The Good Negro At
the Goodman Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—With the
hindsight of history, we know that the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s
succeeded, triumphing over prejudice and violence and intimidation. But back in
that turbulent decade, black leaders weren’t at all sure they would win out
over the massed forces of the white South and the interference of the federal
government. Tracey Scott Wilson’s “The Good Negro” at the Goodman Theatre
revisits the scene of a major battleground of the Civil Rights conflict, a
fictionalized Birmingham, Alabama, in 1962. The central figure is a black
minister named James Lawrence, clearly modeled on Martin Luther King. In
the play, Lawrence is the face of the movement to black America, an eloquent,
committed, charismatic leader. Lawrence is also a man battling his own demons
as well as trying to maintain peace among the personality clashes within his
own organization. Then there is the implacable hatred of the white population
of the city and the eavesdropping of the FBI trying to discredit the Civil
Rights movement on the orders of the Old Man (J. Edgar Hoover), paranoid that
the Civil Rights activists would leads to a race war in America. The
first half of “The Good Negro” is a semi documentary portrait of the Civil
Rights leaders trying to organize the local black population to desegregate the
city. The second, and more dramatically effective, half deals with the
fractures within the movement, the personality conflicts, warring agendas, and
most important, the vulnerabilities of Lawrence, a man with a weakness for the
ladies. Lawrence’s exposure as a philanderer threatens to wreck the movement’s
credibility, along with Lawrence’s marriage. “The
Good Negro” concentrates on the inner workings of Lawrence’s organization. The
horrors of white violence against black freedom marchers and demonstrators are
only suggested offstage, mostly by actual photos and film clips. Wilson’s goal
is humanizing the Civil Rights struggle, probing the frailties of the
participants and the tensions and power jockeying among Lawrence’s associates.
The result is a look at the black activists of the 1960’s beyond the headlines
and the history books, a portrait of real people beneath the heroism and
martyrdom. The
play provides insights into the mentalities on both sides, even allowing the Ku
Klux Klan its point of view. The Klan may have been driven by redneck
opportunists and bigots but there was real fear that their white world would be
overwhelmed by the black race. And the FBI considered itself the front line in
preserving public order, even if it meant preserving the evils of segregation. The
Goodman production visually presents a rather antiseptic view of Lawrence’s
crusade. Other than those few newspaper photographs and film clips, the
audience isn’t given a real glimpse into the ghastly violence the black Civil
Rights followers faced daily from the hostile white society. Audiences of a
certain age will remember the chilling nightly TV newscasts showing the
clubbings and water hoses and raging dogs inflicted on the marchers and sit-in
demonstrators. Still, that is an oft-told story. The play’s strengths reside in
exposing the vulnerabilities of the key activists behind the scenes, their
doubts and fears and intramural infighting. Much
of the play deals with the personality conflicts between Lawrence’s colleague
Henry Evans and an outsider named Bill Rutherford come from Europe to fight for
the cause. Evans sees Rutherford as an intruder with no grasp of the realities
of the segregation scene and he belligerently resents Rutherford’s potential
poaching on his place in the movement’s leadership. There
is a subplot involving Claudette Sullivan, a local woman whose four-year-old
daughter was jailed for using a white public bathroom because the black
washroom was out of order. Lawrence wants to use the girl and her mother as
poster people for the movement, an idea opposed by the little girl’s father, an
earthy man named Pelzie Sullivan who sees exploitation in using his little girl
and rightly fears reprisals from the white community. The
heroine of the play is Lawrence’s wife Corinne. Her explosion of bitterness and
betrayal when she learns of her husband’s womanizing is the best scene in the
play. The
three opposition white characters are Steve Lane and Paul Moore, the two FBI
agents who wiretap Lawrence’s conversations, and a local redneck named Gary
Thomas Rowe, Jr., who the agents plant as an informant within the Klan. The
government role in trying to disrupt the Civil Rights actions will not inspire
Americans of any race with pride. As James Lawrence, Billy Eugene Jones is a
stirring preacher, though he doesn’t quite have the commanding physical or
emotional presence of a Martin Luther King, but then, who does? Overall, it’s a
sensitive and intelligent piece of acting, especially when Lawrence tries to
come to terms with his own sexual appetites. Karen Aldridge is very moving as
his strong willed wife, stunned and outraged by her husband’s extramarital
affairs. Teagle
F. Bougere is outstanding as Henry Evans, a true believer in the black cause
and a man determined to protect his own status within the movement against a
straight-laced interloper like Bill Rutherford, convincingly played by
Demetrios Troy. Nambi E. Kelley is terrific as Claudette Sullivan, willing to
stand up as a face of the movement against her own terrors and the opposition
of her husband, superbly played by Troy O. Davis. The
three adversarial white characters are the lesser part of Wilson’s narrative
but they are still brought to vivid life by Mick Weber (Steve Land), John
Hoogenakker ({Paul Moore), and Dan Waller (Gary Rowe). Riccardo
Hernandez’s clean and modern church interior set seems a little bland for the
raw emotions that drench the play. Birgit Rattenborg Wise designed the 1960’s
costumes, Robert Christen the lighting, Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath the
sound, and Mike Tutaj the projections. “The
Good Negro” runs through June 6 at the Goodman Albert Theatre, 170 North
Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2
and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and
7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $71. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org . The
show gets a rating of 3 1/2
stars. May 2010 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
and read his reviews on Facebook. ********************** A True History of the Johnstown Flood At
the Goodman Albert Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—It’s
always a bad sign when the scenery is the best thing about a play. “The True
History of the Johnstown Flood” displays some splendid sets, but a weak play
remains a weak play, however it’s dressed up. The Goodman Theatre is presenting the world premiere of the
Rebecca Gilman play in an all-out production that centers on the flood in
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, that killed more than 2,200 people in 1889. The play’s
title is misleading. The history of the floor occupies a small percentage of
the play and how “true” it is remains a matter for speculation. The event
obviously happened but Gilman has fictionalized most of the characters. Gilman provides no new revelations about what happened back
in 1889 and why. As a matter of record, the flood was caused by a dam breaking
during a torrential rainstorm. If there is blame to be laid for the disaster,
it resides with the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club, an organization of
local rich men who built the dam to create a private lake for their recreation.
The dam was ill conceived and couldn’t hold back the floor waters that
destroyed the town of Johnstown. But no charges were ever formally filed and
the wealthy element in the area suffered little compared to the havoc visited
on the poor residents of the area. Gilman perhaps realized that the flood wouldn’t provide
enough dramatic material to fill an entire evening in the theater. Once the
fact of the flood itself was established, along with its probable cause, there
wasn’t much else to say. The play concentrates on the Baxters, a family of itinerant
actors who tour with antique melodramas originally written by the father when
such plays were in fashion. But by the late nineteenth century such melodramas
were going out of style, usurped by the theatrical spectacles of New York City
and the emerging realistic drama coming from Europe. The Baxters, brothers Richard and James and sister Fanny, try
to carry on the family tradition as they teeter on insolvency. The siblings are
roiled by the radicalizing of James Baxter, returned from a year in Europe with
his head filled with the communist doctrines of Karl Marx and the cutting edge
naturalism of plays like Gerhart Hauptman’s “The Weavers.” The play follows the fortunes of the Baxters just before,
during, and after the flood. Unfortunately, they are not very interesting
people and the other characters who cross their path aren’t any better. That
includes Walter Lippincott, the son of a rich father who has a yen for Fanny
and wants to break into show business as an impresario. It’s hard to get a
handle on Walter’s character. He variously comes across as well meaning, a
seducer, and a callous opportunist. The flood itself doesn’t happen until the end of the long
first act, evoked largely through some very noise sound effects. Before then
the audience must endure two excruciatingly long examples of the laughably
artificial melodramas performed by the Baxters. Gilman does have weighty matters on her mind. There is the
issue of class, with the rich taking their privileges and the poor suffering
when those privileges lead to calamity. Gilman is also concerned with the place
of the artist in society in the figure of the outspoken James. At least in this
play, the artist is marginalized as an entertainer and discarded as a voice of
society’s conscience. The theme is interesting but poorly developed. The wobbly and inconsistent script is partially saved by Walt
Spangler’s spectacular set designs, mostly hangings that descend from the
rafters to create a stage set, a railroad car, and other environments in full
view of the audience. Even the most restless viewer should be impressed, while
computing the budget for all these scenic effects and pondering how much better
the money would have been spent on a more worthwhile play. The acting is difficult to assess because the characters
don’t amount to much. Cliff Chamberlain, Stephen Louis Grush, and Heather Wood
do what they can as the Baxters. Grush has the better of it because James
Baxter at least has the fire of revolution in his belly. Wood needs to project
her voice more. Janet Ulrich Brooks does well in the two-dimensional role of
the haughty Lippincott matriarch. Cedric Mays plays Nathan, a black member of
the Baxter troupe. Nathan is an intelligent man and a skilled pianist trying to
navigate his way through a society barely a generation removed from the Civil
War. More could be done with Nathan’s character but he gets washed away in the
flood before we can get to know him better. Lucas Hall plays Walter Lippincott
and suffers from the unevenness of the role as written. Randall Newsome and
Sarah Charipar round out the ensemble honorably. Gilman is an accomplished playwright and the play may yet be
saved, starting with the elimination of those endless melodrama recreations by
the Baxter troupe. Revision could focus more on the aftermath of the flood and
the class cleavage that may have led to the disaster. The script also needs a
more dramatic ending. The play now just stops, lamely. So “The True Story of the Johnstown Flood” is a major
disappointment, both as a slice of Americana and as an exploration about the
place of the artist in American society.
