The Odd Couple At
the Raven Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Neil
Simon’s “The Odd Couple” may be the funniest comedy in American drama. The only
serious competition might come from “The Man Who Came to Dinner,” but nobody
does that show anymore. As most people know from the hit movie and TV adaptations,
“The Odd Couple” is about two men who have become icons in American pop
culture—compulsive neat freak Felix Unger and his friend and nemesis, the
uber-slob Oscar Madison. They become roommates from hell, granting audiences
three acts of unconditional hilarity. “The Odd Couple” will be funny in all but the most inept
productions. It’s a special joy when the acting is razor sharp, with Simon’s
wisecracks and visual jokes bouncing around the stage at warp speed. The revival at the Raven Theatre starts slowly. The opening
scene poker game, which should crackle with one liners and comic insults,
stimulated chuckles instead of belly laughs. The actors look their roles but
the scene doesn’t scintillate.
The production takes off with the entrance of the neurotic
clean-aholic Felix, melting under the emotional distress of his suddenly broken
marriage. The play then becomes a two-hander between Felix and Oscar and the
comedy temperature rises nicely. The star of the production is Jon Steinhagen, a chubby Felix,
not quite as assertive as Tony Randall in the TV series, but funny enough, and
more important, a credible human being instead of a cartoon. We feel Felix’s
pain as we laugh at him and his compulsive cleaning mania. The very tricky
scene in which he is thrust together with the ditsy Pigeon sisters from an
upstairs apartment, reducing them to tears, was the best staging I’ve ever seen
of this potentially silly interlude. As Oscar, Eric Roach is excellent in the early scenes, a
believable portrait of a happy go lucky single man on the outside who still
aches for the domestic tranquility denied him since his divorce. Roach is a
good actor and when his Oscar finally breaks under Felix’s multiple annoying
habits and he tells his roommate “Stay out of my way,” the play suddenly takes
a serious turn. Here is a man driven to desperation and maybe violence. The
action returns to comedy, but it’s a moment that puts a human face on a story
the audience had been conditioned to take very lightly. Unfortunately, as Felix eats away at Oscar’s nerve ends,
Roach tends to go over the top in his hair pulling and ranting. The emoting may
gather a few easy laughs from the audience but it cheapens Oscar, a man capable
of blowing his cool, but not in such a farcically frantic manner.
Liz Fletcher and Brigitte Ditmars are admirable as the Pigeon
sisters, Oscar’s hope and expectation for a little male-female rest and
recreation. The poker buddies are played by Greg Caldwell, Larry Carani, Greg
Kolack, and Anthony Tournis. The Raven production eliminates the intermission between the
second and third acts, bringing the show in at a tight two hours. Michael
Menendian’s directing sustains the necessary brisk pace. Ray Toler designed the credible apartment interior, allowing
for plenty of room to dash in and out of swinging doors and around the
furniture. JoAnn Montemurro designed the costumes, Katherine Chavez the sound,
and Amy Lee the lighting. Newcomers to “The Odd Couple” may have a
better time than veterans of the play. The lady sitting next to me on opening
night was convulsed with laughter throughout the evening. This obviously was
her first exposure to the play and she was having a ball. In any case, though
I’ve seen funnier poker scenes, Steinhagen’s Felix Unger is worth the price of
admission. “The Odd Couple” runs through July 18 at the Raven Theatre,
6157 North Clark Street. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.
and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 773 338 2177 or visit www.raventheatre.com. The show gets a rating of three stars. May 2010 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
and read his review on Facebook. At
the Raven Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The Raven Theatre
revival of “Death of a Salesman” is a reminder of just how good a play this is.
And the production has enough creative touches to freshen the viewer’s exposure
to the Arthur Miller classic, no matter how familiar it might seem. Willy Loman has become an iconic figure in American culture
since the drama opened 60 years ago. Audiences and academics can argue whether
Loman is a flawed hero seduced by false dreams of success or whether he’s a
pathetic villain. But the man does grab the spectator’s mind and emotions. And
that’s the core value of the Raven production.
