A Streetcar Named Desire At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—“A
Streetcar Named Desire” is a great play and the Writers’ Theatre delivers a
solid revival, with one glaring flaw. The production been much anticipated this season, not only
because we rarely see this masterpiece on a local stage, but also because David
Cromer directs. Cromer has become the director of the moment nationally after
building a notable career in Chicago theater and anything he directs
automatically becomes an event. Audiences anticipating Cromer’s reinvention of the Tennessee
Williams drama will be disappointed. Cromer’s staging is mostly faithful to the
playwright’s script, with only a few minor, and unnecessary, embellishments.
“Streetcar” is powerful enough to hold the audience without directorial bright
ideas, a truism Cromer mostly honors. The Writers’ Theatre has stocked its ensemble with local
performers, nearly all with basically storefront theater experience. The
absence of familiar faces gives the production a fresh look, and Natasha Lowe
delivers an exceptional performance as the doomed Blanche DuBois. She is
surrounded by fine complementary work from a half dozen players, but there is
one huge stumbling block. “Streetcar” is essential a duel, with vulgarity, emotional
brutality, and insensitivity ultimately triumphing over art, beauty and
sensitivity. In a Tennessee Williams play, delicacy always goes down before the
onslaught of crass realism. Stanley
Kowalski is a coarse blue-collar type, bursting with animal vitality. Stella
Kowalski is Blanche’s younger sister, in thrall to her husband’s sexual
magnetism, while Blanche is revolted by Stanley’s cynicism, lust, and volatile
temperament. Matt
Hawkins is either miscast or misdirected as Stanley. Granted, Marlon Brando’s
original performance on Broadway and in the film is one of the iconic acting
jobs in American theater history, but I’ve seen the role performed with great
strength and insight by actors who avoided the Brando shadow. Hawkins
plays Stanley as a near hysteric, often screeching out his rage or frustration.
Stanley may be a brute, but he should be a charismatic brute. Hawkins’s Stanley
is more of a skittish punk and bully. This Stanley is a small man emotionally
and scarcely the callous adversary who ultimately defeats the vulnerable
Blanche. Here he is merely boorish, robbing the play of a large chunk of its
dramatic potency in the conflict between the two main characters. Even
Stanley’s horrifying rape of Blanche at the end of the play comes off as a mere
pettish assault. Blanche
has her failings. She’s manipulative, delusional, and neurotic, but she’s
always fascinating. Maybe in another life she could have been a grand lady,
cultured and capable of honest love. Still, her erotic and decadent appetites,
her fragile personality, and her emotional self-indulgence might have been
baggage that would destroy her in any life. Lowe’s Blanche is a maddening,
tragic woman who isn’t strong enough to withstand life’s hard knocks. Blanche
is an endlessly engrossing character and Lowe is eloquent and heartbreaking in
her portrayal. Stacy
Stoltz is a fine, earthbound Stella, a character intelligent enough to make the
spectator question what she sees in the crude and abrasive Stanley on the
Writers’ Theatre stage. Danny McCarthy fine as one of Stanley’s poker playing
buddies, a pathetic middle-aged man who for a time becomes Blanche’s suitor.
There is also good work from Loren Lazerne as an upstairs neighbor and Jenn
Engstrom as his wife. The ensemble is filled out by Ryan Hallahan, Derek
Hasenstab, Carolyn Nelson, Rosario Vargas, and Esteban Andres Cruz. Cromer
has injected cameo appearances by the ghosts of Blanche’s tragic young husband
and the boy’s lover. The husband committed suicide after Blanche discovered his
homosexuality and his death launched Blanche on her long downward psychological
spiral. The apparitions do the play no harm but they are scarcely necessary.
We’ve already seen the troubled inside of Blanche’s head through the woman’s
own words and actions. Collette
Pollard has designed an extraordinary set that fills the small Writers’ Theatre
acting space with the Kowalski’s claustrophobic two-room apartment and a
stairway leading to an upstairs apartment. Janice Pytel designed the gritty
1940’s clothes. The sound design by Josh Schmidt leans heavily on discordant
New Orleans jazz music, ramming home Blanche’s disordered mind a little too
insistently. Likewise, Heather Gilbert’s lighting often turns nightmarish,
again to emphasize what we already know, that Blanche is living on her nerve
ends and on the brink of collapse. The
jazz music aside, the production doesn’t sufficiently create the hot and humid
and exotic New Orleans backdrop that underpins the play’s mood. Possibly that’s
the fault of the theater’s intimate playing space. Overall
it’s good to have a decent rendering of “A Streetcar Named Desire” back on a
local stage. And I won’t soon forget Lowe’s performance as Blanche. A more
successful Stanley would have elevated this production to something really
special. “A
Streetcar Named Desire” runs through July 11 at the Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor
Court. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday
at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $40
to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org. The
show gets a rating of three stars. May 2010 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com or
read his reviews on Facebook.
