Return to Haifa At
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—“Return
to Haifa” originated as a 1968 short novel by the Palestinian writer and
political activist Ghassan Kanafani. It was made into a motion picture in 1982,
possibly the first Palestinian film. In 2008, Israeli writer Boaz Gaon adapted
Kanafani’s book into a play. Now the Chicago playwright M.E.H. Lewis has
created a new version, also called “Return to Haifa,” receiving its world
premiere at the Next Theatre. Kanafani’s novella tells about a Palestinian couple forced to
flee from their home in Haifa amidst the chaos surrounding the founding of the
State of Israel in 1948. In the confusion, the couple left behind their infant
son. That son was discovered by the Jewish couple who took possession of the
home and raised the child as an Israeli. Twenty years later, the Palestinians, now living a grim life
in the Ramallah refugee camp, revisit their Haifa home during the opening of
borders between Palestine and Israel. The Palestinians find their home occupied
by the Israeli couple and their infant son now grown into a strong young man
serving in the Israeli army. The Palestinians confront the young man as his
biological parents, but he rejects them, feeling a complete identification with
his Israeli upbringing and resentful that his biological parents abandoned him
in his crib. The story ends on a bleak note, with both sides standing on either
side of a giant chasm of mistrust and hostility that can never be bridged. The Gaon and Lewis plays attempt an even-handed approach to
an incendiary topic that likely will arouse indignation on both sides of the
narrative. Both the Palestinian and Jewish characters state their case with
passion and some eloquence. Sarah, the Jewish wife, takes the most bipartisan
position, empathizing with the plight of Palestinians who fled their homes in
panic in 1948 and now live in squalid circumstances with a simmering sense of
injustice. But the story deals with more than the rights and wrongs of
the politics in the Middle East. The story raises issues about identity. Does
the young man belong to his biological parents or to the couple who nurtured
him from infancy? And who really owns the land? These are heartbreaking
questions with no adequate answers.
According to Next director Jason Southerland, the Lewis play
was in revision practically up to curtain time. Unfortunately, the script still
needs much work. The heart of the play is the meeting between the young man and
his Palestinian biological parents within the walls of the house in Haifa that
originated as Palestinian and is now Israeli. But the meeting doesn’t happen
until the end of the play in a long final scene overloaded with political
debate on top of the very human conflict between the two families. The first act consists of a confusing prologue and eight
scenes that do little more than introduce the audience to the Palestinian and
Israeli couples. We hear the back-story of the Jewish couple, survivors of the
Holocaust and the loss of their young son to Nazi violence. The Palestinian
husband takes a sanguine view of the political ferment of the time, insisting
that Jews and Arabs can live in harmony. But mostly both couples banter and
bicker affectionately for an hour before intermission, carrying the narrative
up to the flight of the Palestinians and the Israeli discovery of the baby left
behind. All this could have been telescoped into a couple of scenes to advance
the story to 1967 and the central meeting between the two families. The final scene is so emotion-laden it taxes the powers of
the viewer to absorb all the passions expressed by both families, escalated by
the appearance of the young man claimed by both sides. As written, the scene
belongs to the wives (the husband of the Jewish wife had been killed 11 years
previously by an Arab bullet). Both Saren Nofs-Snyder (Sarah) and Diana
Simonzadeh (Safiyeh, the Palestinian mother) pull out all the stops as mothers
and symbols of the Arab/Israeli divide. The scales tip toward Safiyeh because
she’s the mother who lost her child and sympathy naturally goes to the losers
in a battle and the Palestinians as painted in this play certainly are the
losers, whatever the merits of the Israeli point of view. Lewis should rethink the structure of her play, getting to the
meat of her story sooner and then allowing more stage time to explore the
grievances and claims of both families so the audience isn’t overloaded by the
operatic bursts of passion that saturate the final scene. Along with the strong performances by the two actresses,
there is excellent work by Anish Jethmalani as the Palestinian husband who
descends from optimism to embittered pessimism by the Palestinian defeats in
war after war with Israeli. Jethmalani’s performance is a model of realism,
intelligence, and sensitivity. Daniel Cantor plays the Israeli husband and
Miguel Cohen the son under psychological siege. Todd Garcia rounds out the
ensemble in multiple roles. Tom Burch designed the effective all-purpose indoor and
outdoor set. Whitney McBride designed the costumes, Jared Moore the lighting,
and Nick Keenan the sound. “Return to Haifa” runs through March 7 at the Next Theatre in
the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street. Most performances are
Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m.
Tickets are $25 to $40. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org. The show gets a rating of three stars. February 2010 *********************** A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology
Pageant At
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—The
meanest critic in the world wouldn’t have the heart to write a negative review
of “A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant,” the 2003 show
now playing at the Next Theatre. How can anyone take shots at little kids
singing and dancing their hearts out? The show explores the life and thought of L. Ron Hubbard, the
founder of the Church of Scientology in a one-hour satirical musical performed
entirely by children. As theater concepts go, this has got to be one of the
nerviest ideas of the new millennium. The Next Theatre has assembled a cast of eight youngsters
from the northern suburbs who look to range in age from about eight to 12. They
all play multiple roles as they sing and dance through the saga of L. Ron
Hubbard, his rise and almost fall as the controversial leader of a
controversial new religion that has gained international notoriety with the
highly publicized allegiance of John Travolta and Tom Cruise.