The imaginative sets can’t repair the show’s inadequacies. “The True History of the Johnstown Flood” runs through April
18 at the Goodman Albert Theatre. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.,
Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and
Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $76. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org. The show gets a rating of two stars. March 2010 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
***************************** At
the Goodman (Albert) Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
Goodman Theatre’s double bill of “Hughie” and “Krapp’s Last Tape” is a showcase
for actor Brian Dennehy and a rare visit to a pair of short works by two of the
most important playwrights of the twentieth century. That’s a nice parlay for
connoisseurs of quality theater. “Hughie” was one of Eugene O’Neill’s last plays, written in
1941 but not produced until 1958, five years after his death. The play visits
O’Neill’s favorite theme, man’s need for illusions to get him through a shabby,
unfulfilling life. “Krapp’s Last Tape” was written by Samuel Beckett (and also
first staged in 1958) and remains one of the enigmatic author’s more accessible
dramas. Here we are on familiar Beckett ground, glimpsing the futility and
meaninglessness of life as seen through the playwright’s bleak artistic eye. “Hughie” takes place in the lobby of a seedy hotel in New
York City in 1928. The time is just before dawn and the characters are a small
time gambler named Erie Smith and the hotel’s night clerk. We get a read on
Erie’s personality in the first few moments of the play. The man is a blowhard,
talking a good game to conceal the hollowness and desperation within. Erie is mourning the loss of Hughie, the former hotel night
clerk, who just died. Erie and Hughie had formed a bond, the gambler using the
clerk as a willing foil for his bravado as he bragged about his female
conquests and his skill as a gambler. But with Hughie’s death all of Erie’s
luck dried up. He’s in a downward spiral and faces unpleasant consequences if
he can’t repay some loans in a few days.
Hughie and Krapp’s Last Tape
The play is mostly Erie’s monologue as he runs the emotional
changes from buoyant self-confidence to despair. Deep down Erie recognizes that
he’s small time in a big time city. He needed Hughie’s admiration to puff up
his ego. Near the end of the play the new night clerk unexpectedly assumes
Hughie’s role as Erie’s sounding board. The gambler suddenly regains his
swagger and maybe his luck will finally change. “Hughie” is basically a one-note story. The success of the
show depends entirely on how much the audience cares about Erie, the tinhorn
horseplayer and dice shooter with delusions of grandeur. In Dennehy’s
performance the audience cares a lot. Dennehy rings all the emotional changes
on the character’s mood swings from bluster to self-loathing. Dennehy conveys a
powerful physical presence with his bulk. He wears a white suit that has seen
better days, an emblem of a jaunty exterior masking a shopworn interior. In
every way, it’s a commanding performance by a commanding actor. Joe Grifasi is perfect as the hangdog night clerk, a little
man leading an ineffectual life who barely tunes into Erie’s gush of blarney
until the final moments of the play. The production profits from Eugene Lee’s detailed set, a
hotel lobby out of an Edward Hopper painting that reinforces the isolation and
loneliness of the two characters on stage. Dennehy returns in the second play, barely recognizable as
the nearly blind and burned out Krapp, who is supposed to be 69 years old and
looks more like a disheveled 80. Krapp mostly sits at an old desk, playing tape
recordings of himself 30 years previously. Like “Hughie,” this is essentially a
one-note plot. The elderly Krapp confronts his younger self and reflects on a
life once filled with promise that now has turned to ashes. The play opens with some foolery about a banana that gets
laughs from an audience who likely didn’t expect any humor from a Beckett play.
There are long pauses and mime sequences that are as eloquent as any of the
play’s speeches. “Krapp’s Last Tape” is a chilly vision of an elderly man on
life’s ash heap, a fascinating glimpse into the bleak Beckettian universe.
Spectators who don’t like (or don’t get) Beckett probably won’t be converted by
the relative realism of “Krapp’s Last Tape,” but they should be amply
compensated by Dennehy’s performance as a doddering, muttering old man visiting
an earlier time when his life was touched by love and some hope for the future.
Each play benefits from incisive directing from Robert Falls
(“Hughie”) and Jennifer Tarver (“Krapp’s last Tape”). Both directors are tuned
into the heart and soul of their play, making a perfect marriage with Dennehy’s
acting brilliance.
In addition to Eugene Lee’s scenic designs, Patrick Clark
designed the costumes, Robert Thomson the lighting, and Richard Woodbury the
sound. There is talk of Goodman taking this production to New York
City. The combination of O’Neill and Beckett may be too rarefied for the
typical Broadway playgoer, but Chicago audiences have welcomed the production,
which has already been extended a week. “Hughie” and “Krapp’s Last Tape” run through February 28 at
the Goodman Albert Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are
Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.,
and Thursday and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $83. Call 312 443
3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org.
The production gets a rating of 3 1/2
stars. ************************************************************* A Christmas Carol At
the Goodman Albert Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—It’s back,
irresistible as ever. The Goodman Theatre’s “A Christmas Carol” is on stage, so
the holiday season can be officially launched. By now children who saw the original Goodman production of
the Dickens classic more than 30 years ago are bringing their children. I envy
youngsters attending this masterpiece for the first time, but after seeing the
show every year since its premiere, I still get a charge from the spectacle,
the sentimentality, and the imaginative staging. This year’s production has been tweaked a bit. Some of the
scenic effects have been revised, the script has been tinkered with slightly,
and the sentiment and moral preachiness is a little more forceful (which is an
observation and not a criticism). Only a person with the heart of an assassin
could fail to be moved by Scrooge’s transformation from skinflint to reborn
humanitarian. And Dickens’s anger at the callous abuse of the poor in early
Victorian London still resonates uncomfortably today. Inevitably a veteran viewer will measure this staging against
earlier ones. I miss the Ghost of Christmas Present making an entrance on a
giant cornucopia of fruits and vegetables, and the Ghost of Christmas Past
soaring onstage in a shower of sparklers. I still recall the wondrous image of
shadow puppets representing Scrooge and the Ghost of Christmas Present flying
across a star-drenched sky as they survey the human condition. But the most important good bits are still there. The scene
in Scrooge’s bedroom with Marley’s ghost should continue to scare the little
members of the audience nicely, though the memorable moment a few years ago
when Marley suddenly shot back onstage from the flames of hell has been
omitted, doubtless because that moment likely gave child viewers nightmares for
weeks. And the scene with the giant spectral Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
remains a chiller. These scenes remind the audience that “A Christmas Carol”
ranks as perhaps the preeminent ghost story in English literature, whatever its
ancillary pleasures. Larry Yando returns as Scrooge, playing the curmudgeon of the
opening scenes to great effect. Yando adds some shadings this year, portraying
Scrooge with a sense of unease as the Christmas festivities loom around him.
He’s not just a monolithic miser but someone unsettled by the season, setting
up his conversion (perhaps a little too rapid) in the scenes with the Ghost of
Christmas Past. The main virtues of the show are unaltered, thanks to the engrossing
Dickens narrative and to the creativity of the Goodman designers, performers,
and William Brown’s savvy directing. The stage comes alive as a nineteenth
century incarnation of London, with a huge wardrobe of authentic and colorful
costumes. As always, there is lots of music and dancing in the Victorian
manner. The handling of the Cratchit family is especially effective,
with Ron Rains as a warm and emotional Bob Cratchit and Christine Sherrill as a
strong and maternal Mrs. Cratchit. I still shudder every time Tiny Tim chirps
his “God bless us every one” but the sentiment of the Cratchit subplot never
cloys, for which, much thanks to director Brown. Matt Schwader is a vigorous and decent Fred, Scrooge’s
boundlessly optimistic nephew. At the end of the play when Scrooge haltingly
announced to Fred that he’s come to dinner I choked up, as usual. 
The physical production remains eye catching throughout,
thanks to Todd Rosenthal’s set designs and Heidi Sue McMath’s costumes. Much
credit also goes to Robert Christen for his lighting and Cecil Averett for his
sound design. Tom Creamer’s adaptation preserves much of the original Dickens
language and all of the Dickens humane messages. Economies don’t touch
this production. The cast numbers more than two dozen, including the on stage
quartet of skilled musicians. William Brown and his cohorts are honorable
custodians of this magical holiday treat in sustaining the show’s pageantry and
spirit. And Goodman has kept the purse strings loose to ensure that everything
is presented top of the line. Each year the ultimate testimony to the success of “A
Christmas Carol” comes from the many children in the audience, who sit silently
transfixed through an event that lasts more than two hours and extends well
past a lot of bedtimes. That kind of attention and appreciation can’t be faked.
