Itsoseng At
the Chicago Shakespeare Theater(Upstairs) By
Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Earlier
this year, three Chicago theaters staged plays by Athol Fugard that portrayed
the evils of apartheid in South Africa during the 1970’s. By a quirk of
scheduling, a short play called “Itsoseng” is providing a kind of melancholy
epilogue to the cumulative impact of those three plays. “Itsoseng” (the name of an impoverished black South African
township) covers several years in post-apartheid South African starting in the
early 1990’s. The tyrannies of white rule no longer exist, but the bleakness of
life for black South Africans remains. The poverty is still there, the lack of
hope, and the frustration with an uncaring government. But there has been an
emotional sea change. Despondency replaces the anger and revolutionary ardor of
the apartheid period. There is no enemy to feed the individual’s sense of
outrage and frustration. Helpless despair reigns supreme.
“Itsoseng” is the autobiographical creation of a black South
African actor and writer named Omphile Molusi. It’s being presented by the
Chicago Shakespeare Theater as part of the company’s admirable World’s Stage
series. “Itsoseng” originated at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in
2008 and its popularity led to an equally successful transfer to a London
theater. The reviews were highly laudatory and the show became a natural fit
for the Chicago Shakespeare Theater and artistic director Barbara Gaines, who
passionately believes in the play and in Molusi. Molusi is the sole actor in his play, though he creates a
number of characters as the 65-minute show unfolds. Molusi plays a 24-year old
black man named Mawilla. The play opens and closes with Mawilla at a funeral.
Who died and what the death means to Mawilla is revealed during the narrative
that covers about 14 bleak years in Itsoseng. Mawilla
describes how the end of apartheid, so filled with possibilities of social and
economic rejuvenation, has led to a life that betrays that promise.
Revolutionaries burned down the local shopping center as a symbol of white
oppression and locals looted the stores. But the shopping center was the
township’s economic heart and repeated government promises to rebuild it proved
empty. Meanwhile unemployment insidiously drains the energy from the community. Mawilla falls in love with a young woman named Dolly, but she
is forced into prostitution to sustain herself. The life finally kills her,
dealing Mawilla a devastating personal blow. At the final blackout Mawilla
somberly talks of dreams as all he possesses, but they are hollow dreams that
won’t be fulfilled. “Itsoseng” sounds glum and for most of its performance time
it is. What lifts the show above grim kitchen sink realism is Molusi’s
performance. The performer, only 29 years old, takes us through the
tribulations of Mawilla and his friends with considerable dramatic and
theatrical resource. Molusi is a versatile performer with a strong stage presence,
a likable young man who communicates easily within the intimacy of the small
Upstairs performing space at the Chicago Theater Company. But while Molusi
tells an affecting and occasionally humorous story, there isn’t quite enough
substance to sustain a full length evening, even one of only 65 minutes. The
English productions apparently ran 75 minutes. The discrepancy in time could
have resulted from a faster delivery or from text cuts. Whatever
the playing time, too much of the material strikes a single glum note. I also
sometimes struggled with Molusi’s thick South African accent and occasional
injections of South African dialect. But I still left the theater filled with
admiration for the performer and I would love to see the young man playing a
starring role in a more substantial play that really taps into the range of his
performing skills, like one of Athol Fugard’s dramas. “Itsoseng” runs through June 20 at the
Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Wednesday, Friday,
and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $28 to $38. Call
312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com. The show gets a rating of three stars. June 2010 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com and Visit Dan on Facebook.. At
the Chicago Shakespeare Studio Theater By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—When
I saw Enda Walsh’s “The Walworth Farce” at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival two
years ago, I thought it was the most preposterous play I’d seen in years, a
complete waste of an evening. But Walsh’s Irish comedy-drama harvested a
cornucopia of positive reviews in Britain, good enough to propel the show to a
2009 cross-country American tour. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater has snared “The Walworth
Farce” for six performances. I entered the CST Upstairs Theater on opening
night with grim foreboding, recalling the misery of sitting through the show in
Edinburgh in 2007. But that was then and this is now. “The Walworth Farce” is
still preposterous, but somehow the preposterous factor has been converted into
a positive. Or perhaps the amazing performances in this production trumped the
Edinburgh staging to elevate the play into an engrossing, disturbing (and
funny) viewing experience.