The show has a whiff of what “Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat” may have resembled in its origin as a 15-minute musical
in an English school back in 1968. “Very
Merry…” is fetching, cute, funny, and even informative in enunciating the rules
and regulations of Scientology. No disrespect to the late Hubbard (he died in
1986) and his followers, but Scientology comes across as one weird faith in
this show. Yet many people claim to have found personal salvation and
spiritual rebirth as members of the church. To the show’s credit, the
presentation attempts to be even handed, giving roughly equal time to both the
advocates of Scientology and to its opponents, including the United States
government. Anyhow, the pleasures of “Very Merry…” reside in its playful
qualities rather than its documentary efforts. Spectators who insist on a
minimum level of professional gloss in their theater may not be entertained.
The eight members of the Next ensemble are an enthusiastic and hard working
lot, but they are, after all, children. Their acting and singing will be a
delight to their fans and ungainly to their detractors. The production has an amateurish appearance that I suspect is
calculated. The costumes and sets have the homemade look of mothers at sewing
machines and props manufactured in school shop classes. Credit Grant Sabin
(scenic design), David Hyman (costumes), Mac Vaughey (lighting), and Nathan
Leigh (sound and orchestrations), for the artless but whimsical physical
character of the show. “Very Merry…” was originally written and composed by Kyle
Jarrow from a concept by Alex Timbers and became a minor cult hit in New York
City, winning a 2004 OBIE award. Jarrow and Next Theatre artistic director
Jason Southerland have revised the show, adding four new musical numbers as
well as new scenes and characters. Considering the musical runs only 60
minutes, the changes amount to practically a new vehicle, though one in sync
with the spirit of the original version. Jason Krause takes on the demanding role of L. Ron Hubbard.
Krause has an impressive list of TV, radio, and stage credits and gets through
the role of Hubbard with commendable stamina. His colleagues consist of
Jennifer Baker, John Compton, Lauren
Delfs, Sara Geist, Shaina Jones, Nicole Rudakova, and Kevin Wyant. They give it their all, and they were
rewarded with continuously appreciative reactions throughout the evening from
the opening night crowd, which I’m sure included a high percentage of proud
family members.
“A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant”
runs through January 3 at the Next Theatre in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center,
927 Noyes Street. Most performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and
Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $25. Call 847 475
1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars. December 2009 ************************** End Days At
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—Say
this for Deborah Zoe Laufer. She’s got quite an imagination and she doesn’t shy
away from risks. Consider her new play “End Days” now at the Next Theatre. Laufer’s comedy-drama includes a teen-age Elvis impersonator,
a Jewish atheist now a born again Evangelical Christ preparing for the Rapture,
her daughter who is a 16-year old rebellious goth, and her husband who has been
in a near catatonic depression since he was his company’s only survivor in the
9/11 terrorist attack. To round out the character list, there are guest
appearances by Stephen Hawking and Jesus Christ (if only in the minds of the
wife and the goth daughter). “End Days” sounds like a recipe for a pretentious and
confusing muddle, but it’s really a humorous and whimsical play that asks some
challenging questions about our need for meaning in life, whether it comes from
religion, science, or the family. The core characters are the Stein family--husband/father
Arthur, wife/mother Sylvia, and goth daughter Rachel. The family fled New York
City for the suburbs following the 9/11 disaster, where Arthur has lapsed into
a nonfunctioning state, hanging around the house in his pajamas and robe and
sleeping most of the day. Three months earlier Sylvia became a born again
Christian and spends virtually all her time trying to convert her friends,
family, and neighbors to Jesus in time for the Rapture that will separate the
saved from the damned. In reaction to her dysfunctional parents, Rachel has turned
goth as protective coloring, yet the girl isn’t just a misfit. She’s
potentially brilliant in math and science if she could just work her way
through her family’s hang-ups. Into the Stein home comes neighbor Nelson
Steinberg, an awkward, innocent, gabby, and endearing teenager with the Elvis
complex and a fierce crush on Rachel. There is a lot of comedy in “End Days” and even some
suspense as Sylvia awaits the imminent approach of the Rapture (she coaxes from
Jesus the information that the Rapture will take place that Wednesday). The audience knows the Rapture isn’t going to
happen but as the countdown begins, Sylvia’s intense belief filters across the
footlights to the spectator. How is the woman going to react when the big event
doesn’t occur? The playwright stirs the pot by injecting an unexpected
electrical storm that Sylvia mistakes for the start of the Rapture. And then
Nelson disappears and Sylvia fears he’s been taken to heaven while the woman
and her family have been left behind. The play has its farcical, not to say ludicrous, moments but
Laufer has some thoughtful things to say about our need to connect with
something or someone to get through life. The most obvious connection, at least
for Sylvia, is her uncompromising religious faith. But the droll apparition of
Stephen Hawking makes a strong case for science. And Nelson just wants to
belong, attaching himself to the Stein family like a surrogate son. Apparently
Nelson’s parents, actually stepparents, have no problem with the boy virtually
moving in with the Steins. Like Jesus with Sylvia, Nelson becomes a kind of
savior, drawing Arthur out of his shell and introducing Rachel to Hawking’s
theories and breeching her antisocial behavior.
