The Theatergoer

"The Big Meal" at American Theater Company on 2/7/11 in Chicago, IL

2011-02-07T19:31:00.000-08:00

In "The Big Meal," a new play by Dan LeFranc receiving its world premier at the very exuberant American Theater Company, a father tells his daughter who is about to get married that "you will encounter storms and hail but eventually it will pass." The play bills itself as 75 scenes about a family in 75 minutes, fragmented in a way that reflects fragmented life in a contemporary society. I don't know about that: there are a lot of scenes indeed and there is tension in the family but the play itself is linear and the family is no more fragmented than any of the memorable families in American theater. Instead, it's about a couple, tracking them from the moment they meet in their youth to the end of their lives. The play follows their life together, through storms, through hail, but that all passes.

At first, the scenes are short and move quickly, requiring intensive acting if it's going to inspire pathos. Peggy Roeder, who plays the mother-in-law of the woman at the center of the story and then the woman herself, is fantastic. She has the acting chops to pull that off. As the play develops, scenes lengthen, which seems necessary to create the depth the play needs as it shifts from comedy to drama. Phillip Earl Johnson plays partner to Peggy Roeder and his performance is centered and varied.

On opening night the acting wasn't even but it was often excellent. The best acting was spotlighted during moments when death is announced. The play is centered around meals at the dinner table(s), as the title suggests, and the drinking takes place out of empty glasses but the arrival of real food means death for the character who gets to eat the actual meal. These moments are the most beautiful in the play. As the final meal is served, it is served to the husband and Peggy Roeder's repetition of "Sam. Sam. Sam." signals that despite the storms and hail that we've witnessed in their marriage, at the end of the marriage they had weathered the storm.

"Brief Encounter" by Kneehigh Theatre at Studio 54

2011-01-21T16:47:00.000-08:00

"Brief Encounter" is one of the most magical theatrical experiences I've ever had. By the British company that did "A Matter of Life and Death," another magical theatrical experience, "Brief Encounter" is a play with live music on stage and film incorporated in the scenery. Based on the film by Noel Coward, it's the story of a married woman and married man (a doctor) who fall in love but know that they cannot be together because of their families. The film was produced in 1945 and the play attempts to recreate the beauty of the black and white cinematography.

The wife is married to a man who trusts her completely but their marriage is one of politeness. Politeness is a very contained thing but when she falls for the doctor she describes their love as a violent thing. Still, she is committed to her family: her husband and two children. When sneaking around leads to nothing but pain and embarassment, the doctors realizes that they must end the relationship. He tells her that it will be the end of their spending time together but not the end of their loving each other. For Coward, a gay man living at a time when it was not ok to be gay, this served as a metaphor for the love he must have felt for men but couldn't act on or nurture. All of the sadness of his situation is represented in this play. The sadness is at its height when, during their last moment together, their goodbye is interrupted by a chatty friend. The wife says that it was cruel of fate to be against them even in those last few minutes, their goodbye eventually being nothing more than his hand on her shoulder. Imagine love being able to express itself only in so poor a gesture.

The story itself is beautiful but the production's spectacle is equally wonderful. In the opening scene, standing in the aisles of the theater rather than on stage, the man yells to the woman that he loves her deeply and knows that she loves him too. She tells him that she loves him but can't stay with him and must go back to her family. Then, her husband's voice begins to call to her from the stage and, at that moment, one notices a large blank movie screen on stage. A black and white image of her husband appears and fills the screen as he pleads with her to come home. She looks at him and runs away from the doctor. She leaps on top of a couple chairs and tables and up to the stage, running into and disappearing behind the movie screen as her image appears on in the living room as she sadly looks back at the doctor. At another point the woman and the doctor sit at a table in the train station's cafe and laugh as they talk: they are falling in love. At the same time, a young musician on the edge of the stage sits back and mournfully sings a song called "Go Slow, Johnny." It's as though he sings it as a warning to the doctor as we watch them falling in love off to the right.

"American Idiot" at St. James Theatre on April 16th in NY, NY

2010-04-17T06:45:00.000-07:00

This show has it all: music by Green Day, an impressive urban set with lots of television monitors blaring news about all of Bush's fuck-ups, a car hung upside down with headlights on, a woman hanging from a trapeze, cute young nubile things, lots of fake tattoos, punk costumes, a very talented cast of youngins, no drama, a story unworthy of the music, no story, cast members strumming acoustic guitars and looking silly because its so forced, a sing-along at the end that no one seemed inclined to sing along with because half of the audience wanted to escape, a completely facile analysis of the impact of global politics on American youth, a cheesy concept that is cheesily realized.

I wanted to leave the auditorium screaming half way through the second song but was in the middle of the row and so was stuck. "Hair" is playing right right around the corner and deals with the same themes much, much, much, much more effectively. This play was a waste of money and a 90 minutes I'll never get back. I think its made me like Green Day less. Now those songs seem to have lost their energy.

"The Shipment" by Young Jean Lee's Theater Company at the Mueum of Contemporary Art on March 28th in Chicago, IL

2010-04-15T22:19:00.000-07:00

"The Shipment" is a perplexing show that is highly entertaining, vexing, and clever. Although I never completely made sense of it, in fact maybe because I never made complete sense of it, it left me thinking for a long long time. The playwright, a young Korean American woman, says in her artist statement that she's writing about black identity-politics. Obviously a dangerous thing to do as a non African American but why not? The question is whether or not she's been successful in saying anything new and coherent.

The play is divided into four sections: the first is a dance performance that records various styles of African American vernacular movement; the second is a stand up routine by an African American comic; the third is a series of scenes about a black child who becomes a drug dealer, goes to jail, and makes it big as a hip hop artist; and the fourth is a 30th birthday party for a man who seems to have it all but wants to die and take his friends with him.

In the second section, the comic tells the audience that he's going to say confrontational things about racism and that they should leave if they don't like it. He conflates jokes about race and sex that cross the line of what's acceptable in a way that reflects the same line we often see real comics tow. He manages to go just over the line while most comics tend to step just on the line. The audience laughs for the most part, finding it unbelievable that they can experience such tasteless things funny. Near the end of the routine, he says that while white folks complain that black folks whine about race too much white people are the biggest whiners there are. "They whine by saying things like 'I had a terrible day at work today,' 'My job doesn't fulfill me.'" In other words, they complain about problems that many other people would be thrilled to have. They whine about the state of their existence rather than their existence. As a friend always says to me, those are high class problems to have.

The third section chronicles an African American boy's decent into drug dealing, his imprisonment, and his eventual rise as a rap star. The acting is highly stylized, as though middle school students were doing the acting. And every moment of the section is comprised of cliches -- about the violent schools that African Americans grow up in, their being coerced into dealing drugs and fighting with other drug lords, getting famous by rapping about killing cops, and getting rich and dating women who want to spend their money and demand sexual pleasure at the drop of a hat. While the second section left audience members perplexed, the third section left many people angry at this depiction of African Americans.

The final section is the only one that had a set. Five black folks are at a party celebrating a 30th birthday. Slowly, we realize that each person is a bit of a stock character and we notice increasingly that they're whining about the things that the comedian had joked that white people whine about. Eventually, the characters play a game called "library" and we realize that the black actors are playing white characters. During the game of "library" a woman writes a joke on a piece of paper that clearly titillates her but that she knows she shouldn't think is funny, thus mirroring the audience's feeling while watching the second section. When the characters read their racist jokes, the vegan in the group protests that he's uncomfortable playing the game and doesn't believe that they would be playing it if black people were present. One of the characters replies "Depends on what kind of black person it was." Of course, the truth of the matter is that black people are present (the actors, after all, are black) and one has to wonder what kind of people they are to be in such a play. The equivalent of the racist stereotypes recorded during the game "library" had been presented in the third section by black people and with black people present.

I talked with friends after the show who were incensed. They are the ones whom Young Jean Lee had invited to leave during the second section. I knew that I liked the play but I couldn't explain the apparent racism in it. I knew it was smart: the structure was tight, the dialogue clever. But I couldn't give an analysis that would appease my friends. Still, I felt that the play was alive, in a way that an August Wilson play isn't. Those plays are easy to like because we all agree on what is bad and what is good. Its themes reflect a past that we've struggled with and come to agreement on. This play seemed vital. I don't know if people would have found it less offensive had an African American written it. Maybe so. First voice and all. Either way, give me this over something that we've all come to agreement over.

"Taming of the Shrew" at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on April 14 in Chicago, IL

2010-04-14T21:19:00.001-07:00

First, let me say that this is by far the best production of "Taming of the Shrew" I've ever seen. It's critical of Shakespeare's script and the play within the play that we normally think of as "Taming of the Shrew" is more engaging than any I've ever seen.

"Shrew" of course, is a play within a play. The story of Kate and Petruchio is being performed for someone but the scenes that frame the play are almost always cut from the productions. For this production, Neil Labute, the consummate gazer on misogyny, has written new scenes that frame the play within the play.

The truth of the matter is that"Taming of the shrew" is incredibly misogynistic. Kate is a shrew because she knows that marriage means agreeing to become a man's property. Petruchio breaks her of her headstrong ways by starving her, preventing her from sleeping for days, keeping her in her dirty wedding dress for days, and keeping her from her family. Eventually, Kate accepts that the only way to eat is to do what her husband tells her. If he says it is day, then she agrees. If a second later he says it is night, then she agrees. In the play's closing scene, Kate preaches to the other women that they should always obey their husbands. In fact, they should lay their hand on the ground for him to step on. And then she lays her hand on the ground and he steps on it.

That is all typically played for comic effect and in this play much of it funny. However, at some point we realize that Kate is only pretending and the people who are so happy about her submission seem like the problem, not her shrewishness. By the time we get to the scene where Kate preaches to the other women, her repressed anxiety is palpable and incredibly sad. Disturbing even.

All of this works because of the Labute scenes that frame the play. There are somethings to dislike about them. They seem to go too far in search of humor at times. They even seem to explain the themes of the play too much. That much explanation is unnecessary since the directing and acting are so good that the point comes across anyway. Yet, this interpretation of the play, one that is critical of Shakespeare, needs the framing device for the commentary to work. Or rather, this way of doing it works. As the play entered its final 20 minutes I found myself almost anxious, wondering how the production would integrate this critique of sexism in the play considering where the script goes. Eventually, the framing device takes care of this surprisingly and effectively. I won't give it away but I'll say this much: there is a lot of talk about kissing in the play, both in Shakespeare's text (Petruchio thrice asks Kate to kiss him as a sign of her submission -- we won't talk about symbolism but I'm sure you get it) and in the framing scenes the woman playing Kate has some ambivalence about being kissed by the actor playing Petruchio. That kiss, the one that is asked for in the play and discussed among the actors, is important to the final scene of the play and it is the final commentary of the play.

"The Cabinet" at Redmoo Theater in Chicago on 3/6/10

2010-04-01T16:09:00.000-07:00

In traditional theater, one hopes for a production in which the art design is integral to the piece and beautiful in its own right but also somewhat invisible. In puppet theater, the mechanics of the performance is visible by necessity. For one, its impossible to ignore the people manipulating the puppets. Puppeteers have tried to make themselves somewhat invisible by covering their heads in black, wearing black clothes, and black gloves. My favorite puppet theater pieces, though, have left that convention behind and made the puppeteers visible.

"The Cabinet" is such a production. The set, which is a series of drawers in a cabinet that open and close noticeably, and at time magically, is manhandled by a group of puppeteers who are spookier than any of the puppets. I love the way contemporary puppet theater asks you to be aware of the puppeteers' presence and yet suspend your disbelief. In this production, the puppeteers create the dark and somber mood of the play, making it scary even. That they so visibly control the puppets and the various drawers of the cabinet reflects the theme of the play nicely.

In the play, which is based on the 1919 film "The Cabinet of Dr. Callagari," a film I've never seen, a somnambulist (a wonderfully somber word that is fun to hear and say) goes to a mental institution hoping to overcome his condition. Instead of providing help, his doctor uses the protagonist to satisfy his own curiosity about how thoroughly one can control a somnambulist. He leads the somnambulist to the extreme of murder, killing not only various strangers but also someone who seems to embody life and love, things missing from existence as a somnambulist.

"The Cabinet" is blessed with incredible art design, evident both in the cabinet that serves as its set, beautifully expressive puppets, and the puppeteers whose dress is as disturbing of their demeanor. They wear monocles that are bend and missing glass, which somehow makes them seem incredibly sinister. One of the puppets of the doctors has him as a short rotund man with little hands. The little hands lend him an air of the grotesque and encapsulates the cleverness of the design work. The show is not a home run, though. While it's a wonderful show, its theme seems somehow less developed than its mood. It's lots of fun to sit through and something that should not be missed because of its inventiveness but could stand to have a better developed narrative.

Why fund theater?

2010-04-01T16:05:00.000-07:00

I was asked to write a short essay about why the corporation I work for supports theater as a funder. This was my response. Since I have a theater blog, I thought I'd include it here:

As someone who manages the arts giving at a large corporation, I’m often asked why Boeing funds the arts. What’s behind the question, of course, is a query about how an aerospace company, centered on the work of engineers, benefit from communities having a robust arts scene. My response typically includes three reasons: the arts comprise a natural breeding ground for innovation, provides a civic service, and that beauty serves as a respite from an increasingly overcrowded life.

The innovation answer is expected. However, the kind of causality people imagine is not always what I intend. It’s true that the arts breed innovation and we need innovative workers to design our products but I also mean something else. Our communities need members to think in new ways if we are to respond productively to all the change the world is presently throwing at us. As we become an increasingly global society and experience a growth in international migration, we are experiencing an important shift in demographics all over the globe, whether in the United States, Italy, or South Korea. Other kinds of changes, in the earth’s climate and genetic engineering to name a couple, require a speedy response in new technology, behavior, and ethics. People will have to think differently to create these solutions. Innovation in the form of theater helps us strengthen those muscles. Last fall, I saw Richard Foreman’s “Idiot Savant” at the Public Theater in New York, a thoroughly abstract and non-liner piece of theater in which the characters take orders from a disembodied voice and consider the subjectivity of experience. It was, in a way, a completely non-sensical experience but the humor and acting talent kept one engaged enough to make it through. Like a Faulkner novel, this play asks you to give up on making meaning until it unfolds in its own time. This means choosing to remain engaged while not understanding. At some point if one is open and works hard, meaning emerges. Until then, though, you make your peace with what at first seems nonsensical. This is an emotional and intellectual exercise that theater makes possible and that serves us well as we try to take issues the world puts before us seriously and tackle productively. This skill and patience is needed in our communities but also in an increasingly diverse company.

Innovation then, serves the purpose of developing the workforce of the future but also a civic one. The second purpose, as I see it, is also civic in nature. Theater presents us with a picture of ourselves that we are often willing to encounter only with the distance the stage provides us. One of the special treats of living in Chicago is having the Hypocrites theater company among us. One of the highlights of their 10-year life was a production of Eileen Fornes’ “Mud,” a play about a hard working woman who cannot escape poverty due to a lack of education and the financial and emotional dependence of two men. This production protected the audience from the protagonist’s pain by placing the action in a glass box. The audience walked about the box to view the scenes, with a light bulb lighting up to alert the audience of the direction in which the next scene would be played. As an audience member walking around the box, one finds oneself trying to walk a little faster than ones neighbor in order to get a better view of the action. Near the end of the play, the protagonist tries to escape her situation. With an ax, she breaks the box and leaves, walking out among the audience. As she slowly walks among you, looking at you amazed, sweating, and exhausted, you realize that her pain has provided you entertainment (much like the evening news might) and that you have vied for position for the best peek into her pathetic life. Then the men pick up a gun, go after her, and bring her back in the box and again you realize that you’ve done nothing. This is, of course, a play and in a way nothing is to be done. However, it does implicate the audience about our response to poverty and violence. If someone were to tell us directly that we use often other people’s pain as entertainment and refuse to get involved, we are likely to be defensively shrug it off, maybe even getting angry at the accuser. However, when the argument unfolds in front on us on a stage, we accept it less defensively.

While my first two reasons are centered in civic benefits my third is purely personal but is, in my estimation, the most important. The arts provide the opportunity to experience beauty in a world where the work day keeps getting longer and where we have less time for leisure. Rejuvenation is important for productivity and our souls, a word we often think too slippery to use in public discourse, and Americans turn to theater more than any other performing art form for that rejuvenating experience. That beauty might reside in the sharpness of an idea engendered in the story on stage, the sound of a voice, or the colors and textures of art design. In Josh Schmidt’s and Jason Loewith’s musical adaptation of Elmer Rice’s dark play, “The Adding Machine,” which received its world premier at Chicago’s Next Theatre, there is a moment when a husband and wife who have come to loathe each other remember better times during the song “Didn’t We” that is engrossing both because of the emotional content and the register of the actors’ voices. In Mary Zimmerman’s “Eleven Rooms of Proust” at Chicago’s Lookingglass Theatre, one loses oneself each time one enters another room filled with beautiful costumes, lighting, set, and words. Living a meaningful life, or perhaps living well, requires working productively, living in consort with ones neighbors, and experiencing beauty. Few of us do any of those as much as we want but our society rarely publicly recognizes the benefits of the third enough.

"The Pride" at the Lucille Lortel Theater in NY

2010-03-27T07:57:00.000-07:00

Set in 1958 and 2008, "The Pride" involves two threesomes: a pair of men who love each other a woman who mediates that love (maybe mediates is too strong a word but her existence certainly makes them possible). The "NY Times" review of this play sees it as a rumination of gay identity -- now and then. I, however, see it as a play about internalized homophobia among gay men (and perhaps gay women) -- the source of it and the way it plays itself out, both in the gay men and the people who surround them.

One of the 1958 men is a writer who has remained single and sleeps with men in seedy settings, which is to say the only place he can get it. The other is married but falls in love upon meeting the writer. They sleep together for a few months. The writer, upon finding love, realizes that his sexual desire is not the result of perversion but instead part of something more whole than, until now, couldn't be expressed more wholly. The married man, afraid of being seen as a pervert and giving up his "perfect" life, tries to empty himself of sexual desire but fears that the emotional desire will still remain.

In 2008, the two men are a couple: one who goes to parks to suck the dicks of closeted married men who express their sexual desire and self loathing simultaneously in those hookups and the other is repulsed by his boyfriend's behavior. His repulsion comes less from the boyfriend having sex outside the relationship and more from his detached sex with men who clearly abhor him. In one scene, he walks in on the boyfriend having sex with a prostitute dressed up as a Nazi.

The two stories of the gay men are incredibly moving. Also important is the story of the women, especially the wife in 1058. In a lovely but passionless marriage, she witnesses her husband fall in love with another man and is imprisoned in the lie of a marriage. When she finally acknowledges what has happened between her husband and her friend, she says that what upsets her the most is knowing that she has never experienced the passion that she'd witnessed between the men. This is a complex and fascinating moment. Homophobia is largely responsible for her husband's lie: he fears being ostricized. She is part of larger society that abhors gay men and women. At the same time, her husband has a choice and can, upon realizing who he is, choose to leave her. That choice would be an abandonment and a gift. Or, perhaps, just the best of a series of bad options.

I found the script to be beautifully and smartly written. Hugh Dancy ("Black Hawk Down" and "Jane Austin Book Club") and and Ben Winshaw ("Perfume" and "Bright Star") are excellent as the two couples, as is Andrea Riseborough, who plays the wife in 1958 and the best friend in 2008. The art design is also beautiful. The set is smart but not flashy. The lighting design is beautiful: it's amazing what some white lights and cigarette smoke can do.

This play is Alxi Kaye Campbell's first script and I can't wait to see what comes next.