************************************************************************
Death of a Salesman
Chuck Spencer plays Loman. Spencer, a Raven Theatre ensemble
member, is younger than the conventional rendering of the salesman, but the
viewer easily adjusts to his comparative youth. Spencer is a continuously
kinetic Loman. His moods swing higher and lower than any Willy in my
experience. Today, Loman might be diagnosed as bi polar, with a touch of
dementia. Whatever his psychological condition, Loman seethes energy, whether
in his anxiety and anger or in his irrational exuberance and optimism. Spencer’s portrayal is also exceptionally physical. His
battles with his sons Happy and especially Biff are both scary and heartbreaking
in their violence. Spencer’s arguments with the other characters ooze
intensity. Willy’s optimism may be built on sand, but you have to love a guy
who can feel that good about something, even if the next moment he plunges into
despair or antagonism The play’s most painful scene comes when Willy visits his
boss, asking for a home office reassignment to get him off the road. It’s an
agony to watch Willy increasingly humiliated by the insufferable young man in a
beautifully played scene by Spencer and Anthony Tournis (who resembles a
youthful Mayor Daley). Under Michael Menedian’s insightful directing the drama’s
theatrical shifts in time and space come off without a hitch. The production gets off to a stirring start
when Willy trudges down the theater aisle muttering to himself and walks up to
his garage, which dominates the stage. Without missing a beat, he swings open
both ends of the garage exterior to reveal the inside of his Brooklyn
apartment. It’s a startling creative moment that immediately establishes that
the play is in inventive artistic hands. The Raven ensemble consists of 11 performers, three doubling
in minor roles. Everyone is at least satisfactory and some much more than that.
Jason Huysman is outstanding as Biff, the older son with a life ruined by a
steady diet of his father’s pipe dreams about success and being “well liked.”
Huysman’s confession of his own inadequacy to meet his father’s expectations is
superbly delivered. Greg Caldwell is excellent as Happy, the younger son who
also is victimized into a shallow womanizer by Willy’s false gospel of the
American dream.
JoAnn Montemurro is credible in the difficult role of Linda,
Willy’s wife. How can any woman stand by her man so steadfastly in the face of
his weaknesses and volatile temperament? Linda may be naïve (she apparently
doesn’t know of Willy’s on-the-road adulteries) but the heart must have its
reasons and Montemurro brings Linda sympathetically alive without turning
mushy. Ron Quade is the strongest Charlie I have ever seen, an
impressive figure even if he is mostly filtered through Willy’s imagination.
Jerry Bloom is fine as Ben, the next door neighbor who remains Willy’s friend
and benefactor even in the face of Willy’s insults and irascibility. The cast is rounded out by Kevin Hope, Susie
Griffith, Devon Candura, and Alexis Atwill. The play’s epilogue at Willy’s gravesite still seems an
unnecessary add-on marred by purple patches of dialogue out of kilter with what
we have seen and heard previously. But it’s a small price to pay for all the
richness of the first two acts. Hats off to the production’s designers, starting with Andrei
Onegin for his garage/apartment interior set. Joelle Beranek outfits the cast
in a wardrobe of authentic looking clothing of the late 1940’s and earlier.
Mike Tutaj created the sound and video design, Leif Olsen’s composed the
original music, and Amy Lee designed the lighting. The revival is free of any ethnic leaning. Willy and his
family are often portrayed as Jewish but the Raven staging is WASP-like if
anything, representing Willy as an all-American Everyman. The spectator can
decide if Loman was just a well-meaning casualty of a bogus idea of success or
if he is a man who wrecked the lives of his sons and damaged his own life with
corrupt and occasionally illegal values. The man is endlessly fascinating and
he’s embedded in one of the most entertaining and thought provoking works in
modern drama. It’s great to have him and his supporting characters back in all
their complexity and humanity. “Death of a Salesman” runs through December 5 at the Raven
Theatre, 6157 North Clark
Street. Performances are
Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickers are $25 and
$30. Call 773 338 2177 or visit www.raventheatre.com.