Laura T. Fisher carries the production as Sylvia by making
the woman’s religious fanaticism credible. Fisher doesn’t allow us to patronize
Sylvia as a deluded loony tune. Her Sylvia is all business in her religious
mania, formidable and rigid but still human. We know Sylvia is misguided, but
she’s above ridicule and mockery. When was the last time we saw a religious
fanatic on the stage or in a movie that we didn’t patronize, or fear? Fisher gets a lot of help from the other four members of the
ensemble. Adam Shalzi endows Nelson with charm, sweetness, and the grit to
accept life’s hard knocks with open arms (he witnessed his father’s suicide by
hanging as a boy). Carolyn Faye Kramer is a delight as the feisty, foul-mouthed
Rachel with her goth clothes and makeup as tools of survival in the bizarre Stein
household. William Dick has the play’s most difficult role as Arthur,
traumatized by guilt as the only company survivor from 9/11. He is affecting in
his low-keyed inertia, though Arthur’s sudden breakout into normalcy near the
end of the play is hard to swallow. Joseph Wycoff doubles as Jesus and Stephen
Hawking and makes both fantasy characters believable, but he needs to project
more loudly as the wry Hawking. Director Shade Murray keeps this unlikely theatrical and
dramatic brew on track, a considerable achievement for a show that could fly
off into caricature and sentimentality under a less insightful and steady hand.
Andre LaSalle’s domestic interior set is built on angles to reflect the off
kilter atmosphere of the action. Lee Fiskness designed the lighting, Melissa
Tochia the costumes, and Nick Keenan the original music and the sound, which
includes some ear-splitting thunderclaps on Rapture night. “End Days” is just the kind of play that turned the Next
Theatre into a major venue for cutting edge new drama in the past few years.
The play has its flaws, including a wan ending and too much touchy feely
emotion as the play winds down. Minor defects notwithstanding, the play remains
engaging, stimulating, funny, and relevant, and the performances are uniformly
up to the mark. What else does the intelligent playgoer need? “End Days” runs through November 29 at the Next Theatre in
the Noyes Cultural Art Center, 927 Noyes Street. Most performances are Thursday
at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are
$25 to $40. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nextheatre.org. The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. Nov. 2009 *************************** boom At
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—We
don’t lack for movies and books portraying the end of the world. But there is
always room for a fresh spin on this perversely popular subject, like Peter
Sinn Nachtrieb’s comedy-drama “boom,”
now receiving its local premiere at the Next Theatre. The playwright gets high marks for a fresh take on how life
ended on earth and how it was rebuilt. Unfortunately, Nachtrieb’s concepts are
stronger than his execution. His storyline is provocative, but even at only 80
minutes with no intermission, the play can be a longish sit, especially in its
final third.
“boom” may be about the cataclysmic end of the world, but it
doesn’t have all the pyrotechnics of “The War of the Worlds” and literary and
cinematic spectacles of that ilk. The play is confined to a single room and
offers only three characters. The action begins in the underground laboratory and living
quarters of a geeky young marine biologist named Jules. He is playing host to a young journalism
student named Jo. The girl is unhappy with her social life in general and her
sex life in particular. So she answers
Jules’s Craigslist ad online offering “intensely significant coupling.” That’s a good-enough come-on for the
sex-starved Jo. The first date does not go well, especially after Jules
informs Jo that he is gay. Then he unfolds his theory of an impending
apocalypse. While doing research on a deserted island, he notices strange
sleeping habits of the fish. From this phenomenon he extrapolates the idea that
a comet is about to strike the earth, destroying humanity. The theory sounds
ludicrous to Jo but Jules turns out to be right. The mismatched couple may be
the last living people on earth, charged in Jules’s mind with the
responsibility of restoring the human race. The fact that Jules is gay and Jo
hates babies is a serious impediment to Jules’s salvation mission, but where
there’s a will there’s a way. The third character in the play is a woman named Barbara. At
first she silently provides loud percussion noises from the rear of the stage
but eventually we learn that the Jules and Jo story is really a kind of live
museum exhibit, with Barbara manipulating the Jules and Jo characters,
sometimes with levers. So instead of a realistic tale of Doomsday featuring Jules
and Jo, what we see is Barbara’s speculation on how the world ended maybe
thousands of years ago and how life began again. The resumption of life, in a
deft twist at the end, resides not with Jules and Jo but with four fish
swimming in a large tank in Jules’s laboratory, a tank the audience has been in
the audience’s view throughout the play.