************************ The Old Settler At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—“The Old
Settler” was first staged in 1997 and in a short time became one of the most
produced plays in the United States. It’s easy to see why. Along with matters
of economy (only one set and four characters), the play brims with warmth,
humanity, and humor, plus honest sentiment that never descends into
sentimentality. All the heart and
sympathy of “The Old Settler” are flawlessly displayed in the superb staging at
the Writers’ Theatre. The play by John Henry Redwood is the latest in a dazzling
string of dramas about black life that have burst upon the Chicagoland theater
scene over the last several weeks. Some
of the plays have been edgier or more experimental in their style, but none
exceeds “The Old Settler” in its compassion, vivid personalities, and stirring
confrontations. It’s a leisurely play by today’s standards, flowing for 2½
hours to a bittersweet but satisfying conclusion. “The Old Settler” is a romance and it’s also a convincing
historical re-creation. The time is 1943, during World War II, and the place is
Harlem in New York City, that oasis of African American culture just starting
to lose some of the glamour of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920’s and 1930’s.
Bessie and Quilly are a pair of middle-aged spinster sisters.
The slightly older Bessie (age 55) brought Quilly (age 53) from their deep
South home to Harlem. Quilly works as a domestic for a white family but Bessie
still rents out rooms to help pay the bills. Bessie is a generous and expansive
woman in contrast to her sister’s contrary nature. Years ago Quilly married a
man who Bessie loved. The marriage failed but Quilly’s presumed disloyalty led
to an eight-year break between the sisters. The reconciliation hasn’t entirely
obliterated the scars of their conflict. The narrative centers on a 28-year old boarder from the rural
South, a pleasant and innocent young man picturesquely named Husband. Bessie
and Husband gradually develop a relationship that leads to a full-blown love
affair, in spite of the disparity in their ages. Bessie had been an Old
Settler, the disparaging term for a woman past 40 who is unmarried and unlikely
ever to get married. Bessie sees Husband as the final chance for love in her
life. The sharp-tongued Quilly, whether out of jealousy or altruism, claims
Husband is looking for a surrogate mother and not a wife. Complicating the love affair is a manipulating floozy from
the South named Lou Bessie, a young lady who insists on being called Charmaine
because it’s more sophisticated. Lou Bessie’s brazen sexuality is a continual
enticement to Husband and an ongoing threat to Bessie. “The Old Settler” isn’t primarily a racial drama, though
racism does intrude in accounts of white insensitivity and intolerance that
were part of the daily lives of black people in America in those days. Essentially the play is a story about family,
the often prickly connection between Bessie and Quilly softened by their
unspoken recognition that for all their rivalry and bickering they share the
same blood. The theater does not lack for stories of May-December
romances, but the Husband-Bessie connection is particularly rich in feeling,
humor, and passion. The outcome of the Bessie-Husband affair holds no surprises
but that doesn’t lessen its affecting emotional resonance. The playwright’s
delicate, realistic handling of the romance is a marvel.
The four-member cast is impeccable but the behind-the- scenes
hero is director Ron OJ Parson, who orchestrates the characters and the action
with the surest of touches. It’s the best kind of directing, invisible to the
audience, allowing the narrative to unfold spontaneously and naturally. Chicagoland favorite Cheryl Lynn Bruce dominates as Bessie, a
full-figured woman—religious, compas-sionate, embittered by her sister’s past
perfidy, and dazzled by the good fortune of apparently winning a good man’s
love. If any theater is contemplating a revival of “A Raisin in the Son,”
here’s your Lena Younger. Wandachristine is the perfect foil as Quilly, armored with a
façade of skepticism to mask her fear of a lonely old age. Kelvin Roston, Jr.,
perfectly captures the naïve Husband, a Southern country boy overmatched by the
pace and temptations of the big city in the North. Alexis J. Rogers is saddled
with the two-dimensional character of the callous siren Lou Bessie, but she
maximizes her few scenes, carving out a colorful portrait of a young woman on
the make, confident in her sexuality and careless of the feelings of others. Jack Magaw has designed a historically authentic and detailed
apartment interior that skillfully utilizes every inch of the intimate playing
area. Nan Cibula-Jenkins designed the period costumes, and Heather Gilbert
(lighting) and Josh Schmidt (sound) contribute effective visual and aural
embellishments. “The Old Settler” runs through March 28 at the Writers’
Theatre, 325 Tudor Court. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30
p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2
and 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. February 2010 ************************ Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—In 1967
Tom Stoppard exploded on the international theater scene with “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern Are Dead,” an audacious riff on Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.” The
Writers’ Theatre is opening its 2009-2010 season with a revival of the Stoppard
show, demonstrating that more than 40 years later “Rosencrantz…” still stands
tall with its wit, theatricality, and intelligence. Stoppard builds his play around two minor characters in
“Hamlet,” a pair of young men who knew the melancholy Dane in younger days and
have been called to the Danish court by the new king to investigate why Hamlet
is so out of sorts. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern find themselves drifting in an
uncertain universe. They aren’t even sure which of them is Rosencrantz and
which is Guildenstern. But these two insignificant Shakespearean figures move
to the foreground as central figures in their own play while the chief
characters in “Hamlet” (some of the most famous names in dramatic literature)
fuss about in the background. 
The two men occupy much of their time playing word games,
tossing coins, and pondering the meaning of death. Periodically they are drawn
into the actual “Hamlet” play, speaking Shakespeare’s lines and then returning
to their own rudderless world when their brief time on the stage ends. Along
with their coming and going in “Hamlet,” the two encounter a troupe of grungy
traveling players, allowing Stoppard to make some amusing and penetrating comments
about the theater. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern engage in plenty of comic
moments but overall they are dominated by a mood of uncertainty and unease.