A good time truly was had by all. “A Christmas Carol” runs through December 31 at the Goodman
Albert Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Performances run Tuesday through
Sunday with various show times on weekdays. Weekend shows are Friday at 8 p.m.,
Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $74.
Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org. November 2009
*************************** Animal Crackers At
the Goodman Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
Goodman Theatre production of “Animal Crackers” wants to be funny and tries to
be funny. But it isn’t funny. Oh, the audience at my performance tittered a lot
and occasionally chuckled, but nobody belly laughed. And this is a show that
must induce loud and consistent laughter or it’s dead in the water. “Animal Crackers” is the Marx Brothers vehicle that started
as a Broadway hit in 1928 and was adapted into a popular movie in 1930. So why
not revive the musical in 2009, casting three talented young performers as
Groucho, Chico, and Harpo to capitalize on the comic mystique of the team? As a
bright idea, the revival may have merit. But in its execution the show is too
long and lacks the needed comic buoyancy. Joey Slotnick (Groucho), Jonathan
Brody (Chico), and Molly Brennan (Harpo) impersonate the Marx Brothers but they
can’t duplicate them. And that’s fatal.
The Goodman production retains the bulk of the original
Broadway show, including the Long Island mansion setting. The plot, for want of
a better term, has something to do with a stolen painting being exhibited by
the wealthy matron Mrs., Rittenhouse. There are two pairs of young lovers and a
bitchy mother and daughter team who want to mess up Mrs. Rittenhouse’s house
party. The movie cut most of the songs from the 1928 score by Harry
Ruby and Bert Kalmar. The Goodman show retains the Broadway score and
interpolates the Kalmar-Ruby hit “Three Little Words.” Several performers
double in roles and the entire ensemble is often converted into a chorus. A
thin six-piece onstage band accompanies the singing and John Carrafa’s
sprightly choreography. But the show rises or falls on the Marx Brothers, with their
verbal insults, non sequiturs, and puns. The operative word throughout the
evening should be “zany.” Velocity is
everything, with the brothers careening through the storyline, talking directly
to the audience, and in general laying on a relentless assault of slapstick
comedy. The original Marx Brothers must have been a hoot in the show, creating
their fast and furious uproar that didn’t spare the satire and the vulgarity.
Anything for a laugh was their credo and it made them the darlings of movie
humor during the 1930’s. The Goodman adaptation retains topical references like
mention of “Abie’s Irish Rose” and a lampoon of Eugene O’Neill’s 1928 drama
“Strange Interlude,” with a contemporary Goodman tag. What audiences today make
of that satire is anyone’s guess. The Goodman production under Henry Wishcamper’s directing
lacks edge and pace. The show should come across as a wild spontaneous romp
full of “what will they do next” improvisation. The Goodman version seems
scripted from first to last. The Marx brothers’ routines are familiar but they
don’t look or sound fresh. The outrageous element isn’t there, but that may be
the fault of time. What was daring to a 1928 audience is endearing today, and
endearing isn’t funny. Slotnick has the best luck as Groucho. He looks like the
great wisecracker, has the body language down pat, and his vocal timbre is
spot-on. But he can’t quite match the original Groucho’s gleeful malice. The supporting cast is full of fine singers
and decent dancers. Ora Jones is the only performer to capture the flavor of the
original, taking on the Margaret Dumont role of Mrs. Rittenhouse, the perpetual
straight woman to the brothers’ ongoing nonsense. Mara Devi and Jessie Mueller
display fine singing voices as the female halves of the two love duos. Ed Kross
is a terrific comic actor who is underused in the Zeppo Marx role and as an
aspiring young painter. Tony Yazbeck and Stanley Wayne Mathis complete the
ensemble.
Robin West has designed an opulent set for the interior of
the Rittenhouse mansion and Jenny Mannis has designed a wardrobe of rich
looking period clothes. There’s nothing wrong with the look of the
production. Paul Kalina is credited as
“clowning director.” Better luck next time. Probably “Animal Crackers” should rest in peace, the eternal
property of the original Marx Brothers. As a musical, it has too many romantic
ballads and the vaudeville prologues to each act just consume time. All in all,
an intriguing concept that doesn’t come off. “Animal Crackers” runs through November 1 at the Goodman
Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday
at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and
8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $76. Call 312 443 3820
or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org. The show gets a rating of 2½ stars. October 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. ************************** Boleros for the Disenchanted At
the Goodman Albert Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Jose
Rivera based “Boleros for the Disenchanted” on the courtship and married life
of his parents, a topic that obviously touches him deeply. The play is filled
with passion, romance, humor, poignancy, conflict, sadness, disillusion, and
acceptance. It may not be a great play but it’s a wonderful play, performed
with luminous commitment by an exceptional ensemble at the Goodman Theatre. Rivera divides his story into two, unequal parts. The first
act takes place in Puerto Rico in 1953 and 1954. Young Flora has just had her
heart broken by her womanizing fiancé Manuelo. Flora is a spunky, willful,
idealistic girl who sees life as hard work and not frivolous fun. To get over her
heartbreak, Flora visits her cousin Petra and meets a young National Guard
soldier named Eusebio. After a few fumbling false starts, they become engaged
and move to the United States to start a new life. After the intermission the action leaps forward to 1992 and
1993. Flora and Eusebio are now living in a modest home in Alabama. Their nine
children are either dead or moved away. Eusebio is bedridden, his legs
amputated because of diabetes. Flora, selfless as always, tends to her
husband’s needs in a life that has reached a dead end. The first act is the superior of the two, thanks primarily to
Elizabeth Ledo’s charming and feisty performance as young Flora. It’s a typical
Ledo acting job, full of personality and vigor and offbeat humor. Ledo
beautifully captures Flora, vulnerable and stubborn and spunky. Ledo’s Flora is just the centerpiece of a set of characters
who reflect the social atmosphere of Puerto Rico in the early 1950’s. It’s a
land of great beauty and tradition but also a land drenched in poverty and
resentment against the United States for skimming off Puerto Rico’s resources
and seducing its best and brightest young people to relocate to the mainland
with its greater economic opportunities and materialistic pleasures. Flora’s father represents the old ways of Puerto Rico, its
macho patriarchal society, love of the land, and anger and despair at a way of
life eroding before the temptations and power of the United States. The rock of
the family is Flora’s mother, Dona Milla, who nimbly juggles her difficult
husband and her headstrong daughter while keeping the household running on very
little money. The first act is filled with verbal arias, like Flora’s
demand that Manuelo be totally faithful and Manuelo’s rebuttal that fidelity is
simply not in the nature of sinful man. Rivera is a master of these small
monologues in which every speaker seems eloquent and persuasive, though talking
on opposite sides of the question. The second act falls into the “old age is a shipwreck”
category. The worn, aging Flora is every bit her mother’s daughter, holding her
family together with fierce dedication. Rivera only hints at what transpired
during the 39 years that separate the first and second acts, but it’s obvious
the dreams of the young Flora and Eusebio have foundered on the hard realities
of the immigrant’s life in a new and unwelcoming land. The second act lacks some of the opening act’s dramatic
variety and colorful characters. Flora and a reluctant Eusebio improbably serve
as marriage counselors for a young couple that provides a bit of humor but not
much dramatic substance. The Eusebio of
the first act scarcely resembles the old man of the second act in temperament
and appearance, partly because of the dissimilar, though effective, acting jobs
by Joe Minoso as the young Eusebio and Rene Rivera as the physically broken old
man. The spine of the second act remains Flora, wonderfully played by Sandra
Marquez (who was Flora’s mother in act one). “Boleros for the Disenchanted” ends up being a celebration of
the tenacity and compassion and tough love provided by Dona Milla and young
Flora. The women persevere with difficult husbands, economic privation, and in
the first act a social code that placed all the empowerment in the men. It’s a
heartfelt tribute by Rivera that Ledo and Marquez bring to rich and resonant
life. The remainder of the ensemble is without blemish. Felix Solis
is terrific as the woman hungry Manuelo in the first act and a droll priest in
the second. Liz Fernandez is excellent as the boy crazy cousin and then the
young woman getting a grim dose of pre marital counseling from Flora in the
second act. Rene Rivera creates an entirely different Eusebio in the second act
from Minoso’s optimistic young man in act one but both are outstanding even if
their characters don’t mesh. Henry Godinez directs with great sympathy and insight. He
must have felt a personal stake in the play as much as his actors. Linda
Buchanan designed the flexible set, Rachel Anne Healy the costumes, Joseph
Appelt the atmospheric and often dramatic lighting, and Ray Nardelli and Joshua
Horvath the sound. Gustavo Leone composed the original music. Rivera’s play would be improved by a second act more in tune
with the first act. He could also reveal more of Eusebio and Flora’s married
life during those 39 blank years. But those quibbles don’t diminish the value
of a superbly written play brought to vivid life in a superb production. “Boleros for the Disenchanted” runs through July 26 at the
Goodman Albert Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are
Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8
p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25
to $70. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org. The show gets 3 1/2 stars. June 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
**************************** Rock ‘n’ Roll At
the Goodman Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—To
properly appreciate Tom Stoppard’s “Rock ‘n’ Roll” at the Goodman Theatre, one
should be familiar with the iconic British rock musician Syd Barrett, who died
just before the play premiered in England in 2006. A general love of rock
music, especially rock of the 1960’s and 1970’s, is also desirable. And it
wouldn’t hurt to have an interest in the history of Czechoslovakia during the
late 1900’s. Stoppard covers all these bases and still finds time for
several romances covering three generations over 22 years, plus frequent
eloquent and heated debates about communism, capitalism, and democracy. And
there is an analysis of the poetry of the ancient Greek poet Sappho to intrigue
lovers of classical literature. Stoppard’s plays have never lacked for ambition
and “Rock ’n’ Roll” explores an especially loaded plate of issues. The play’s action shuttles between England and Czechoslovakia
(now the Czech Republic) from 1968 to 1990, covering the years of oppressive
Russian occupation in the eastern European country. The key character is a
dissident Czech student named Jan who leaves the cozy world of Cambridge
University in 1968 to return to his homeland to save his mother and to save
socialism. Jan undergoes numerous trials during his years in
Czechoslovakia, including a year in prison resulting from his love of rock
music, considered inflammatory and anti-socialist by the government. Jan then
spends 12 years working ignominiously in a bakery. But he still is able to
forge some intellectual and romantic relationships with assorted people in
England while he navigates the treacherous political waters of Czechoslovakia
with friends who may not be friends. This may be Stoppard’s most sentimental and lovelorn play.