"Desire Under the Elms," at the Goodman Theater on 2/24/09 in Chicago, IL

2009-03-01T11:07:00.000-08:00

This is, by far, the most successful production of "Desire Under the Elms," I've ever seen. A number of years ago I saw the Court Theatre's production with a mixed cast that created an additional layer of meaning to the text that I liked very much. For me, though, there is always a nagging issue with the productions I've seen: I never believe the attraction of the new wife and the son. Without buying into that passion, it is impossible to connect emotionally to the tragedy in the play.

There is much to like about this production: the barrenness of the landscape as conveyed by the boulders on stage, the house that is taken apart and put back together in various ways, the strong acting across the board, etc. Bob Falls has taken care of the problem of conveying the sexual excitement of the couple by invoking the audience's sexual excitement. The son is shown undressing slowly and he lingers naked while getting in his bath. Similarly, the new wife lingers as she undresses for bed. On one level, we get to watch them peek at each other naked. At the same time, we get to see that nudity and it moves us. Thus, we can easily buy into their passion. This is accomplished largely by the way Falls uses their nudity. Of course, it's also only possible because they really are fine actors.

I won't go into it but I will say that this is a production with a concept. Sometimes concepts serve as a distraction. In this case, the concept is in accord with the play's themes and makes them clearer. In a way, this play ends as it begins, with men pulling big pieces of rock in a quarry. the opening image conveys something about the place we'll be seeing during the play. At the end, it's a description of the character's life and leaves us with a powerful, and moving, closing image.

"Our Town" at Lookingglass Theatre on on 2/22/09 in Chicago, IL

2009-03-01T11:03:00.000-08:00

Ehh...

"Five Days in March" by chelfitsch on 2/21/09 in Chicago

2009-03-01T10:19:00.000-08:00

chelfitsch is a Japanese theater company that uses the vernacular everyday language and pairs it with movement that is created from unconscious gestures used in conversation. I loved this show but can't say that I got it. Any piece of art that is immediately accessible is something of a disappointment to me and so the somewhat inaccessibility of this piece didn't bother me. It's the kind of thing I'd like to see again to try to make more sense of. While a few people did walk out during intermission, this might be a very exciting piece for those of us who value experimentation and are comfortable with ambiguity.

The play tells three related stories that are conveyed through a series of fragments. Thus, three tales are being spun at once but the audience doesn't get a sense of completion until the end of the play. The language is very much the vernacular of young people -- perhaps teenagers or folks in their early 20's. The play's inhabitants all have part time jobs and live with the ironic sensibility of youth (for example, they purposely go to see bad movies). The first story is about a young man who meets a girl at the movies whom he likes. She, like him, is odd and knows it. They clearly like each other but don't know quite how to talk to each other. In talking about the music in the movie they've just seen, he thinks out loud about his opinion, not being attached at all to these opinions. He's talking as though he has some authority but really has none. The girl, however, takes his opinions as signs of his disinterest and goes home feeling that she's blown it. Having suggested that they meet at a concert the next night, she thinks he has rejected her and thus doens't show up but he does. A friend who has accompanied that young man meets a different girl at the concert. They hit it off and rent a sex hotel room for five days, as referenced by the title of the play, because that's what they can afford. They fuck dozens of time, sometimes with condoms and other times without, and go their separate ways at the end. She's not happy to separate forever but is afraid to say so. At the same time, two boys are participating in a protest rally and march against America's invasion of Iraq. One boy is happy to be in the periphery (he's not a hard core protester, he says). In all three stories a potentially successful friendship is eclipsed by a lapse in communication.

The action of the play is conveyed almost completely through storytelling. Whether the characters are speaking directly to the audience, to each other, or an imaginary audience of friends is uncertain. Perhaps it's all three. Every now and then, one of the actors seems to embody a partucular character but which character is embodied by which actor changes over time. Two different actors take turns playing the boy who is held up in the sex hotels for five days, for example. While the actors might be speakig directly to the audience, the feel of the storytelling is not like a docudrama. Not like a "Laramie Project" with a journalistic feel. It's rather like overhearing a conversation. In fact, it even feels differently than a narrator who tells parts of a story directly to the audience.

While the plays uses the vernacular of youth speak, the blocking is close to movement (or dance). These gestures, collected and reworked by the director, are raised to the level of movement (which I'm using as a dance term to emphasize the choreography of an individual). Thus, in a way, the actors are dancing while speaking. It would be inaccurate to say that they are dancing but they are certainly choreographed. The intersection of this choreography with dialogue makes for the sense of tis piece but also its peculiarity. Gesture, of course, always accompanies dialogue. But in this piece the movement accompanies the dialogue but often not at the places where tey would typically intersect. It's sort of like starting the sound in a film 10 minutes after the images start to roll. There's a relationship between what is seen and what is heard but they don't feel quite synced up. As a result, one pays more attention to both the language and the movement because one tries to sync them in one's head. It's a similar kind of work is that required to bring the fragments of the storytelling together into one coherent narrative.

"Art" at Steppenwolf Theatre on Feb. 15th in Chicago, IL

2009-02-17T19:34:00.000-08:00

This production of Yasmina Reza's play is incredibly well acted. It's not the kind of acting where people cry, scream, or argue (though they do those things) but the kind of acting that brings out strengths of a script that are otherwise easy to miss. And this is a tightly structured script that continuously circles in on itself, revealing progressively more each time it makes a turn.

In the play, Serge has bought an incredibly expensive painting that his best friend, Marc, is inexplicably pissed about. This argument escalates to include Ivan, the third in a close friendship, and the three decide to call it quits. In the first three scenes of the play, we witness three discussions about the painting, a white canvas with white diagonal lines, that show how differently each of the men see the painting, or rather the value each man puts on art. One is excited by the novelty of style, the other sees it as pretension, and the third as something whose ownership might cause happiness. Each man invests his own feelings to construct a meaning of the painting. One sees the excitement of modernity, components of the ridiculous contemporary art world, and an opportunity for comfort and happiness.

As the play progresses, the analysis of our relationship to art is extended to our human relationships. In the way that art can be a white canvas that absorbs and reflects our histories, so can ay interaction in which we engage. On one level, how we see others is determined by our own psychological make-up. On another level, what we think about ourselves is determined by how we believe others see us. As the scenes play themselves out, Reza's script goes deeper and deeper and we learn increasingly more about each man and his relationship to the others and the world.

What starts off as a someone intellectual unfolding shifts into a very human one. At that point, the audience made a collective gasp. It's never a complete shift, though. The intellectual continues throughout.

For me, the script is the star of the show. I was astounded from the very start. However, I've seen the play before and, while I liked it, I was never terribly impressed. The acting, which isn't exactly understated nor showy, makes that possible without drawing attention to itself. It was the most interesting script I've seen at Steppenwolf in many years. While not as fun as "August, Osage County," in my book it's a more interesting script because it has a philosophical underpinning that is lacking in "August."

"The Hairy Ape" by the Hypocrites on Feb. 11 in Chicago, IL

2009-02-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

Typical of Sean Graney's work, the new production of Eugene O'Neill's "The Hairy Ape" is impressive in the way that his art design always reflects the themes of the work so precisely. Having seen a number of shows in the Owen (the black box) at the Goodman, I was delighted to see a different use of the space. Graney recognized the potential of the space and put it to good use. Most other productions just use a lot of resources to make an impressive set. Graney, with more resources than is typically available to the Hypocrites, does not forgo meaning for spectacle. While the set looks wonderful, it's the spectacular use of the structural space that impresses.

The theater is rearranged so that the seats are where the stage typically is and the inside entrance of the theater is used for the set. Graney puts the physical structure of the entrance to good use. The ground floor becomes the bowels of the ship, the balcony the men's sleeping quarters, and the very top tier the ship's deck, where the passengers are both physically and metaphorically above the men who make the ship go, the subject of the play. Not only are the structural elements of the space made to serve the needs of the play but it also supports the themes, as reflected in the woman on deck being high up. At the end of the play Graney accuses the audience of being hairy apes. That reversal of roles is, of course, also reflected in the staging.

The play's plot involves a man who shovels coal into the boat's furnaces, allowing the boat movement. At the opening of the play he's happy with his position, believing that he allows everything that happens on the boat to happen through his work. His comrades present various ways of viewing their situation -- from Marxist social theory to personal comparisons made through memory. Yank, the protagonist of the play, laugh at their views of the world. He seems to suggest that he's the one in control and there's no need for complaining. When a young woman who imagines that she cares about the poor comes down to the broiler room and encounters Yank, she's repulsed and asks to be taken away. having been seen as an ape, Yank now sees himself similarly and he wants revenge.

The farther down the path to vengeance Yank gets the less articulate he becomes, more like an ape. Although he had seen himself as being above the rest of the world before, we see that he knows little about the world of Manhattan. His naivete leads to his inability to insult the denizens of 5th Ave. and to gain admittance into the radical group that would allow him his revenge. He ends up in a prison, a cage created by the merchants of industry, and eventually a zoo. At this point, Graney reworks the original script in a way implicates the audience, among other things that I won't mention.

Graney's production seems very matter-of-fact to me. It's a nicely unified production with information that is out out there rather than interpreted. I'm left with a number of questions, which are clearly raised in the play but a point of view, at least in thinking about it 18 hours later, are yet unanswered. For example, does Yank become an ape because he doesn't have tools to help him deal with the conditions of his life? He has neither a social theory than can help contain him not cherished memories to accomplish the same. Has he always been an ape and only now recognizing it, something that the production suggests is true of the audience? Or does the act of being seen generative? Perhaps Graney's point is to leave these questions unanswered, perhaps he answered them and I missed it, or perhaps he's not concerned with them at all. Whatever the answer, there is a lot to keep you occupied and an exciting and surprising production.

"Disfarmer" by Dan Hurlin at St. Ann's Warehouse on Feb. 1st in Brooklyn, NY

2009-02-05T20:57:00.000-08:00

"Disfarmer" is a puppet theater piece by Dan Hurlin. It is the story of a real life portrait photographer from Arkansas, Mike Myer, who claimed to have been born from a tornado. The tornado, he said, took him from his home in Missouri and dropped him off in front of the Myer house in Arkansas. Myer, he said, means farmer and since he is not a farmer, he changed his name to Disfarmer. His protography was apparently of some merit and there have been exhibitions of it of late. He was also, if you haven't already figured it out, quite an eccentric. This piece illustrates some of the pieces of his peculiar life.

I love puppet theater. For me, the fact that it never tries to be "realistic," in the way that plays might, and still manages to make you forget from time to time that you're watchng a production is astounding. When three or five puppeteers are manipulating the puppet and yet they all manage to be ignored, I think it's a minor miracle.

"Disfarmer" embraces that component of puppet theater. He lines up all of the components of the set and the instruments needed for sound effects across the front of the stage. The puppeteers place them on various carts that they roll around on stage, constantly moving things on and off the carts to constantly re-set the stage. The simplest of these movements can be quite lovely. When the piece opens, there are standing pictures of trees, houses, and buildings across three of the carts. While a live band of four musicians plays along the back of the stage, the puppeteers come on the stage and remove each photograph one at a time to expose a minitature tree, house, or building behind them. Then, drawings on plastic panels are brought out and laid out in front of or behind the carts to show the arrival and progress of a tornado. The entire scene is serendipitous and delightful. The puppets of Mike Disfarmer are wonderfully expressive and are dexterously manipulated by the puppeteers.

The best part of the production were the technical pieces: the puppets, the sets, the manipulation of the puppets, and the music. The least successful part was the story itself. While Mike Disfarmer's life is conveyed as an eccentric life of some seclusion, it doesn't all add up to much in the performance. I found my mind wandering many times because the story wasn't terribly engaging. The puppeteering, however, is riveting. It is reason enough to attend this performance. It's mezmerizing.

"The Investigation" by Urwintore at Chicago Shakepeare Theater on January 29 in Chicago, IL

2009-02-05T20:27:00.000-08:00

The set up for the production of "The Investigation," by the Rwandan theater company Urwintore, couldn't have been much more compelling. This company, comprised of Hutus and Tutsis, is performing Peter Weiss's play about the trials of Nazis after WWII. The horrible crimes perpetrated against victims in the concentration camps are described by Rwandan actors who might have fallen on either side of the genocide that took place in 1994. One doesn't have to see the play to understand its point: altough we say "Never again" about the holocaust, we clearly don't mean it. After all, nearly a million Tutsis were killed in Rwanda in '94.

For me, the specifics of the production are incredibly moving. Men and women who were on different sides of that fight were performing together. Imbedded in that action is the recognition of Hutu actors of the crimes they committed and perhaps a kind of forgiveness granted by the Tutsi actors. And, like I said above, having the representatives of another genocide read the lines of a play about the holocaust is itself a metaphysical accusation. As the actors speak their lines, they describe what may have happened to their family members or what their family members may have perpetrated on the families' of their fellow actors. It also obliterates time by connecting the two genocides.

The interesting drama of the production, however, was largely embedded in the production's metaphysical meanings. I found the actual thing lacking performative strength. The actors' delivery of lines rarely moved me and there was no dramatic arc. It felt like a reading of a play rather than a performance of a play. So, while the ideas infused in the creation of the production were fascinating, sitting through it was not.

"The Emperor Jones" by the Wooster Group at the Goodman Theatre on January 10 in Chicago

2009-01-12T17:37:00.000-08:00

This is a perplexing one. I liked this show very much but more for its performative elements than what I took away from it, which is to say that I loved sitting through it but not sure what the actual text in the play added up to.

"The Emperor Jones," by Eugene O'Neill, is about a black American man who escapes prison and flees to an island where, having convinced the natives that he's supernatural, he exploits them and amasses a fortune. It opened to rave reviews in 1920 and Paul Robeson starred in the 1924 revival. Eventually, it lost favor -- I don't know if that's because audiences began to think of it as racist or because it didn't hold up well.

The Wooster Group's production is truncated. There are only three characters: Jones, a tradesman, and someone who repositions the set and props and occasionally dances with them. From this production, I don't have a good sense of what the play in its entirety might be. It left me with an impression of the play rather than a knowledge of the script. My sense of it is that it's a play about an oppressed man who, when given the chance, oppresses others, suggesting that anyone who has access to power is capable of corrupting it. In this case, a black man in Jim Crow America goes to the Caribbean and oppresses other blacks. Like so many other Western imperialists, he uses the natives' belief in the supernatural to make them afraid and bend to his will. As his day of reckoning comes, however, his past returns in the shape of a "haunt" and destroys him. It's a true enough thing but is presented so succinctly here that I never had a chance to watch the argument develop.

All of this, of course, takes a back seat to the performative aspects of this production. The lead is played by a white woman in blackface. The tradesman, Smithers, is in kabuki costume. Everything about this productio is deconstructed. The set is bare and its machinations are laid bare for the audience: you see the sound guy you and see the guy arranging the props. He even participates in the action of the play, as if to point out that what happens backstage is indeed a part of a play. The lead's acting and movement are impressive. So is Smithers'. Both have amazing control of their voice and accents. They're incredibly expressive despite the extreme stylization of their accents. Jones' especially leaves an impression because she's imitating our mainstream culture's image what what Black vernacular sounds like (this is the way O'neill wrote his dialogue).

The blackface creates what seems like a never ending series of references that all turn in on one another. Rather than having a black actor play that role, is the Wooster Group suggesting that underneath all such oppression perpetrated by African Americans is a white person (African American slaves who owned other slaves, for example)? Or is this white woman in blackface pointing to O'Neill's authorship of the play and standing in for him- a white man criticizing oppression perpetrated by Arican Americans? The lead characer might be black but behind his crimes is the authorship of white O'Neill. Or does the blackface, like the kabuki, merely point out the layers of masks that we wear, as people and as performers? Or, is it there just to make us uncomfortable?

Even going into this performance knowing that the lead would be in blackface, one is caught offguard by it. One is incredibly uncomfortable at first but that discomfort begins to subsize after a while. In the end, what I think the blackface does is to accuse any white audience member of the continuing existence of the difference between the white "subject" and the colored "other." At the time that this play was a critical and commercial success, I suspect that it was largely seen by whites (though it did provide work for a lot of black actors and continues to do so) who got to look at the problem from a far and have opinions that made no difference in bringing about positive change for the people the natives of this island might represent. Implicit in this is a criticism that those black actors might as well have been white actors in blackface meant to entertain a primarily white audience. As one sits through this production as part of a laregley white audience, one has to wonder how blacks would experience this. Would you be comfortable if your black friends were sitting next to you in the audience? Or, maybe more to the point, is this something you think blacks could ever be comfortable sitting through? And if they would not, why are you sitting there?

?Macbeth" at Chicago Shakespeare Theater on January 9, 2009

2009-01-11T14:05:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite scenes in CST's new production of "Macbeth" is one in which Macduff's cousin comes to tell him that his family has been murdered. In the scene, the stage is bare. Macduff and Malcolm (the murdered's king's son who has fled to England) are strategizing when the news comes. The cousin who delivers the news is heavy hearted and sad as is Malcolm in hearing it. Macduff, as you might imagine, is devastated. I've seen this scene done a number of times and mostly seen it played unconvincingly as shock followed by sadness. in those instances, it feels like a scene intended only to deliver a bit of news that the audience needs to know. In this production, I saw moments of sadness that were very convincing. As the same time, even in this one scene, it went in and out of being convincing.

For me, all of "Macbeth" was like this. There were moments when what was happening on stage was unusually well done and authentic and times when actors seemed merely to be speaking their lines in ways that they think they're to be spoken. Karen Aldridge, who continues to wow me as an actor, gave a fantastic performance as Lady Macbeth. In her fist scene, in which Macbeth returns from victory, she is turned on by his new acquisition of power and gives him quite a loving. The connection between power and sexual excitement is established and Lady Macbeth's later taunting of Macbeth for not being a "man" when he shies away from murder for the sake of power makes more sense than I've seen it in most other productions. Or at least brings a different dimension to it. The "out, out, damn spot" scene is sad and scary. In the hands of Aldridge this scene feels fresh, like something I hadn't seen in quite that way before.

Macbeth is far less convincing. The actor, Ben Carlson, has a fine pedigree (having performaed a lot at the famous Shaw festival) and is, I assume, a very good actor. His performance here, however, wasn't careful enough. So much of this play is overwrought with emottion and here played at such a high pitch that there seems to be no nuance in the delivery of lines. Carlson is a steamroller. Macbeth's feelings about what he's doing shifts around constantly, from fear to anger to paranoia to happiness to fear to anger to paranoia, and this is not carefully tracked in Carlson's performence. Macbeth, of course, has the famous soliloguy about sound and fury signifying nothing and Carlson delivers it in a flat staccato that almost gets thre but never does. Smartly, he slows it down but doesn't bring meaning to the lines as convincingly. Compared to the almost equally famous Lady Macbeth's "out, out, damn spot" lines, his delivery was much less convincing.

When the play opened, the stage was a stark grey. I thought that might mean a production in which bells and whistles would give way to a careful treatment of the text. Thirty seconds into the play, though, I realized that wasn't going to be true. The art design is largely grey and black and takes its cue from S&M and seedy club culture. At times, this works very well. As the play opens, though, the voices of the three withches are electronically layered and echoed so that I couldn't understand what they were saying. Later in the show, though, when lady Macbeth is losing her mind she thinks she sees the bodies of Lady Macduff and her children hanging bloody. Light momentarily illuminate the bodies hanging upside down high at the back of the stage for a quick moment and it sends shivers up your spine. The contrast between the start grey and white of the set and this small spot of reds and pinks is effective. There are times when the stage effects of the production detract from the script and times when they enhance it.