This may be giving away too much of the plot but
foreknowledge shouldn’t inhibit the audience’s interest. What is bothersome is
the facetious, sitcom-ish nature of much of the play. There are too many
reaches for easy laughs in the improbable romance between the awkward Jules and
the bitchy Jo. The girl’s character is a major problem. Either in the writing
or in Kelly O’Sullivan’s performance, Jo is all attitude, swearing a blue
streak, attacking Jules physically, and generally making herself an unpleasant,
strident shrew. John Stovkis has better luck with the more rounded Jules, an
unlikely candidate for repopulating the world but a young man trying to do his
best in what surely is a daunting assignment. Stovkis has a nice flair for
physical comedy and should have a good future in the theater playing schlemiel
type characters. Shannon Hoag plays Barbara, an elusive character with her own
back story to flesh out her position as the orchestrator of the Jules/Jo
narrative. Hoag takes a breezy approach to the role, though she rises to some
nice intensity near the end of the play. Next Theatre artistic director Jason Sutherland directs the
play with an emphasis to its humor, possibly blunting the nuances of the
serious story beneath the laughs. There are thoughtful and intriguing ideas
embedded in the narrative that tend to get buried in all the comic sound and
fury. The Next cannot draw on great technical resources in its
theater, but the team of designers has done a creative job in endowing the
production with a strong visual and aural presence. Commendation goes
especially to Seth Reinick’s lighting, complemented by Andre LaSalle’s
persuasive realistic set, Chelsea Warren’s costumes, and Nathan Leigh’s sound
and original music. “boom” runs through October 11 at the Next Theatre in the NoyesCulturalArtsCenter927 Noyes Street. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday
at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $40. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. Sept.2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
. *********************** Overwhelming At
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff EVANSTON—Over
a two-month period in 1994, roughly 800,000 men, women, and children were
brutally massacred in the east central African country of Rwanda.
The outside world took little note of the savagery and most Westerners probably
couldn’t even locate Rwanda on a map. Playwright J. T. Rogers has written a drama called “The
Overwhelming” that attempts to probe what happened in Rwanda 15 years ago when
the Hutu faction in the country launched a genocidal attack on the Tutsi
people. The play opened in London in
2006, premiered off Broadway in 2007, and is now receiving a searing production
at the Next Theatre. “The Overwhelming” is a riveting, disturbing play that asks
lots of incisive questions and comes up with very few satisfactory answers,
mostly because there are no satisfactory answers. Rogers frames his play around
an American academic named Jack Exley who is in the country to obtain material
for a book he needs to publish to gain tenure at his Illinois university. The
white Exley unaccountably brings along his family--his African American second
wife Linda, and his rebellious and troubled 17-year old son Geoffrey—into the
danger zone that is Rwanda.
Exley tries to make contact with Joseph Gasana, a college
friend and now a doctor in Rwanda who operates a children’s hospital. But
Joseph has disappeared, and Exley’s search for his friend thrusts him into the
whirlpool of Rwandan ethnic and political conflict. Exley thrashes about in an environment where
nobody is what he seems and trust is a fast track to disillusion at best and
destruction at worst. “The Overwhelming” is the kind of drama Graham Greene or John
Le Carre would have written had they been playwrights. The story is drenched in
moral ambiguity. Exley is an American innocent abroad, completely out of his
depth amid the hatreds that roil Rwanda, hatreds dating back to the brutal
Belgian colonial rule of the nineteenth century. The Hutus and Tutsis fear and
despise each other, killing without qualm in the name of their people. Exley demands that the American government do something to
stop the violence, at least assist in locating his missing friend. But a
variety of white officials—American, French, and South African—remind him that
they are outsiders in the country. The United Nations force in Rwanda is a
corrupt joke. An American embassy official named Woolsey is a spokesman for the
realpolitik of Rwanda. The United States can do nothing to limit the killings
in the country even if it wanted to. The
Rwandan factions are determined to slaughter each other, but it’s their country
and their problem. As Woolsey notes, Rwanda isn’t the United States, with our
democratic institutions and society of law. So stand aside and try not to get
hurt. The play starts slowly, the first act introducing the main
characters who mostly talk a lot. The emotional temperature ratchets up in the
second act, leading to a final scene of extreme intensity that ends with Exley
making a shattering moral choice. The audience leaves the theater somberly
aware of how unstoppable historical forces can be. White characters in the play initially seem
callous in their skepticism about the efficacy of intruding on Rwandan internal
affairs in the name of humanity, but the skeptics are also realists. The Next staging employs a terrific ensemble of black and
white actors under Kimberley Senior’s taut and fluent directing. Si Osborne
makes one of his lamentably rare local stage appearances as Jack Exley, the
American who learns that our ideals of democracy and tolerance cut no ice with
the rival Hutus and Tutsis. Tamberla Perry is Exley’s wife and Rob Fagin is
their son. Both are excellent and Fagin is especially good in evoking the
confusion and hostility of a teen-ager in a situation beyond his understanding.
He asks “Why is everyone here killing each other?”, a simple, naïve question
that’s unanswerable. The other whites in the drama are played by Jamie Vann as the
American embassy official and John Byrnes, as the Frenchman and the South
African, character transformations so complete it is hard to believe they are
played by the same actor. The Rwandan characters are all superbly performed, starting
with Dexter Zollicoffer as Joseph and Kenn E. Head as an affable Rwandan government
official of indecipherable loyalties. Christoph Horton Abiel is very strong as
a servant in Exley’s household. Lily Mojekwu is Joseph’s wife with John Nyrere
Frazier and Mildred Marie Langford rounding out the ensemble. Tom Burch has designed an effective all-purpose set that
relies on sliding rear panels decorated with abstract African art designs.
Whitney McBride designed the costumes, Charles Cooper the lighting, and Tamara
Roberts the sound.
I entered the Next
Theatre with little enthusiasm, expecting a play that mixes bludgeoning
violence with soap box preaching. But what “The Overwhelming” delivered is a
story of unnerving complexity, rendered with evenhanded intelligence and
knowledge. The result is political drama that is informative and challenging
and wonderfully acted. “The Overwhelming” runs through May 17 at the Next Theatre in
the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m.,
Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23 to $38.
Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars April 2009.
***********************
Dying City
At the Next Theatre
By Dan Zeff
EVANSTON—How much content can a 75-minute one-act play hold? Christopher Shinn’s “Dying City” at the Next Theatre touches on the Iraq war, the psychology of violence, the 9/11 disaster, and even the TV show “Law and Order” and the writings of William Faulkner. But these all turn out to be periphery issues yielding to a portrait of a fractured marriage and the mysterious death of one of the three characters.
Shinn’s drama is constructed around a therapist in her late 20’s named Kelly, her husband Craig, and Craig’s identical (and gay) twin brother Peter. The twins are played by the same actor. The action takes place over two nights, the first in July 2005 and the second in January 2004. The setting is Kelly’s apartment in New York City.
In the opening scene, Peter pays an unexpected, and not necessarily welcome, visit to Kelly. During the course of their initially awkward conversation, we learn that Craig had died in Iraq the previous year of a self inflicted gunshot wound. Was it an accident or a suicide? The official ruling was an accident, but Peter claims “Everyone there knew that dad taught us, from the time we were little, how to shoot, how to handle weapons…” But if Craig’s death was a suicide, then why?
The 2004 scenes take place on Craig’s last night in New York before he ships out to Fort Benning, Georgia, and eventually to Iraq. Craig is sullen, angry, and distant. Kelly is desperate, seeing her husband slipping away from her emotionally and helpless to get him back. A year later she is still grieving, and still confused. Her conversations with Peter only aggravate her sense of loss and confusion.
In “Dying City,” truth is elusive. We never learn for sure how and why Craig died in Iraq. He was never explicit in why he fell out of love with the devastated Kelly. Maybe he didn’t know himself. We just know that he was unhappy and bitter, perhaps going back to his relationship with his father, a man scarred by the violence of his service in the Vietnam War. Is it possible to hand down a predilection for violence from father to son?
Peter is the better written of the two brothers, more appealing, more humorous, and perhaps just as tragic as his dead twin. Peter is a successful actor with at least outward contempt for his work. His homosexuality stresses him out personally and professionally. And Peter, like Kelly, must deal with the problematical death of his brother.
Shinn shifts the presence of the brothers from scene to scene by the simple device of having one character walk off stage on some pretext, like making a phone call. Then the other brother enters a few seconds later, with a slight change of clothing but a radical change in attitude. Craig is brooding and intense. Peter is outgoing, eager to connect with a reluctant Kelly, and unlike the emotionally withdrawn Craig, he wears his emotions on his sleeve.
The dying city of the title refers both to New York City and to Baghdad. The disillusioned Craig e-mails his brother from Iraq “It’s clear to everyone now that we are not equipped to bring this country back to life. The city is dying and we are the ones killing it.” And yet the play is not overtly political soapbox attack on the war. It’s a launching pad for the personal demons Craig carries with him into battle.
“Dying City” premiered in London in 2006 and was critically praised after its off Broadway opening in 2007. The production at the Next Theatre is continuously engrossing, but how much credit goes to the play and how much to the superior acting rests in the eye and ear of the beholder.
The performances by Nicole Wiesner as Kelly and Coburn Goss as the twin brothers are stunning under Jason Loewith’s taut and sensitive production. Wiesner and Goss have multiple acting credits in local theater but this is the first time both performers have had this kind of platform to display their talent. Wiesner is amazing, especially because for much of the play her character mostly reacts to Craig and Peter. But when she hears from her husband that he no longer lovers her, she breaks down in weeping despair that is wrenching to observe.
Goss makes credible the two brothers, a device that could come across as stagy and gimmicky. Nothing can completely disguise the artificial nature of the character switches but Goss is so good at establishing the separate personalities of Peter and Craig that the spectator accepts the exits and entrances as a natural convention of the play. Coincidentally, Pablo Schreiber, now starring in the powerful Goodman Theatre revival of “Desire Under the Elms”, played the role of the twins off Broadway.
Jim Davis designed the effective apartment set. Kristine Knanishu designed the costumes, Keith Parham the lighting, and Nathan Leigh the atmospheric sound.
I left the theater not sure whether I had seen an important play or just an interesting play elevated to importance by tremendous acting. In the end it doesn’t matter. “Dying City” is an absorbing audience experience and a further testament to what ex artistic director Jason Loewith has meant to the Next Theatre and indeed to the entire Chicagoland theater scene.
“Dying City” runs through March 8 at the Next Theatre in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street. Most performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23 to $38. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. February 2009
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
****************************
Well
At the Next Theatre
By Dan Zeff
EVANSTON—“Well” is an oddball little play that is part performance piece, part social commentary, part autobiography, and part mother-daughter bonding, all presented in a style that recalls Thornton Wilder and Luigi Pirandello in a playful mood.
The play, which premiered off Broadway in 2004 to laudatory reviews, is receiving its local premiere at the Next Theatre.
“Well” was written by Lisa Kron, who has gained considerable recognition as a solo performer. The central character in this play is the author, named Lisa Kron. Addressing the audience directly at the beginning of the play, Lisa announces “This play is not about me and my mother.” Instead, it is a “theatrical exploration of health and illness in the individual and the community.”