There is probably more kissing in “Rock ‘n’ Roll” than in all his previous
plays combined. Numerous love affairs and marriages develop over the years,
some successful and some failed. In the early portion of the play, we meet Max, a Cambridge
professor and a hardened communist, and his wife Eleanor, a classics scholar.
Eleanor is dying of cancer, climaxing in a scene of astonishing emotional
intensity. Max’s daughter Esme is a teen-ager in the first act who grows into a
woman making a bad marriage that produces a precocious daughter named Alice. At
the end of the play Esme goes to Prague with Jan. At the same time the aging
Max unites with Lenka, Jan’s former sweetheart. So the play ends happily, at
least for these two couples. The best parts of “Rock ‘n’ Roll” reside in its fierce
intellectual debates, no surprise considering Stoppard’s erudition and
limitless command of language. Max’s defense of his communist beliefs is
stimulating and refreshing. Indeed, several characters stop the narrative in
its tracks to face off in impassioned and fascinating arguments about politics
and ideology. This is what Stoppard does best. Jan’s struggles in Czechoslovakia are less absorbing.
Stoppard was born in the country and his interest in his homeland’s recent
history is understandable. But to an American audience, the travails of
Czechoslovakia two generations ago might not strike many sparks. After all,
communism has fallen and the Soviet Union is no more. The Czech portions
belonged in a play that should have been seen 20 years ago, when the subject
had some immediacy. I felt a real disconnect with the whole “Czechoslovakia in
chains” storyline. Snippets of rock music insinuate themselves throughout the
production. Back in the flower power 1960’s, rock was a cultural symbol of
anti-establishment liberation and the tyrannical Czech government feared the
music and suppressed it, sometimes brutally, just like Nazi Germany suppressed
jazz with its message of freedom and individuality. Rock aficionados in the audience doubtless will react warmly
to the snatches of music by the Rolling Stones, the Velvet Underground, and the
Doors. Those of us with a lesser knowledge
(and lesser tolerance) for rock, especially at an ear piercing volume,
will likely not share the music’s importance to Jan and his generation. The Goodman production under Charles Newell’s directing gives
“Rock ‘n’ Roll” the full blast treatment. The ensemble, mostly drawn from the A
list of Chicagoland actors, throws itself into the action with complete
commitment. Timothy Edward Kane is the lynchpin of the play as Jan. Kane rings
all the psychological changes on Jan’s tortuous progress from the late 1960’s
to 1990 with conviction and sensitivity. Occasionally his voice didn’t project
to the rear to the main floor but overall this fine actor delivers a superb
performance in a demanding role, which includes keeping a Czech accent in
place, even when he is talking to other Czechs. Two other performances stand out for their dramatic richness.
As Eleanor, Mary Beth Fisher gives the evening its emotional highlight in her
stunning cry of anger as she faced a losing battle with cancer. Fisher then
reappears as the adult Esme to provide a portrait of a woman living in an
emotional whirlwind. Stephen Yoakam is responsible for the play’s most resonant
intellectual moments as Max, fighting the good fight for what he sees as the
positives in communism even as he faces the reality that communism works only
as an ideology and not in real life. There are strong supporting performances by Mattie Hawkinson,
Kareem Bandealy, Amy J. Carle, Johanna McKenzie Miller, Thomas J. Cox, and John
Hoogenakker among others. John Culbert designed the modern abstract set that
symbolizes an arena sized rock concert backdrop. Christopher Akerlind designed
the lighting, which plays a crucial theatrical role in the production. Ana
Kuzmanic designed the costumes and Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath the sound. “Rock ‘n’ Roll” plays through June 7 at the Goodman Theatre,
170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m.
Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and
Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $75. Call 312 443 3800 or visit GoodmanTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. May 2009 *************************** Magnolia At
the Goodman Albert Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—“Magnolia”
combines elements of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard” with the rising
turbulence of the American civil rights era in the 1960’s. The author is the
highly respected playwright Rebecca Taylor, so the result should be stirring
and challenging. No such luck. “Magnolia,” receiving its world premiere at the
Goodman Theatre, is dramatically inert, populated by a large cast of characters
who whine and pontificate for more than two long hours of relentless verbiage. Taylor sets her play in Atlanta in 1963, at the cusp of the
civil rights uprising that would engulf the decade. Most of the characters,
African American and white, have some association with a 42-acre plantation
that will be up for sale because Lily, the matriarch of the estate, has been
gallivanting around the world, allowing her ancestral home to fall into
bankruptcy. She returns to Atlanta to face the probability the estate will be
sold out from under her to satisfy the mortgage, leaving her bereft of her
roots. Lily is the stand-in for Madame Ranevskaya from “The Cherry
Orchard.” Her opposite is Thomas, a successful local black businessman whose
ancestors were slaves on the estate where his brother was lynched when Thomas was
a boy. Thomas represents the former serf Lopakhin in the Chekhov classic who
buys Ranevskaya’s estate. 
The characters in “Magnolia” talk much about their heritage,
but from contrasting black and white perspectives. Most of the play takes place
in one of two Atlanta restaurants, Black Pearl’s catering to blacks and Kerry’s
to whites. The play’s major problem is that everyone just talks, sitting in
chairs or standing in one of the restaurants or in the final scene on the
estate. I can’t remember when I’ve seen a play so physically static, and a
hysterical outburst by Lily and a clumsy fight between three black males over
the affections of a female do nothing to energize the story. “The Cherry
Orchard” has almost no physical activity, but the personalities of the
characters are so rich that the absence of action doesn’t matter. Unlike the men and women in “The Cherry Orchard,” few of the
characters in “Magnolia” are interesting to watch or hear as they drone on
about race and personal history. The one major exception is Carlotta, a former
entertainer who is lively and funny as expertly performed by Roxanne Reese. I
don’t know why the character is in the play but she is a refreshing presence
whenever she comes on stage. The Goodman ensemble is a mix of local actors and imports.
Annette O’Toole does what she can with the self indulgent and clueless Lily but
as I watched her performance I kept speculating on how much more effective she
would be starring in “The Glass Menagerie” or “A Streetcar Named Desire.” John
Earl Jelks is her co-star as Thomas, a man wrestling with all sorts of demons
that turn him into a psychological head case rather than a fully rounded
character. The supporting actors are all OK or better, though their
Southern drawls sometimes blurred their dialogue. John Judd plays Lily’s
brother and John Hines her former boyfriend, both men wedded to the racist Old
South as they bleakly contemplate radical changes brewing in the social
climate. Caitlin Collins is Lily’s daughter, Anna, and Carrie Coon is Lily’s
ward, Ariel. In the only dramatically absorbing scene in the play, Lily tries
to trade Ariel to Thomas to become his wife in exchange for saving the family
estate. On the African American side, Tyla Abercrumbie plays the
restaurant waitress Maya, a woman militantly ready for the new racial world
struggling to be born. Her local suitor Meshach (Tory O. Davis) claims he wants
to sit out the dangers of racial activism to pursue his own personal self
improvement agenda. Brandon J. Dirden is Cain, a light skinned black man who
can’t wait to get out of Atlanta and back to the racial tolerance of France.