They are caught up in events beyond their understanding and control, following
orders as laid out by Shakespeare’s drama and their reward is their death. “Rosencrantz…” is at its best when it’s being clever and
literate. Periodically an aura of pseudo profundity oozes into the action,
giving aid and comfort to generations of graduate students seeking deeper
meanings in the play. The title characters have been compared to figures out of
a Samuel Beckett absurdist drama, two commonplace human beings trapped in an
existence they will never fathom. They go to their deaths never knowing why
they are fated for their tragic end. Pretty chewy stuff, especially when
combined with their ruminations about the nature and condition of death. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern suspect there is some hidden
meaning to their lives “Operating on two levels, are we? How clever!” But they
are never masters of their fate. “What are we supposed to DO?” The answer:
“Relax. Respond. We only know what we’re told. And for all we know it isn’t
even true.” They exist on a very slippery slope indeed. The audience can take all the philosophizing or leave it
alone. The play is still a gem because Stoppard’s language is so scintillating
and his manipulation of the title characters in and out of the “Hamlet” story
is so clever. A warning: full enjoyment of the play requires a fairly thorough
knowledge of “Hamlet,” though the evening is ingenious and droll enough to
stand on its own merits. Although “Rosencrantz…” is essentially a two-character play,
the Writers’ ensemble consists of 13 actors, several of them doubling and
tripling in roles. We get all the major characters in “Hamlet,” including the
prince, Polonius, Claudius, and Gertrude, as well as the rag-tag company of
traveling players. The Writers’ production has hired several of the leading
performers on the area theater scene for the supporting characters, like Terry
Hamilton, Fredric Stone, Karen Janes Woditsch, and John Hoggenakker. The star
among the complementary actors is Allen Gilmore, who delivers an expansive
bravura performance as the leader of the traveling acting company. But it all boils down to the two leading men, Timothy Edward
Kane as Guildenstern and Sean Fortunato as Rosencrantz, and they are both
outstanding. Even though the characters are interchangeable in their
identities, Kane’s Guildenstern is the smarter of the two, more articulate,
more prone to thinking deep thoughts, more intellectually curious. Fortunato’s
Rosencrantz is a bit of a dim bulb with little patience for all of his
partner’s heavy thinking. He’s a confused young man and he just wants to go
home. Their contrasting personalities play off beautifully against each other.
Even their physical appearances, the craggy faced Fortunato and the dapper and
handsome Kane, contribute to establishing the characters’ separate personas.
The production fits neatly into the intimate performing space
at the Tudor Court theater. A raised stage accommodates the “Hamlet” portions
of the play. The backdrop is a kind of diorama showing seating in a modern
theater, reinforcing the shadowy line between reality and the make believe of
the theater. Director Michael Halberstam orchestrates the performances
beautifully. This is a talky show, especially the first act, but the
multi-level action flows with engrossing inevitability. This is first and
foremost a play about language and Halberstam ensures that all of Stoppard’s
sparkling dialogue radiates through the production. Collette Pollard designed
the set, Rachel Anne Healy the Elizabethan-style costumes, Keith Parham the
strong lighting, and Andrew Hansen the sound. Hansen also composed the original
music. “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead” runs through December
6 at the Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court. Most performances are Tuesday and
Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8
p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or
visit www.writerstheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. October 2009 *************************** A Minister’s Wife At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—The
Writers’ Theatre world premiere of “A Minister’s Wife” is a very good chamber
musical and very good George Bernard Shaw. That’s a solid combination for
audiences seeking a sophisticated but accessible new theatergoing experience. “A Minister’s Wife” is an adaptation of Shaw’s mid-1890’s
comedy-drama “Candida.” The show features an original score by Josh Schmidt, a
consensus nomination for the leading young composer on the contemporary American
musical theater scene. Austin Pendleton did the adaptation and Writers’ Theatre
artistic director Michael Halberstam directs. Along with Schmidt, that’s a
powerhouse brain trust, and they accomplish their mission handsomely, with much
assistance from a group of outstanding designers. “Candida” lends itself to the 90-minute intermissionless
compression of “A Minister’s Wife.” The play has only six characters and one
has been deleted from the musical, a boorish and bullying businessman mostly in
the show for comic relief and excess baggage for the main narrative. The script
is one of Shaw’s shorter works and the narrative can be distilled into a single
question, who deserves the love of the play’s title character?
The story is mostly a three-hander between the Reverend James
Morell, a respected social activist in late Victorian London, his wife Candida,
and a passionate 18-year old poet named Eugene Marchbanks. Marchbanks loves
Candida, 15 years his senior, with all the fervor of a teenage poet. Eugene
believes Morell is unworthy of so fine a woman. He accuses Morell of being a
clerical windbag, mouthing pieties for congregations who enjoy a good sermon as
entertainment. Marchbanks insists Candida is too good for Morell but perfectly
aligned with the poet’s rarefied sensibilities. The play reaches its climax in a final scene in which Morell
asks Candida to choose between him and the teenager. She makes the obvious
choice for an unexpected reason. And there the Shaw play ends. The musical adds
a coda that lends an air of ambiguity to the story’s resolution, and the
spectator leaves the theater pondering whether any of the three main characters
will be the same. The show’s book relies heavily on the original Shaw play and
most of the songs are Shaw’s dialogue set to music. Jan Tranen receives credit
as the lyricist but nearly all the lyrics I heard came directly from the play. Schmidt’s score is unobtrusive compared to the electrifying
music he composed for the celebrated Next Theatre production of “The Adding
Machine, a local hit in 2007 and a national hit in 2008 when it transferred to
New York City. “The Adding Machine” score was full of dissonances to mirror
the expressionistic tensions of the original play. The music in “A Minister’s
Wife” is just as effective, but more self-effacing. The songs flow with the
dialogue naturally with no spotlight grabbing arias. We listen more closely to
song lyrics than we do to conventional dialogue and Schmidt’s score cannily
enhances the emotional intensity of Shaw’s lines. The musical’s interpretation of Candida’s character does not
break with tradition. The show portrays the woman as sympathetic,
understanding, and nurturing, deftly balancing relationships with two
problematical men. There is a contrarian view that paints Candida in darker
colors. According to this view, Candida, for all her outward earth mother
wisdom, is the intellectual inferior of both Morell and Marchbanks and employs
her street-smart feminine wiles to control both men. Candida patronizes Morell,
one of the best known and most honored men in London, and condescends to
Marchbanks, who may be a brilliant poet, her manipulations bringing both men
down to her level.