All of this is to say that what happens is often exciting but also inconsistent. The direction never brings the elements of the production into a cohesive whole. There is a lot I liked a lot about this production and much that left me flat. The ideas in it work very well at times and there are times when the production has such integrity that I wish more care had been taken. having said all that, I liked it more than most straight productions of "Macbeth" I've ever seen.

"Cabaret of Desire" by Blair Thomas and Co. on Oct. 11 in Chicago

2008-10-18T15:25:00.000-07:00

"Cabaret of Desire" illustrates eight or ten pieces of writing, including letters, poems, and plays, by the celebrated Spanish writer Fredrico Garcia Lorca. It is an intimate collection of pieces that require concentration and a sensitive ear. For Lorca fans, the letters might prove particularly interesting because they are little known. Also, one of the anchor pieces, "Buster Keaton's Stroll," is an unproducable surrealist theater script that lends itself well to pupper theater.

As with all of Blair Thomas' pieces, the treatment of the literature is poetic. Thomas has an impressive ear for the poetry in language and translates it to the stage in a lovely way. The puppets are also wonderfully varied and expressive. One of the early pieces has puppets made out of shoes. The surprise of their creation is enough to command your attention. It's the somber mood of piece that sicks with you, however.

The final piece, "Buster Keaton's Stroll," is fantastic for its variety of puppets and technique. We see Buster Keaton as bunraku puppets of various sizes, as shadow puppets of various sizes, and as represented by a person. Each time a new version of Buster Keaton comes out, one is surprised and the result is wonder. At times the story is wacky and funny but mostly it makes little sense. At those times, it's the magic of Thomas puppetry that keeps you connected.

The pieces all seem to ruminate on existence in some way. I think I'd have to see it a second time to recall all of it, though. What sticks with me most are the moments of surprise, whether brought about by the language of Lorca or the puppetry. This show is a treat for serious fans of puppetry or Lorca's but it's not for the faint of heart or the uninitiated.

"War Horse" on September 27 at the National Theatre in London

2008-10-17T20:22:00.000-07:00

"War Horse" is the most commercially successful show in the National Theatre's history. A hit with critics and lay audiences alike, the show is in a sold out extended run. It is an adaptation of the Michael Morpurgo children's book by the same name. A story about a teenager whose beloved horse is sent off to the battlefields of WWI. Desperate to be with his horse, the boy joins the army so that me might search for the horse.

The horses in the play are created and operated by Handspring Puppet Company from South Africa. They are each maniulated by three puppeteers, two who are inside the body of the horse and one who manipulates its head. My favorite thing about puppetry is how transparent it makes the artifice of theater but how it still pulls you in emotionally. One can somehow be in the moment and still be aware that you're watching something that isn't real. The horse puppets look angry, afraid, and loving at different times. That puppet makers and puppeteers can make these contraptions resemble something with emotions is remarkable.

For me, though, the puppets were the only remarkable thing about the show. The story is what you might expect from a children's book -- a bit implausable and too much heroism. The boy loves his horse too much and that he risks his life to go find him is more than we should have to take. Still, the beauty of the puppetry makes it all worthwhile.

"Amadeus" on Sept. 17 at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre in Chicago

2008-09-17T21:09:00.000-07:00

At the center of Peter Shaffer's "Amadeus" is a triangle of relationships, among the anti-hero Salieri, God, and Mozart. Salieri tells us that he begged God to allow him to be God's servant. He wanted to be made a composer and God, he tells the audience, made him one. Then Mozart, an upstart 20-something, comes along and Salieri realizes that his own music pales in comparison to Mozart's. He is both deeply moved by Mozart's music and uncontrolably envious of his talent and what he believes will be the immortality of his music. He pleads with God to allow him to be the instrument through which God creates one piece of music comparable to Mozart's but it never happens. Consequently, Salieri goes into battle with God but does so by ruining Mozart's career.

Salieri is constantly surprised that God never stops him. Instead, Salieri continues to collect accolades and his fortune grows as Mozart grows increasingly poorer and sicker as the result of his cunning. Mozart, he tells us, is the instrument through which he does battle with God. By ruining Mozart, the true instrument of God's beauty, he is getting back at God. The play raises the question of how one sustains such a relationship with God? Can it ever be done but through our relationship with others? If Salieri says he is fighting with God, we only see the wounds manifested on Mozart's body. That is the issue with maintining a relationship with a disembodied being; that relationship can only be manifested in human form. God's stand-in is Mozart. He is the cause and the target of Salieri's, no matter what he calims his real motivations are.

In the end, it turns out that what Salieri wants most, if he can't have divine talent, is immortality. Fame he's got and it's not enough. And since he can't have Mozart's talent, he decides to at least settle for fame as the man who kills Mozart. It is reputed that Mozart might have been poisoned by Salieri. In his old age, he cries out Mozart's name and begs his forgiveness but all of this is done just to start rumors. Knowing that his servants will spread the story and that the townspeople are gossips, he counts on the rumors to culminate in the belief that he murdered the genius Mozart. Then he tries to kill himself but fails. He is the high priest of mediocrity, he tells the audience, and we are his followers.

This is a serious accusation against the audience. Like the noblemen in the play who never acknowledge Mozart's genius but worship Salieri's mediocrity, the audience is implicaed as being unable to recognize real art and relying on what is fashionale, a particularly salient point at Chicago Shakespare Theatre. As I sat in my seat and listened to the wealthy patrons who surrounded me in the theater (this was opening night and geared at funders), I knew that Schaffer was speaking directly to the audience, accusing it. People around me audibly shared their agreement when Salieri, who addresses the audience directly, spews forth the most obvious and inane claims about our lack of understanding of art. At the end of the play, he says that as the priest of mediocrity he absolves the audience of its own mediocrity. One has to wonder, though, whether he is a priest with any power to absolve us. Having Salieri absovle us is perhaps the most brutal accusation from the playwright. Schaffer allows us to see Salieri for the pathetic being he is over time. For a while we think he's funny, then we think he's dangerous, then we realize that he's failed himself in every way. Schaffer has no sympathy for him and in aligning the audience with Salieri, he's making an unsympathetic accusation of the audience. During intermission, an audience member was praising the performance of the actor playing Salieri. He commented that this actor's portrayal was so funny when it's usually so dark in other productions of this play. Well, it's a funny role and I've only ever seen it played that way. I think he must have confused the play with Milos Forman's movie. This kind of pretension is perhaps indicative of the behavior Schaffer is ridiculing.

I last saw a production of this play at the Wilma Theatre in Philadelphia a little less than two years ago. It was a highly stylized version done all in black and white with lots of patent leather clothes and boots, somewhere between baroque and punk rock -- the kind of production we might call edgy. Sadly, it was dull, dull, dull. While the director had gone to great lenghts to make it look oppulent and "edgy," he had spent too little time explorng the humanity and the play's themes. Thankfully, Gary Griffin hasn't fallen into that trap. The acting is very, very good and the direction emphsizes the humanity of the characters. The thing I've largely admired Griffin for is his reliance on the humanity of characters and the meaning of plays rather than relying on large production values, something Chicago Shakespeare Theatre itself is too often guilty of doing. I'm not sure why Barbara Gaines, the artistic director, chose this play. It's good but it certainly isn't timeless. Still, Griffin's production has a lot of integrity. He's chosen to stage most of it on the thrust so that the action takes place in the audience rather than on the proscenium, which would have distanced the action from the audience. And, in a play that suggests that the audience members are followers of Salieri the Mediocre, it seems appropriate that he's choosen such a staging.

"Hair" by the Public Theatre in Central Park on August 16 in NY

2008-09-15T21:35:00.000-07:00

I'm a huge fan of the movie "Hair" but I've never really taken the play seriously. I've credited my love of the movie to my love of the music, which I've always believed to be moving despite a fairly problematic script. I've also liked productions of the play but also found them problematic. They've always seemed like a hybrid between a concert and play. More of a conceit and less of a coherent play. And, again, it's mostly the music that I've found moving.

Turns out the the Public Theatre premiered "Hair" 40 years ago. Like "A Chorus Line," the play premiered at the Public and then went to Broadway. For its 40th anniversary, the theater included in its summer Shakespeare in the Park season with an electrifying production. It was very nearly flawless. This production was incredibly well-thought out. Meaning was wrung out of every lyric and every bit of dialogue and they were all organized into a coherent whole, something I've alays thought was impossible.

Leading the cast was Jonathan Groff, who played melancholy Melchor in "Spring Awakening." His performance as Claude had wonderful depth and integrity and he's an incredible singer. There are two other standouts. One is the woman who sang "Frank Mills" with wonderful vulnerability. Her voice is strong and sweet and by the time she gets to the end of the song, you know she's realized that Frank Mills is not coming back, not because he doesn't know where she is but because he doesn't care to. It's a sweetly sad moment. The other stand out is the guy who plays Woof, another fantastic actor and singer. The only disappointment, and it's not much of one, is Will Swenson who plays Berger. It's not that he's bad, it's just that he's not as strong as eveyone else.

I won't say much about the plot of "Hair" as we all already know the story. I will say that the second act is devasating. When the tribe goes to protest in front of the induction center, hoping to prevent Claude from showing up for the draft, they are frantic when they can't find him. Turns out that he's already inside and his fantasy about dodging the draft by becoming invisible has been transformed to mental illness from emotional strain and he comes to believe that he really is invisible. He goes off to war and, of course, is killed. At the end of the show, when the cast sings "let the sinshine in" it is a moving plead and a prayer to the audience to replace war with beauty and life. The woman who sanf "Frank Mills" weeps with pleading. As the cast leaves the stage, we're left with a dark and solitary image of Claude's corpse laying on an American flag.

But wait, there's more. The cast comes back for the curtain call with a refrain of "Let the Sunshine" and invites the audience up to the stage. Its meaning is transformed from a plea to end such violence to a celebration of life. The entire stage is packed with adience members, who are singing, dancing, jumping about, and hugging the cast members. The plea for life results in a manifestation of it in the theater. No one sitting in the seats leaves the theater until the very end. Instead, they sing at their seats (after all, it turns out we all know these songs and can sing along) while the others sing on stage. The show is transformed from an elegy to a celebration of life. I've never seen anything like it.

"A Day In Dig Nation" by Flying Carpet Theatre at PS122 on August 14th in NY, NY

2008-09-15T21:04:00.000-07:00

I find myself constantly attracted to and repelled by PS122. On the one hand, if you want to see something experimental, it's the first place one thinks to go. On the other hand, there's a damn good chance it's gonna suck. God knows, I've had my share of disappointment there. One puts up with all of the losses in hopes of seeing a great show every now and then. And that prince of a show makes up for all the frogs. Such is the name of the game.

"A Day In Dig Nation" is a one man show featuring Michael McQuilken. It opens with his parents arguing over what to name him. His mother insists on naming him Rex and his father insists that Rex is a dog's name. The father puts up a good and exasperatedly funny fight but is eventually beaten down by his mother. Each parent is just a voice coming from either end of the stage and poor baby Rex is just a pair of exaggerated and expressive eyes that moves from side to side, afraid and following the parent who is talking. It's a funny and entertaining start to the show.

Part of the joy of the show is McQuilken, who is good at comedy, drama, singing, and even tap dancing. Witnessing the opening, one fears he might be an actor with a schtick but I was pleasantly surprised by his range. Rex is a character who is emotionally cut off from the world. At one point he acts as someone's personal hero and when she tries to thank him, he shrinks from her attention, finding it impossible to believe that someone wants nothing else but to thank him. He's deathly afraid of her. Their conversation is the weightiest moment of the show and McQuiken handles it very well. He's more than a one trick pony.

The story itself chronicles Rex's exile from human emotion. He's surrounded by and in a way enveloped by technology. Instead of a set, the production has video projections that serve as the set. In one of the scenes, a man is trapped in a hiding place in a post apocalyptic world. He hears the calls of a woman who is desperately searching for another survivor of whatever catastrophe has caused the world's ruin. He can't bring himself to communicate with this woman and thus loses her, listening as she finds another male survivor and connects with him. This man might be a character from one of Rex's video games but it's also Rex. Thus, when the woman Rex has saved from drowning comes to thank him, one fears that Rex will not be able to talk with her.

This production was a mixture of hi tech sound and video, a solid, script, and good acting. It's a modest production, not slick at all. Yet, it's a winning combination and enough to get me to PS122 the next time I'm in New York.

"Fela!" on August 13th at 37 Arts in New York, NY

2008-09-13T16:46:00.000-07:00

This new musical is choreographed and directed by Bill T. Jones. The good news, which we pretty much could have guessed, is that the music and choreography are fantastic. After all, the music is Fela Kuti's and the choreography is by Bill T. Jones. The not-so-good news, which we also could have guessed, is that the direction isn't nearly as strong. The wild card is the book, which is written by Jim Lewis, who is presently working with The Civilians. Sadly, that's the weakest part of the show.

I could get into a discussion about the evolution of the jukebox musical and how it's led us to this place but I won't. I will say that the conceit of the play is that Fela is telling his life story at his final concert in Nigeria. His compound has been ransacked, his wives raped and beaten, and his mother murdered. The concert setting is a vehicle for Fela to sing his greatest hits and to put them in a political context. While this is an easy way to show off the music, it's a bit of a copout and doesn't make for very compelling drama. If there is a theme, and if there is it's not well developed, it's that in the face of political adversity we should keep our resolve and continue to fight the good fight. While the story is poor, I will say that I heard "Zombie" in a whole new way. The production wrung out the meaning of the song.

As someone writing a personal critique of the play, the weakness of the script matters. As a guy who just went to see it, it barely matters. The music is fantastic and it's a joy to hear it played and sung live. Bill T. Jones' choreogrpahy is impressive and lots of fun. In a way it reminds me of Ron Brown's choreography in its fusion of traditional and African and Western movement. While Ron Brown's accomplishment is that he combines African and African American movement seamlessly, Bill T. Jones' is that he adds geometry to it. If you're a fan of Afro-pop and dance, this show is a blast. I enjoyed it tremendously. From the reaction of the audience, I think the entire theater enjoyed it. And from the fact that it's been extended for a couple of months, I think people continue to enjoy it.

"Funk It Up About Nothin" at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre on July 19th in Chicago

2008-08-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

This is the second of Shakespeare's comedies that the Q Brothers have created, the other being "The Comedy of Errors." In the days of "updating" Shakespeare, the Q Brothers have done great service to these plays by adapting them as hip hop productions. First of all, this production was 90 minutes long instead of 3 1/2 hours. As far as I'm concerned, the only people who could possibly be interested in a full production of "Much Ado About Nothing" are Shakespeare scholars. For the rest of us, it's great to pare it down to just its basic plot because those are the entertaining parts of this play.

The medium of hip hop, at least as employed by the Q Brothers, works very well here. It's a bawdy story and their lyrics bring that out, the style of lyricism serves the battles of wit well, and it plays effectively with the rhyming couplets. The Q Brothers adaptation of the language is fantastic, often rewriting complete sections of dialogue but keeping Shakespeare's original text in pieces as well. It's a clever adaptation and the most fun anyone's had seeing this play in at least a century, I'm sure.

Some of the odd characteristics of this show are dealt with masterfully here. For example, the Q Brothers comment on the ridiculous series of disguises in the play by being over the top about them. It's as though they're purposely not even trying to be convincing. At the same time, the costumes take their basic form from hip hop fashion and make them more costumey. Talentwise, the woman who plays Lady B (Beatrice), is hysterical. She has that "three snaps in a Z formation" kind of attitude down.

One aside is the ever growing practice of adapting plays and musicals using hip hop. Oddly enough, but not surprising, is that the hip hop music itself is never very innovative or new. This music, while exuberant and tons of fun, felt like something the Fresh Prince of Bel Air would have made in the late 80's. It's nothing that a current hip hop musician would have written. This is the primary reason, I think, that the audience is packed but with people who don't really listen to hip hop. Be that as it may, there was a dj on stage. Whether she was spinning improvisationally, I don't know; I doubt it. nevertheless, this was a fantastic show. Highly entertaining, incredibly witty, and quite smart.

"The Lion in Winter" at Writer's Theatre on July 18th in Glencoe, IL

2008-08-21T20:32:00.000-07:00

Writer's Theatre's directors always pay such careful attention to scripts that they inevitably wring more meaning out of them than just about any other theater company in town would. Plays that I've never liked, I've loved when seeing their version. Frankly, the directors just seem smarter to me. It also helps that they attract the best actors in Chicago.

Seeing "The Lion in Winter" was a surprising thing here. I've seen the play before a couple time and seen the movie many times. Not unsurprisingly, Rick Snyder decided to downplay the camp humor and emphasize the pathos. As usual, the direction was careful and the acting first rate. However, I ended up feeling rather unmoved. Without the camp humor, the rest of the play didn't quite hold up. So, while I can't say I was enthusiastic about this production, it was more than solid and I realized that this play is primarily a comedy and can't stand up without it.

"The Last Days of Judas Iscariot" by Gift Theatre on July 5th in Chicago

2008-07-20T16:56:00.000-07:00

"Judas Iscariot" opens with Judas' mother recounting his suicide and burial. Judas, unsurprisingly, had been abandoned by everyone. She alone dug his grave and covered him with earth. People insisted that he was in hell but at the close of her monologue she declares, with equal parts pathos and equal parts anger, that Judas is in heaven. If Judas were not in heaven, she says, then God is unjust. At the end of the monologue, we notice Judas, humped over and drooling, on a stump in the front corner of stage right. It's a wonderful moment, partly because it raises the question of Judas' culpability in God's plan for the death of Christ (and consequently our salvation) and because we see the physical manifestation of what must have been Judas' emotional state upon betraying Christ. Thus, in the first few minutes of the play, the scene is set for what I think is one of the most fascinating stories of all time.

Judas, it turns out, is in purgatory. His name is mud and he can't get a trial that might release him from purgatory to heaven, not because God forbids it but because the other inhabitants of the place refuse to hear his case. A feisty woman decides to act as his public defender and doesn't rest until she gets him a trail. As the trail proresses, we learn why each person present is in purgatory and we learn some historical and non-historical details about people surrounding the death of Christ. Chief among them are the high priest Ciaphas and Pontius Pilate. Her challenges offer us an opportunity to reconsider the story that we'd learned and accepted without giving it much thought. Ciaphas, she suggests, also betrayed Christ, who was a Jew after all, and thus one of Ciaphas' own people. She accuses him of being in bed with the Romans and profiting from the enslavement of the Jews. How is Ciaphas any better than Judas she wants to know. Ciahas' answer is that Judas took money. Not much of an answer. Ciaphas storms off and declares that what he feels for his part of the story is between him and God. Why then is what happened not between Judas and God? Pilate doesn't get off any easier. And neither does Mother Theresa who, the play suggests, said that abortion is the worst sin of al and is responsible for all wars. The point of these testimonies seems to be to point out that everyone, including our saints, are culpable but quite willing to throw the first stone. Why then has Judas gone down in history as the worst fiend?

As the received story of Judas goes, Jesus is sent to earth to die for our sins. Due to his sacrifice, we can now be forgiven for our sins and gain entry to the kingdom of God. At the bequest of the Jews, the Romans decide to kill Jesus. Ciaphas, the Jewish high priest, resents Jesus for his power and claims it is blasphemy. Judas, we've been taught to believe, betrays Jesus' whereabouts and identity to the Romans for payment and they string Jesus up and crucify him. Thus, Judas is the scummiest of the scums of the earth. Some theologians have argued, however, that Judas' betrayal was a sacrifice itself. Jesus was sent to earth to die and Judas did an important thing by betraying him. In fact, they suggested, Jesus willed it. In either case, this is a moving story to me because Judas and Jesus seem to be incredibly close friends and Jesus' betrayal is necessary. That it comes at the hands of one so close to him, whether mandated by Christ or brought about by Judas, is a complicated story of friendship. My image is of Christ both knowing that he is responsible for Judas' betrayal and saddened by that betrayal.