Ernest Perry, Jr., is the equivalent of the ancient butler Firs from “The
Cherry Orchard,” except that in “Magnolia” he spouts profundities with a pretentiousness
scarcely creditable a man who claims to be 100. Finally, there is Cliff
Chamberlain as Paul, a folk singing ivory tower hippie liberal who resists Anna’s
sexual advances in the interest of higher spiritual goals. Todd Rosenthal’s set uses the Goodman revolving stage to
travel between restaurants, with a scrim backdrop that symbolizes the forest on
the estate. James F. Ingalls designed the lighting, Linda Cho the costumes, and
Richard Woodbury the sound. Ariel D. Shapiro makes her Goodman debut as
director and seems content to allow her characters to talk at each other and to
themselves with an absolute minimum of physical movement. Taylor probably intended “Magnolia” to be a modernized take
on the death of the old social order of privilege and the birth of a new world
dominated by money. The old order had its defects (racism and inequality in
“Magnolia”) but there was also tradition and stability and a certain grace, at
least among the whites. Regrettably, Taylor’s narrative is often hard to follow
and her characters generally so unsympathetic or uninteresting that an elegy
for a vanishing way of life and a salute to a brave new world never grab us.
All in all, a missed opportunity and a disappointing evening.
“Magnolia” runs through April 19 at the Goodman Albert
Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30
p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m.,
and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $70. Call 312 443 3800 or visit
www.GoodmanTheatre.org. The show gets a rating of two stars. Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com March 2009
************************** Desire Under the Elms At
the Goodman Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
first thing the audience notices when the giant canvas curtain rises on “Desire
Under the Elms” at the Goodman Theatre is that there are no elm trees in the
set. Instead of two giant elms that
“brood oppressively over the house. They are like exhausted women resting their
sagging breasts and hair on its roof,…” we see a background of giant boulders,
as if symbolizing the outsized emotions that will dominate the play.
The unconventional set is just one of director Robert Fall’s
decisions that make this revival of the Eugene O’Neill tragedy so direct and
inevitable. Falls also has cut some minor characters and dialogue as the
production moves relentlessly to its grim conclusion, compressed into a single
intense 100-minute act. O’Neill located “Desire Under the Elms” on a New England farm
in 1850. Ephraim Cabot, a flint hard 75-year old Calvinist, owns the farm,
working his sons Peter and Simeon like dray horses. Their half brother Eben
does the house chores. Eben hates his father because he believes Ephraim stole
the farm from his mother and then worked her to death. Early in the play Eben convinces Peter and Simeon to sell him
their share of the farm in exchange for money the two brothers can use to sail
to California to prospect for gold. Just as the Peter and Simeon leave, Cabot
arrives at the farm, surprising his sons with a new bride, Abbie Putnam, a
35-year old widow who snared Ephraim so she can finally have a home of her own after
enduring a life of hard knocks. Following some preliminary verbal sparring, Abbie and Eben
predictably fall in love. Abbie conceives a son with Eben that she passes off
as Cabot’s. The birth of the heir leads to the play’s tragic conclusion. The Goodman production heightens the play’s sensuality to
fever pitch, not only with bits of partial nudity but with some torrid love
scenes between Eben and Abbie, fueled by Carla Gugino’s smoldering sensual
performance as the young woman. The play ran into censorship problems after it
opened in 1924. Those censors would have really flipped at the Goodman
interpretation of the script. The Goodman staging includes frequent passages that omit any
dialogue, like the opening scene showing Peter and Simeon painfully dragging
rocks off the land, and the scene where Eben undresses to take an outdoor bath
while Abbie watches nearby while hanging clothes on a wash line. These silent
passages intensify the subterranean emotional currents of the story beyond
anything explicit in the O’Neill original. The Goodman revival stars Brian Dennehy as Cabot. The
collaborations between Robert Falls and Dennehy have become legendary on the
Chicago (and later the Broadway) stage. Dennehy, with his shock of white hair
and squat powerful build, is physically just right as Cabot, a man who is
scarcely sympathetic but not really a villain either, just a domineering
personality who only answers to his own unyielding God. The play really belongs to Carla Gugino and to Pablo
Schreiber as Eben, a young man consumed with a sense of outrage over the
perceived theft of his mother’s farm, his turbulent emotions complicated by the
roiling hormones of a healthy young man whose only sexual release is the town
prostitute. When Abbie Putnam appears, we know it’s only a matter of time
before a sexual conflagration is ignited.
Daniel Stewart Sherman and Boris McGiver get high marks for
their early scenes as the brutalized, intimidated brothers aching to flee the
drudgery of farm work for the riches of the California gold fields. O’Neill has been chastised by critics for his clunky
dialogue, but the spare New England dialect sounds just right on the Goodman
stage, notwithstanding the excessive use of the word “purdy” for “pretty.” The
playwright has drawn on Freudian psychology and ancient Greek drama for
inspiration, but the symbolism doesn’t interfere with the inexorable rush of
events that ends with the somber climax. The play was written in three parts,
but by eliminating any intermission Falls sustains the arc of the tragedy
without interruption from Abbie’s first appearance to the grim conclusion. Walt Spangler’s set design shows off Goodman’s high tech
capabilities. The full sized Cabot house hangs suspended above the stage when
not part of the action. A bed and other props are raised or lowered as needed.
And there is those always present mounds of boulders that ascend many feet
above the stage. The physical production is rounded out by Ana Kuzmanic’s rural
nineteenth century costumes, Michael Philippi’s lighting, and the original
music and sound design by Richard Woodbury. Dennehy is always money in the dramatic bank with this kind
of revival. But the production is favored with the casting of Gugino and
Schreiber, two outstanding actors with thriving film careers. Even Sherman and
McGiver have impressive New York stage credits. The performers have come
together under Falls’s incisive directing to create a show of uncompromising
power, even without those threatening elm trees. “Desire Under the Elms” runs through March 1 at the Albert
Theatre at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances
are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at
8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25
to $82. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org.
The
show gets a rating of 3 1/2
stars. January 2009 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com . ********************** A Christmas Carol At
the Goodman Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Credit
the Goodman Theatre with never leaving well enough alone in its annual
production of “A Christmas Carol.” Each
year there is something different to enjoy, and sometimes to marvel at, some
bright theatrical or dramatic touch to freshen up what is already a superior
playgoing experience. While some tweaking goes on each year, the bedrock of the
show remains untouched. Goodman still re-creates the mid Victorian world of
London with remarkable color and fidelity. The basic story of the reclamation
of Ebenezer Scrooge is intact, though Larry Yando this year deepens the man’s
misanthropy at the start of the story, allowing for more glee and satisfaction
when the character comes over to the good guys at the end. The appearance and departure of Jacob Marley is scarier than
usual, evoking some decent shrieks from the kids in the audience. The same is
true with the spectral appearance of the giant mute Ghost of Christmas Yet to
Come. This edition uses sound more dramatically (and loudly) than any version I
can remember. Music is woven into the show more effectively than in the past,
though I recall dancing of greater variety in previous stagings. The Ghost of Christmas Present has been rethought in the
person of the beautifully gowned and exuberant Penelope Walker. But I did miss
the ghost rolling out on stage atop a giant cornucopia like an entrant in the
Rose Bowl parade. But the show does not lack for spectacle, thanks to colorful
props, atmospheric lighting, smoke billowing from the stage, a sky illuminated
with stars, and two dozen performers embedded in William Brown’s creative and
imaginative staging. There are a few minor changes in the dialogue, but Tom
Creamer’s adaptation brilliant retains the essence of the Charles Dickens
original, in all its rich characterizations, moral uplift, and sentimentality.
And let’s not forget that Dickens also wrote one of literature’s great ghost
stories along the way. Larry Yando again holds the production together as Scrooge,
superbly tracing the old man’s ascent from mean-spirited miser to humanitarian
benefactor. His first scenes are chilling in their expressed loathing of the
Christmas spirit and he’s tremendous as he watches how his young self made all
the wrong choices to plunge him into the despicable man he’s become. Quality supporting performances abound. As Scrooge’s humane
nephew Fred, Matt Schwader gives a performance of rare warmth and realism.
Brendan Marshall-Rashid delivers a telling portrait of the young Scrooge at the
crossroads, selecting a path that robs him of love and sentences him to a life
of barren money grubbing.