The show gets a rating of four stars. October 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
*************************** Hedda Gabler At
the Raven Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
title character in Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler” is the greatest female role in
modern drama. Depending on the actress and director, the woman has been
portrayed as a pathological monster at one extreme or as a victim of a
repressive society on the other. “Hedda
Gabler” remains sturdy and stageworthy after more than 100 years, but it’s
still all about how the production interprets Hedda. Hedda’s first appearance in the play comes several minutes
into the opening act and our first look tells us much about the kind of Hedda
we will see the rest of the play. At the Raven Theatre excellent revival,
Mackenzie Kyle is cast as a young and attractive Hedda. I’ve seen Heddas who
were near middle age and severe in countenance, dressed in dark colors. So we
can expect a youthful, livelier Hedda, and that’s what we get. The play takes place in what is now Oslo, Norway. Ibsen wrote
the play in 1890 and it reflects a conservative and male dominated society. Hedda
was the daughter of the famous General Gabler. As we first meet her, she has
returned from a six-month honeymoon with her husband, George Tesman, a naïve
and slightly stuffy but well-meaning academic. It’s significant that the play
is called “Hedda Gabler” and not “Hedda Tesman.” The title establishes that the
woman is very much in the line of her military father rather than a marital
appendage of her new husband. Kyle’s Hedda is petty, malicious, cowardly, fearful of
scandal, and most of all, bored. She is pregnant and revolted by her condition,
and probably by sex in general. The play explores how Hedda destroys Eilert
Lovborg, a genius writer given to dissipation. She ruins Lovborg partly out of
an evil nature and partly to demonstrate to herself that she can control
another person’s destiny. Unfortunately for Hedda, her destruction of Lovborg puts her
in the power of Judge Brack, a friend of the family and a wily middle-aged
bachelor who isn’t a bad person but a man of the world happily willing to press
an advantage that falls into his lap.
For Hedda, being dominated, especially with its sexual ramifications, is
insupportable and leads to her famous off stage suicide at the end of the play.
The Raven production under Michael Menendian’s savvy directing
uses a modern adaptation by the contemporary American playwright Jon Robin
Baitz. The adaptation remains faithful to the spirit and narrative but smooths
out some of Ibsen’s clunky (at least in translation) language and makes the
dialogue more idiomatic to the modern ear. Kyle is a tall young actress with curly blonde hair. Her
interpretation of Hedda is consistent and persuasive. The audience may recoil
at Hedda’s seemingly wanton evil but beneath the malice we can glimpse the
frustrated, fearful woman who recognizes her own cowardice and her jealousy of
people around her with the courage to take their own lives in hand. The Raven production is favored with exceptional supporting
performances by Ian Novak as George Tesman and Jon Steinhagen as Judge Brack.
Novak gives us a Tesman who is a pleasant, unworldly man, not very clear
sighted about his wife but not the silly ass caricature so many actors make of
the character. And Steinhagen’s smooth Judge Brack isn’t the predatory villain
in some revivals. His Brack is a man who keeps his eye on the main chance. The
judge sees no reason why he and Hedda can’t work out a companionable sexual
situation and he is genuinely shocked at Hedda’s violent death at the end of
the play. Ian Paul Custer is a little low keyed as Lovborg, admittedly
a difficult role. Wild eyed geniuses aren’t easy to portray on the stage and
Custer’s less manic approach has its own legitimacy, even at the risk of losing
some dramatic heat. Symphony Sanders is good as Thea Elvsted, an uncomplicated
woman who rehabilitates Lovborg, at least temporarily, much to Hedda’s envy and
resentment. JoAnn Montemurro is fine as Tesman’s sympathetic and giving aunt.
Claudia Garrison completes the ensemble as the Tesman maid. The Raven physical production is a little unsteady. Andrei
Onegin’s detailed set suggests late Victorian Norway, the critical background
which establishes the oppressive social climate that weighs Hedda down. But the
characters wear clothing all over the chronological map, from what looks like
1930’s and 1940‘s styles to the present day.
And the portrait of General Gabler, which should look down ominously on
the action, is reduced to a small picture on a back wall that contributes
nothing to the atmosphere of the play. More successful are Christine Ferriter’s
lighting, Katherine Chavez’s sound design, and Leif Olson’s original music. But visual quibbles aside, this is a fine rendition of one of
the great plays of modern times. The production chooses not to create an agenda
for Hedda, whether as a feminist victim or as a psychological case study.