Early on, Lisa’s goals for the play are swept away. The show is very much about Lisa and her mother, a frumpy old woman who is dozing off in a recliner chair as the audience enters the theater and is on stage for most of the 100-minute intermissionless evening.
The play also tosses theatrical convention to the winds. Characters talk directly to the spectators. The actors break character, reverting to their real identities. A girl who bullied Lisa as a child forces her way into the play much against Lisa’s will. The tone shifts back and forth from realism to what might be considered controlled wackiness. Ultimately, the actors, fed up with Lisa’s writing, abandon the stage altogether and the actress playing the mother discards the role for her real persona to lecture Lisa on the failings of her script.
It all sounds either pretentious or cutesy but the dramaturgy
works nicely. It doesn’t take the audience long to plug into the off-the-wall
flavor of the show, adjusting their perspective as the people and action on
stage shift gears.
“Well” is more than just an exercise in theatrical tomfoolery. Kron’s mother genuinely is ill and the script raises thoughtful point about illness as it impacts on both the sick and the healthy. Kron’s mother was a social activist in East Lansing, Michigan, during the late 1960’s, fighting for racial integration in her neighborhood in spite of her perplexing and debilitating illness, which she ascribes to severe allergies. Much of the play takes place in a hospital where Lisa is tested for various allergies, a vaguely disturbing set of scenes for all their comic overlay.
Lisa bickers with her mother, who disputes the ac- curacy of her daughter’s presentation of the older woman. Lisa is also in frequent conflict with an increasingly rebellious cast of supporting performers. She complains that she’s lost control of her own play, yet the show never seems ramshackle. It’s only after leaving the theater that spectators will reflect that they have just witnessed a pretty sophisticated piece of playwriting masquerading as a “what next” slice of spontaneity.
At the Next Theatre, the crucial role of Lisa Kron is played by Lia Mortensen, an effervescent young woman who resembles Ellen De Generes in her stage personality. Mortensen receives perfect support from Mary Ann Thebus as the mother, a strong personality battling a weak body. The supporting cast all plays multiple roles, both children and adults, and play them well—James Krag, Kat McDonnell, Lily Mojekwu (particularly fearsome as Lisa’s childhood tormentor), and Andre Teamer.
Director Damon Kiely deftly orchestrates all the clashing moods and styles, keeping the action coherent, fluent, and often funny. Set designer Jack Magaw divides the stage into a highly detailed living room on the left occupied by the mother and her recliner, and a basically open stage filled at various times by large props moved on and off stage by the actors. Debbie Baer designed the costumes, Ray Nardelli the sound, and Charles Cooper the lighting, which plays a central mood role in spotlighting an isolated Lisa and then merging her into action with the other characters.
While “Well” does explore some meaningful personal and social issues, I didn’t detect as much dramatic substance to the play as other observers. For me Kron’s work succeeds primarily as a well-acted and well-staged exercise in theatrical slight of hand.
“Well” runs through December 14 at the Next Theatre in the NoyesCulturalArtsCenter,927 Noyes Street. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23 to $38. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.nexttheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. November 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
***********************
The U.N. Inspector
At the Next Theatre
By Dan Zeff
EVANSTON—In 1836 Nikolai Gogol wrote a political satire variously translated as “The Inspector General” or “The Government Inspector.” The comedy predictably attracted the notice of the censors in Tsarist Russia but still became the most popular play in Russian drama.
In 2005, British playwright David Farr updated Gogol’s play
as “The U.N. Inspector,” changing the main character into an Englishman. Now
the Next Theatre commissioned Chicagoland playwright James Sherman to adapted
Farr’s adaptation, changing the English protagonist into a Chicago loser named
Michael Fitzgerald Murphy.
All this puttering hasn’t done the Gogol original any favors. “The U.N. Inspector” is an overlong farce occasionally interrupted by a couple of moments of serious, even dark, theater that don’t mesh with the low comic tone that dominates the evening.
Gogol’s play describes how the corrupt officials of a provincial Russian town mistake a petty clerk for a visiting government inspector. Fearing their malfeasance will be exposed, they load the clerk with bribes and the mayor even offers the puzzled man his daughter. The clerk and his servant grab the loot and clear out of town at the moment the officials discover the visitor isn’t a government inspector after all. Just as they learn of their blunder the real government inspector is announced.
At the Next Theatre, Michael Fitzgerald Murphy is a failed real estate agent from Chicago come who travels to a grungy former Soviet satellite state to try to cash in on the opportunities for plunder. Murphy and his companion are languishing in a local hotel, broke and hungry, when the state officials mistake him for a visiting United Nations inspector. The country’s president and his henchman (and henchwoman) ministers fear the inspector will demand an accounting of the $600 million the International Monetary Fund has given the country, money the officials have grabbed to line their own pockets.
Fearing exposure for their corruption and human rights violations, the officials suck up to Murphy, who doesn’t realize until late in the play what’s elevated his status in the country. But Murphy is happy to accept the bribes the officials fling at him as well as the president’s bimbo daughter.