Ron Rains manages to present Bob Cratchit as a human being
and not a repository of weepy sentiment. And it’s a pleasure to see William
Norris, if only in a cameo role. It was Norris in his rendering of Scrooge over
many years that cemented the Goodman “Christmas Carol” as a mandatory
attraction of the holiday season. The visual aspects of the production make marvelous use of
the Goodman’s high tech capabilities, moving giant pieces of scenery on and off
stage to transfer the audience from Scrooge’s office to his home to the world
at large. For these pleasures we salute Todd Rosenthal’s set design and Robert
Christen’s lighting. Their contributions are matched by Heidi Sue McMath’s
massive wardrobe of Victorian costumes and Cecil Averett’s sound design. Presiding over the entire enterprise like the maestro over a
great symphony orchestra is William Brown, a veteran hand at this show as
former Scrooge and now director, striking a perfect balance between the show’s
storytelling and special effects glories. In the end, “A Christmas Carol” is the perfect partnership
between Charles Dickens in the nineteenth century and the Goodman Theatre in
the twenty-first. The proof of the production’s success was evident at a
weekday matinee, jammed with bumptious young students, many of them probably
being exposed to their first professional live theater. However chattery the
kids were until the play began, they fell under the spell of the show virtually
from the opening moments. When a play holds that kind of audience in rapt
attention for two hours, it indeed can claim to be something special. “A Christmas Carol” runs through December 31 at the Goodman
Albert Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street.
There are performances from Tuesday through Sunday but schedules vary.
Tickets are $25 to $72. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. Dec. 2008 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
.
********************
Turn of the Century
At the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The first 25 minutes of the new musical “Turn of the Century” are sublime at the Goodman Theatre. Then the plot takes over.
This is the big buzz musical of the autumn locally, a show with a firmament of stars attached to it, like Jeff Daniels and Rachel York in the featured roles, Tommy Tune directing, and Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (of “Jersey Boys” fame) writing the book. And the score draws on 100 years of the best of the American songbook.
The musical gets off to that terrific start. It opens at a New Year’s Eve party in a New York City penthouse at the end of 1999. Cocktail pianist Billy Clark (Daniels) is entertaining and Dixie Wilson (York) bursts into the party, pleading to sing a song to catch the ear of party host and record producer Manny Wexler.
Clark and Wilson have a back story of a romance gone bad, mostly because Billy is a bit of a swine around women. Suddenly Billy and Dixie find themselves at another New Year’s Eve party in the penthouse, this one 100 years ago. Somehow the two have slipped through a time curtain back to 1899. Billy discovers he can play all the great songs of the Twentieth Century like he wrote them, because technically they haven’t been composed yet. So Billy and Dixie launch a meteoric career performing music by the great songwriters of the upcoming century as their own compositions.
The time travel isn’t a very credible plot hook and the show
doesn’t spend much time on it. It’s sufficient that Billy and Dixie have an
excuse to claim all those great songs as their own. But the first scenes aren’t
just a simple jukebox medley, they are a joy of creativity, pageantry, wit, and
show business sizzle. We watch the Floradora Sextet of 1900 sashay through “I
Am Woman” and Evelyn Nesbit glide across the stage on her red velvet swing
singing “Moon River.
These early numbers are performed in a swirl of colorful costumes, brilliant lighting effects, and high stepping choreography. After those first 25 minutes or so, the press night audience was entitled to sit back in exhilaration, comfortable that they were getting in on the ground floor of a certain hit after the show transfers to Broadway.
Then the authors decide it’s time to start telling a story. The music doesn’t exactly stop but the narrative ascends. A little boy named Israel Baline makes an appearance, a lad who would grow up to be Irving Berlin. Dixie gets an attack of conscience, refusing to perpetrate their plagiarism fraud anymore on the worshipping American public.
A production of “Annie Get Your Gun” two generations before it was actually written is canceled when Dixie walks out as the star, but not before she tells Billy she is carrying his baby. Billy, now bankrupt and in disgrace, plummets down to a skid row piano player. Then the heavily pregnant Dixie reappears, Billy reforms, and with the love of a good woman, he returns to the Twenty-first Century, leaving young Israel Baline behind to write his many masterpieces.
Possibly it would be asking too much of the show’s creators to sustain the pleasures of those first 25 minutes, but it would have been worth trying. The show runs for 100 minutes without an intermission. Could Brickman and Elice and Tune and Daniels and York and their talented supporting players deliver hit after hit for another hour and a quarter in the same joyous spirit as “I Am Woman” and “”Moon River?” Why not?
Of course, there has to be some narrative to avoid turning the show into an “and then he wrote” revue, but the plot needs to be less intrusive. There is a potential for all kinds of satirical time travel bits, a few of which are in the present show. And Brickman and Elice demonstrate plenty of the hip wit that helped turn “Jersey Boys” into a blockbuster.
The production at the Goodman Theatre gets the full Broadway treatment. A horseshoe shaped electric sign encloses the stage, with messages and plot subtitles flowing like the electric sign in Times Square. The technical credits are models of high tech imagination, thanks to the imaginative set designs of Walt Spangler, Natasha Katz’s spectacular lighting, Dona Granata’s opulent and witty costumes, and Tom Morse’s vivid sound. No show at Goodman ever looked and sounded better. Michael Biagi directs the first-rate pit orchestra and Noah Racey created the sprightly and inventive choreography.
The large ensemble is loaded with talent. The most welcome surprise is Kevin Gudahl, a local performer of great reputation as a serious classical actor. In “Turn of the Century” he demonstrates outstanding skills as a song and dance man. Jonah Rawitz and Matthew Gold alternate as little Israel Baline. I think I saw Rawitz on press night and he was sensational. The lad was even allowed to take the final bow at the end of the performance.
Daniels and York are an all-star pairing. Daniels has an honorable singing voice for a non-singer. Better still, he seduces the audience as an irresistible con man. The man could charm a smile from the stone heads on Mount Rushmore. Rachel York is a beautiful woman with a magisterial vocal style. If the show does go to Broadway, the producers have their leads already in place.
Presumably “Turn of the Century” is still a work in progress. There are so many good things in the current staging that one devoutly hopes some fine-tuning of the plot excesses will put the show over the top.
“Turn of the Century” runs through November 2 at the Albert Theater in the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $82. Call 312 443 3800 or visit goodmantheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. Sept. 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@worldbook.com.
*************************
Ain’t Misbehavin
at the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Since its opening on Broadway 30 years ago, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” has been one of the great audience shows in American musical theater. The celebration of the music and personality of Fats Waller is an irresistible treat for viewers who want a couple hours of rhythmic and sassy escapism.
During his short life (he died in 1943 at the age of 39), Waller was known as an entertainer who wrote some of the most exuberant songs in American pop music. He also led a fine small jazz band that made hundreds of recordings. For jazz fans, Waller’s place in music history is secured by his brilliant piano playing. The two-CD collection of Waller’s solo piano recordings is a desert island necessity for connoisseurs of jazz piano.
But “Ain’t Misbehavin’” honors Waller the irrepressible clown and not the musician. Hence we get novelty numbers like “Fat and Greasy” and “Your Feet’s Too Big” and “This Joint Is Jumpin’.” Waller the premiere songwriter is represented by the title song, “Honeysuckle Rose,” “I’ve Got a Feeling I’m Falling,” “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now,” and the brilliant “Black and Blue,” one of the most heart felt and eloquent songs about racism in the American songbook.
The Goodman Theatre is reviving “Ain’t Misbehavin’” as its final production of the season. Some people may complain that the show lacks the gravitas expected of a serious theater like the Goodman. Others may welcome the production as an agreeable summer diversion. Mostly the revue is a lot of fun and anyone complaining that it’s too lightweight a vehicle for Goodman should recognize that the theater can’t do “King Lear” all the time. There is no harm in allowing the audience to lighten up once a season.
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” is a revue that strings together about 30 songs Waller either wrote or recorded. There is almost no spoken dialogue and no attempt at a storyline. The songs just flow one after another. The music is delivered by a cast of three women and two men, accompanied by an eight-piece jazz band at the rear of the stage. The setting attempts to replicate a Harlem nightclub during the 1930’s.
The revue probably would be a better fit in a more intimate setting than the Goodman main stage. Some of the entrances and exits are a little awkward because the performers have to cover a lot of ground to get to and from the wings to the center of the stage.
Director Chuck Smith injects plenty of low comedy into the songs, not always with beneficial results. Waller’s high spirits and sly wit can carry any of his songs. His music isn’t improved by mugging and physical shtick from the ensemble. There are a few attempts to establish personalities for the five performers but that’s hit and miss.
The ensemble is led by E. Faye Butler, Chicago theater’s co-diva of this kind of hot music along with Felicia Fields. Nobody tops Butler at belting out a hot number or delivering a wrenching ballad. She can sashay through “Cash for Your Trash” and then knock out the listener with a moving “Mean to Me.”
The remainder of the cast consists of John Steven Crowley (who looks like Waller, give or take 75 pounds), Lina Kernan, Alexis Rogers, and Parrish Collier. Only Collier is less than stellar vocally, being more of a dancer than a singer. His spacey cavorting through “The Viper’s Drag” is a show highlight.
The orchestra is led by Malcolm Ruhl and it sounded good enough to get a little more featured space in the show. Linda Buchanan designed the 1930’s nightclub set and Birgit Rattenborg Wise designed the Depression era costumes. The women seemed to come out with a new dress for every number. Robert Christen designed the lighting and Ray Nardelli and Joshua Horvath the sound.