Kyle’s Hedda may not be a daring interpretation, but it works superbly within
its own parameters. “Hedda Gabler” runs through June 27 at the Raven Theatre,
6157 North Clark Street. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m.
and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25. Call 773 338 2177 or visit www.raventheatre.com. The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. May 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
***********************
Laughter on the 23rd Floor
at the Raven Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—In “Laughter on the 23rd Floor,” Neil Simon wrote a fictionalized account of his apprentice years as a comedy writer on the legendary Sid Caesar variety program called “Your Show of Shows.”
During the early 1950’s, Caesar employed a stable of writers whose names read like a roll call of American comedy in the late 20th century—Mel Brooks, Woody Allen, Larry Gelbart, and Simon himself. “Laughter” takes audiences behind the scenes as the writers, a manic and furiously funny group, go through the agonies of creating a weekly 90-minute TV show for their boss, a comedy genius named Max Prince who was also a pill-popping neurotic in a constant state of paranoia.
The Raven Theatre is reviving Simon’s 1993 comedy in a superbly cast and adroitly directed production that provides a snapshot of an era in American show business. Simon’s dialogue delivers one zinger after another, but the glory of “Laughter” is humor that emerges naturally from its characters rather than as a string of stand-up comedy wisecracks.
The setting is a room on the 23rd floor of a building on 57th street in New York City. There the writers gather to trade insults and concoct the comedy sketches that will please their boss.
“Laughter” doesn’t have much plot. If there is a narrative thread, it’s Prince’s offstage battle with network executives over the content of his program. “The Show of Shows” was a hip, intellectual revue that typically would spoof Marlon Brando’s appearance as Mark Antony in the movie Version of “Julius Caesar.” It was an East Coast Jewish brand of comedy that made the network uneasy because TV was emerging from its infancy and spreading into America’s heartland where, in network eyes, tastes ran more to bowling on television and inane sitcoms than to Max Prince’s idiosyncratic brand of high brow humor.
Along with the tensions between Prince and the network, the specter of McCarthyism hung over the national scene. Joseph McCarthy was calling a patriot like General George Marshall a communist. Anyone with a hint of left wing background was in danger of the dreaded blacklist.
But “Laughter” isn’t primarily a history lesson. It offers a collection of gifted and volatile writers bouncing off each other like protons, everyone trying to please the self-dramatizing and wired Max Prince.
The play is narrated by Lucas Brickman, the young writer who represents Simon himself. The writing staff consists of six men and a woman, all indulging in love-hate relationships with each other in the pressure cooker atmosphere of that claustrophobic room.
The Raven production nails each character, starting with Eric Roach as a Max Prince living on his nerve ends, existing on medication and booze as he battles his demons at the network and within himself. It’s an over-the-top performance appropriate to an over-the-top personality
The characters are all clearly and comically delineated, from the self-conscious hypochondria of the Woody Allen character (furiously played by Jeremy Glickstein) to Carol, the lone female trying to stay afloat in that profane macho world. Mackenzie Kyle does a superb job of holding her own with the outsized individuals who surround her. And Noah Simon provides a bull’s-eye performance as the insecure Mel Brooks character.
The rest of the ensemble playing the writers—Greg Caldwell, Greg Hardin, Dean LePrairie, and Dan Granata (as the Simon stand-in)—all work beautifully together as a group and in their individual comic moments. Even the staff secretary, a comedy writer wannabe named Helen (Elizabeth Lesinski), gets a funny turn in the second act as the ditsy woman tries to come up with a set of comic names in competition with the pro writers, and totally blanks out.
Director Michael Menendian does a fine job of ensuring that the writers remain human as well as funny. There is a danger of allowing the acting to descend into a disorderly Marx Bothers farce, but Menendian keeps the characters and the action on the rails, resisting all temptations to allow the play to generate into shtick.
Ray Toler designed the credible realistic set. JoAnn Montemurro’s costumes capture the look of the early 1950’s. Stephanie Farina designed the sound and Christine Ferriter the lighting.
A comedy by America’s funniest playwright about a collection of funny people should be a funny play. And “Laughter on the 23rd Floor” is a very funny play.
“Laughter on the 23rd Floor” runs through June 28 at the Raven Theatre, 6157 North Clark Street. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25. Call 773 338 2177.
The show gets a rating of four stars. May 2008
For more information, visit www.raventheatre.com
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com