Most of the play treats the government officials as caricatures, bumblers who fall all over themselves to placate the U.N. inspector. The officials may be cartoons but they are also brutal and cruel in suppressing their country’s population to preserve their own cushy positions. The play encourages us to laugh at the manic fear of the officials and their toadying to the bogus inspector and then pull back to be horrified by their viciousness. The abrupt shift in tone doesn’t work.
The satire in “The U.N. Inspector” is virtually nil. There are a couple of decently cynical lines about flaws in the United Nations and the USA’s approach to disadvantaged foreign countries, but the characters are so two-dimensional that they lose their value as satirical targets.
The humor includes one running gross-out gag involving the severed tongue removed from a troublesome local journalist imprisoned by the president. The play ends on a nasty note that intends to highlight just how unprincipled and callous the government officials can be in protecting their turf. Point taken, but it’s not a very illuminating point. We don’t need a double adaptation of the Gogol classic just to inform us that governments can be corrupt. We need wit and insight, elements in short supply in “The U.N. Inspector.”
The Next production, under Jason Loewith’s strident directing, does not lack for energy. The show is worth seeing for Joe Dempsey’s bravura performance as Murphy. Dempsey, who looks and sounds remarkably like Jerry Seinfeld, delivers a brilliant comic impersonation. Dempsey especially soars in the scene where Murphy’s blowhard bravado inflates as he ingests glass after glass of plum brandy in the company of the country’s fawning officials in the presidential palace. Dempsey carries the show, a blessed comic relief from the endless hand- wringing and plotting by the government officials as they seek damage control against the threatening visiting inspector.
The rest of the large cast carries out its assignments with professionalism and comic commitment. Bill McGough is first rate as the overwrought president, though his operatic near breakdown near the end of the play is way over the top. All the corrupt ministers are good in their one-note roles—Joseph Wycoff, Douglas Vickers, Will Schutz, Mark Mysliwiec, and Elizabeth Laidlaw. Tony Bozzuto is excellent as Murphy’s fretful sidekick and Cliff Chamberlain and Alex Goodrich are effective as a pair of thugs who serve as presidential aides. Susan Hart and Kathryn Hribar are solid as the president’s hard-edged wife and her libidinous, pampered teenage daughter.
Grant Sabin designed the clever set that morphs from the president palace to Murphy’s hotel room. Amy Gabbert designed the costumes, Diane Fairchild the lighting, and Misha Fiksel the sound and music. Dialect coach Claudia Anderson deserves credit for the smooth transition between conventional English (when the officials talk among themselves) and a heavily accented Slavic brogue when they address Murphy and his friend.
“The U.N. Inspector” runs through October 12 at the Next Theatre in the Noyes Cultural Arts Center, 927 Noyes Street. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $23 to $38. Call 847 475 1875 or visit www.NextTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. Sept. 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
************************* 9 Parts of Desire by
the Next Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—“9 Parts of Desire”
intends to bring the Iraqi war down to a human level, away from the political
posturing and sound bytes and numbing statistics. The play shows audiences the cost
of the conflict among the non-combatant civilians who endure the unending
violence and tension of the war, that is, if they are fortunate enough to
survive it.
An American actress named Heather Raffo wrote “9 Parts of Desire” as a one-woman show. Raffo is the child of an Iraqi father and an American mother. The play was the result of 10 years of interviews throughout the world, primarily the testimony of Iraqi women who were touched the war in some manner.
The show opened in Edinburgh in 2003 and transferred to
London the next year. It opened in New York City in 2004 and has since played
throughout the country, often performed by another actress. The Next Theatre
captured the show for Chicagoland audiences with Raffo starring. The production
is installed at the Museum of Contemporary Art for a too short run. Raffo impersonates nine women, almost all of them Iraqi.
Through them we hear chilling accounts of the toll the war has taken on Iraqi
civilians and also the horrific regime of Saddam Hussein. Even the most
vociferous opponents of the war will have to concede that the American invasion
did rid Iraq, and the world, of a true monster in Hussein and his family. The 85-minute show is set within a detailed set of
scaffolding and ruins that visually set the tone for the destruction inflicted
on Iraq over the course of the war. Raffo changes characters with a sudden
switch in a cloak and altered body language, often accompanied by a blackout
and occasionally a thunderclap of sound that will make some spectators jump out
of their seats. The nine women whose voices we hear are a varied lot,
beginning with the Mulaya, a professional mourner and continuing with
individualized characters like Layla, a painter who collaborated with the
Hussein regime by painting nudes and portraits of Saddam and became their
sexual plaything. Several of the women
reappear during the play. There is surprisingly little outrage in their
accounts of the brutality and death that have been their daily companion for so
many years, much of it inflicted by American guns and bombs. They are not
desensitized to their suffering and the suffering of those around them, but
they accept the devastation as the way of their world.