Whatever one makes of Candida’s personality, there can be no
quarrel with Kate Fry’s intelligent and warm performance. She evokes Candida’s
highly charged feelings in the coda scene that add a startling new edge to the
story. Kevin Gudahl is first rate as Morell and there is fine complementary
work from Liz Baltes as Prossy, Morell’s prickly secretary unhappily in love
with the minister, and John Sanders as Morell’s clerical assistant. But the performance of the night comes from Alan Schmuckler
as Marchbanks. This is a notoriously challenging role. Marchbanks is a
physically fearful lad who lives on his nerve ends and uses his weakness as a
weapon against Morell. The actor playing Marchbanks must be convincingly
youthful and given to lapses of cowardice and near hysteria, yet command the
audience’s respect for his insights and eloquence. Schmuckler brings off the
character as a fascinating combination of the laughable and the near tragic. An
exceptional performance. “A Minister’s Wife” is an intimate show that could be ruined
by highly trained operatic voices. The members of the ensemble sing simply,
expressively, and clearly, and that’s just right for Schmidt’s evocative score. Brian Sidney Bembridge has designed a splendidly realistic
Victorian parsonage parlor. Keith Parham designed the mood-setting lighting and
Rachel Anne Healey the authentic period costumes. At my performance, Timothy
Splain directed the outstanding four-piece chamber orchestra—Paul Ghica
(cello), Pasquale Laurino (violin), a very pregnant Jennifer Woodrum (clarinet
and bass clarinet), and Splain on piano. “A Minister’s Wife” runs through July 19 at the Writers’
Theatre, 325 Tudor Court. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30
p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2
and 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2009 ************************* Old Glory At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—The
audience has to work very hard to make sense out of Bret Neveu’s new play “Old Glory.” By the time the show ends, many spectators will wonder if it was
worth the effort. The play presents three pairs of characters, each in a
different place on different dates in 2006, though for some scenes all six
characters are on stage at the same time. The play starts in at a bar in
Berlin, Germany, on December 14. Then we move to a U.S. army barracks in Iraq
on April 25 of that year. Finally we are transferred to a home in Mesilla, New
Mexico, on September 3. The bar scenes bring together two American men, one
apparently an ex American military officer and the other a civilian. In the
barracks scenes, two young American soldiers banter and bicker while the Iraq
war roars outside. The Mesilla scenes involve a middle aged woman and her
neighbor. Neveu doles out his narrative in elusive bits and pieces.
Gradually we learn that all three pairs of characters are connected by the
death of a soldier in Iraq, a death that first was ruled accidental but
probably was murder. The civilian in the
bar was the dead soldier’s father. The woman in Mesilla was his mother. The ex
officer in Berlin apparently was the soldier’s commanding officer. The Mesilla
neighbor knew the truth about the soldier’s death but withheld it from the
parents. The audience knows that by the end of the play all three sets
of characters will connect. But lacking narrative reference points, the
spectators are adrift in dialogue and incidents that exist in isolation for
most of the night. The spectators don’t know how to process the information
tantalizingly distributed on stage because they don’t have a handle on what’s
going on. When the pieces of the plot finally fall into place at the
end of the play, the viewer might want to revisit all those early scenes to
absorb the bits of information that emerge as relevant only at the end. At that, some scenes never do seem to
contribute to the storyline, especially the emotional exchanges between the
mother and the neighbor in Mesilla. The play is really about the toll the Iraq war takes on
American forces. One of the two soldiers flips out after witnessing an Iraqi
family destroyed when their car is blown up by trigger-happy American troops.
That’s the core of the play. The scenes in Berlin and Mesilla are more
distractions than contributors to the narrative whole. The six performers under William Brown’s direction all
deliver intense performances and look and sound like they know what’s going on,
even if the audience is grasping for narrative straws. Steve Haggard and Marcus
Truschinski are outstanding as the two soldiers. Their tension-filled
relationship mirrors the ever-present violence in the Iraqi landscape outside
their barracks. It’s their play and the script struggles when they are out of
the spotlight.
Tom McElroy as the father and Philip Earl Johnson as the
military officer are both fine in their cat and mouse game in the Berlin bar.