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The Walworth Farce
The play takes place, apparently during real time, in a
grungy 15th floor walkup apartment in a housing project on Walworth
Road in south London. The action starts
off full tilt with Dinny and his grown sons Sean and Blake enacting some kind
of convoluted play set in Cork, Ireland. The play’s farcical elements include
mistaken identities, cross-dressing, florid overacting, and knockabout humor. Gradually the audience recognizes that the three men have
been performing this insane and anarchic play over and over again for 20 years,
ever since Dinny left Cork for London. His sons have become willing prisoners
in the apartment for most of their lives, Sean leaving occasionally to purchase
supplies. But their claustrophobic existence is dominated by the tyrannical
Dinny orchestrating the play that turns out to be rooted in the reason he left
Ireland two decades ago, a dramatic exercise he requires to retain his shaky
sanity. The narrative is difficult to follow and only near the end of
the play does the viewer hear a more or less realistic and accurate account of
the events in Ireland that drove Dinny and his sons to this bizarre lifestyle
in London. Even then loose ends dangle, truth and fantasy being blurred after
so many performances in the apartment over so many years. The story receives a jolt of reality when a fourth character
enters, a black grocery clerk from a nearby supermarket come to deliver a bag
of groceries Sean had left behind that morning. The girl injects a note of
normalcy into the proceedings and we see with her eyes just how bizarre Dinny
and his boys actually are. We had been so wrapped up in their weird playacting
that their freakish world was actually making a kind of perverse sense. The appearance of the girl changes the dynamic of the
playacting and leads to a not entirely convincing but still stunning violent
conclusion. The concluding image of madness and death should stay with the
spectator long after the final blackout. In Edinburgh, I left the theater in complete disbelief that
Dinny’s play could be acted with almost ritual sameness for so many years
without the sons going bonkers (Dinny obviously had long ago tipped over into
megalomania and paranoia). And Sean and Blake remaining willing prisoners in
the squalid apartment for most of their lives stretches belief behind the
breaking point. But to the glory of the ensemble from the Druid Ireland
theater, “The Walworth Farce” now works, thanks to the intensity and commitment
of the actors. Michael Glenn Murphy delivers an astonishing performance as the
bombastic and menacing Dinny, a memorable display of physical and psychological
obsession. His performance is the lynchpin in selling the play to the audience
and the show is unthinkable without his volcanic dramatizing. Tadhg Murphy repeats his Edinburgh performance as Sean, the
more mentally scrambled of the two brothers. Raymond Scannell is Blake, the son
who plays all the female roles in Dinny’s twisted psychodrama. The young men
are both brilliant, as they must be to stay even with Michael Glenn Murphy’s
tumultuous Dinny. Mercy Olejade plays the grocery clerk, a character who could
easily be washed away by the titanic emotions flooding from the three male
characters. But Olejade carves out a major contribution to the production’s
success, mostly by looking silently baffled and terrified by the antics of
those three wild Irishmen throughout the second act. Director Mikel Murfi ratchets up the madcap comedy and
dramatic tensions with commendable theatricality. This is not a play for an
introspective Method director and “The Walworth Farce” has found the right man
in Murfi’s let-it-rip style. The physical production is first rate, from the
set and costume designs by Sabine Dargent to Paul Keogan’s lighting. “The Walworth Farce” may be unreadable as a script. It
demands the kind of fervent and no-holds-barred acting it gets from the Druid
company to seize the imagination. I’m still not convinced of the merits of
Walsh’s play, though the walls of my earlier dissatisfaction definitely have
been breeched. But the acting grabs the audience by the throat and even if we
aren’t sure what’s happening on the stage we are fascinated by the characters
and what they put themselves through. For connoisseurs of impressive acting,
this is a “must” event. “The Walworth Farce” runs through Sunday at the Chicago
Shakespeare Upstairs Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are 7:30 p.m. through
Saturday with 2 p.m. performances Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $46 and $56.
Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com. The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. October 2009 ************************* Sweet William At
the Chicago Shakespeare Theater By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Michael
Pennington is giving a master class in Shakespeare at the Chicago Shakespeare
Theater. It’s an event not to be missed by anyone with an interest in the Bard,
which is to say, all serious theatergoers. Pennington has been one of England’s leading classical actors
for a generation, a performer and director familiar to CST audiences from
Chicago appearances with his English Shakespeare Company. He calls his one-man
show “Sweet William,” a distillation of more than half a century of watching,
studying, and performing Shakespeare. 
Pennington estimates he’s spent 20,000 hours in Shakespeare
plays on world stages, and that doesn’t include rehearsals, personal reading,
and authoring several books on the dramas and comedies. Clearly the man’s
credentials are in order when it comes to an informed discussion of
Shakespeare’s life and works. Pennington presents his show as a personal verbal essay. He
performs on a bare stage, the only prop being a throne-like wooden chair (a red
handkerchief is also used to great effect in one scene). Pennington dresses
casually in slacks and a sport shirt. The minimalist presentation fits
perfectly in the CST’s intimate Upstairs Theater, where the two-hour production
assumes the form of an informal living room chat. Pennington dates his love of Shakespeare back to his first
exposure to the playwright at the age of 11 when his parents took him to see
“Macbeth.” It was love at first sight (and hearing) and the springboard to a
distinguished theater career. The actor organizes “Sweet William” as a chronological trip
through Shakespeare’s life from his birth in Stratford to his theater years in
London and then his retirement and death back in Stratford. Along the way
Pennington injects asides and anecdotes as well as swatches from the plays and
sonnets to illustrate particular points. Unlike some one-man shows devoted to Shakespeare, “Sweet
William” is not a survey of the playwright’s greatest hits—all those famous
soliloquies that practically invite the audience to recite along with the
actor. Pennington mines the riches of lesser known plays such as “Timon of
Athens,” “A Winter’s Tale,” “Henry VI” part 3, and “Troilus and Cressida.” When
he does explore the better-known works, he selects telling but less familiar
passages to illuminate his thoughts. Pennington has spent a lifetime steeping himself in
Shakespeare’s life and times and he isn’t afraid to speculate where the factual
record is sparse or nonexistent. He speaks persuasively about how the man might
have spent the so-called “lost years” from 1585 to 1592. He analyzes how the social and cultural scene
in Elizabethan London impacted on Shakespeare’s writing and how the ascension
of James I, with his hedonistic court, turned Shakespeare’s plays darker and
more cynical. “Sweet William” may be an extended lecture but it avoids the
taint of an academic exercise through Pennington’s ingratiating stage presence
and his canny selection of material that makes Shakespeare’s life and works
come alive with fresh information and stimulating insights. It should be
stressed that “Sweet William” caters to spectators who know and care about
Shakespeare, but that will be the profile of the typical CST audience. It’s
doubtful that any patrons will stumble into the Upstairs Theater expecting a
performance of “Xanadu.” The bottom line is that Pennington delivers an adult show in
the best sense of that abused term. He’s great company, droll and knowledgeable
and gently opinionated. A most entertaining and literate evening. “Sweet William” runs through February 22 at the Upstairs
Theater at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are
Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., Saturday at 2 and 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at
2 p.m. Tickets are $46 and $56. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com. The show gets a rating of four stars. February 2009 ********************** Edward II at
the Chicago Shakespeare Theater Upstairs Theater By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
prospects did not look encouraging upon entering the Chicago Shakespeare
Theater’s Upstairs Theater for the opening of “Edward II.” Before the
performance, members of the audience were mingling on stage with the actors in
costume, drinking beer and wine and generally having a jolly time. The
atmosphere pointed more to a gimmicky, frivolous evening rather than a serious
revival of the Christopher Marlowe historical tragedy. Then the play took over, 80 minutes of uninterrupted drama
(and melodrama), a scorching display of brutality, cruelty, greed, and
betrayal. The audience configuration was divided during the
performance. Those who wanted to sit were placed on a balcony surrounding the
playing area on all four sides. Spectators who chose to remain with the
performers were moved unobtrusively from spot to spot on stage as the action
dictated. The standing audience was unobtrusive during the play, a credit to
the traffic control by company docents but mostly due to the power of the play.