It’s impossible not to take pleasure
in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” but the viewing and listening experience may have been
enriched by shifting the production into Goodman’s smaller OwenTheatre. For sure the production could profit by
eliminating the easy laugh stage business. Waller doesn’t need it.
“Ain’t Misbehavin’” runs through August 3 at the Goodman Theatre,170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., with occasional extra weekday matinees. Tickets are $35 to $78. Call 312 443 3800.
The show gets a rating of three stars. June 2008
For more information about the show, visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org
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Gas for Less
at the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—Brett Neveu’s “Gas for Less” is a wispy little play that tries to play the nostalgia card in portraying the last days of a neighborhood hangout on Chicago’s north side.
The hangout is the Gas for Less service station and convenience store, run by a curmudgeon-on-the-outside and heart-of-gold-on-the-inside old Croatian immigrant named Art Pelenkovic.
The opening act takes place in October 2005 in the interior
of the station. Virtually nothing happens during the act actionwise until the
final seconds, and that happens offstage. What the first act does try to
accomplish in a leisurely style that verges on the inert is to portray the
dying gasps of the gas station and its culture.
Gas for Less is operated by Art’s grandson Anthony, a 20-something clerk who insists on calling himself the station manager. Most of the act is a three-way conversation among Anthony, Art, and a long-time customer named Pat Munson, a crusty old man who exchanges insults with Art as everyone watches a Chicago Bears football game on the convenience store TV.
Art reminisces about the days when the store was jammed with men watching the games and eating and drinking, but we know those days are gone. The old time customers are either dead or moved away. What’s left is a commercial operation that has outlasted its time, a somber condition Art senses and Anthony refuses to recognize.
The second act takes place almost three months later. The station-store essentially is defunct, whatever Anthony’s denial. An Asian acquaintance drops in to report that he has sold his auto shop to a chain, another erosion of neighborhood ownership in the face of irreversible competition from national chains. That provokes hot words from Munson, who wants things to remain as they were, forever. The play ends bleakly and inevitably, with barely a dramatic pulse.
“Gas for Less” deals with a gas station, but Neveu could as easily have written about the demise of the neighborhood bar, delicatessen, hot dog stand, bowling alley—any number of small mom-and-pop business that become gathering places for the locals beyond the services the places dispensed. It may be sad for the old timers (those still left) and even tragic for the displaced employees. But it’s the way of the world and every generation goes through it.
Neveu makes the play site specific for audiences, filling the dialogue with references to Chicago streets and sports teams. Probably the play could be transferred to any American big city with the simple alteration of street names and sports teams. But I doubt “Gas for Less” will have a life beyond its current run at the Goodman Theatre. Neveu stretches play for two 45-minute acts, sustained by a teacup full of plot and an abundance of crusty banter. It isn’t enough.
The main problem is that “Gas for Less” doesn’t rise above a small tale about ordinary people. The story certainly doesn’t ascend to a tragic level nor does it succeed as a metaphor for some lost American Eden when neighborhoods were close and assorted ethnic types easily mixed together. Art Pelenkovic’s gas station simply outlived its role in a neighborhood that irrevocably changed. We may sympathized with Anthony’s grief at the demise of the station but the grandson really comes across as a young man who urgently needs to get a life and not bury himself behind the counter of a convenience store.
The Goodman production gives the play every opportunity to succeed. The cast of Robert Breuler (Art), Ernest Perry Jr. (Pat Munson), Rian Jairell (Anthony), Kareem Bandealy (the Asian auto shop former owner), and Nathan Alan Davis (a neighborhood student) all turn in persuasive performances. Tom Burch’s set evokes the ambience of the convenience store with detailed precision, enhanced by Keith Parham’s lighting. Dexter Bullard is responsible for the ostentatiously stately directing.
The Gas for Less service station is based on a real gas station that thrived for many years in Chicago before going under. It may be sad for the owners but I suspect that the station isn’t missed by the residents of the area who can buy their gas and shop in convenience stores more modern, and probably cheaper, than the original.
“Gas for Less” tries to be an elegy for a vanished world, like “The Last Picture Show.” But the dramatic stakes are too low. What the play represents is not a lost and perhaps happier time but the commonplace failure of an easily replaced gas station. A few old men may have to find a new place to watch Bears games with a sense of male community but the world marches on and Anthony will need to find a real job.
“Gas for Less” runs through June 22 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 to $38. Call 312 443 3800.
The show gets a rating of 2 1/2 stars. June 2008
For more information visit www.GoodmanTheatre.org
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The Ballad of Emmett Till
at the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—On August 28, 1955, a 14-year old African American boy named Emmett Till was lynched by two white men outside a small town in Mississippi. Till, a Chicago resident, had been visiting relatives in rural Mississippi. The brutal killing sent shock waves through American society and triggered a new wave of civil rights activism throughout the country.
Ifa Bayeza has dramatized an account of the Emmett Till killing in a play called “The Ballad of Emmett Till,” now receiving its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre. Given the wrenching emotional nature of the subject matter, the drama could scarcely be without its riveting moments. But the script is so flawed that it demands a return to the workshop for rethinking and revising.
A play about Emmett Till and his death was presented by the
Pegasus Players in 1999. It was an angry play, dominated by the bitterness of
Till’s mother, Mamie Till-Bradley. There is anger in Bayeza’s play. How could
there not be in any recounting of the Till atrocity? But the show basically
covers facts that are familiar to anyone acquainted with the Till tragedy. And
at more than 2 hours and 30 minutes, the production takes far too long to tell
its story, at the same time skimping on aspects that could have expanded the
tale beyond its grisly account of Till’s violent death.
The first act takes almost an hour to fill in the back story, taking much too long to recount Till’s fatal visit to Mississippi and to outline the boy’s personality. Apparently Till was an outgoing lad, loquacious in spite of a severe stutter. His high-spirited, cheeky manner would not be well received in the racial heart of darkness that was Mississippi in the 1950’s, a region that demanded its Negroes be subservient. The boy was warned to be respectful to the point of groveling toward whites in Mississippi but he had too much northern exuberance to fit in with the oppressive racial caste system of the Deep South.
The audience sits impatiently through that hour of preliminaries, tensely aware of the violence to come. In the final minutes of the first act, we witness Till’s fatal encounter with the white female store clerk. Nobody knows what actually happened in that store between Emmett and the woman. But the woman claimed the boy insulted her, arousing her husband and brother-in-law to break into the home where Till was staying and drag him to his ghastly death.
The second act takes us through the trial of the two white men, which unnecessarily retells the break-in of the first act. There is also an overlong and brutally explicit recreation of Till’s torture before his death. The scene is gratuitous, varying uneasily between stagy fighting and stomach turning savagery. The scene is a terrible miscalculation that inexplicably got past director Oz Scott. The playwright provides at least two places where the play could have ended satisfactorily before concluding with the ghost of Emmett Till embracing his mother, who assures him that his death was not in vain.
The play does include a few bits of information that may be new to playgoers, particularly the probability that two black men were forced to participate in Till’s murder. And the local district attorney angrily states that he might have gotten a conviction except for the interference of the NAACP and a northern politician, two outsider forces who antagonized the inbred Mississippi power structure and made an acquittal inevitable.
But the play only hints at the seismic force of the Till case that galvanized civil rights forces and made Till a symbol of racial injustice throughout the country. Instead the play is filled with operatic theatrical touches and high-flown poetic speeches. Till is visible virtually the entire evening, both in life and in death. He is given an excessive number of passionate speeches, which implies the boy may have been an effective preacher had he lived. But Till’s monologues at Goodman primarily allow Joseph Anthony Byrd to demonstrate his acting chops and his stamina in one of the most exhausting roles I’ve seen in recent seasons.
A cast of 13, led by Byrd’s bravura acting, tells the story from its origins on Chicago’s Southside to the cauldron of violence and racism that was rural Mississippi in 1955. The supporting performers throw themselves into the story with admirable commitment, led by John Wesley as Till’s uncle Mose Wright, Chris Sullivan and Cliff Chamberlain as the white killers, Kristina Johnson as the trashy white woman who launches the tragedy, Deidrie Henry as Emmett’s mother, Kirk Anderson as the smarmy racist defense attorney, and Brian McCaskill as the prosecutor.
G. W. Mercier designed a set dominated by a background of giant abstract monolithic forms that often serve as screens for projections that locate the action visually. Myrna Colley-Lee designed the costumes, Victory En Yu Tan the lighting, and Richard Woodbury the sound.
“The Ballad of Emmett Till” has its heart in the right place. There is no denying Bayeza’s sincerity or the considerable research that informs her story. And there is merit in recreating the appalling racial divide that convulsed this country only a half century ago. But overall the play did not open any new vistas for me, especially considering the excessive length of the show. I left the Goodman Theatre pondering what August Wilson could have achieved with both the realistic and mythic elements in the Emmett Till martyrdom.