LaShawn Banks and Penny Slusher do what they can with the roles of the neighbor
and the mother, but their scenes turn into emotional roller coaster rides that
made no dramatic sense to me. Neveu injects several
exchanges between characters, like the men in the bar talking about a frozen
fish and the mother angrily speculating to the neighbor that his new baby could
be choking to death as they speak. These verbal cadenzas may serve some purpose
in the play that I wasn’t able to identify. The show runs 90 minutes without an intermission. The three
locations are nicely delineated by the composite Keith Pitts set design. Rachel
Anne Healy designed the costumes and Charles Cooper the lighting. Andrew Hansen
designed the sound and composed the original music. The title of the play is as much a perplexity as its slippery
storyline. The play completes a three-play project by Neveu called “Trilogy:
’04-’05-06,” following “Harmless” and “Weapons of Mass Impact.” I haven’t seen
the first two works and possibly “Old Glory” would hold together better
within their context, but that doesn’t excuse the latest drama’s weaknesses as
a stand-alone play. A play is not obligated to spell out its plot and message in
obvious broad strokes. But there is no virtue in being so allusive and
circumspect that the spectator flounders trying to understand the
narrative. There are some vividly
dramatic scenes and some strong writing in “Old Glory.” Neveu has the
makings of a powerful play when he focuses on the Iraq scenes. He could do for
the Iraq War what playwright David Rabe did for the Vietnam War a generation
ago. Neveu just needs to get to the point. “Old Glory” runs through March 29 at the Writers’
Theatre, 325 Tudor Court. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30
p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2
and 6 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org. The
show gets a rating of three stars. February 2009 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. *************************** Picnic At
the Writers’ Theatre By Dan Zeff GLENCOE—William
Inge was a hot American playwright during the 1950’s, with four consecutive
Broadway hits. Then he ran into a string of critical failures and eventually
committed suicide in 1973. Inge effectively
disappeared from the American theater for a generation. Bur recently there has
been an Inge reappraisal, with theaters and audiences rediscovering the man’s
craftsmanship and his skill at creating psychological studies of ordinary
people in small Midwestern towns.
Locally we have enjoyed recent revivals of Inge’s “Come Back,
Little Sheba” (by the Shattered Globe Theatre) and “The Dark at the Top of the
Stairs” (by the American Theater Company). And the Shaw Festival in Canada
staged a fine version of “Bus Stop” a couple of seasons ago. “Picnic” is located in prime Inge territory, a Kansas town
populated by ordinary people with strong feelings of desire, fear, and hope.
These feelings seethe below the surface of their commonplace lives, blocking
individual fulfillment until the pent-up frustrations come boiling to the
surface. In “Picnic,” Inge portrays how the repressed romantic dreams
of several women boil into a series of crises after a handsome drifter comes to
the town. In a conventional production, the play would turn into a romantic
comedy-drama with a heavy garnish of local color. Hal, the drifter, connects
with Madge, the town beauty. Erotic sparks fly and off they go, into the
sentimental Hollywood sunset. Cromer drains any hint of sentimentality out of the
narrative. Hal isn’t only a sexy hunk, he’s a young man who conceals his low
self esteem and vulnerability under a veneer of bravado. He’s awkward beneath
his blowhard façade, bitter at the hand life has dealt him, and a little
pathetic. The 18-year old Madge has heard her entire life how pretty she is and
how wonderful it is for a girl to be pretty. As a result, she has no sense of
her own worth. Madge’s younger sister Millie is a feisty girl who fiercely
resents Madge and her beauty and is demoralized by her own lack of social skills.
Flo, their mother, struggles in genteel poverty to raise her daughters. There
are tensions in Flo’s personality rooted in her own marriage. We never learn
what happened to her husband, whether he died or ran off. But his absence has
emotionally scarred Flo, who tries to steer Madge into the economic and social
safety of marriage to Alan Seymour, the local rich boy, a lad lumbered with his
own insecurities. The complementary characters are burdened with their own
repressions and frustrations, especially Rosemary Sydney, a boarder at Flo’s
house, a middle aged schoolteacher aching to escape her dead end life by
corralling a local businessman into marrying her. The play’s characters suffer from such heavy doses of
psychological angst that the show threatens to turn into second rank Chekhov.
But the honesty of Inge’s writing, his compassion for his characters, and David
Cromer’s incisive directing combine to elevate “Picnic” into a nonstop
engrossing viewing experience. At first, the acting seemed so low keyed that I feared the
ensemble was too artless to carry the play. But as the evening progressed, the
people on stage came alive in their ordinariness. Millie is a key example of
the wonders Cromer works with the play. Millie can easily be played as comic
relief, the bratty kid sister good for a few laughs as she brags that she will
leave her boring town after college and go to New York City and write novels
that will shock people. Cromer takes Millie seriously, and thanks to Hillary
Clemens’s first rate performance the viewer can accept that Millie’s dream will
someday be a reality. She has the spunk and talent to write those novels. The 1955 movie version of “Picnic” starred William Holden as
Hal and Kim Novak as Madge. At 37, Holden was far too old for the role and
Novak, though only 22, projected a glamour that was a bad fit for Madge’s inner
pain and confusion. Now comes the Writers Theatre revival of Inge's Pulitzer prizewinning 1953
drama 'Picnic' (The theater revived 'Bus Stop' in 2006.) It's a stunning
achievement, thanks to a pinpoint cast led by David Cromer's extraordinarily
insightful directing.