The play's suggestion is that Judas is Jesus' puppet -- that Jesus puts these plans into action and that Judas' betrayal is necessary. Those pieces of silver cannot repay Judas for what he's had to do for Christ's plan and he resents the payment. Maybe he doesn't throw them away because of remorse but out of the recognition that it's paltry payment considering the magnitude of the sacrifice. When Jesus comes to Judas looking for emotional succor, Judas is still angry and sends him away. While Judas sits on trial in front of mankind (and mankind who have been less than perfect and ended up in purgatory) Judas is actually judging God.

The play is fascinating to me for its exploration of good and evil and that relationship between Jesus and Judas. The production itself I'm a bit more mixed on. The acting is frequently but not always strong, the costumes are odd, and the set is flat. The cast is racially diverse and each person of color plays a caricature of his/her ethnicity. Pilate is black and a bit ghetto. Actually, he's like a ghetto guy who has made a lot of money. One of the characters is St. Augustine's mother. She's a Latina hoochie mama. While her characterization drove people around me crazy, I found her kind of funny. About St Augustine (who wa an alcoholic and slept with more prostitutes than he drank glasses of wine), she says, he gave up hooch and whores and went down the straight and narrow. Her manner is over the top and none of the women in heaven like her. They know, though, that she can get shit done. When she approaches Judas for the first time, she slaps the drooling invalid about and makes jokes about his suicide ("How's it hangin'?"). But then she comes close to him and touches him. Against her will, she senses the centuries of pain and she bursts into tears. She hugs him, tears falling down her face, and Judas seems to warm just a bit. Like so much of the play, the conventions are weak but it delivers when it needs to. In that moment, we feel and experience Judas' isolation. For all the silly stereotypes, bad jokes, and odd costume choices, we experience a deeply human moment. Those moments make the play more than worth seeing.

"Pippin" by East West Players on June 21st in Los Angeles

2008-06-27T05:49:00.001-07:00

I was interested to see this production for a number of reasons. First, East West Players is an Asian American theater company with a national reputation. Furthermore, they were doing a hip hop and anime version of "Pippin," the 70's rock (sort of) musical that the "L.A. Times" said had "street cred." Even the "Chicago Tribune" wrote about it.

Watching an Asian American theater company take on "Pippin" with both hip hop and anime sensibilities is pretty cool. Both are forms of art that were popular before they began to be considered legitimate by the arts establishment and both are very much identified by their urban and ethic roots but have had wide influence beyond those communitites. Many theater companies are adopting plays to give them hip hop sensibilities. It's especially trendy to do hip hop Shakespeare. That East West Players decided to weave both hip hop and anime into this production makes it much more interesting than the hip hop Shakespeare that's popping up everywhere. In this production, they go together very well, combining to give the production a stylistically sexy edge that's fun to watch.

"Pippin" is the story of a gifted child whose aspirations to do great things lead to a series of existential disappointments when he realizes that nothing makes him feel like life has meaning. At one point the narrator of the show, a sort of Satan/Dionysis figure, offers him a fiery and spectacular death as the penultimate event that will grant his life meaning. Although tempted, Pippin realizes that meaning comes through what feels like the ordinary things in life, such as loving someone and parenting. perhaps that's true but it doesn't ring true in this production. Instead, it feels a bit cheesy. I'm not sure if it's the fault of the script or the production.

The musical direction was excellent. While the original cast recording sounds hollow and tinny, this music sounds current. What makes this "Pippin" a hip hop musical is that there's a dj on stage who mixes a hip hop backbeat to many of the songs. When he does, the dancers' choreography is hip hop choreography. It is also an incredibly sexy show. The dancers are all hot as hell and we get to see lots of them.

The actor who plays the narrator is the highlight of the show. He has a sexy, Satanic, fu manchu look and he's a very good hip hop dancer. He's really the life of the show. The rest is less successful. The dancers are all excellent but they don't have the technique or precision of great hip hop dancers. While I'd be impressed watching any of them dancing in a club, they don't have the energy or technique of street dancers. It ends up looking like hip hop for older white people. The hip hop music is also very pedestrian. This, of course, is the case with pretty much all musicals. The music and choreography are always a watered down version of what more cutting edge musicians and choreographers are doing.

My guess is that theaters that are turning everything into hip hop productions imagine they'll draw teens and African Americans to their houses. Granted, I saw a weekend matinee, not the time slot that tons to draw young people. The audience was largely older white folks with a smattering of Asian Americans. I saw one African American couple who seemed to be in their late 30's. I don't think these shows draw teens or African Americans because they don't have the freshness or technique of street hip hop dancers or good hip hop dj's. Instead, they seem like hip hop for older people who think it's cool but who are a few generations behind current trends. My guess is that a black teen would think the dancing and music are pretty pedestrian. Street cred? Maybe if you live in Beverly Hills.

"How Theater Failed America" by Mike Daisey in Denver, CO.

2008-06-12T09:50:00.000-07:00

I'm at the Theatre Communications Group conference, where yesterday everyone was talking about this show. They were either excited to see it, resentful of it, or resentful of it but still interested in seeing it. Some thought the show might make them angry but I thought it sounded insular, and thus, wasn't terribly interested in seeing it. With all thet alk, though, I couldn't resist.

"How Theater Failed America" is a monologue, with Mike Daisey sitting at a desk on a bare stage, with very minimal lighting, talking into the full but dark auditorium. It's an incredibly funny critique of the current state of American theaters but a critique that comes out of an intense love of theater and its possibilites for transforming lives. He opens the piece by speaking directly to the audience and saying: I wonder why you've come. The implication is that he has nothing positive to say to this theater-going crowd about theater and so it's surprising that they'd show up to hear it. He list a few hysterical reasons why he's surprised folks would come to see the show and then gives a few hysterical reaons why they might have. Perhaps we want to hear him place blame, he says. Perhaps we want to hear him talk about how the young people have short attention spans, with iPods always in their ears; how funders have screwed things up; how critics, especially thet "NY Times" and Charles Isherwood, have ruined things for theater. It's a sly parody of the reasons arts administrators give for the state of the arts. The audience is good natured, though, and they laugh at themselves throughout this. Then Daisey changes his cadence and begins to speak very slowly and says "It's not the NEA, or corporate funders, or short attention spans, it's not evern Charles Isherwood that's ruined theater, it's you [long pause] and it's me." What had been 5 or 10 minutes of good fun turns very serious and just as the tenstion becomes too much to bear, he turns the page of his notes and cuts then tension.

This moment is indicative of the piece. It uses humor to challenge the audience, at times it's accusations are serious and direct, and it uses the conventions of the monologue (and to a lesser extent theater more broadly) to structure the piece but also to make the tone work. He wants to challenge the audience but he doesn't want to alienate them.

He walks the audience though a series of stories that are in turn funny and poignant. They speak to the power of theater and the ways it can provide hope for its participants and the ways in which theater companies, the artists and administrators, have sold out the theater. I'll tell one story quickly. He tells about a production of Genet's "The Balcony" in which he played the cardinal. The direction said he wanted to create a "super fucked up" production and does so. He put the actors in boots that are a foot-and-a-half off the ground, has them wear outrageous wigs and thick kabuki make-up, and has a dwarf and mud wrestling. What it didn't have, Daisey tells us, was sound dramaturgy.

When the director tells Daisey, who is a pretty fat guy, that after his speech four minutes into the play he should open his cardinal's robe and beat off, Daisey is torn. One side tells him that actors do what directors tell them to do but the other side knows this has gone too far. When he tells the director that his masturbating on stage is needless and doesn't contribute to the ideas in the play, the director replies that that is why it is "super fucked up." Daisey, being an actor, follows his director's instructions and comes up with the most fucked up way of masturbating he could imagine. After a late seating one night when a young girl enters the small theater right at the moment of his perverse masturbation scene, he wonders if he should do it. He hestitates for a while and then he does. As he readies himself in that moment to begin masturbating, he tells himself that he's an actor and he's doing what actors do. But then he can't sleep for nights. He loses sleep, not because he masturbated in front of a child, but because, as an actor, he couldn't think of what else to do.

Daisey presents a number of such stories, each bringing a different point to light. That one makes plain the danger that artists, despite their reservations, sometimes give over too much control to their collaborators. Another story illustrates the point that in our mad rush to build new buildings for our theaters, generating enough revenue to fill these large houses takes us away from our original impulses for creating theater and fiorces us to put on safe productions that do not feed our artists passion. We become a business, a corporation, and not a place where artists work together as a community. Corporations, he reminds us, can't love the theater, only individuals can love the theater. An artistic director friend told him that the name of the play shouldn't be "How Theater Failed America" but "How Theater Became America."

This is the performance's punchline and it's representative. It not only makes clear this dangerous trend in theaters, God knows we've seen plenty of that in Chicago, but it also tells us something about America. By carefully sketching out how many of us have poured cold water over the soul of theater, robbing ourselves of our creative individual impulses, he points out the similar process that has taken place in America and that so many of us particiate in.

"Operation: Orfeo" by Hotel Pro Forma at the Istanbul Theatre Festival on May 30 in Istanbul, Turkey

2008-06-07T07:05:00.000-07:00

Every year, the Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts host a month-long theater festival that showcases the work of Turkish performing arts companies as well as that of other companies from around the globe. I went to see a Danish theater company performing an opera adapted from the story of Orpheus and Eurydice. In the past few years, I've seen Mary Zimmerman tell this story in "Metamorphosis" and Sarah Ruhl in "Eurydice." In both versions, the emotional center of the work is really with Eurydice. In Zimmerman's piece, the tearful moment is not when Orpheus looks back thus losing his love forever but as he's disappearing and we witness her confusion. She can't remember exactly who he is and is confused by his sadness. The chasm between his experience and hers, due to her lack of memory, is the tragedy. Sarah Ruhl's plays are never perfect but are marked by such deep humanity and amazing dialogue that I find them remarkable. Her version explores the relationship among love, loss, and memory. Eurydice's father is in Hades when she arrives. Having manged to resist losing his memory when he crosses into Hades, he acts as her guide upon her arrival and helps her to reconstruct her memories. Without those memories, her love for Orpheus couldn't exist.

I honestly have no idea what languages this opera was in. I know two of the songs were in English but I couldn't understand those and the supertitles were in Turkish. Thus, I had the music (sans the libretto) and the staging to engage me. Even so, I enjoyed it about as much as I did the others. The company was made of of 14 singers, 12 of them in the chorus and the two title characters. I can't comment at all on the story since I understood none of it. And I can't really dissect the music's technique since I know so little about operatic music. I will say however, that I see a fair amount of opera, both old and contemporary, and this was way up there for me. My two favorite late 20th century operas are John Adams' "Nixon in China" and Phillip Glass' "Satyagraha." In fact, it's the Phillip Glass opera that got me interested in new music. Unlike even my favorites of Glass and Adams, the music in this opera, which clocked in at fewer than 90 minutes, was beautiful to me the entire time. It was haunting, sparse, and shockingly varied at times.

The program booklet refers to the show as a visual opera done in three acts. Visually, it was as astounding as anything I've ever seen. Like the music, it was incredibly restrained while also being wildly exuberant within that restraint. The set is a series of about 15 large white steps that are enclosed by a white border, visible in the picture I've attached. The first 10 or 15 minutes of the performance is done in the dark, with the chorus of 12 singers sitting pretty much in a vertical line in stage right, Eurydice lying on one of the stairs on stage left, and Orpheus standing a few steps below her. All 14 performers wear dark gowns with black crowns and wee see only their silhouettes. We listen intently to the music. Then the lights come up slightly and the chorus members begin to move their arms just slightly and in unison. While the movement is minimal, and maybe because it is, it is very beautiful. Afterwards, the staging picks up its pace but largely in terms of lighting. There are moments when Eurydice slowly rolls from one stair to the next but there is very little movement besides that. The blocking acts as tableaux and we experience each scene primarily as still moments, even if there is movement within them. And usually we experience each scene in comparison to a preceeding one. In addition to the movement, the lighting is a star of the show. At one point, the chorus members stand in a diagonal line covering the set from top to bottom. Eurydice is laying on a step and Orpheus stand a few steps below her but looms above her. With just white light and shadow, the stage is black to the left of the chorus members and completely white to the right. As a still image, it's beautiful. There are many, many ways in which the light plays with the white steps and the variety seems like a small miracle. This is something that I'm unable to describe really, so I'm hoping that the image will give you a sense. Near the end of the piece, two intensely green laser lights begin to shoot out of the set. The length of the light glows longer and a layer of green light acting as a wave lay out between the two lasers. That entire system of lights grows longer and longer, eventually extending over the audience, until it covers the entire audience.

Opera lovers, of which I'm not one, say that opera is the greatest art form because it combines music, theater, dance, and visual art (thought the set). I find that this is rarely the case. As theater, it tends to be disappointing. The stories are usually silly and the acting ineffective. The dance is usually boring and often silly. And the sets are usually very impressive but rarely interesting. This production does seem to forgo acting but it sure was high on the other three. While there was no dancing as we often think of it, there certainly was choreographed movement. The set was like something Dan Flavin would have done if he had continued to work. And the music was exceptional.

"Opening Night by Les SlovaKs at fabric Potsdam in Berlin on May 24

2008-05-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

In the end, my gamble paid off. Turning down the concierge's suggestion that I go to the Berlin opera house to see the ballet "Sleeping Beauty," I took the train 45 minutes to the neighboring (and picturesque) town of Potsdam instead. There, I saw lots of Germans in the 20's and 30's with a few in their 40's watching a company from belgium called Les SlovaKs. Born in Slovakia but having emigrated to Belgium, the dancers, all well-trained and wonderful movers, found each other over time and created this company. I had never heard of them but was thrilled to see them. They had a combination of beautiful dancers' bodies, wonderful technique, surprising choreography, and charm enough to go around and still have some left over.

The company of five male dancers has created this piece with the help of a violinist who composed the music for the piece. The choreography was created by the collective of five male dancers. Perhaps the moments that most succinctly represents the piece is a violin solo where the violinist plays a series of quirky and short notes followed by a single note that he holds for a while. In that moment, the quirky is transformed into something beautiful. It's not that the quirky short notes are not beautiful and the long note is, but that the longer note, in its beauty, provides a context to experiencing the succession of shorter notes.

The piece looks like something the cowboy from "Midnight Cowboy" might choreograph, which is to say something choreograhed by amateurs making up something that they think looks like dance but with a certain energy and charm. Taking that kind of playfullness for its language, the piece plays those movements out to something that shows the beauty and skill involved in such movements and in playing them out to a certain end. The piece's movement, in fact, is comprised of quirky choreography (meant to look amateurish), folks dancing moves (ostensibly from Slovakia), and technique that comes from modern dance. The amateurish and folk movement are eventually because we see in them skill and beauty that are not evident at first.

The dancers and the violinist also appear to have a certain relationship that makes the piece even more charming. We get to watch them play together and it's a joy. At one point, one of the dancers begins to introduce one of his comrades. He tells us his name and explains that he's got a goodlooking Slavic face, which the dancer adorns with a mustache because he's young and wants to appear to be older. It's a kind of silliness that would be annoying if it weren't coupled with talent but that is endearing and funny because it is and because we like them. (When one enters the space, the six performers are all standing about 10 feet from the front row and just smile as we file in.) There are also moments of violence in the piece, as when one of the dancers begins to beat up on one that earlier had wanted his attention. The beating also turns into beautiful movement but is repeated and so we experience both pain and beauty at the same time. In one of these moments, one dance pounds the other's stomach as if hurting him and the dancer lands against the wall to the back of the stage. He lands on his back, feet up in the air and against the wall, and he begins to roll slowly, his body extended, towards the audience. In doing so, he transforms the movement of being beaten into something unexpected, in which we get to sympathize and then witness with awe.

The feeling of the entire piece might be describe as off balance but controlled. That's exemplified by a certain moment in which a dancer has has left arm extended straight. He brings his right arm over to the left but never extends it quite straight. He almost gets to that position that is common in dance but he never quite finshes it. He doesn't get to the point of balance. As a result, he seems in danger of losing his balance but he never does. And in not delivering for our expectation of balance and centeredness but also never losing his footing, he transforms our expectation and creates something new.

"Fram" at the national Theatre in London on May 24

2008-05-25T08:53:00.000-07:00

Londoners have the benefit of the National Theatre, with many stagees in the same complex and seemingly unending access to wonderful playwrights, directors, actors, and state-provided big budgets. While big budgets in the United States often seem to go with an over reliance on expensive scenery and sloppy directing, I'd seen a few things at the National Theatre in the past and all were excellent. This included a production of Tennessee Williams' "The Rose Tatto" that was incredibly well-acted and directed with impressive intergrity. This was a few years after seeing a silly production at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago in which all of its eggs were put in a visual basket, taking the motif of the rose tattoo too far and attention to the direction not far enough.

"Fram" is about a real life explorer who once held the record for having travelled the farthest north and eventually turned in his adventuring ways for humanitarian, paying particular attention to raising money to battle a famine in Russia in the early 1920's. Written by Tony Harrison, a highly-respected British poet and playwright, the poem opens in the cemetary at Westminster Abby with an embittered dead poet/translator bitching about his bad reviews from T.S. Elliot, who happens to be lain fairly close to him in the cemetary. He decided to write a play about the explorer and he conjurs up a famous actress, the Fram (the explorer's boat), and a production. In the production, the poet and the actress interact with the explorer throughout the production.

The play deals with the issue of how one goes about doing good in a turbulent world. As the play-within-a-play opens, the explorer and his companion are stuck in the ice near the north pole. Tired of dealing with each others' scents and bad habits, they decide to divide their blanket and sleep separately. They realize that sleeping together under the same blanket they produce more heat and thus sleep more comfortably. Thus, depsite the farting and other disgusting habits, they snuggle together to survive.

The difficulties of life get more dire as the play goes on, including the famine in Russia, torture in the Middle East, and violence in parts of Africa. There is an argument in the play about the role art can play in producing empathy and thus a solution. The Americans, who claim to be playing the biggest part in alleviating starvation in Russia, fight with the actress and the explorer about how to raise support. When they suggest that poetry and theater are ineffective in representing the pain of the hungry, the acress gives a very compelling performance to the contrary. At the end of the performance, however, she walks away, more concerned with proving her skill than actually making a difference. The explorer's method is a slide show that show the bodies of children who have starved to death and the Americans have made films that one of the characters points out are fabricated.

Unfortunately, in the end the argument isn't expolored in a very compelling way, I don't think. The strength of the piece comes with the visuals (with the Fram coming up out of the bottom of the stage) and when the argument is made personal, as it was with the characters on the Fram. There's also a nice moment when a Middle Eastern poet arrives on the scene, his eyes and mouth sewn shut. The poet and actress believe he's purposely sewn them shut and see it as an intentional opposition to the mask of Tragedy, with it's eyes and mouth constantly open (but perhaps ineffective). As the Middle Eastern poet tries to speak and sing, however, we hear nothing but garbled sounds. The truth, of course, is that his eyes and mouth have been forced shut and he's lost his voice. He's not capable of representing himself. The explorer warns throughout the play that the entire world will eventually freeze over. Right before the end of the play, after seeing a series of more contemporary atrocities, we are reminded of the explorers' sharing a blanket. And then we see an image of London freezing over, perhaps a reminder that when the world does freeze over, as it certainly will in some way or another, than it's the individual's relationship to another that keeps us warm.

