees added on January 23 and 30 and February 6. The show gets a rating of three stars.
For more information: www.steppenwolf.org Jan, 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.