The
Writers’ Theatre casts Boyd Harris as Hal and Bridgette Pechman as Madge. They
both look very young, at that hormonal age when erotic attraction is at its
most intense. Their coupling is inevitable but the prospects of a successful
long-term relationship look dubious. Cromer turns what could have been a
conventional happy ending into something much more problematical. Madge doesn’t
so much run away to join Hal as she runs away from her stultifying existence as
the small town beauty queen with no substance beyond her looks. We wish her
luck with the rest of her life but she has a high hill to climb. The remaining performers are all
outstanding, led by Natasha Lowe as the anguished Flo, trying her best to
mediate between her two daughters and their conflicting personalities. Hanna
Dworkin is perfect as Rosemary, the spinster who finally erupts in bile and
frustration at a shocked and defenseless Hal. Marc Grapey gets a striking
amount dramatic heft out of Rosemary’s reluctant swain. Robert Fagin is
outstanding as the rich kid who should have everything but instead is gripped
by his own insecurities. Alyson Green and Samantha Gleisten are very good as
Rosemary’s middle-aged unmarried lady friends. Annabel Armour is fine as an
elderly woman whose personal life has been blighted by a monster of a mother,
but the woman soldiers on, maybe the bravest person in the story. The theater has been reconfigured into
an almost in-the-round facility. The action takes place in a front yard linking
two neighboring houses. Jack Magaw’s set gives the production an environmental
feeling and some viewers must walk across a wooden front stoop to get to their
seats. Janice Pytel designed the authentic looking 1950’s costumes. Keith
Parham designed the lighting and Rick Sims the sound. “Picnic” runs through November 16 at the
Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday
at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and
Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $50
to $65. Call 847 242 6000 or visit www.writerstheatre.org. The
show gets a rating of four stars.
Sept.
2008 Contact
Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com . By Dan Zeff
GLENCOE- Historical dramas
by American playwrights have never been large on the American stage. We've had plenty of
hit musicals with historical backgrounds, but straight plays rarely catch the
box office ring, even a historical work as literate and entertaining as James
Goldman's ‘The Lion in Winter.’ ‘The Lion in Winter’ opened on
Broadway in 1966, attracted plenty of positive reviews, though perhaps fatally,
not from the New York Times, and expired in a few weeks. The movie adaptation
starring Peter O’Toole and Katharine Hepburn was much more successful. Over the
last 40 years, ‘The Lion in Winter’ has managed a decent life in regional
theaters, like the Writers Theatre, which currently is presenting a triumphant
revival of the play.The Lion in Winter
at the Writers' Theatre
At first look, Goldman's play does seem a
little forbidding in its subject matter, centering on a medieval English king
named Henry II and his family one Christmas season in 1183. There¹s nothing
there to grab the interest of an American audience, except that the play is
really a masterful comedy-drama about a dysfunctional family, and heaven knows
we've seen plenty of those in recent seasons, but rarely with the wit and
intelligence of ‘The Lion in Winter.’ Goldman’s play portrays real
historical figures, though the dialogue and action are fictional. All the
characters look medieval in Nan Zabriskie’s authentic looking 12th-century
wardrobe designs. But the emotions and passions are as real as today, with the
characters fiercely engaging in betrayal, manipulation, and shifting alliances.
The play ends up being a blend of adult romantic family comedy and ‘Who’s
Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ In the play, Henry gathers his three grown
sons to his castle, along with their mother and his wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.
Henry and Eleanor in real life had one of the most volatile marriages in
European royal history. Henry had imprisoned Eleanor in a castle for years in France for plotting against him, but there
is a powerful bond between them--love at war with political expediency. Henry wants to make his son
John the heir to the English throne. Eleanor supports their son Richard. The
third son, Geoffrey, is the odd man out but he is entirely capable of looking
after his own interests. Adding further complexity to the narrative is a
23-year old French princess named Alais. She loves the 50-year old Henry and he
loves her, or so he says. He mainly wants to breed more sons, not being
satisfied with the three now on hand, and he selects Alais as the vessel for
the new male generation. Understandably, Eleanor is not pleased. The sons plot with and against
each other and against their father, with Eleanor pulling some of the strings
and the young King of France on hand with his own spin on the political
situation. The plot may be set in the Middle Ages, but it is recounted in a
very modern fashion. The characters talk like they are residents of the 20th
century. After one particularly heated verbal conflict, Eleanor sighs ‘Well,
what family doesn’t have its ups and downs?’
Henry is the dominant
character, but the most complicated and ultimately poignant figure is Eleanor,
a woman nurturing a love-hate relationship with her husband. She is brilliant,
articulate, and politically savvy, a wheeler-dealer who can hold her own with
the rough playing men folk. Katharine Hepburn won an Academy Award as Eleanor
in the motion picture. It’s a great role and at the Writers’ Theatre Shannon
Cochran is tremendous, running the psychological changes on Eleanor¹s
personality from pleading supplication and surrender to scheming and
unscrupulous protector of her turf. As Henry, Michael Canavan
(Cochran’s real life husband) matches Cochran’s stage presence, delivering a
persuasive portrait of macho self-possession flecked with despair and
frustration at the muddle he and Eleanor have made of their three sons. Canavan
gives a performance of great assurance and it¹s not his fault that Eleanor
simply has the better lines and more theatrical scenes. The three sons are all
portrayed with spot-on dramatic and comic impact. Robert Belushi is superb as
the whiny, cowardly, infantile John. As Richard, Lea Coco is every inch the
ruthless and ambitious prince who will permit no impediment between himself and
the English crown, including his father. Christopher McLinden is subtly
sinister as Geoffrey, the third son who won’t allow himself to be marginalized
in the power plays between John and Richard. In a pair of telling complementary performances,
Laura Coover is sweet and youthful as Alais, a plucky girl in way over her head
among all the plots and counter plots swirling throughout the castle. Michael
Fagin is excellent as the French king, a crafty young man with a possible
homosexual relationship with Richard. The last production of ‘The Lion in Winter’
that I saw ran a verbose and tiresome three hours. At the Writers’ Theatre,
director Rick Snyder keeps the pace brisk and the scene changes fast and
efficient. The zesty flow of the play conceals the fact that Goldman’s play is
almost all talk and very little action. Jack Magaw designed a functional
all-purpose set dominated by a row of Romanesque arches at the rear of the
stage to set the historical tone for the evening. J. R. Lederle designed the
lighting and Josh Schmidt the sound.