"Our Town" by the Hypocrites on May 10th in Chicago

2008-05-17T07:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently "Our Town" is the most performed show in the United States. I'd assumed that was because it calls for no set or costumes and because high school drama departments perform it so often. Having last seen and loving it in high school, I had no interest in every seeing it again -- the way those of us who have since discovered "The Sound and the Fury" and " Mrs. Dalloway" can't be bothered with "A Separate Peace." When the Hypocrites announced they were going to produce"Our Town" I was excited and scared. Excited to see what they would do with a play that I thought was such a dud and afraid that the play would out wrestle them with its over the top emotionality. What happened instead is that this production made clear what the Hypocrites do: bring the feeling of discovery to timeworn texts that audiences must have felt when they were still new. It's a rediscovery of texts that endless unimaginative productions have robbed of their vitality and originality. It's an incredible production with exuberance and restraint at the same time.

As you probably know, "Our Town" is a play in three acts. The first act gives a sense of what general life in the town is like, the second act is about love and marriage (including that of the protagonists), and the third acts deals with the death of some of the townspeople. Mostly, though, the play seems to be about the way that we live our lives blind to beauty and the things people "up there" live in little boxes, suggesting that we live in darkness and solitude, in a state akin to death. The third act, when Emily goes back to relive the day of her 13th birthday, makes that very clear. Her mother has gone to the trouble of getting her a gift she knows Emily will love but spends the whole morning cooking and never speaking directly to her daughter. There are other examples of this throughout the play, though. For example, the choir conductor who is likely gay but lives in a loveless marriage for the sake of societal convention. The loneliness of such a life has led him to alcoholism and despair.

Two things give this production its strength: the depth of the director's insight into the text and the production's restraint. Rather than playing the emotions large, the performances are controlled, almost quiet. In the scene where Emily goes back to her 13th birthday she doesn't scream and sob. Once she realizes that her time spent with her family won't be emotionally satisfying, she seems to want to get the hell out. She conveys this with a certain quality in her voice and an energy in her body but it's very controlled. The director, David Cromer, has cut about half the stage manager's lines, suggesting that audiences today are in a different place than they were in 1930's and didn't need to be told as much.

The action of the play alone is wonderful. This is a play, though, that calls for no sets or costumes. And the device of having a stage manager who speaks directly to the audience must have been quite a shocker when the play was first produced in 1938. What I found most interesting, though, is the way time works in the play. The third act is in some ways the future. In it, we see the past (Emily's return to her 13th birthday) and the future (the death of many of the townspeople). While times passes between each act and so the third act is rally just what happens after the second act, it feels as if the second act is the present. In Act III, when Emily decides to go back, the stage manager tells her that it won't be the same because she knows the future. We see the impact of the future on the past.

Perhaps one of the greatest strengths of the production is Cromer's stage manager. he not only sets up the scenes but by the second act he sort of comes out of the play. Rather than remaining detached, he seems emotionally involved with what's happening. Not so much in what he's seeing on stage but rather with what he's showing the audience. In Cromer's production, the action takes place in every square inch of the theater, which is to say very much among the audience. The play is a cautionary tale he is telling the audience and he tells it with an undercurrent of emotion. You see his frustration at our blindness and his warning to us. That might very well be the most jarring thing in the production. The play sets itself up as a play, constantly reminding us of its artifice. In this production, it goes one step further. It points out that this is indeed a play but one that exists to warn us about how little of life we experience and how much we throw away. The play exists not to entertain but to warn.

Northwest New Works Festival at On the Boards on May 9th in Seattle

2008-05-15T17:03:00.001-07:00

Annually, On the Boards presents a series of new works from the Northwest region. I was really happy to be in town during the festival as it was an opportunity to see some of the region's most vibrant artists. I was curious to see what their interests were and who was influencing them. I guessed half the work would be atrocious and half surprising and wonderful.

On the Boards is like a regional and much smaller version of BAM. The staff brings incredible international artists to Seattle (this year, including Elevator Repair Service and Societas Raffaello Sanzio) and showcase the work of local/regional artists. It's the kind of resource anyone who likes contemporary art hopes to have in his/her city and that artists are grateful for. Seattle is lucky to have it.

At the Northwest New Works Festival I saw four performances. The first was by a woman from Portland. It was very Laurie Andersonesque in that she had a control box (doubling as a make up case) from which she controlled the sound and lighthing cues, including a device that recorded her voice and repeated it in order to layer sound. The piece was about Ondine, a woman who came mysteriously from the water, had a difficult life (which was somewhat romanticized in the piece -- the way heroines of fairy tales are romanticized), and was thrown back into the water by her sister. The performer played different roles through songs, with each songs describing an episode in Ondine's tragic life. The best parts were the her visual work, which came largely through costume. The story itself, while dark and dramatic, never quite provoked an emotional response. As with dark fairy takes, it seemed that fear and pity should at least have been present.

The second performance was by two young women who seemed to have been trained as dancers. It was a playful piece, bordering on wacky, about the tasks involved in getting to the earth's core. My favorite parts included dance/movement. Every now and then the two performers would move in unison, which was always surprising and lovely, perhaps precisely because it came against a backdrop of wackiness. At one point they performed in the style of poetry slam artists, mimicking their eponymous cadence and voicework. You know, that way of speaking poetry that makes it all sound like the same poem written by a Beat poet.

I enjoyed both performances and was very interested to see the way technology, spectacle, and storytelling came together in both pieces. The second two were less successful for me. The third piece was a dance performance about birds that, according to the notes, was inspired by an Edward Hopper painting. While we saw just an excerpt I can't imagine Hopper ever painting a bird. I could be wrong. In either case, the choreography was a bit rudimentary and the dancers lacked energy. The music was a combination of music, bird sounds, and city living sounds that was more interesting. The fourth piece was an alternative country trio of banjo, ukulele, and guitar players singing about small town Western Washington life. Parts of it were fun, especially the parts about Dairy Queen and Tasty Freeze (which I'm sure I'm spelling wrong), but overall it didn't go anywhere. It lacked the musical inventiveness of the first piece and its attempt of storytelling was underdeveloped.

While I didn't love everything, there was something to admire in each piece. More than anything, though, I thought it was fantastic that these artists got a chance to perform their pieces in front of an audience, something crucial as they continue to develop their ideas and aesthetics.

"9 Parts of Desire" on May 5th at Next Theatre (at the MCA) in Chicago.

2008-05-07T20:23:00.000-07:00

One of the nine characters Heather Raffo channels in her one-woman show is herself (I didn't count but I assume the title suggests there are nine characters). In that section, Raffo talks about her obsession with watching Iraq fall to pieces as the American and British invasion swings into action. As she obsessively watches the coverage on television, everyone else around her in New York says they're obsessed but they say so while getting their nails done. Raffo, of course, is also getting her nails done at the time. This is a reminder that American wars are never fought on American soil and thus we're spared from feeling the human impact of our imperialism. The Iraqi people we want to save from Saddam aren't really people to us. We might see them on television but we know nothing about them. Raffo's engaging play is not an argument for or against the war but an opportunity to get to know some Iraqis, the people deeply affected by our decision to wage war on Saddam.

One-person shows are always entertaining if for no other reason than the skill it requires to play a number of different characters convincingly is often dazzling to watch. One of Raffo's accomplishments is that her acting skills, which are impressive, become secondary and it's her characters who are compelling. And the characters all tell us something about what life is like in Iraq, both under Saddam's regime and under American occupation.

One character is an artist who sees freedom in her sexuality. She is unfaithful to her husband and takes other lovers. She argues that Western women aren't necessarily free and finds evidence of that in their sexual repression. Over time we come to realize that her sexual freedom is rather more complicated than it seems at first. Another character is a precocious young girl whose self-assuredness lands her father in Saddam's jail. Another character tells us that she throws the shoes of the dead into the river -- that the river is a collector of souls (soles). There are no martyrs under the water, she says, only the soles of dead people.

As with the Anna Devere Smith plays of the 90's, Raffo allows us to recognize the wisdom of her characters. Like Smith, Raffo interviews subjects and weaves their interviews into a performance. The performance allows us to witness the humanity of her subjects in a way that seems possible only with theater. Her representations of her subjects are never sentimental. Instead, she discovers the natural poetry of their voices and the wisdom of their thoughts. The character I loved listening to the most is a fat woman who says she sees with her heart. When Raffo allows her to tell her story, the woman finds so much joy in that connection, in being able to put her feelings into words for Raffo.

Near the end of the play, Raffo tells a story about her Iraqi relatives' attempts to reach her in New York after 9/11. Due to the overloading of the phone system in New York, they weren't able to get trough. They called her mother in Michigan for news of her well-being. Having gotten assurance that she wasn't killed in the explosions, they still keep calling until they finally hear her voice. They tell her how sorry they are that this has happened to her city. They empathize with the pain of 9/11 and worry about her. And they end their conversations by telling her "I love you." As Raffo echoes the voices of the Iraqi relatives who called, we get a succession of I love you's in similar and sometimes slightly different accents. Raffo's point is well made. There is great irony in the empathy of the Iraqis for Americans after 9/11 when 9/11 becomes the occasion for the war against their country. Her string of I love you's points out that irony but it's also a message to her Iraqi relatives, or maybe the women she portrays in the play.

It would have been a good ending for the piece, I think. After that, we learn more about characters we've seen before, much of it sad. I do think that it was largely unnecessary, though, and the performance started to feel a little long. I will say, however, that while I wanted the string of I love you's to end the play, the final image of an Iraqi woman whose life has been momentarily illuminated for us through Raffo's performance now fading into black is an apt closing image. We've come to see these women for a moment and then they fade back into obscurity. Maybe it's really a caution more than description of what is inevitable, though. A few nights later, the women are all still clear to me.

"Around the World in 80 Days" on April 26th at Lookingglass Theatre in Chicago, IL.

2008-05-07T19:58:00.000-07:00

Having never read Jules Vern's "Around the World in 80 Days," I can't say for certain whether this was a good translation to the stage or not. I'm almost willing to argue, though, that it isn't. My sense is that the book must have been a whimsical story that relied on the exotic locations for much of its magic. The story is about a wealthy Brit who bets that he can go around the world in 80 days and has a singular focus to do so. Along the way, he encounters many fascinating scenes and falls in love. Over time he comes to realize that his focus has led him around the world but robbed him of actually seeing the world.

This is a typical Lookingglass production in that it's an adaptation of a much loved piece of literature. The fact that it's a children's story isn't uncommon. Mary Zimmerman's "The Secret in the Wings" was based on fairy tales and "Lookingglass Alice" was based on "Alice in Wonderland" (or is it "Through the Lookingglass?"). "Lookingglass Alice" translated the Lewis Carroll story partly through playful spectacle. The shenanigans of the story were translated into visual jokes that worked well. In this production, the magic of exotic lands was never well translated visually. While the performances were largely very good (I especially enjoyed watching Phil Smith), the production never felt delightful. It lacked the visual poetry of Mary Zimmerman's Lookingglass productions and what I could hear of the text wasn't enough to make the show terribly interesting. When Phineas Fogg (what a great name) reports that he's going around the world again because he never saw it the first time, the audience should feel something but I didn't. It wasn't the final point in an argument or exploration as it should have been. I left the production thinking it was kind of fun but slight.

"As You Like It" at Writers Theatre on April 11 in Glencoe, IL

2008-04-20T19:12:00.000-07:00

In a way, there's a very typical experience I have at almost all productions of Shakespeare and they were evident at this production. The woman behind me kept examining silly things trying to sound learned and impressive. She commented endlessly on the fact that the actors were wearing contemporary rather than period costume. She explained to her date that despite the attempt at updating the play, it still felt old to her. When the "all the world's a stage" speech began, the very nice and jovial man next me nodded with furious recognition when the character says "all the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players." He seemed to have such recognition, as if he'd heard and learned something so new. But the meaning of that speech unfolds in the ensuing lines. In my opinion, when most lay people (including me) see Shakespeare, they have a very difficult time with the language and thus lose much of the play. They expect to be bored and claim to love the production if they're entertained for twenty percent of the show. No one wants to admit that they didn't like a play that everyone knows is brilliant and that you'd have to be an idiot to say you didn't like. However, the language is so difficult and the plays so tough that it's hard to understand the plays in a meaningful way upon first seeing them. But, people don't want to feel dumb so they pretend to get a lot out of it. Plus, with so many snippets of Shakespeare's dialogue so familiar, we pretend to be moved by their meaning when we hear them. Thus, this woman going on about the silliness of the choice of costume and the man who nods in furious recognition at hearing the opening of that speech. I, for one, am usually bored off my ass in most productions of Shakespeare and get much more meaning out of reading them than watching them.

This production, however, was completely different. There were still audience members trying to convince themselves that it was deep and that they really understood it. What was different is that this production was neither distancing nor dull. In fact, I found myself incredibly moved a number of times. I often get the sense that directors of Shakespeare rarely understand each line of dialogue and, thus, can't get their actors to do more than speak them as sentences that sound right even if they don't convey meaning. Most actors seem so clearly to be acting when they speak their dialogue. Consequently, the lines are rarely convincing and the themes rarely coherent. In this production, Larry Yando delivers the famous lines "all the world's a stage" speech. What comes after those lines is so clear in its delivery that Yando has you enraptured as you listen to him talk about the inevitability for aging. At the end of the first act (as the play is staged), the lovers and other gentle folk who are in hiding in the Forest of Arden scatter as spotlights search the forest from a threatening helicopter. Once they've all scurried away, Yando remains alone, sitting in the open and apparently not caring if he is harmed. He's angry about aging and being closer to death and seems to want to combat death by daring it. While everyone else around him is silly in love, he alone experiences this melancholy and thus is even more isolated. This final image in the first act serves as a continuation of the earlier speech. When Orlando comes upon the gang of nice people in the Forest of Arden, he has left his elderly servant to find food and bring it back. Having left his job with the evil brother to look after Orlando, the servant has difficulty in the forest and is nearly dead from starvation. Orlando comes upon the band of merry men in the woods and savagely robs them at gunpoint. When they ask why he is robbing them, he explains. The good uncle in the play, who has been banished, tells him he has no need to steal the food. If he needs it, he can have it. I wish I could recall the lines because they were delivered with such compassion. Orlando is completely disarmed by this and collapses. It's the first time in a long, long time that he's received such generosity and when he does it's as if he feels the pain of the past the moment he's relieved of it. The lines are well delivered and the acting true.

What was so wonderful about this production was the care of thought was evident in every decision, from the bar used in the first few scenes to the delivery of dialogue. Most productions of Shakespeare done on this scale tend to be over the top with costumes and sets and most people find entertainment with those things rather than in the action. This production used simple costumes and a not-so-flashy set and instead focused on wringing emotion and meaning out of the play. It was a treat to see.

Having said the production wrung meaning out of the play, I will say that I think this is a damn silly play. I've never read "As You Like It" and this was my first time seeing a production of it. Maybe there's more to it than met my eye but if there's any philosophy in it, I missed it. The love connections aren't terribly interesting and the reversals are stunningly ridiculous, especially the evil uncle who finds God and gives his kingdom over to his foes. Still, it's a joy, and a rare one, to see what this director and these actors have done with it.

"Monument" by The Seldoms on April 11 in Chicago, IL

2008-04-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

I don't usually include dance in this blog because, although I love it, I can't analyze it and have no vocabulary for discussing it. The Seldoms' pieces, though, can verge toward dance theater.

Carrie Hanson and Doug Stapleton are the choreographer and dramaturg of The Seldoms. Hanson is a beautiful dancer, an ambitious choreographer, and a consummate collaborator (with wonderful taste). As artistic director of The Seldoms, Hanson's pieces typically involve collaborations with visual artists, costume artists, and musicians. In fact, her relationship with Stapleton is a testament to her collaborative nature. It's also a testament to her ambition. As a choreographer and artistic director, she wants to create innovative movement but she also wants to create and convey meaning beyond the physical. Their collaborations, however, don't always work and I've seen some spectacular failures. The Seldoms is also a small and poor dance company that can't afford to hire great dancers. They try to make do.

"Monument" is one of Hansen's most ambitious pieces to date. It looks at the amount of waste Americans consume and waste. Monument refers to a a trash heap in NY that is so large that it is visible from space. Apparently, it's larger than the Statue of Liberty. This trash heap is a monument to our consumerism and tendency to waste. The show's set includes beautiful video and its music adds effectively to its mood. The composer has rearranged "I Can't Get No Satisfaction" and made it slower -- sad and reflective. It lends the piece a beautiful tension.

With all the wonderful artistic collaboration, the treat in seeing this piece is still the choreography and dancing. Hansen has found a team of strong dancers who make her choreography seem light and effortless, a luxury she's always lacked in the past. The partnering is complex, unexpected, and sometimes breathtaking. The choreography's vocabulary is tight. We see certain movements repeated and with each repetition they seem more poetic. The movement also frequently approaches literal meaning, or recognizable gestures.

I hope we see move of this from The Seldoms. This is the most exciting piece of dance I've seen by a small, local company in years. It gives me hope that something meaningful might develop in Chicago.

"White White Black Stork" by The Ilkholm Theatre on April 5th in Seattle, WA

2008-04-08T21:24:00.000-07:00

The Ilkholm Theatre was founded in the mid 1970's in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. It was a non-state sponsored theater (and a political one) ten or a dozen years before Gorbachev. In his notes, the founder explains that in Uzbekistan's history the arts, especially theater, were highly prized as a tool for examining political situations. Under Soviet rule, this freedom disappeared. With this history and under these conditions he founded The Ilkholm Theatre.

"White White Black Crane" is set in the late 1900's. A boy in his late teen falls for a poor boy who is in school. The poor boy seems largely to spend time with the protagonist out of economic self interest. Forgetting his economic reason for his participation for a moment, he gets caught up by the exuberance of the other boy's attraction and they frolic and are caught by the father. The father and townspeople interpret the frolicking as sexual play. The poor boy is kicked out of school and the protagonist is forced to marry. The girl he marries has fallen in love with her own pauper, a boy who seels cloth for a living and wanders into her family's garden. With her headdress off, she tries to flirt with the boy but he's afraid and dashes off. he returns for meals but never tells her his name. Her father marries her off to the other boy for and insists on a larger than normal dowry.

The boy is heartbroken and can't bring himself to have sex with his new wife. She knows that he's reputed to be gay and shuns him. Over time, however, they come to understand each other's pain and they forge an emotional bond. Knowing that they still haven't consecrated the marriage, her father sues the boy's family and wins. The play culminates in murder and everyone's miserable.

The themes are clear. The boy and girl do not follow social conventions and are cast out as result. The only relationship allowed any power is the economic relationship between the fathers. Their children are things they trade with no consideration of their uniqueness. While arranged marriages might be typical, the impetus for the marriage were homophobia and greed. One father forces his son to be with a woman and the other didn't care that he was marrying his daughter off to a gay man -- he just wanted the money. The treatment of the theme is more nuanced than my statement of it, however. We're not really certain if the boy is gay or if, as he insists, he's just deeply connected to the other boy in neither a sexual or romantic way. There's also a play on "Romeo and Juliet," with some homoeroticism brought to the surface, an investigation of how families harm their children, and, most interestingly, how young people come to love each other in ways that adults can't seem to recognize.

The play is lyrical, with much of it reading like poetry (well, it's in Russian and I read supertitles but the supertitles were lyrical so I think the original script must also be). Even the set and the blocking were sparse and lovely.

I very much enjoyed the play, partly because it was a pleasure to watch but mostly because I was interested to be seeing a play by an Uzbeki theater company. The supertitles weren't always synched up correctly with the dialogue on stage, which pulled one out of the play.

