Jailbait

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                     Contact  Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

  Visit Dan on Facebook

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Body Awareness

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                       Visit Dan on Facebook.

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Killer Joe (Transfer)

By the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

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

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

                            

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                     The show gets a rating of four stars.    April 2010

                           Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com  .

         

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Killer Joe

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

   

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        The show gets a rating of four stars.    January 2010

             Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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The Mercy Seat

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

            Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

       

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Graceland

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

        The show gets a rating of four stars.     May 2009

                    Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

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Great Falls

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The show gets a rating of three stars.        January 2009

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The Thugs

At the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

                Contact Dan at  zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

               

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In a Dark Dark House

at the Profiles Theatre

By Dan Zeff

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 For more information Contact: www.profilestheatre.org 

                     Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com