“The Ballad of Emmett Till” runs through June 1 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $23 to $70. Call 312 433 3821.
The show gets a rating of 2 1/2 stars. May 2008
For more information, contact: www.Goodmantheatre.org.
Contact Dan: Zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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The Trip to Bountiful
at the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—For more than 50 years Horton Foote has flown under the radar of American drama. Oh, the playwright has won his share of rave reviews and picked up an Academy Award and a Pulitzer Prize. But he’s never received the publicity won by dramatists with more sizzle in their plays, like David Mamet, Tom Stoppard, and Harold Pinter.
Foote is approaching his 92nd birthday and is the subject of a mini-retrospective at the Goodman Theatre. The final entry in the festival is his 1953 drama “The Trip to Bountiful” in a production that largely replicates the highly praised revival by the Signature Theatre in New York City in 2005. The cast includes a number of actors from that 2005 staging, gloriously headed by Lois Smith, who won a 2005-6 Obie award for her incandescent performance as the elderly Carrie Watts.
“The Trip to Bountiful” is a nostalgic elegy for a vanished way of American rural and small town life. It’s also a hymn to the shipwreck of old age. The play runs just under two hours without an intermission, grabbing the audience with its understated realism and its sympathy for characters enduring the pain of everyday life and the regret that comes with the melancholy realization that that they are mired in disappointing and unfulfilled lives.
At the beginning of the play, Carrie Watts is living in a cramped Houston apartment with her son Ludie and his wife Jessie Mae. Stifled by life in a big city and her running battles with the self-involved and short-tempered Jessie Mae, Carrie plots to return to her hometown of Bountiful in the east Texas region that has provided the landscape for much of Foote’s work.
Carrie manages to escape from the apartment and board a bus that takes her to the town of Harrison, Bountiful having virtually disappeared as a living community during her 20-year absence. Carrie finally arrives in Bountiful, makes her peace with her past, and is taken back to Houston by her son, hoping for happier times in the few remaining years of her life.
There is a bit of Chekhov in Foote’s portrayal of blighted lives--people frustrated by fate and by their own shortcomings. But “The Trip to Bountiful” is a very American play in its east Texas accented characters and the play’s nostalgia and sympathy for the departed world of small town America, swallowed up by subdivisions and malls and neglect.
The role of Carrie was strong enough to gain an Academy Award for Geraldine Page in the 1985 motion picture version. But the character belongs to Lois Smith who brings the old woman to aching life. Smith’s Carrie is physically frail but canny in mind and indomitable in spirit. Near the end of the play she recognizes that she’s become a quarrelsome old woman in the confines of that Houston apartment. She wonders where all the promise of her early life in Bountiful has gone. Carrie comes up with no answers, but her burst of self-knowledge washes over the footlights into the audience and connects with those viewers caring for elderly relatives and also to those spectators of a certain age who may see their future in Carrie’s plight.
Smith is on stage virtually the entire play and has a large percentage of the play’s lines. It’s a daunting role for a woman of 77 but she inhabits Carrie so authentically that her time in front of the audience scarcely seems like acting at all. It’s real life, prickly and distressing and heartbreaking, and just occasionally, inspiring.
Smith gets superb support from Hallie Foote, the playwright’s daughter, as the venomous Jessie Mae, and Devon Abner as the weary and unhappy Ludie. Hallie’s Jessie Mae is mostly appalling in her insensitivity toward Carrie, but a few moments of humanity do peep through, as when the genuinely concerned woman anxiously brings Carrie a glass of water when Carrie has a fainting spell.
Meghan Andrews contributes a touching cameo as a young woman Carrie meets on her bus ride to Bountiful, a character enduring her own pain at the absence of her husband stationed overseas. The character isn’t part of the main narrative but she provides still another example of the playwright’s quiet compassion for average people trying to deal with personal problems not of their making and perhaps beyond remedy.
The play’s gallery of supporting characters Carrie meets on her journey is filled out by Bradley Armacost, Danny Goldring, Frank Girardeau, and James Demarse, all proving there is no such thing as a small role in the hands of quality performers.
Harris Yulin repeats his insightful directing from the 2005 revival. E. David Cosier designed the sets that impressively show off the Goodman backstage technology as the stage morphs from the Houston apartment to two bus station waiting rooms to the outside of Carrie’s now dilapidated house in Bountiful. Martin Pakledinaz designed the 1950’s costumes, John McKernon the lighting, and Brett Jarvis the sound. Loren Toolajian composed the original music.
“The Trip to Bountiful” runs through April 6 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $35 to $75. Call 312 443 3800.
The show gets a rating of four stars. March 2008
For more information contact: www.GoodmanTheatre.org
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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Shining City
at the Goodman Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—“Shining City” is a ghost story, or maybe not. It’s also about two men fighting their way through spiritual crises. The complex and nuanced Conor McPherson play is driven by language rather than plot, in the best tradition of Irish drama. And it’s receiving a hypnotic production at the Goodman Theatre.
“Shining City” was a major critical success on Broadway in 2006 in a staging directed by Goodman artistic director Robert Falls, who also directs the current Goodman production. Falls has assembled a local cast of four and it’s difficult to imagine any of the Broadway actors surpassing the Chicago ensemble.
“Shining City” runs for about 90 minutes without an intermission. It’s divided into five scenes, each involving two characters. One character appears in all five scenes, a young Irishman named Ian who has just left the priesthood and has set himself up as a psychotherapist in a rundown section of Dublin.
The play opens with Ian seeing a middle aged patient named John. The man is struggling to recover from the death of his wife a few months earlier in a terrible automobile accident. What drives John to seek Ian’s help is the supernatural experience of seeing the ghost of his wife on two occasions.
The session between John and Ian occupies the first, third, and final scenes. In the second scene, Ian is visited by his mistress, an angry and frightened woman named Neasa who is reacting with panic and fear to Ian’s decision to end their relationship, even though they have a baby. The fourth, and briefest scene, portrays Ian bringing a young male prostitute to his office.
In the third scene, John delivers a long and emotional monologue about how he tried to hit on an attractive woman while his wife was still alive, an attempt that ended in pathetic failure. The collapse of his attempted seduction drove John to a brothel and further humiliation. The monologue is an extraordinary piece of writing, exposing John’s uncertainties and vulnerabilities as Ian sits quietly by, murmuring his support.
The play is a dual portrait of two men desperately in need of restoring their emotional and psychological balance. While John is consumed with guilt over the death of his wife, Ian wrestles with his own demons, primarily his departure from the church, though the audience never really is told why he left the priesthood.
At the end of the play, some psychic health seems to be restored to both men. John has made peace with himself and is moving on with his life. Ian is closing his Dublin office and, reunited with Neasa and their baby, to start life over in Limerick. And then comes the shocking final moment of the play, which throws everything we’ve seen into disarray.
McPherson tells an unsettling story driven by inference and mood rather than straight ahead narrative. Audiences who demand clarity in plotting, with a beginning, middle, and end, may be dissatisfied. And that final moment in the final scene has upset critics who otherwise adore the play. I thought the moment was a brilliant bit of theater that forces the viewer to reexamine everything we’ve assumed about John and Ian.
There is also some ambiguity in the fourth scene between Ian and the male prostitute. Is the ex priest gay? Does he even want sex with the young man or is he seeking human contact at a moment of personal desolation? The scene ends with an embrace that may be all Ian wants from the lad. Viewers can make up their own minds.
The Goodman production is still another showcase for John Judd, a local actor who just goes from triumph to triumph on our stages. As John, he runs through a kaleidoscope of emotions as he creates an indelible portrait of a man on the verge of mental collapse from guilt and uncertainty.
Judd’s burly physical presence and expansive manner make a striking contrast with the slender and diffident Ian, played with marvelous understatement by Jay Whittaker. McPherson’s gives Ian only one explosive moment, in the scene with Neasa when he struggles to explain why he wants to end their relationship and then erupts with outrage when she confesses to a minor sexual dalliance while they were together.
Nicole Wiesner is splendid as the desperate Neasa, fighting for her emotional life as she tries to make sense of Ian’s rejection, a rejection that could make her and their baby homeless and socially isolated.
Keith Gallagher gives the male prostitute just the right tone of reluctant compliance in his meeting with Ian. The lad is married and hustles men for the money. He’s there to serve Ian physically, but Ian has needs that run much deeper and the hustler’s sympathy may be a greater service to the former priest than purchased sex.
Falls obviously knows the play inside out and under his insightful guidance the scenes flow with an inevitability and undemonstrative realism that perfectly suit the deep spiritual waters that flow beneath the surface action.
Santo Loquasto designed the authentic looking consulting room. Kaye Voyce designed the costumes, Christopher Akerlind the lighting, and Obadiah Eaves the haunting and expressive sound.
“Shining City” runs through February 17 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sun day at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30 to $70. Call 312 443 3820.
For more information contact: www.GoodmanTheatre.org
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.
Jan. 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com