‘The Lion in Winter’ runs through August 3 at the Writers’ Theatre, 325 Tudor Court Tickets are $40 to $65. Call 847 242 6000. Most performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m.
The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2008
For more information, visit www.writerstheatre.org. Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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As You Like It
at the Writers’ Theatre
By Dan Zeff
GLENCOE—By a quirk of scheduling, two of Chicagoland’s leading theaters opened productions of Shakespeare on consecutive nights. The Chicago Shakespeare Theater presented “Othello” in a brilliant staging, but we’ve become accustomed to major league work on the Bard from the CST. It’s their mission. On the other hand, the Writers’ Theatre had never staged a Shakespeare play before its current revival of “As You Like It,” but the result is likewise brilliant. 
"As You Like It” is one of Shakespeare’s most agreeable comedies. Most of the plot is front loaded into the first 30 minutes. During that time, young Orlando and Rosalind fall in love at first sight. Then Orlando flees for his life from his evil older Brother Oliver to the Forest of Arden. At the same time, Rosalind is banished by the equally nasty Duke Frederick, who has usurped her father’s land. So Rosalind and her cousin Celia (the nasty Duke’s daughter) flee in disguise to the Forest of Arden, setting up a round robin of romantic encounters. With all the key characters in Arden enjoying the hospitality of the rightful duke and his merry men, the wheels of the plot stop spinning and assorted love affairs are put into place.
In addition to the exiles, the forest is populated with country folk, like the shepherdess Phebe, much loved by the bumpkin Sylvius. But Phebe falls in love with Rosalind in her disguise as a young man. The jester Touchstone accompanies Rosalind and Celia into the forest and matches up with the country girl Audrey. By the end of the play Shakespeare has paired off everyone in the forest but the chiggers, with the exception of the melancholy Jaques who ruefully philosophizes on the frailties of the world.
Director William Brown places the action in modern times, giving the story an easy accessibility for the audience. The stark difference between the intrigues and cruelties of the court and the camaraderie of the forest is a pronounced subtext. Shakespeare obviously prefers the generosity of spirit of life in natural surroundings to the darkness and betrayal of the court (read civilization).
“As You Like It” is not a knockabout farce. Brown orchestrates a mellow, sympathetic atmosphere in the forest, with Jaques’s melancholy a keynote. Larry Yando ornaments the production with his wry mocking, sounding at times like Jack Nicholson and looking like a character out of a Samuel Beckett drama. Yando practically reinvents Jaques’s famous “Seven Ages of Man” monologue, his measured and thoughtful discourse giving this familiar speech a new depth and richness. Even the normally broadly comic Touchstone plays as a knowing and human clown, superbly delineated by Ross Lehman, an old hand at Shakespeare’s comic characters...
The heart of the play is Rosalind, performed in a breakout performance by Tracy Michelle Arnold, who delectably captures the woman’s intelligent and realism without stinting on her female vulnerability (in Shakespeare’s eyes). Marcus Truschinski is a handsome Orlando, but he’s a bit of a ninny as written in comparison with the vivacious Rosalind. But Truschinski’s good looks and affecting manner make him a good match for Arnold’s Rosalind in the end. Carey Cannon is a marvelous Celia, often merely a second fiddle to Rosalind. At the Writers’ Theatre, Cannon endows Celia with a feisty, saucy personality that adds unexpected comic flourishes to the character.
In supporting performances, five of the actors double in roles, all to good effect. There is especially good work from Kevin Asselin as both the good and bad dukes, Eric Parks as the lovesick Sylvius, Nancy Moricette, sporting a delightful West Indian accent, as Phebe, and Carol Kuykendall as an unconventionally savvy and hip Audrey. The ensemble is rounded out with distinction by Tim Gittings, David Dastmalchian, and John Lister.
“As You Like It” is filled with some of Shakespeare’s finest songs, all neatly integrated into the action instead of being mounted as isolated set pieces that stop the action in its tracks. The songs are delivered in a contemporary folk manner with guitar accompaniment and moving vocal work by Kuykendall among others.
The set by Keith Pitts recreates the Forest of Arden as a decaying mansion surrounded by unspoiled nature. The harsh realities of the real work periodically intrude with the menacing sound of a helicopter overhead obviously searching for the subversive exiles in the woods. The physical production is further enhanced by Rachel Anne Healy (costumes), Charles Cooper (lighting), and Andrew Hanson (sound and original music, complimented by some spot-on moody Miles Davis).
