Spin At
the Theater Wit By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Theater
Wit has finally opened, adding three small but well equipped theaters to the
Chicago storefront theater scene. After seven years of planning and 16 months
of construction at a cost of $1.3 million, Theater Wit artistic director Jeremy
Wechsler can point with pride to a project that will provide performing spaces
for his own theater as well as the Shattered Globe Theatre, Stage Left Theatre,
and Bohemian Theatre Ensemble. The theater complex has been remodeled from the old Bailiwick
Arts Centre and should be fully operational by this autumn. But the outlines of
the project are clear now. There will be three 99-seat theaters, two with
proscenium configurations and one flexible. The theaters will complete a mini
theater district in the 1200 block of West Belmont Avenue, joining the Theatre
Building next door with its multiple theater spaces. The amenities at Theater Wit won’t be extravagant, but they
are a massive upgrade over the previous facilities in terms of restrooms, lobby
space, concessions, and box office convenience. The seats were obtained from an
area high school but are comfortable and stylish looking. Compared to the
typical storefront theater in Chicago, Theater Wit oozes luxury. That’s the good news. The not so good news is that Theater
Wit is opening the complex with the premiere of a play called “Spin.” It’s a
family affair with Wechsler directing the work by his wife, dramatist Penny
Penniston. “Spin” advertises itself as a comedy that takes satirical shots at
advertising and consumer culture. But it’s really a ramshackle affair that
lurches into so many different directions that it seems like the author dumped
ideas for a half dozen plays into one script, with predictably indigestible results. “Spin” has six characters. Brent (Coburn Goss) is an ace art
director for an advertising agency who wants to get out of the rat race after
he separates from his wife. Danielle (Alice Wedoff) is a street waif who Brent
rescues from her abusive boy friend Aaron (Michael Kessler). Redge (Joe Foust)
is the head of the ad agency, a cynic with a low opinion of human nature. Jack
(Lance Baker) is a button-down executive with the agency who hovers on the
fringes of the action to no discernible purpose. Ruby Jones (Austin Talley) is
a black tennis star of Tiger Woods-like celebrityhood who becomes part of a
beer campaign for the ad agency. At times, “Spin” takes pot shots at the advertising business,
surely the most over satirized institution in American society. Along the way, Brent falls in love with
Danielle, discovers she is woefully under age (though Wedoff looks like a very
healthy female in her 20’s), and goes to pieces. Danielle’s youth makes three
of the play’s five male characters guilty of statutory rape. Aaron starts the
play as a naïve anti-establishment terrorist of the Weathermen persuasion,
leaves for a few scenes, and returns a changed and repentant young man. His
main function in the play apparently is to introduce a bomb on stage that leads
to a ridiculous black comedy climax. Ruby Jones comes in late in the story to introduce a
meditation on the power of celebrities in American life. When a brief video of
Ruby surfaces on the internet showing the man fighting police seven years
previously, we get commentary on the power of the internet and how to convert a
public relations disaster into a positive through information manipulation. There are continual and purposeless references to a small
abstract sculpture in Brent’s possession as well as the death of Redge’s sister
years ago that is a narrative tease and dead end. Periodically the characters
address the audience directly, a distracting and confusing dramatic device that
works in “The Glass Menagerie” and “Our Town” but not in “Spin.” Somewhere in all this mish mash of storylines there may be a
workable play. Penniston has written some sharp dialogue and a handful of
dramatic scenes that hold the stage nicely. My guess is that her best chance to
save her show would be to concentrate on the Ruby Jones bit. That’s where the
real spin of the title comes in and it has immediacy with the real-life Tiger
Woods soap opera that has flooded the media. The Jones narrative touches on
racial attitudes, the cult of the sports hero in America, and image management
that could work either as a tart comedy or as a drama. The rest of the stuff
doesn’t coalesce into a coherent play. The performances in “Spin” are fine, as one would expect from
an ensemble that includes several A list actors in Chicagoland theater, notable
Goss, Faust, and Baker. Wechsler directs unobtrusively. Jack Magaw has designed
a functional and credible modern big city apartment set. Jessica Harpenau
designed the lighting, Laura Brookshire Kollar the costumes, and Christopher
Kriz the sound. “Spin” runs through June 5 at Theater Wit, 1229 West Belmont
Avenue. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2:30
p.m. Tickets are $25. Call 773 975 8150 or visit www.TheaterWit.org . The show gets a rating of two stars. April 2101 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
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Feydeau–si-deau
by Theater Wit
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO-Theater Wit is the latest local company to try its hand at
bringing a Feydeau show to life in English. The theater calls the show “Feydeau–si-deau,” one of several titles for the original, the best known being “Chemin
de Fer.”