"Throwing Bones" by Sojourn Theatre on April 3rd in Portland, OR

2008-04-04T07:30:00.000-07:00

"Throwing Bones" is a remarkably humane story about three ill women and the personal and medical care they recieve. One is a black South African whose cheating partner passes on the HIV virus to her, another is a white South African whose illness is undiagnosable by Western doctors, and the third is a young woman in Portland with cystic fibrosis whose mother who is devastated upon learning of it. Each story illuminates another in a symbiotic way that I've rarely seen in theater. From the moment of learning about her daughter's cystic fibrosis, the mother thinks constantly about it. In a way, she begins to experience her daughter's death at that moment of learning about the diagnosis. (There is a wonderfully moving scene -- maybe to say it is a vignette is more accurate --when she finds out about this illness at the dinner table. The news is whispered to her and not a word is spoken. We witness her devastation through the way she handles the dishes. Ther's another stand out scene where, in the daughter's hospital bed, the two play a game of re-enacting a movie deathbed scene. We see them try to control what is inevitable by playing it out with humor. The mother, of course, becomes the grieved person she's mimicking and breaks down sobbing while the daughter laughs uncotrollably.) She never lives another day, when her daughter is both alive and after her death, that she doesn't miss her daughter. Death comes early, even before the daughter dies. In contrast, the black South African has decided not to tell her mother of her illness. She explains that once she does die, her mother will suffer unmentionable pain. She knows that, like the other mother, her mother will begin to experience her death upon learning the news. The play is filled with unspoken comparisons like this. Another I'll mention just briefly is between the two doctors - one an ivy league educated physician and the other a South African faith healer. We get glimpses into why both do the work they do and their relationship to each other as healers (or rather, as someone who tries to stave off the inevitable).

The structure of the play, in the way that it tells these stories, is impressive enough. However, there are dance sequences and moments in which the characters speak directly to the audience. The movement is choreographed by a member of Urban Bush Women. Rather than being silly or cheesy, it is moving, conveying sadness, joy, pain, and even ideas. At one stand out moment in the piece, the American doctor instructs the audience on how to feel for the pulse of the person to the left. He carefully walked us through that and after a few seconds I slowly began to feel the pulse of the person to my left, feeling it get stronger and stronger. We continued to feel the pulse for a while and, with our finger on that wrist, he tells us that that pulse will enevitably stop beat and that person will surely die. Then, he continues, there are people across the world (causing us to envision South Africa) whose pulses are ceasing to beat. In doing this, he creates an immediate and intimate moment with our neighbor (many of whom were strangers to the person next to us) and extends that intimacy to someone we've never laid eyes on but summon as a result of this very bodily experience. Interestingly, we pay more attention to the pulse we're feeling and imagine that person's death. However, the person to our right is feeling our pulse and our death is also being alluded to. In keeping with the concentration of the play, though, it is the otehr person's death we consider.

Two things strike me about this company: their ambition and their care. This is one of those plays where so many decisions could have gone bad and seemed cheesy but none do because every artistic decision has been carefully considered and shaped. The ambition is to humanely examine our experience of illness and death and the way we create meaning out of them. Creating a play about death and dying is, of course, huge. Yet they do so in an extremely intimate scale. The play is performed in what I think is the examining room of a nurse's college. In a way, doing it on such a small scale makes the largeness of the impact possbile.

"Boneyard Prayers" by Redmoon Theater on April 1st in Chicago, IL

2008-04-01T21:28:00.000-07:00

Puppet theater by nature has certain limits. The best puppet theater turns those limits into strengths. I'm always amazed by scenes in which you see three puppeteers manipulating a puppet in a sad or tender moment. The fact that a puppet is standing in for a human and that three people are visibly manipulating it would likely prevent the viewer from being drawn into the scene emotionally. Yet, sometimes this display of artifice actually heightens the emotional punch of the scene. Puppet theater also cannot move at the pace of a conventional show and, as a result, not as much can happen. Thus, puppeteers tend to condense stories to a series of emotionally heightened scenes, operating almost with the economy of poetry.

Redmoon Theater has mastered the spectacle, large scale performances that tend to eschew narrative for the joy of endlessly unfolding visual (and often musical) surprises. They've also done excellent plays more on the scale of traditional theater. These tend to be adaptations of literature. One of the reasons these adaptations have been successful is because the artists have managed to surprise us with an unexpected series of delightful images, whether puppets of various sizes and forms or drawings.

"Boneyard Stories" is not a literary adaptation but an original story with original songs. It's about an alcoholic who decides to go home after having fled 23 years prior. The set is largely piles of dirt and everything and everyone is always covered in dirt. This are constantly being unearthed, or dug up. Having fled home because he couldn't face something he's done, the protagonist has tried to bury his guilt and, consequently, has become an alcoholic. Thus, the point of the story: we harm ourselves by sublimating painful events and can recover our health only by facing, or digging up, the past.

The problem with this production is that the narrative is severely underdeveloped. Characterization doesn't work and we care little for the characters. As always, much of the puppetry is wonderful. In one of my favorite scenes, the protagonist and his former wife have a bitter argument. The puppeteers/actors manipulating them drop the puppets and retreat. The puppets they drop fall crumpled unto the dirt in positions that express their pain. The duality of puppet and actor conveying the same emotion is fun to watch and the placement of the puppets manage to reflect the pain even more than the actors and their doubles. In the way that a story can seem especially ridiculous when it tries to be moving but doesn't achieve its goal, this story gets there. And once it does, the wonderful set, music, and puppetry can't save it. In fact, it's the other way around. The weak plot infects lessens our appreciation of the puppetry.

"The Brig" at the Odyssey Theatre Ensemble on March 19th in Los Angeles, CA

2008-03-22T05:11:00.000-07:00

"The Brig" is unlike anything I can remember ever having seen on stage. Set in a Marines jail, there is little plot, character development, or dialogue in this fascinating play. There is, however, intense theatrical poetry.

The first act, which is probably nearly an hour long, is a carefully choreographed acting out of the prisoner's day. We see them change their clothes, make their beds, march off to the bathroom, and read their marines manuals. The prisoners are sometimes barked at by the wardens but the soundtrack of this play is provided by the heavy panting of the actors as they march/stomp and run across the stage and as they scream their request for permission to cross the various white lines laid out across the brig. Once the ten prisoners are awakened by the wardens, the play is a flurry of activity, all highly coordinated, all intensely physical, and all terribly impersonal. It's like a fucked up version of watching a marching band up close. The sense of the lives of the men in the marines is conveyed through a highly intense bodily experience and the drama of the play is the acting out of the demands and difficulty of these lives.

I was fascinated to watch a play without dialogue communicate a deep sense of the experience of being a soldier. Still, at the end of act one, I was praying for some dialogue and a plot in the second act. I didn't get any such thing but what I got was masterful. Having set the scene of the ordinary day for these soldiers in act one, act two provides scenes that act as relief against the first act. For example, there's a scene in which the men clean the brig. If they clean it well enough, they are told, they will get a half hour to write letters. As an audience member, you pray that they receive this half hour because you sense they desperately need the break from this awful physical routine to survive with their sanity intact and because you need a break from the choreography of loud sound and repetitive action. This is where the drama lies in the show. A very different kind than we typically experience in theater. Its story is boiled down to emotion and conveyed in a unique way. As the men frantically wash the brig, things become frantic, almost slapstick, and one gets the sense of the chaos that lives just beneath the surface of this military routine. At any moment, it seems, these men could fall out of marching step and pandemonium could ensue. Or, perhaps more accurately, just beneath of the surface of the gloss and physical order of military life each soldier experiences a personal chaos and is part of a larger one.

Set against the order witnessed in the first act, the second act is remarkable. Among the things we witness is a prisoner leaving and a prisoner arriving. The prisoner leaving, we learn, is getting out five days early for good behavior. This is a serious disruption of the audience's assumptions. It means that in a world where one has no choice about how to behave, one can actually be deemed to have behaved well. Furthermore, and more to the point, it means that the wardens recognize the difficulty of these mens' lives and feel sympathy for them. This is jarring because it seriously disrupts our understanding of them as cold, mean, machines. Finally, we witness a prisoner's arrival, seeing how he learns all of these seemingly arbitrary rules (one can't ever have one's bare feet touch the ground, for example). After about five minutes of the soldier learning by making mistakes and being punished, a warden tells the new prisoner that another prisoner will explain the rules to him. This is the only time he will ever be engaged in a conversation, he is told. Once the explanation of the rules is complete, he will never speak to another human being, he will only receive and ask for orders. Having just witnessed two hours of this kind of life, this short bit of relief, or counterpoint, leaves us devastated. We feel what they have missed largely being seeing it happen for 30 seconds.

I have given away a lot about this play but there's so much more. And it's something to see. After the show, an actor friend of mine said he can't imagine why any actor would want to be in that show. He pointed out how hard they work in the production, both physically and emotionally, and guessed that they were all backstage feeling isolated and angry with each other. I replied that this was Los Angeles and that maybe they're willing to be in any play to get noticed. He pointed out that it's impossible to get noticed in that play -- everyone does everything the same way at the same time and emotion isn't conveyed in such a way that one recognizes the work of an individual actor. As in the world of the marines that this play reflects, there is no individuality and the bits of humanity present are rarely witnessed.

"Carousel" at the Court Theatre on March 16th in Chicago, IL.

2008-03-16T21:46:00.000-07:00

"Carousel," by Rogers and Hammerstein, has among its songs one called "A Real Nice Clambake" and another called "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" The first is about what a nice clambake the characters have just had, how many dozens of clams they've just eaten, and how full and jovial they are. The other asks what's the use of wondering if your man is good or bad when he's bound to hurt you in either case and you're bound to stay with him even then. The first is a frivolous and silly song and the second a dark and painful song. This production could have chosen the path of either song for its tone but chose to go with the clambake.

About a dozen years or so ago, Gary Griffin began to direct musicals on a small scale at Pegasus Theater. By necessity, they didn't have large orchestras or fancy sets. As a director, Griffin focused on wringing the meaning out of the songs and coached his singers into fine emotional performances. I guess Chicago Shakespeare Theatre and the Court Theatre caught wind of this and invited Griffin to direct musicals at both theaters. About six years ago, Griffin directed "My Fair Lady" at the Court, a musical I'd had no interest in at first. Griffin produced it with two pianos as the only instruments and great direction. The extremely talented Kate Fry played the lead with deep emotional intelligence and the show was a sensation. Ever since, the Court has been "exploring the American musical."

If one is going to conduct such an exploration, then doing Rogers and Hammerstein seems essential. As one sits through this production and wonders why the hell they did this show, one might remember that Rogers and Hammerstein were important pioneers of the American musical and instead ask yourself why the hell did they decided to do this show this way. The story, about a couple who loved each other but would never say "I love you," seems stunted and flat and much of the action seem to make no sense.

This show tries to have more integrity than a typical splashy musical but in the end doesn't. The young actors are all very fine singers but none of them are good actors -- of the caliber of Kate Fry. They act and move like actors in splashy musicals act and move. Whereas Griffin seemed to carefully consider each and every decision about what happened on stage, mining the script for meaning, this production seemed to take all of its cues from one's memories of musicals. There's a scene in which a wife finds her husband of just a few months dead -- he's killed himself rather than land himself in jail. In that moment, she says "I love you" to him for the first time. This scene could have been nicely done, especially since this thread of not saying "I love you" but wanting desperately to hear it is sewn throughout the play. Instead of dealing with the meaning of that scene, the director stages it so that all the actors turn their heads away from the mourning wife -- gestures that are hackneyed. Had "What's the Use of Wond'rin?" been treated intelligently, we would have felt the bitterness of the divorced woman who opens the number. One gets the sense, however, that the director never studied the scene with his actors.

The Court Theatre is one of the most consistently good theaters in town. Charlie Newell, the artistic director, always puts together an intelligent and unexpected season. I can see why he would choose this show but I'm sorry about this production.

As an aside, I will mention the race blind casting. This is something that the Court has done for some time. The theater has also consistently chosen plays that call for a majority of black actors. A few years ago it did a mixed cast production of "Desire Under the Elms" that was fantastic and made the story even more complicated. The mixed cast in this show is more straightforward. A number of actors of color, and not just black, have work on this production and that is a good thing. One choice seems unfortunate to me, though, and that is of Nettie, the matriarch among the young women. She is a surrogate mother to what appear to be motherless young women. Played by an African American woman, Nettie seems like a mammey character in this production, the selfless black woman who historically has cared for the white children of her owners/employers. In American history, mammies mothered the children of white women, even breast feeding them, until they grew into adolescence and were then torn away from the children. The southerner Lillian Smith has written about what a painful separation this is for the black woman and for the child. In popular culture, the mammey is usually depicted as jovial and selfless when the truth of the matter was that she had no choice. On the one hand, the fact that a talented African American has a well-paying role at one of Chicago's best theaters is great. On the other hand, they might have tried to play her differently to avoid this stereotype.

"The Trip to Bountiful" at the Goodman Theatre on March 10th. Chicago, IL.

2008-03-16T21:07:00.000-07:00

I was interested in seeing this show largely because it was written by a Southerner and because Lois Smith is in it. As a student of southern literature, I couldn't pass up the chance to see a Horton Foote play and the only scene in "Minority Report" worth seeing was the scene with Lois Smith in the greenhouse. At the same time, I was prepared to be somewhat bored. This was to be a straightforward production of a play written in 1953, about three or four years after Ionesco's far more experimental "The Bald Soprano."

This terrific production totally won me over. The direction focused on the script and the acting. In Goodman productions, the art direction, especially the sets, can be a bit much. In this case, the set took back seat and for that I'm grateful. Lois Smith's performance was as wonderful as I'd expected. Meghan Andrews, who plays Thelma, a young woman whose husband has left to fight in WWII and who shows great kindness to Carrie, is also especially great to watch.

The story is about an old woman who has left her family farm in the dying town, Bountiful, and lives with her son and daughter-in-law in Houston. She longs to go home but she is old and her son insists she stay in Houston with him. As time goes on, Carrie recalls her memories of Bountiful while her son blocks them out. We are never told what happened in their past but one assumes that something painful did because the son has suffered a nervous breakdown. His wife is afraid for him and refuses to consider entertaining the notion of the mother going back to Bountiful. One day, Carrie sneaks out and takes a bus back to Bountiful with no food, a few coins, and pension check no one will cash. On the way, she encounters a series of people who could easily be indifferent to her but her humanness and will win them over. There's an especially wonderful scene set on the bus in which Carrie and Thelma talk about their situations and we witness their care and kindness for each other. Things in Bountiful don't turn out quite the way Carrie had hoped but they turn out ok. She gets to see the homestead one more time and decides that has to be good enough. The son, in chasing after his mother, comes to the farm and invites the memories of his boyhood for the first time, something that seems to offer a kind of freedom to him.

"The Trip to Bountiful" is concerned with two things, the lost of the agrarian past to the isolation of modernity and the importance of reckoning with the past. This production brings nothing new fangled to the play and is all the better for it. What it does bring is deep emotion to a lovely story and some of the best acting I've seen recently on a Chicago stage.

"The Addding Machine" at the Minetta Lane Theater on Feb. 25. NY, NY.

2008-03-16T15:14:00.000-07:00

"The Adding Machine" is a musical for people who love theater that pushes the boundaries of its form and that examine life seriously. It's a wonderful musical but not for folks who think "Rent" or "Wicked" are great, which is to say it's serious, both in its form and theme. It strives to examine life rather than simply entertain but if you like to smart theater, it's terribly entertaining. After I finished seeing it I wanted to buy a ticket to see it again in 15 minutes.

"The Adding Machine" received its world premier in Chicago at the Next Theatre. It's a musical adaptation of the 1920's play by Elmer Rice. It about a man, Mr. Zero, who gets fired from his job adding numbers on his 25th anniversary with the company. Thinking he's going to get a raise, he's let go and replaced by an adding machine. Worried about his ability to make ends meet and angry for this betrayal, he kills his boss. He's put to death and once dead he finds himself not in hell but in the Elysian Fields, an afterlife where you can still live in passion. Mr. Zero is offended that the wicked, as he sees them, are not punished in hell and he hides flees beauty and pleasure, working on an adding machine for the rest of his time in the afterworld. In a way, this is a play about how capitalism's obsession with productivity dehumanizes us but even more, I think, it's about our personal impulse to be used as machines rather than seeking out beauty and pleasure. The tragedy of the play is not just that he's replaced by the adding machine but that he becomes one willingly.

This show is pretty darn close to perfect. The music reflects the 1920's but it's also fresh and new. The story is interesting. And the performances are superb. There's a moment in the play when Mr. Zero and a woman he works with remember a moment when they might have touched each other and chosen to be together, and thus be happy. The script, singing, and acting are superb, a combination than one sees too rarely in theater. I can't recommend this enough.

"Conversations in Tesculem" at the Public Theater on Feb. 24th. NY, NY.

2008-03-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

I don’t know how many plays about George Bush I’ve seen but I’m tired of them. Of course, the only one I can think of ever having seen, Theater Oobleck’s “The Strangerer,” I loved. Maybe what I’m tired of are the same old complaints about America under Bush. I pretty much agree with all the criticism but it’s all so obvious that I want to cover my ears when someone starts.

Enter the world premier of Richard Nelson's “Conversation in Tusculum,” set in the countryside outside of Rome at the height of Juluis Caesar’s reign. Against the advice of the smartest men in Rome, some of them who had been very close to him, Caesar continuously takes the country to war with little provocation. He believes in preemptive strikes. Being at war constantly, Caesar is able to manipulate the Romans to relinquish their civil freedoms and the country no longer operates as a republic. This stifling atmosphere is loathed by enough citizens and embraced by enough that the country is bitterly divided. Surrounded by a small group of advisors, no one can get to Caesar to give him what they think of as sane advice. These men and women who have been living in the countryside get drunk and recount their betrayal by Caesar and wax philosophical about the country going to hell. They worry that the nature of the republic has changed so much that it may be beyond the point of repair. Yet, they want to see the humanity restored to their great nation.

This is the kind of play that is very short on plot. Rather, its concern is to analyze the condition of America and it does so through allegory. I found it fascinating and spot on. In a way, as a bit of analysis, it doesn’t say that much that we don’t already know. But because it is an allegory, it is more interesting because it reflects who we are rathen than being didactic. Plus, it focuses not on Bush, but on the thoughts and feelings of those of us who have tried to oppose him. At one point, Brutus goes to Rome to meet Caesar, hoping that Caesar is tired from all the wars and lonely as the result of his isolation. Brutus believes that Caesar might once again consider him a friend and that he will then have power as an insider and can help save the republic. It becomes clear, though, that Caesar won’t allow that to happen and he tells Brutus that while he and others are having conversations in Tusculum, Caesar is at least being decisive. He may be wrong, he tells Brutus, but at least he’s acting. Sound familiar? Horribly defeated, Brutus goes back to the countryside and writes a short play. He asks an actor to put on the play, explaining that through theater we can safely say things that we cannot say directly. The actor, speaking Brutus’ words, recounts Caesar’s horrible deeds and announces that for those reasons, he will assassinate Caesar. This ending is fascinating, partly because it serves as a kind of wish fulfillment for many Americans (and perhaps as catharsis of a kind) and because it’s a moment when the play, which has been serving as a metaphor, becomes history again.

The cast features some of our finest American theater actors, including Brian Denehy and Adrian Quinn. The set is sparse, without being minimalist. Everything in this production drives forward the ideas in the play rather than being elaborate.