The full title of the drama is “The Troublesome Reign and
Lamentable Death of Edward II, King of England, with the Tragical Fall of Proud
Mortimer.” Marlowe wrote the chronicle
about 1592 and scholars have noted its close relationship to Shakespeare’s
“Richard II.” Both deal with English kings totally unfitted to be kings, men
who lose their crowns because of personal weakness. But Marlowe’s language is
more accessible and visceral, the verbal engine that drives the narrative with
nonstop and often merciless power. The CST production, under Sean Graney’s endlessly inventive
directing, compresses the Marlowe play into those white-hot 80 minutes of
action. Edward II is a headstrong and petulant young man with an insatiable
passion for an upstart Frenchman named Gaveston. The king lavishes all kinds of
honors on Gaveston, earning the resentment of the English nobles and the
hostility of Isabella, Edward’s queen. Eventually the nobles conspire to murder Gaveston, leaving
Edward distraught at the death of his lover, though he shortly takes on another
young man, named Spencer, as his favorite. This public display of homosexual
ardor must have startled Elizabethan audiences. Under pressure from Lord Mortimer, now the queen’s lover,
Edward is forced to resign his crown and eventually dies a miserable death,
murdered at Mortimer’s orders. But Mortimer himself dies at the order of Edward
III, the dead king’s son and a young man forced to grow up very quickly as the
new monarch. The CST staging puts the characters in modern dress. There
are only a few props, notably a large chandelier lowered toward the end of the
play to give Edward an airborne forum to vent his rage and futility. In one corner of the playing area stands a
kind of prison cell, the place of execution for a considerable number of the
characters. One after another they enter the room, plastic curtains are drawn,
a gunshot is heard, and the curtains are opened again to reveal blood-spattered
walls. Adding a striking macabre theatrical touch, a mysterious hooded specter
enters after each execution, tolling a bell and collecting the corpse, who
walks solemnly off stage behind the ghostly figure. “Edward II” is not for everyone. The violence and brutality
can be relentless. The murder onstage of Edward is particularly grisly. And
none of the characters deserves the audience’s sympathy, all driven by either
lust or ambition. There is a certain
pathos to Edward’s end, but the man brought upon his own destruction, though
nobody deserves to die as frightfully as he does. Jeffrey Carlson leads the skilled ensemble as Edward, the
passion-blinded and arrogant young man who allows his appetite for Gaveston to
lead both of them to ruin. Carlson’s final scenes as Edward at the end of his
tether have real emotional impact. Several
members of the supporting cast play multiple roles. John Lister is especially
good as the Bishop of Canterbury among other characters. Karen Aldridge
effectively portrays Isabella’s shift from wronged wife to power-seeking
adulteress. Scott Cummins is fine as the blunt, ruthless Mortimer and Kurt
Ehrmann is excellent as his father and other characters. There is also good
work by La Shawn Banks as Gaveston, Erik Hellman as Spencer, Zach Gray as the
youthful Edward III, and Chris Sullivan and Lea Coco in a variety of roles. Sean Graney’s directing (Graney also did the adaptation)
endows the production with a relentless intensity. The story moves with raw
propulsion from death to death as the English court turns into a slaughterhouse
repository of the basest human emotions. Graney’s conception of the play is
superbly reinforced by Todd Rosenthal’s set design, Alison Siple’s costumes,
Philip Rosenberg’s lighting, and Michael Griggs’s sound. Together they create
an intense environment within the intimate Upstairs Stage that visually
reinforces the turbulent emotions of the play. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater deserves credit for bringing
in Graney, perhaps the edgiest of Chicago theater directors, and allowing him
to create this fierce vision of a rarely presented Elizabethan classic. The
gamble has worked. This is strong stuff, but it’s the kind of risk-taking
production that makes Chicago theater so rewarding. “Edward II” runs through November 9 at the Chicago
Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Most performances are Wednesday through
Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are
$20 to $56. Call 312 595 5600 or visit www.chicagoshakes.com. The
show gets a rating of four stars.
Oct.
2008 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com . 
************************
Funk It Up About Nothin’
at the Chicago
Shakespeare Theater(Studio Theater)
Rating: Four stars****
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—“Funk It Up About Nothin’” is a hip hop adaptation of Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing.” The rap version isn’t as witty as the Shakespeare original, but the Shakespeare original isn’t as clever as “Funk It Up.” I suspect that the American stage will be able to accommodate both shows very happily.