Feydeau may have a hallowed place in the comic theater pantheon, but the man’s work doesn’t seem to travel well across the Atlantic Ocean. Over the years I’ve seen Feydeau productions, always in adaptations by English-speaking theater people, in Chicago and suburban theaters and in Canada. In spite of occasional felicitous humorous moments, the plays seemed laborious and silly, a great deal of sound and fury signifying very little in terms of laughter.
The reference books rank Georges Feydeau among the great comic playwrights in the history of western theater. In France, Feydeau is mentioned in the same breath with the immortal Moliere. Feydeau’s farces have been praised for their ingenuity and hilarity and he’s even been credited as a precursor of some of the edgiest experimental drama movements of the 1900’s.
The theme of a Feydeau farce is always sex, more particularly adulterous sex set among the complacent middle class and upper middle class Parisian society of the late 1800’s. “Feydeau si-deau” is comparatively late Feydeau, opening in 1904. It’s not a typical example of the author’s farce style. Generally, a Feydeau plot is so intricate and so complex that it defies description. The action in a Feydeau farce begins with a small misunderstanding. It then escalates into a frenzy of confusion and mistaken identities, with one character dashing in or out of a room, missing by a nanosecond a meeting with another character that would prove disastrous.
In many Feydeau farces the characters try to consummate their infidelities, but fail because of bad luck and their own incompetence. In “Feydeau –si-deau” the adulteries actually come off, which gives the narrative a faintly unsavory flavor. The plot itself is much less labyrinthine than usual. Essentially “Feydeau –si-deau” is a round robin of lecheries disrupting two marriages, with cheating husbands and wannabe cheaters circling lasciviously around two married women.
Feydeau enjoyed ridiculing his characters, often giving them bizarre physical or psychological quirks. In “Feydeau –si-deau,” a dustman barks like a dog under stress. A respected politician comes unglued like a would-be Inspector Clouseau in the presence of a woman he wants to seduce. A normally placid senior citizen turns randy when drunk, firing a pistol into the air. None of this has anything to do with the storyline but does allow for opportunities for lots of comic shtick.
It’s easier to perform Shakespeare than Feydeau. With Shakespeare, the language and characters are so rich that they can carry a less than perfect production. But a Feydeau play can’t fall back on brilliant language or scintillating characters. The language, at least in translation, is serviceable at best and the characters are mostly caricatures caught in the grip of a narrative spiraling more and more out of control. The sheer energy of the story has to sustain the evening. Give the audience a chance to sit back and ponder all the nonsense happening on the stage and the production is sunk.
Theater Wit gives “Feydeau –si-deau” a game try under Jeremy Wechsler’s high octane directing. But too much of the uproar on stage is noisy and foolish rather than hilarious. The characters are all dupes or sexual predators, which is fine if they are also funny. There are occasional moments of legitimate comedy but not enough to paper over the all too visible skeleton of the script. One character pelting melons at another character should be uproarious, but here it’s just inane.
Theater Wit has assembled a large cast of 14. The performances are uneven, but there is worthy work by Maggie Graham as the woman who is the lodestar of most of the libidinous men in the play. Kevin Theis is solid as Fedot, one of the predators. The funniest bit in the play is a running gag about the similar pronunciations of “Fedot” and “Feydeau.”
The always reliable Ronald Keaton stirs up a lot of dust as the drunk who fires a pistol with the decibel count of a 100-pound bomb. My personal favorite was Jennifer Grace in the very minor role of a lady’s maid who has a grand old time watching her betters land themselves in so many erotic difficulties. It would be interesting to watch the young actress in a more substantial comic role.
The physical production at the Theatre Building benefits from Laura Kollar’s turn-of-the-century costumes and the drawing room and bedroom sets by Hang Le and Courtney O’Neill. Jeremy Getz designed the lighting and Joseph Fosco the sound.
“Feydeau –si-deau” runs through April 20 at the Theatre
Building, 1225 West Belmont Avenue.
Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 7:45 p.m. and Sunday at
2:45 p.m. Tickets are $24. Call 773 327 5252.
The show gets a rating of 2 ½ stars. March 2008
For more information contact: www.theatrebuildingchicago.org
Contact us: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com