"Sunday In the Park With George" at Roundabout Theater on Feb. 24, NY, NY

2008-03-12T09:32:00.000-07:00

People like to say that they hate musicals. Sometimes it’s because the music is too stylized or lacks any vigor or because it’s silly to think of people talking and then suddenly breaking into song. I myself usually dislike musicals – mostly because the music tends to be dull and repetitive, the acting overdone and lacking any emotion or subtlety, and the stories silly, flat, and sentimental. One of the reasons I love Sondheim is because his music is complicated and fresh, even decades after hearing it for the first time. Now that opera houses are doing “Sweeney Todd,” people who at first didn’t, for whatever reason, hear the innovative and complex emotion in those songs are giving him another look and we’re seeing a wave of revivals. As for those who can’t get past the fact that people are singing dialogue, well, I just can’t make sense of that. Music is just one way of conveying emotion. It’s a stylistic device, like any in a number of such devices used in good theater or film. (Of course, people who LOVE!!! musicals can seem to lack any judgment and perhaps the force of their enthusiasm annoys the rest of us.)

The plot of “Sunday in the Park with George” revolved aroun the relationship between the late 19th century painter George Seurat and his fictional model, Dot, who appears in his famous painting “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Le Grande Jatte.” Seurat loves Dot but his compulsion to paint leads him to ignore her constantly. Plus, while he loves Dot, he cannot bring himself to tell her how musch he does. During an argument, Seurat tells Dot that she knows exactly how he feels and that he shouldn’t have to say it. Dot responds that he might be feeling many things and that she cannot know exactly what he feels if he doesn’t tell her. Pregnant with his child but knowing that she cannot get what wants from Seurat, she marries a baker and moves with him to the United States. Dot has a child named Marie and Marie’s son gives birth to another artist named George. Like Seurat, this George is also interested in blazing forth new directions in art, especially in the study of color and light, and unable to speak of his feelings. We see him at a museum reception for donors, where his ex-wife is keeping Marie company, and we know that he has lost her for the same reason.

The music in “Sunday in the Park with George” is particularly difficult to sing plus requires excellent acting to properly convey the emotion of the songs. The leads in this new production handle both excellently. They are both deft with Sondheim’s music, which often call for very fast singing. There are three songs in this play that I find especially moving. One is “Finishing the Hat,” in which Seurat realizes he’s going to lose Dot because he’s decided to stay in and finish painting the hat that she wears in the painting. In it, he sings about what he sacrifices in order to paint, aware that he’s looking at the thing he loves as he’s losing it. Another is Dot’s song, “We Do Not Belong Together,” in which she realizes that although she loves George it is better for her to leave him and go to America. And, finally, a song that George’s mother sings lamenting the loss of the tress on the island and the changes that modernity brings. Upset about the loss of the natural landscape and complaining about the construction of the Eifel Tower, which she considers a poor substitute for a tree, George tries to reassure her that everything is beautiful because someone has made it and that she only needs to look at them in a new way. Unconvinced, she ends the song by saying wistfully, “Oh Georgie, how I long for the old days.”

The direction in this production is careful and smart. The music is as wonderful and moving as ever. The illustrations of Seurat’s painting are made through computer graphics. The walls in the production are all white and as Seurat speaks instructions, we see his brush strokes materialize on the white walls. Seurat, of course, loves these white walls because he sees in them the possibilities of what he will create. A special challenge for a director comes in the second act, which has always seemed disjointed. The action taking place in the 1980’s can seem underdeveloped and less moving than those taking place in the 1880’s. This production connects the two acts by showing what making art is and means to the two Georges and by giving the contemporary George a moment of recognition and catharsis that seems to be cut off by Seurat. In the first act, after witnessing George not being able to tell Dot that he loves her and failing to take care of her, we see the attention he pays to her in his painting. He messes endlessly with the hat, with her bustle, with the monkey she has on a leash. He takes great care, in fact, in how he places everyone and everything in the painting. As we see his care for composition, we see how George experiences and conveys his love for those around him. Later, we see the 1980’s George at a donor reception as he schmoozes the individual donors, the people who might commission a piece, the curator who might give him a museum show, the critic who has the power to shape opinions about his work and future, and the artistic collaborators without whom he can’t make his pieces. This is how art is made in the 1980’s, a kind of composition that is very different than what Seurat had to deal with. Finally, the show ends when the 1980’s George goes to the island where Seurat’s painting was created and sees how the landscape has changed. It’s almost unrecognizable, except for the curving lines of the river, which we recognize from the painting, and one tree that still remains. George sits on a park bench and breaks into tears, recognizing how much he misses Marie, conflating Marie with his mother in the first act. This emotional outpouring is something that Seurat would not have done and we take a little hope that this George might change the direction of his emotional life.

I could go on and on but I won’t, except to say that this is as good a production as I’ve ever seen and perhaps even more carefully directed, or at least somehow more intimate, than the original production. And while I can’t help hearing Bernadette Peters and Mandy Patikin when I hear these songs in my head, I did largely forgot them as I watched this production.

"This Is How It Goes" at Profiles Theater on 2/10/08 in Chicago

2008-02-28T04:31:00.000-08:00

Profiles Theater is doing a season of all Neil LaBute plays. For those of us who like the combination of the head on look at the brutality of contemporary society, his humor, and his dialogue, this was a treat. Lest season, Profiles production of "Fat Pig" was unflinching and excellently done.

The Profiles space is teeny. Its stage is really just a small floor and there are seats on either side. The two front rows are probably two feet from the action at times. As an audience member, it would be easy to notice the entrances and exits of the actors and the audience members sitting across from you. Because of the acting in Profiles' plays, this intimacy is used to good effect and we're largely able to ignore those things. I went to see "This Is How It Goes" on a night when it was below zero and the theater got unbearably cold when an actor opened the door to the theater when making an entrance. I wondered once or twice about how cold the actors, who were wearing shorts in some scenes, must have been, but mostly I was too caught up in the action of the play to worry for them too much.

This play is about a threesome -- a funny, sensitive, somewhat nerdy but cute enough white man; the pretty, exhausted, emotionally dissatisfied white woman with whom he'd been infatuated as a teen; and, a successful, good-looking, athletic black man who is her husband. At the play's opening, we learn that the somewhat nerdy guy is a layer who has come back to town after have been away for many years and is no longer practicing law. He runs into Belinda at the mall and we can see that he's thrilled to see her because he's always been in love with here. His attention, lightness, and humor are a welcome relief from her marriage to Cody. They begin to see each other more frequently and, as she gets more and more of his attention, the disfunctions in her marriage to Cody come increasingly to the surface. At first, the tension in the play is that her marriage is unravelling but eventually we learn why the lawyer has quit his job and come back to his hometown. He has made a very inappropriate racial joke within hearing distance of a black colleague and refuses to apologize. The scene in which he tells this story is classic LaBute. In it we get a thoughtful analysis of racial relationships in America. The lawyer's racism is evident -- his joke, which he maintains is just a joke, betrays racist attitudes underlying the joke. It's especially brutal for audiences because we see ourselves in that joke. Told by a nice man, a character we like very much, we recognize the brutality of the joke and the attitude it reflects, one that we like to think only lives in rednecks in America but that really lives in the hearts and minds of white collar people in America's cities as well. Meanwhile, our long history of race relations makes it impossible for the black woman to hear it as a joke. The result of that history is that she can only hear it as an attack. I won't give anymore details about the play's plot except to say that, in the end, the racism is not the final issue in the play but the relationship between the two men who are fighting for Belinda. Eventually, we realize that Belinda is something that the men feel they can trade. The eventual lesson of the play is that relationships in America are still among men and women are commodities they trade.

LaBute's plays are brutal but I think it is a mistake to say that he must be a brutal person. Instead, I think he's a keen observer of contemporary American culture and his plays reflect the brutality of our lives back to us. His play and the subsequent film, "In the Company of Men," was a scathing reflection of misogyny in American culture. It hits us hard because we would all like to believe that sexism is dead in America, at least in educated spaces, and we are reminded that it's not. "This Is How It Goes" points out things about race in America that many of us think have disappeared but that are still around and lurking under the surface and come up for air in jokes. A look at gender relationships does the same thing. But I think this view is not one that LaBute has made up out of his imagination but instead out of his observations of American culture.

This production is very well acted and well directed. It was very funny. And the intimacy of the theater, despite the cold let in by the entrances and exits, served the play well.

"The Little Dog Laughed" at About Face Theater, Chicago, IL - 2/9/08

2008-02-18T17:10:00.000-08:00

"The Little Dog Laughed" was written by Douglas Carter Beane, author of the movie "To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar" and the book for the musical "Xanadu," presently running on Broadway. The movie, which I thought was ok at best, and "Xanadu," which I loved, rely heavily on camp humor. So does "The Little Dog Laughed." As far as I'm concerned, his humor is sort of one-note, but in the case of "Xanadu," it is fantastically entertaining. In the case of "To Wong Foo," it's forgettable.

In About Face's production of this play, Mary Beth Fisher plays a Hollywood agent who will lie, cheat, and stuff her client in the closet, for success. Her client, who has been happy to remain in the closet and do rent boys every now and then, meets a rent boy for whom he's willing to come out. When he gets the lead in a movie that is certain to be a hit, his agent tells him he has to remain in the closet because the character is gay. Gay men can't play gay men in blockbusters, she tells him. Women have to believe he's straight.

The play is hysterical and Mary Beth Fisher is incredible: she steals the show. Then again, the script was written that way. Other characters have their moments but not nearly as many moments as she does. Apart from watching her, though, there's not much else to this play. Or maybe to this production.

When the play opens, the lead who plays the movie star is adorable (and has a great body) and when he falls asleep before getting it on with the fella he hired for the night, you're ready to like him. The two of them, both living largely in the closet, fall in love and decide they will come out to be with each other. Unfortunately, there is no sexual chemistry between the actors and so one never believes that they're in love and hot for each other. Plus, they're not very good in these roles. As a result, the exposure of hypocrisy in Hollywood as it plays itself out among the characters matters little to the audience We're supposed to be disappointed by the position the two guys find themselves in but we don't. There's a small controversy brewing in town because the stage directions call for a scene where the two men are nude and one goes down on the other. The playwright was upset when he saw the production and realized the men had on underwear in the scene. Frankly, I don't think it would have added anything because the audience wouldn't have believed there was any sexual attraction anyway.

At the end of the play, we all wondered if it would have felt like something more substantial than candy if we had seen a different production. The theme of hypocrisy and cut throat activities in Hollywood is hardly something that I care about. But if we could have seen the characters as people who felt something for each other and who may have lost that, then we may have cared for their lives, even if not Hollywood's. But I don't know. I loved "Xanadu" but there's no attempt to be serious in that play. So, I still don't know if it was an mediocre script or a mediocre script coupled with a lackluster production.

"The Selfish Giant," by Oscar Wilde at Chicago Children's Theatre - February 3, 2008

2008-02-04T05:38:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Children's Theater commissioned Blair Thomas & Co. to create a sort of trunk show for them, a show in which all the materials would fit in trunks and could be taken around to schools and community centers for performances. Blair Thomas is perhaps best known for the "spectacle" pieces he created at Redmoon Theater, the form of theater that Redmoon is perhaps still most recognized for. Some of Blair Thomas' most interesting work, however, is on a much smaller scale. I find a sense of poetry in these smaller shows.

"The Selfish Giant" is an adaptation of the the Oscar Wilde book for young readers. It's not a picture book and not quite a chapter book. It's the story of a giant who refuses to share his garden and explicitly tells kids to stay out. Without the life that children bring, an eternal winter sets in the garden and the other seasons decide that they too will stay away. The eternal chill is too much for the selfish giant and he wishes that spring would come. Luckily for him, some kids find a crack in the wall that surrounds his garden and sneak in. As they play in the garden spring returns and the giant is thrilled. He learns that in cutting yourself off from the world in the hopes of keeping everything for oneself, you also cut yourself off from the joy the world has to offer you.

Blair Thomas has partnered with the folk singer/songwriter Michael Smith on the production. Thomas wrote the book for the piece and Smith has written the music and lyrics. Smith's music is folksy and very funny in the way that folk music so often in. He knows how to wring the humor out of rhymes and juxtaposing the familiar with the exotic to humorous effect. The songs in this show are delightful.

The puppets and the staging are magical. I find puppet theater fascinating because there is no pretense of naturalism to it can be very moving. You can see three puppeteers manipulating a bunraku puppet and still forget about them long enough to be moved the face of the puppet. One of the miracles of Thomas' puppets is that the same puppet conveys various feelings and does so incredibly effectively. At one point the giant seems serene and the other he seems incredibly sad and worried. That such emotion can be drawn from a puppet in the first place is amazing and that such shifts can occur is even more so. This is part of the poetry of puppetry -- that so many meanings can emerge from the same signifier. Throughout the production, the puppets and the world of the play moves from large to small. Thomas is inside the large puppet of the giant at first and the stage is the living room and garden of the giant. When the puppet falls asleep, Thomas slips out of the puppet and emerges to manipulate a number of other puppets, from marionette children to birds carrying suitcases to scolding bees. As winter settles in, the world and all of its players shrink until we see the entire town emerge out of a chest. Each new puppet is a source of fun and delight and we love it that they keep on coming.

The kids in the very intimate theater at the Field Museum seemed to love the show. As with the best children's theater, it's also great for adults. I happened to have a 6-year-old with me but I would attend this show without having the excuse of having to bring a child. Its just good theater.

"Shining City" at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, IL -- February 2, 2008

2008-02-02T13:59:00.000-08:00

Today I have a guest. My colleague and friend, Christy Uchida, sees even more theater than I do. She went to see "Shining City" at the Goodman, a show I wasn't planning to see, and agreed to share her comments on my blog. So, here they are. Thanks, Christy.

“73% of Americans believe in the paranormal” claim the bus tails and other creepy advertisements currently promoting A&E’s show Paranormal State. However, it’s the paranormal event at the end of Conor McPherson’s compelling play “Shining City” currently at the Goodman Theatre that didn’t work for me. The preceding 90+ intermissionless minutes convincingly conveyed our society’s craving for “connection in an isolating age.” And the characters’ flailing attempts at connection are portrayed with humanity and humor. I don’t want to play the spoiler, because the ending was theatrically effective as evidenced by the audience’s (and my own) startled reaction. But it makes me wonder if these types of shocking tricks are necessary to cut through the clutter of all the realism in theater. (See Christopher Piatt’s excellent review of The Hypocrites’ “Miss Julie” for a comment on deconstructing American Realism in theater: http://www.timeout.com/chicago/articles/theater/25906/miss-julie)

McPherson is certainly considered to be one of the most talented young Irish playwrights—“Shining City” was nominated for three Tonys in 2006. And the heightened naturalism of his writing is compared to Mamet. Apparently he began is career writing monologues, which is evident in the long soliloquies that have led some to criticize the play for being too talky. But what else should a play about a bereaved man and his therapist be except talky?

The play is simple. Middle-aged John is recently widowed when his wife is killed in a horrific car accident. In his grief and guilt created by a near infidelity shortly before his wife’s death, he believes he has been seeing the ghost of his wife and seeks the advice of a therapist, Ian. While it initially appears that the man seeking therapy is the wreck, we realize that it’s really the therapist’s life that’s much more screwed up. The subtle shift throughout the play masterfully unravels Ian’s character, and leads us to think how much do we know about professionals we seek advice from? Effectively the costuming—Ian begins as a buttoned-up therapist and ends in a t-shirt and jeans, while John begins disheveled and ends in his salesman’s power suit—reveals the shift. Interestingly, the same irrational homophobia that appears in “Good Boys and True” (see entry below) prevents Ian from being able to have the human connection he craves. The paranormal event at the end hits us over the head to signal that the younger Ian is also settling for a lifetime of second best.

“Shining City” is brilliantly acted with John Judd as John and Jay Whittaker as Ian, recalling the tremendous two-character production of Caryl Churchill’s “A Number” that featured John and Jay at Next Theatre a couple of seasons ago. I wish I could have seen “Shining City” in an intimate venue like Next—we were too far away in the balcony to fully appreciate the incredible acting. And while the production values were excellent as always, the over-resourced Goodman unnecessarily created thunder and lightening in Christopher Akerlind’s lighting design and running water and a flushing toilet in Obadiah Eaves’ sound design that didn’t add value to the script at all. The show would have been just as good, and more accessible, at the type of small, gritty off-Loop space that makes Chicago theater great.

Robert Falls’ production of “Shining City” moves from the Goodman to the Huntington Theatre in Boston this spring, another regional theater too rich and too big for this simple play. But at least large audiences are exposed to high quality new theater this way

"Fragment" directed by Peter Brooks at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre - February 2, 2008

2008-02-02T13:20:00.000-08:00

If you're serious about theater, get excited by amazing acting, or love to see what an amazing director does with strong but incredibly dense scripts, go see this show. It's incredible.

Peter Brooks has taken fragments of works by Samuel Beckett and created an evening length piece out of them. The second piece is a series of repetitions of a a few lines of monologue with small differences over time. In the hands of anything less than remarkable actor, this piece would have seemed silly and been dully. In the hands of Katherine Hunter, it illuminates the nature of language and also has great emotional urgency. Plus, there's the added thrill of seeing such mastery in place.

In another piece there are two bags on stage and a pile of clothes. A large stick comes down and pokes one of the bags and a man comes out. He's miserable about being awaken, miserable about putting his pants on backwards, miserable about the terrible carrot he found in the pocket, miserable about his day. He eventually goes back into the bag and the stick comes down to wake up the second actor. he comes out thrilled about waking up, thrilled about his clothes, thrilled about the tasty carrot he's found in the pocket, and thrilled with his day. All of this is done with no dialogue. Another piece that would be flat if not in the hand of remarkable actors. Like the monologue, we see how language can change meaning except in this case language is reduced to gesture. To up the ante, Brooks ends the piece when the miserable man is awaken b the stick a second time but instead of being just miserable, he also seems sad. This repetition with a difference deepens the poetry of the piece.

Each piece is an exercise in directing and acting but they are also extremely warm but just technically brilliant and smart.

"Miss Julie" by The Hypocrites on January 24, 2008

2008-01-24T21:03:00.000-08:00

Members of the Hypocrites joke that they do two kinds of plays: talkie plays and walkie plays. Talkie plays, as you might guess, have a lot of dialogue. Last season, they did an extraordinary production of Ionesco's "The Bald Soprano." It didn't feel very talkie but I suppose it was. This production of August Strindberg's 1888 play is a walkie play. One walks around the set to view the play. Whether a walkie or a talkie play, one can usually count on seeing plays with extraordinary scripts done with intelligent interpretations of those scripts. Sean Graney, the artistic director of the company, directs the majority of the productions and his understanding and translations of the plays to the stage are among the smartest I ever encounter.

Strindberg is considered the father or modern theater. With "Miss Julie," he set out to ignite a revolution in theater by writing a naturalistic play. These days, though, naturalism is the status quo in theater and Graney, who directed this production, is interested in igniting his own revolution by shifting us away from it. His admiration for the writing, though, leads him to present very careful and smart interpretations of the plays. In a way, a director always co-authors a play when producing it, by cutting scenes or adding dialogue, making certain design choices, or emphasizing certain points of view in the script over others. In this production, Graney seems to do that even more than is typical and it is fun to witness it. In a way, this production is a deconstruction (and I'm not using that word when I should be saying analysis) of theater and a lesson in theater history. I don't know enough about Strindberg to know if he had intended to do the same with his play 120 years ago. As a modernist, that might very well have been the case.