“Funk It Up” is playing at the Chicago Shakespeare Upstairs Theater. It’s a follow-up to the hugely successful “The Bombitty of Errors,” the hip hop takeoff on Shakespeare’s “The Comedy of Errors.” Both have been created by the Q Brothers, GQ and JQ (Gregory and Jeffrey Qaiyum). Both absorb the superstructure of the Shakespeare plays and convert them into continuously energetic, inventive, and comic rap extravaganzas.
“Funk It Up” is presented by six actors, with Adrienne Sanchez presiding over the turntables above the stage as DJ, the purveyor of the record hip hop beat that propels the show. The performers play multiple roles, wearing multiple costumes that must have churned the backstage into a frenzy of quick changes. The production runs about 70 minutes without an intermission, and a more verbally gymnastic 70 minutes won’t be heard on any Chicagoland stage this season.
The Q Brothers adaptation follows the “Much Ado” plot, with embellishments. The story’s core remains the battle of wits between Beatrice and Benedick, supported by the romantic subplot of Claudio and Hero. But Benedick isn’t a soldier visiting Messina, Italy, with his mates after the wars. His leader is still Don Pedro, but the Don now is a rock star instead of a military commander and Benedick and Claudio are part of his entourage.
Some knowledge of the “Much Ado” plot is helpful, but even spectators unfamiliar with the Bard’s comedy should be swept away by the velocity of the production and its rampaging river of rap rhymes. “Funk It Up” doesn’t utilize a single line of Shakespeare that I could detect, though there are plenty of droll inserts from modern pop culture, like “You can’t handle the truth!” The Q Brothers have made the play their own, language-wise, and their skill at sustaining the play’s momentum for a full 70 minutes is breathtaking.
In the hip hop edition, the dullard assistant constable Verges is ostentatiously swishy. Chief constable Dogberry is renamed Dingleberry for no apparent reason. But the Q Brothers have actually made one improvement. Hero is a wan figure in the Shakespeare play, the weepy victim of a dastardly plot to discredit her on her wedding day. But as played by the pint sized and feisty Elizabeth Ledo, Hero fights back, sneering at Claudio for his lack of faith and rejecting him after he rejects her but then recants. It’s a bold dramatic touch that would serve a “Much Ado” revival well.
In a condensed adaptation, the audience can’t have everything. There isn’t time to fully develop the relationship between Beatrice and Benedick, tracing a comic arc from verbal enemies to lovers. But JQ as Benedick and Ericka Radcliff as MC Lady B (Beatrice) give it their best shot.
The cast’s versatility and stamina is remarkable. Everyone slips in and out of his or her roles without skipping a beat, literally. GQ as the villainous Don John, Dingleberry, and Hero’s father Leonato gives three distinct performances of comic distinction. The remainder of the ensemble consists of Jackson Doran as Claudio and a John Wayne-ish judge and Postell Pringle as Don Pedro and the oh so gay Verges. All six form an ensemble that delivers the tongue twisting dialogue and frisky physical action with nary a fluff, a tribute to their talent and the co-directing of GQ and JQ.
I did have some trouble picking up all the lines early in the show, partly because Sanchez’s rap beat tended to overpower the actors. Either she restored the proper balance or my ear adjusted, because as the show went on I tuned in more and more easily to the frolicsome but dense rap poetry.
Brian Sidney Bembridge designed the graffiti-drenched set that looks more like a site out of “Rent” than Renaissance Messina. Debbie Baer designed the wild hip hop costumes, Ryan Davies the lighting, and James Savage the sound.
I thought “Funk It Up” was even better than “Bombitty of Errors,” maybe because “Much Ado About Nothing” is a better comedy than “The Comedy of Errors.” This show seems tighter and totally without dead spots. The language gets a little salty, but the spirits are so high that it’s impossible to take offense at the profanity and sexual japes.
There is good news for the future. The Q Brothers apparently are working on their hip hop adaptation of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Let the good times keep rolling.
“Funk It Up About Nothin’” runs through August 3 at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater on Navy Pier. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday at 7 and 9:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 312 595 5600.
For additional information about the show, visit www.chicagoshakes.com/funkitup.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.