Spectators expecting firebrand political polemics from the
play, especially Bush bashing, will be disappointed. Hooda, an academic living
in exile, expresses her divided attitude about the American invasion. “This war
is against all my beliefs, and yet I wanted it.” The agony of living under the
insane tyranny of the Hussein regime goes a long way toward justifying the
conflict, and yet…. Raffo’s versatility is an obvious positive in the play. She can shift characters in a split second,
but we are still conscious that it is Raffo on stage, displaying her gallery of
women with their mix of bravery and endurance. The play is no facile exercise
in the triumph of the human spirit. These women face hardship and danger and
heartbreak every day of their lives, a condition unimaginable to the audiences
watching the play in this country. They
are survivors, not heroines. But audiences will be exposed, at least for a few minutes, to
the realities of a conflict that adds to its human cost almost hourly. After
watching “9 Parts of Desire,” very few spectators will be able to watch those
impersonal TV shots of the war without recognizing the pain and loss of average
people caught in a crossfire of mayhem they did not start and cannot control. The play’s title is a quotation from Ali ibn Abu Taleb, the
founder of the Shiite sect of Islam: “God created sexual desire in ten parts;
then he gave nine parts to women and one to men.” Director Joanna Settle is responsible for shaping Raffo’s
material into its fluid sequence of mini dramas. Antje Ellermann designed the
set, Kasia Walicka Maimone the costumes, Obadiah Eaves the sound (adapted for
this production by Andre Pluess), and Peter West the lighting (adapted for this
production by Keith Parham). “9 Parts of Desire” runs through May 18 at the Museum of
Contemporary Art, 220 East Chicago Avenue. Performance schedules vary. Tickets
are $23 to $38. Call 847 475 1875.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars. May 2008
For more information, contact: www.nexttheatre.org.
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
*******************************
The American Dream Songbook
at the Next Theatre
By Dan Zeff
EVANSTON—“The American Dream Songbook” explores the American Dream in words and music and finds this elusive holy grail drenched in disillusion, alienation, and false values. That would make for a pretty glum evening if the songs and performances weren’t so entertaining.
The show is still another innovative concept from that house of innovation, the Next Theatre.
Next artistic director Jason Loewith started with the revival of Leonard Bernstein’s 1950’s one-act opera “Trouble in Tahiti.” But that piece only runs 45 minutes, so to flesh out the production, Loewith commissioned five songs from young contemporary American composers to create a second act commentary on the thorny topic of the American Dream, circa 2008.
Bernstein wrote “Trouble in Tahiti” in the early 1950’s and it had a brief run on Broadway in 1955. The opera is very much a 1950’s period piece, when the postwar American suburbs were the lodestar of the white American middle class and also the symbol of shallow comforts and empty materialism. But the work is more a portrait of a marriage gone bad than a sociology term paper about the barren goals of American life at mid century.
Sam is ambitious and self-centered. Dinah feels emotionally abandoned by her aloof and unromantic husband. Bernstein tells their glum story almost entirely in song through seven scenes. The show is basically a two-hander between Sam and Dinah with a trio of singers providing choral commentary and sometimes taking on minor characters. But the show is a slender work, with the exception of one very funny scene in which Dinah imagines herself romantically involved in one of those South Seas movie love stories (hence the title of the opera).
The husband and wife are well sung by James Rank and Karen Doerr, though their voices don’t match well. Rank has a musical comedy voice and Doerr is operatic and in their duets Doerr’s vocal power tends to dominate. “Trouble in Tahiti” ends up being essentially a one-note tale of a couple emotionally adrift who can’t seem to find a way back to connect with each other. The husband isn’t a particularly sympathetic figure and their unhappiness isn’t very involving for the audience.
“Trouble in Tahiti” is really a table setter for the more intriguing second half of the production, when those five young composers take their whack at the American Dream from today’s perspective.
The first piece, by Chicago composer Kevin O’Donnell, is a continuation of the troubled relationship in the first act--a new couple and a new decade but the same old emotional disconnect. The music takes a chipper turn with “Betty, the Clam Girl” by the successful musical theater composer Michael John LaChiusa. This number is a lampoon about a homely girl who finds glamour through an arduous physical makeover. The piece satirizes the American lust for outward physical beauty, an easy target but a fun one in LaChiusa’s musical imagination.
The centerpiece of the second act is Michael Mahler’s “The Rise and Fall of Britney Spears.” The number is an elaborate send-up of the American fascination with celebrityhood, with Spears both manipulated and manipulating in creating the image of the ultimate youth-driven celebrity (Justin Timberlake is also a participant). The number could have been tasteless or obvious, but Mahler’s clever lyrics tell a story that is both hilarious and cautionary.
Michael Friedman’s “Things We Wanted: Two Murder Ballads” shows how the imagination of children is exploited by American legends told to youngsters. Josh Schmidt ends the act with “This Little American Dream,” which starts out as the only optimistic bit of the evening and ends humorously and ironically taking the same sour view of the American Dream that dominated the rest of the production.
The three-performer chorus of “Trouble in Tahiti” takes center stage with Rank and Doerr in the second act. They are Jason Bayle, Brandon Dahlquist, and Bernadette Garza, all quality singers and actors with Garza particularly notable.
Loewith directs the entire presentation, with Tommy Rapley, who seems to be everything these days in Chicagoland musical theater, handling the choreography. Collette Pollard’s all-purpose set features giant mirrors at the rear of the stage. Jason Fassl designed the lighting, Janice Pytel the costumes, and Jeff Dublinske the sound. Jeremy Ramey is the musical director of the very fine six-piece orchestra that ends the evening with a jaunty Dixieland march down the aisle.
“The American Dream Songbook” runs through March 22 at the Next Theatre, 927 Noyes Street. Performances are Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $45. Call 847 475 1875.
For more information contact: www.nexttheatre.org
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars. Feb. 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com