"Miss Julie" is about an aristocratic woman who gives in to her lust for a servant and causes an upheaval of the roles of the aristocracy and the servants. When the play opens, Miss Julie has used her father's absence as an opportunity to dance with the servants. As she plays with her father's coachman, Jean, making him kiss her feet, her hands, and dance with her, he gets aroused and eventually they have sex. Miss Julie becomes somewhat melodramatic, wanting Jean to assure her that he loves her (although they both know that neither of them loves the other). Jean at first tries to protect himself by convincing her that what she is doing is unseemly but once he realizes he's unable to stop her, he uses the situation to make life better for himself: he tries to get her to finance a new hotel that he would start and eventually leads her to kill herself. He knows that as long as the master calls, he'll have to say "Yes, sir" and go to him and tries to escape that life and then just to save his job. The third character, Kristin, is the cook and Jean's betrothed. She wants to keep things they way they are, with the aristocracy out of reach and something to admire. She knows that they know too little because they never work but she believes that social order must be kept. Thus, while Miss Julie and Jean are crossing boundaries, Kristin is trying to maintain them.

Graney deconstructs the play through the audience's physical experience of it. He adds a singing chorus of sorts, and they sing about what is happening in the play and guide us through the space. In the middle of the room is a large box with wooden paneling. Each of the four sides says 4th, as in 4th wall. The audience walks to the farthest side from the entrance for the first act and the wall opens up to reveal a kitchen, where the first scene will unfold. We then move to another side, where Miss Julie opens a wall and the bar is inside. Eventually, the entire box is opened and the audience is invited to sit within it to watch the final act. I was less than two feet from the actors at certain points. The costumes early in the play were fairly contemporary. By the final scene, we've moved backward in theater history and the costumes look like those that might have been used in an 1888 production or a contemporary production that chose to set it in 1888. They also all match; they're the same style, fabric, and shade of green. When in that final scene Kristin tell Jean that his clothes look ridiculous, it's a funny joke about theater productions. His clothes look ridiculous because he's no longer wearing jeans but is now in a coachman's outfit from 1888 and because it's green and matches her dress. The production also begins with a contemporary setting of the play, bringing Strindberg's script up to 2008, but as it moves ahead, it moves backward in time and ends in an 1888 production. As a concept, it's by far one of the most clever sets I've seen.

When the play isn't being referential, it's less of a success for me but I'm not certain why. The script is dense and dense scripts are difficult because if your mind wanders for a minute you lose something important. Still, I feel like I "got" the story. Maybe the performances weren't always clear. The timing of the dialogue was steady and fast and the actor who played Jean wasn't always convincing within those constraints. There were times when he was excellent but not in all scenes. Both women were compelling and maintaining such intensity must be difficult to pull off when you're in such close proximity to the audience. Unlike "Mud," another walkie play that was unsurpassed, the stylized acting didn't manage to breakthrough to have an emotional impact on me. When Jean drips blood on Miss Julie's neck, telling us about the suicide about to come, I loved it for it's referential nature but was not moved to be sad for what was about to happen.

I, for one, do believe that theater artists are creating new forms of theater, with "Hey, Girl" as an excellent example, even if the mainstream theater companies like the Goodman and Steppenwolf are not producing them. The Hypocrites are going in a different direction. They still focus on conventional scripts and create new things out of them. It's some of the very best theater in Chicago and is something to be seen.

"Hey Girl" by Societas Raffaello Sanzalo on January 18, 2008 at the Museum of Contemporry Art

2008-01-20T06:16:00.000-08:00

"Hey Girl" is the kind of piece that performance art groups strive to achieve. It is a true combination of theater and visual art, with non-narrative movement through time and technically dazzling design elements that work together to create a coherent piece. At a time when experimental theater is striving to break away from realism and art is a mixture of media, the Italian theater company Societas Raffaelo Sanzlo achieves what others are experimenting with.

One walks into a theater that is humid and foggy and dark. The lights come up to show a table with a large blob of melting flesh in which one recognizes a foot hanging off the side of the metal table and a woman's head on top. With loud, arresting music that seems to be announcing the arrival of something while also marking the passing of time, the flesh-colored blob melts and falls off the table, revealing the naked body of woman who slowly sits up on the table and slowly walks up stage, her back to us. Upon getting off the table, the female figure still has no head but slowly a hear appears, then hair. She looks at herself in a mirror and stumbles across the stage where she bangs on a drum and puts on some clothes. We witness her birth, rising out of a primordial blob, and see her develop into a recognizable human being. The image is fascinating, a technical feat (what is that blob made out of, one wonders), and meaningful (we recognize what is happening). It is an artifact (the blob is sculpture) and a performance (the birth of this creature).

The rest of the performance is no less astounding. Some of my favorite images include an attack upon the girl when a couple dozen young men, mostly in black, attack the girl with black pillows. The stage is dark and the lighting and sound design are such that it almost seems like a video piece. Another is of a naked and headless black woman with metallic paint on her body (creating the image of an armor) walking through broken glass with high heels wielding a large sword, an oversized girlish head with blond hair that once once her head, now upside down on the floor as though it's been lopped off.

There is no story here. No narrative about what has happened to this girl, raised up out of a primordial blob. But we witness a series of tableaus/images as she develops as a being and a person, learning about and reacting to the world, experiencing conflict and taking up her own coat of arms as a response. It manages to cohere, as successful art does. It is a combination of art forms and none at the same time. As a viewer, we are compelled by the way the piece works. We take in the beautiful images and we also work to create meaning. In the scene of the black woman walking among the shattered glass in high heels, a kind of armor on, wielding a sword, we are presented with a collection of visually and conceptually striking images and we are work hard, are compelled even, to make sense of it. We have images of Joan of Arc, the danger of walking on broken glass, the protection of high heels but also their counter-feminist associations, the presence of a black female body in itself trying to hide itself, etc. They somehow seem related and we have to bring our associations and imagination to make meaning of it. The piece is given to us but means more when we, as audience members, work to make something of it, using associations borne out of history and our own ideas to complete it as a thought piece. It's an amazing accomplishment.

Maybe this is where theater and art are right now, or at least one of the places. It takes some of its shape from the visual arts (painting, sculpture, and video) and theater and literature, each contributing what its discipline has traditionally offered but interacting with us in a way that none of the disciplines have accomplished in their individual histories.

"Saint Joan" by Shaw Festival of Canada on January 16, 2008 - Chicago, IL

2008-01-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

The Chicago Shakespeare Theater presents a series call World Stage in which they present some of the best international theater. This series is incredibly important to Chicago because it provides us an opportunity to see incredibly high quality and innovative work. To give you a sense of the range, last year I saw an all male production of "Twelfth Knight" in Russian that was the best production of Shakespeare I've ever seen and a musical about apartheid by a South African company. Tonight, I saw a more straightforward production of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan."

This play is a bit of an outlier in the series, I'd say, in that the production isn't as innovative as is typical. However, it makes some sense to include, largely because this is a difficult play by a great playwright and one rarely gets to see a good production of it. As someone with an amateur interest in theater history, I was thrilled to have an opportunity to see this production. Most of the attention surrounding the production, though, say the importance of this production is that it deals with themes that are relevant to our times. They speak of Shaw as prescient, as if he anticipated the issues of our times. If that is so, I'm actually less interested.

This is a philosophical play and a fascinating one at that. It's concerned with the relationship among nationalism, the church, and the individual. Or rather, it examines tension as it related to the authority of the state, the church, and the individual. St. Joan believes that she's making war, against England but maybe also among the noblemen of France, in the name of God. God speaks to her through the saints. Eventually, the church, which is to say the leaders of the Catholic church, come to believe that she is a heretic because she believes God speaks to her directly, rather than through the church, which is to say the leaders of the Catholic church. The English hate her because she's defeating them but the more philosophical British seem to hate her because she believes that a king should hold the highest place in a country and not just be a leader. This means that all land would ultimately belong to the king, and not to the lords and noblemen, and this is a threat. Eventually, everyone wants her dead or silenced for their own reasons.

As a philosophical play, this is interesting. As a sign of the times, I find it less interesting, or rather, less satisfying. That argument goes something like this: Joan believes that God speaks directly to her and not through the church. Once this thought catches on, we have folks born of the Middle East listening to their own private Gods and blowing themselves and others up. A similar argument could be made about people in America. For me, that's a less interesting way to look at the play simply because it's then actually less relevant. I believe that arguments should be addressed to the audience. If a play is going to make an argument that will complicate my world view, I want it to complicate MY world view more so than help me make sense of the world view of others. The latter is certainly important but it can also seem a bit too easy.

A quick note on the production. The production design was beautiful. Expensive, glittery sets prevail today but they are rarely as poetic as this set. The acting was "acting." I was always aware that the people on stage were actors in a play. This kind of stylized acting is commonplace and, as in the case of Tara Rosling in this production, it can still very moving. When such stylization doesn't contribute to the theme of the play, though, I tend to find it annoying. And I also felt some of that here.

"Good Boys and True" - Steppenwolf Theatre - January 11, 2008 - Chicago

2008-01-14T19:21:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are planning to see the show here are things you might like to know: it's a traditional narrative; part of it deals with homosexuality; the acting is wonderful (Martha Levy, as usual, is fantastic and the young Stephen Louis Grosh is a treat to watch); and, it's smart enough to keep your attention but traditional enough to not turn anyone off. Now I'm going to give away the plot so stop reading.

The protagonist, a very popular and cute senior at a fancy prep school where he is captain of the football team, has two secrets. One he's willing to let be known although it might mean being kicked out of school or at least the football team, having his admission revoked from the Ivy League college of his choice, having all his schoolmates know he's done something despicable to a young woman, and being dragged through the mud in the local media, to name a few. The other he refuses to have known. If the former secrets gets out, he could lose the life he's on track to lead. If the second secret gets out, it won't have any lasting consequences (apart from losing some friends he knows are losers anyway). Why then, would he choose the hide the second and not the first?

The first act of the play is incredibly tense; I felt like I was wound up tight as a fist and getting tighter all the time. As we learn that he's seduced an unsuspecting girl, videotaped her without her consent, and circulated it to his football buddies (the first secret), we also learn that he's gay and in love with his best friend (the second secret). The shock of the first act, and to me the power of it, is learning that he'd rather have the first secret be known in order to cover up the second. We realize that being considered a near rapist and losing the privileges that his life affords him are better than acknowledging that he's gay.

The second act complicates and extends the themes. The protagonist's mother, a very decent woman who recognizes that her sons has exploited a young woman and robbed her of her dignity, tries to understand his motivation. She doesn't believe that he would do this just because he felt like it and refuses to let it drop until he acknowledges his reason for doing it. We learn that he had tried to tell his father that he was gay and that the guys on the football team suspected it and that it was his father who advised him to do this. For a while one thinks that the father's sin is one that is commonplace in the United States: he's absent. But we learn that it's worse than that -- this doctor who is in the third world providing free medical care for the poor authors his son's crime, oppresses his son by refusing to accept his homosexuality, and, uses the institutions of privilege (in this case the old boys' network at the fancy prep school where he had also once been the captain of the football team) to perpetrate this despicable act. As if that weren't enough, we learn that the mother, who loves her son very much, knew his was gay and never encouraged him to acknowledge it. In the first conversation between them, she asks her son "We don't have any secrets, do we?" but never encouraged openness about that. While she did not author this act, she could have prevented it.

Almost as much as the theme and the script, I loved the depiction of adolescence in the play and Stephen Louis Grusch is perfect. He's less handsome than cute, a quality that is more likely to get you the girls in high school. He is largely removed from what is happening around him throughout much of the play and his speech is slow and his face blank as he tries to bide his time. In a very adolescent way, he doesn't believe that the worst could happen to him and he's perfectly willing to perpetrate a horrible sin in order to hide something that would embarrass him, believing that in time something will work out. The restraint of his acting pays off when he finally tells his mother that he's gay, that's she's known but not acknowledged it, and that his father told him to do this thing. He bursts into tears. Martha Levy draws him to her and puts her forehead against his. It's the most beautiful moment in the play.

There are some things that didn't work for me. The girl who had been seduced and videotaped is a bit too wise and her purpose in the script is to point out the complexities of the motivations of the mother and the son. The boyfriend is maybe just a tad too comfortable with his homosexuality and a bit too wise for me to find him completely believable. And, the playwright, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, explains himself in the second act more than I would like. Those are minor things, though, considering what the play and the production accomplish.

The play ends with a flashback to the boys' first year in high school, when they first met in the locker room. The play presents a series of dualities and this scene is a perfect representation. We read the scene with the weight of the things we'd already learned but also with the nostalgia of seeing a representation of the past. We see that they are gay and immediately drawn to each other, that they came from different places and were heading different places (football vs. track), and that they both loved the Hardy Boys (also a sign of their homosexuality) and that while one acknowledges it but the other will deny it to his friends. There is such innocence and such hope in the scene and we feel two things simultaneously. We know that this hope will be smashed but also that it can be restored. The innocence is forever gone but it can be replaced with promise. It's a far different feeling than the tight fist of the first act and the playwright's suggestion is that we must throw off the privilege of inheritance to salvage a future of pain and oppression that might very well be written into our futures. We are trapped with our past writing our futures and yet we have hope that if we tackle the thing hed on, we might see some success

"Macbeth" by the Metropoitan Opera - Century 12 Theaters - January, 12, 2008 - Evanston, IL

2008-01-13T08:10:00.000-08:00

In general, I'm not a fan of opera. Every now and then I see one that I love but mostly I sit and pray for them to be over. In hopes of growing an audience for opera, the Met has been broadcasting operas at movie theaters live in HD and I've been meaning to check them out. Largely, I wanted to see what it would be like and who would show up.

I walked into the theater 15 minutes before curtain. My first surprise was that the house was packed. I had to sit in the second row from the back. To my left was a man who had come alone and to my right were two chatty women who had attended together. I never spoke to the man but learned all about the women. They both subscribe to the Lyric Opera and one had seen some productions of Chicago Opera Theater. They see a lot of theater, at both small and large theater companies. And they both attend these broadcasts regularly.

The opera was nearly 4 hours long with scene changes and intermission and, miraculously, I stayed the whole time. When I go to a live opera, I look to see how many people leave during each intermission. By the end of the opera, it seems as if a third of the audience has typically left. Half if it's a 2oth century opera and more than that if it's "Dr. Atomic." This doesn't bode well for 21st century operas, I suppose. Anyway, as far as I could tell, no one left during intermission. In fact, I think we gained audience members as some folks who had left other movies came into our theater toward the end of the opera.

I am not qualified to comment on the music. According to the conductor, James Levine, the music isn't as complex as Verdi's later work but I found myself deeply engaged. My favorite song was a sad song sung by McDuff, a nobleman/soldier whose family was needlessly slaughtered by Macbeth and who helps defeat him in the show's final act. Pathos always gets me.

As theater, it was more engaging than almost any opera I've seen. The new general manager of the Met, the guy who started this program, created a campaign that suggests that great opera is great theater and a director from the Royal Shakespeare Company directed this production. That may have meant better acting from the performers. Also, with cameras you can see close-ups of the performers' faces and that also helps.

As for Verdi's treatment of Shakespeare, a couple things struck me. In my viewings of the play, Macbeth always seems torn by what he's doing. The misses is usually to blame. The opera starts out that way but by the end of the third act Macbeth no longer needs his wife's prodding; his murdering rampage is fueled by his desire to hold on to power and allowed by the numbness he's developed from the earlier murders. Verdi's opera also places the murders in political context. As a result of Macbeth's murdering rampage and the flight of the country's leaders into hiding, the people suffer. Fear, oppression, and poverty dominate; it's not just the murdered foes who suffer but the entire country.

The commentary during the breaks were less interesting than I'd hoped for (too many interviews with actors and not enough thoughtful questions from the interviewer) and I'd expected a more diverse audience. Of course, I was watching it in the suburbs and particularly a suburb where the younger adults are all married and have young children. Next time, I will go see it at one of the two locations in the city. Coming up are "Manon Lescaut" on Febraury 16th, "Peter Grimes" on March 15th, " "Tristane and Isadole" on March 22nd, and "La Boheme" on April 5th, and what I think will be a brand new production of "La Fille du Regiment" on April 26th. I'm planning to go to each of them and I think you should check them out. I'm especially interested in "La Fille du Regiment."

"Fluke" by Radiohole at On the Boards in Seattle - January 10, 2008

2008-01-13T06:44:00.000-08:00

I was in Seattle and looking for something to take my nieces, a junior in high school and a junior in college, to see. I went to http://www.seattleperforms.com/ and looked at the performances for that evening. Among my options were "Breach," a play at Seattle Rep about Hurricane Katrina, and "Fluke," by Radiohole, at On the Boards. I decided to go with the more experimental fare.

Radiohole, I learned that night, performs in Europe a lot but this was to be their first performance in an Amertican city outside of New York. A performance group that's big in Eurpoe but underappreciated at home can only mean one thing: the piece was going to be complete nonsense. And that it was but in a good way.

Sadly, American audiences usually don't know what to do with nonsense. We think that art, especially theater, is supposed to tell a story and we forget that art's primary concern should be to evoke an emotion. Telling an ordered story is certainly one way of evoking emotion but it's not the only way and it was certainly not Radiohole's way. The piece, "Fluke," was of course a rif on "Moby Dick," a novel that I happen to love. If you love a piece of literature, you better not be invested in it maintaining its form if you go see other artists work with it. A number of years back Laurie Anderson did a performance piece called "Songs from Moby Dick" that interpreted the novel through sound. This performance seemed less intent on interpreting its plot and instead chose to create impressions related to the novel.

The piece opened with a woman in a red dress and her dark hair rolled on top of her head strapped in above the audience, leaning forward, quietly reading the weather report. She was striking, largely because she was pretty and peculiar in that side show kind of way at the same time. The whispering of her voice was like a day on the calm sea with a promise of romance or maybe even love. At some point, though, you begin to suspect you're being teased more than romanced. A figure loomed on a video monitor above stage left, his presence heavy and oppressive. At first I got the sense that he could be Ahab to the seamen, then Moby Dick to Ahab, then eventually just the feeling of a painful obsession. About halfway through the piece, the three performers on stage closed thier eyes and painted a second pair of eyes on their eyelids and mostly kept their eyes shut for the rest of the performance. This was fascinating and creepy, like a twisted cartoon. There were beautiful video images made from drawings, some seriously loud and fun rock-n-roll numbers, lots of driving around in little boats, and by the end, dozens of little fish skimming the surface of the stage with lights for eyes.

As you can see, what I'm largely left with are impressions. The dialogue was enigmatic. I couldn't string it together to make sense of it but I laughed out loud at parts. I liked it most when the woman was reading the weather report, which she did periodically throughout the play, and when the big guy sang. For the first 20 minutes I was afraid to look at my nieces, afraid they were bewildered and hating it. However, I began to hear laughs coming from them and eventually I saw that they were enjoying the performance as it was: a series of impressions -- some funny, some moving, some magical, some downright confusing. When the piece ended and the audiences did their curtain call, the figure on the monitor was naked. While we had seen only his face throughout the performance, we got to see his torso during the curtain call. I guess if one is to take a bow, one has to show more than one's face. And if you're going to be backstage the whole time, why not be naked? Maybe this sums up the piece - unexpected, titillating, and it makes sense in a way.

As a spectacle, the piece was too contained or too small for the On the Boards space. The theater, which seemed to have about 300 seats, was packed that night, which speaks well of Seattle. But the style of the theater did not do the piece justice. In New York, it had been performed at PS122 and I can imagine what it would have been like there. The audeince would have felt more like they were inside the piece, proximity to the actors would have been much closer, allowing the audience to feel more involved, and the visuals would have been far more striking. Sittting near the back of the theater, I had the sense that I was watching a piece rather than experiencing it. And with a piece like this, experiencing it is the way to go.