But the hero of the evening, along with Shakespeare, is director Brown, who injects countless felicitous touches into the story that illuminate rather than distract. Brown fits the production perfectly into the intimate Writers’ Theatre acting space, allowing the spectators to get up close and personal with an “As You Like It” that is especially fertile in charm and gentle humor.
“As You Like It” runs through April 13 at the Writers’ Theatre,
325 Tudor Court. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $58. Call 847 242 6000.
For more information: www.writers'theatre.org
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Feb. 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
**************************************************************************************
The Turn of the Screw
at the Writers' Theatre in Glencoe
By Dan Zeff
GLENCOE - Ghost stories are notoriously difficult to bring off on the stage. Those flesh and blood actors work against the sense of the supernatural and the horror that are built into the genre. That's why ghost tales are normally more effective on the printed page or in movies or on the radio where the narrative can scare us without the mood breaking intrusion of real people acting out the stories.
So give the Writers' Theatre all the credit in the world for not only taking on one of the most famous and unsettling ghost stories ever written, but staging it in a remarkably convincing manner.
The story is 'The Turn of the Screw,' an 1898 short novel by Henry James that has already inspired one stage version, as well as a motion picture adaptation and even an opera. James's tale has fascinated readers and critics for more than a century, not only because it is a true chiller but because there is no consensus that it is even a ghost story at all.
The story is set in 1872 in Victorian England. A young woman is interviewed by a wealthy London bachelor, who seeks a governess to take complete charge of his young niece and nephew on an estate in the country. The young woman accepts the job, partly because she has fallen in love with her employer at first sight and naively hopes for a relationship between them leading to marriage.
The governess settles in on the estate and immediately tries to bond with her two young pupils, Miles and Flora. The only other resident of the estate is a housekeeper named Mrs. Grose. In short order the governess learns that Miss Jessel, her predecessor as governess, drowned in the estate lake and the estate steward, Peter Quint, was found dead by the children after falling from a tower on the property.
Through the housekeeper, the governess hears that the two dead people had an illicit relationship. The governess soon sees apparitions of Quint and Jessel and comes to believe that the two are malignant forces trying to entrap the children. The governess sets herself up as the protector of the children against these forces of evil, leading to a tragic outcome.
The story is mostly told through the journals kept by the governess and much of the narrative is seen through her eyes. The tale can be taken two ways. Either Quint and Jessel were indeed ghosts bent on harming the children or the whole saga is the product of the governess's fevered imagination. There is much in the story to suggest that the young woman is sexually repressed, the victim of an abusive childhood and caught in the web of high Victorian sexual, or rather anti-sexual, attitudes.
James himself was never definitive about how to read his story and he loads it with ambiguities. Miles is expelled from his school for apparently intolerable behavior but we never learn specifically what crimes the precocious lad committed. Likewise, we are not clear on the precise nature of the connection between Jessel and Quint, though with our 21st century sensibilities, we can make some educated guesses. And we never learn about the parentage that shaped the two unusual children. Overall, James leaves the details of his story open-ended, enticing the audience to fill in the blanks with their own imagination.
Playwright Jeffery Hatcher boils the story down to 90 uninterrupted minutes of intense stage time. He writes the drama for just two performers, a woman who plays the governess and a man who assumes the roles of the bachelor employer, the housekeeper, and young Miles. This is chamber theater at its most intimate, and perfectly suited to the Writers' Theatre venue, a 50-seat space at the rear of a bookstore in downtown Glencoe.
The story is told both in extended monologues from the governess's journal and in scenes between the woman and another character. The set consists of a single chair and a set of opaque black curtains that enclose the stage on two sides. The tone of the action generally is understated, with boiling emotions seething just below the surface. The mood is set by eerie lighting, subtly creepy sound effects, and those sinister drapes. The sudden entrance of a character through the drapes can jolt the spectator like a pistol shot.
The cast consists of Kymberly Mellen as the governess and LaShawn Banks as the other characters. They are both spellbinders. Banks is superb in morphing from the bachelor uncle to the housekeeper to young Miles with only a delicate shift in vocal inflection and body language. Once the audience recognizes the conventions of the staging, it's no leap of faith at all to accept Banks in whatever character he assumes.
Mellen is marvelous as the governess, possibly doing battle against wicked spirits and possibly in the grip of her own disordered mind. It's a heroic performance, especially because the actress was fighting a cold on opening night. Mellen deftly builds the rising hysteria in the governess and by the end of the evening we can't be sure whether she really saw those ghosts or they are the product of her fantasies.
Jessica Thebus has orchestrated the production with nuance and insight. A single false note would have destroyed the fabric of the story. I saw or heard no false notes. The design team of Jack Magaw (scenery), Andre Pluess (sound), J. R. Lederle (lighting), and Rachel Anne Healy (costumes) combine to weave a mesmerizing mood to support James's haunting text.
Hopefully, the muted response by the opening night audience didn't discourage the players. The crowd wasn't being unappreciative. They were so caught up in the spell of the show that loud applause or even conversation on leaving the theater seemed totally out of place.
'The Turn of the Screw' runs through March 30 at the Writers' Theatre, 664 Vernon Avenue. Performances are Tuesday and Wednesday at 7:30 p.m., Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 4 and 8 p. m., and Sunday at 2 and 6 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $55. Call 847 242 6000.
The show gets a rating of four stars. Nov. 2007
For more information: www.writers'theatre.org us :
Contactzeffdaniel@yahoo.com