A Parallelogram At the Steppenwolf
Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Watching Bruce Norris’s “A
Parallelogram” is like revisiting an old “Twilight Zone” TV drama from the
1960’s. There is some science fiction, a little social commentary, and plenty
of plot twists. But Norris spins these conventions into a fresh comedy-drama
that only enhances his stature as the most original and challenging playwright
on the local scene. The
central character in “A Parallelogram” is a thirty-something woman named Bee
who is currently in a live-in relationship with a slightly older man named Jay,
who has left his wife and two children to move in with Bee.
But there
are actually two Bee characters in the play. One is the young woman. The other
is an alter ego, an elderly lady who first appears looking like a bag lady and
later appears as a doctor in a hospital and finally as the Hispanic grandmother
of Bee’s yard boy. The two Bees converse throughout the play but only the
younger Bee can see and hear the older one. Jay understandably thinks his lover
may be crazy. The older Bee has the ability to show
young Bee the future, stopping and starting action through a small gadget that
resembles a television set zapper. The older Bee explains to young Bee how the
past, present, and future can interconnect through some physics process I
couldn’t begin to understand. The narrative moves back and forth in time as the
younger Bee tries to use her foreknowledge of coming events to change the
future. The older Bee wonders why she bothers.
It sounds
a little dense but the storyline is both engrossing and funny. The play’s theme
can be summarized in Bee’s question “If someone could tell you in advance
exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to
turn out, and if you knew you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you
still want to go on with your life?” That’s
heady stuff and Norris takes no firm position on the matter, which is part of
the play’s fascination. The spectators have to come up with their own answers.
There is the possibility that young Bee is delusional and her conversations
with the other Bee are all in her head, sort of like Elwood Dowd in “Harvey.”
Young Bee recently underwent a hysterectomy that may have created emotional
stress unraveling her mind. Or maybe the older Bee really exists but on a plane
only young Bee can connect with. The older
Bee delivers some wry and disturbing observations about human nature: “If there
was an earthquake tomorrow in Bangladesh and a million people died, would you
really care?” The knee jerk response would be, “Of course.” Our actual feelings
likely would be much less compassionate. So spectators should expect the play
to occasionally to knock down their self-esteem a notch. The
Steppenwolf production serves Norris’s play with four perfect-pitch
performances. Kate Arrington, almost unrecognizable with her normal blonde hair
turned brunette, plays young Bee with a superb mixture of confusion,
indignation, and tranquility. Tom Irwin gives another spot-on performance as a
basically decent man who is also a smug jerk (described somewhat more pungently
by the older Bee). A Roosevelt University student named Tom Bickel is just
right as the Hispanic yard boy who weaves in and out of young Bee’s life. For the audience,
the play’s most delectable performance comes from Marylouise Burke as the older
Bee. Her character has the play’s funniest, and wisest, lines and Burke brings
them home with a casual flair that is irresistible. Thanks to
Anna Shapiro’s directing, the production flows naturally and credibly. Todd
Rosenthal’s sets provide the proper atmosphere for the story’s three locations,
assisted by James Ingalls’s lighting. The mechanical change in setting from
home interior to hospital room at the end of the first act in full view of the
audience is stunning. Time
travel stories are normally filled with exciting scenes leading to a dramatic
finale . “A Parallelogram” takes the “less is more” approach.
Norris doesn’t force feed a lot of philosophical pseudo profundities into his
time travel narrative. If there is a moral to the story, it’s that life goes on
and probably it’s better that way. Not a very dramatic conclusion, perhaps, but
there is enough humor and fantasy and humanity in the play to keep the thoughtful
observer’s mind continuously engaged, and entertained. “A
Parallelogram” runs through August 29 at
the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are
Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m.
There will be 2 p.m. performances on August 11, 18, and 25. Sunday evening
performances end August 15. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a rating of 3½ stars. July 2010 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com Find the review on Facebook. At
the Steppenwolf Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Yes,
Samuel Beckett’s “Endgame” is bleak, pessimistic, and dramatically inert. But
at the Steppenwolf Theatre, the play is surprisingly accessible. What the drama
means is anyone’s guess, but audiences should have no problem following the
75-moinute play from moment to moment. Beckett sets “Endgame” in a claustrophobic interior where the
tyrannical and self-pitying Hamm presides, blind and paralyzed, confined to his
throne-like chair. His servant is Clov, wants to leave, but can’t. Hamm is
unable to stand and Clov cannot sit. Hamm’s aged and senile parents Nagg and
Nell reside in two garbage cans at one side of the stage, both having lost
their legs in a bicycle accident many years ago.
Endgame
The four characters are enclosed in the barren room, with two
small windows looking out, into what? The outside world is desolate, implying
that Hamm, Clov, Nell, and Nagg are the last people on earth. What’s happened
to everyone else? Maybe there was a plague or a nuclear war. Beckett isn’t
saying, but the four characters in the room likely are the pitiful remnants of
the human race. There is almost no physical action in the play, not a
surprise considering that only Clov can move about. The dialogue alternates between
minimalist verbal exchanges and extended monologues. The characters reminisce,
bicker, and lapse into silence. What dramatic tension the play provides emerges from the
fractious relationship between Hamm and Clov. Apparently Hamm took in Clov when
the servant was an infant. Clov ministers to Hamm’s whiney demands and oozes
hostility toward his master. But the pair has a symbiotic connection. Hamm
relies on Clov to feed him and provide his medicine. If Clov leaves, Hamm dies. But where does Clov go if he does leave? Hamm
may have the only food supply left on earth, so Clov’s departure would amount
to suicide. Late in the play Clov looks through one of the windows and
claims he sees a little boy on the seashore. But does the boy actually exist,
and if he does, could he represent a new beginning for the human race? Beckett’s plays and fiction have created the biggest academic
cottage industry of the last 60 years. Scholars and critics have poured forth
countless interpretations of “Endgame.”—autobiographical, religious,
philosophical, even theatrical (the play includes many references to the stage
and even uses a line from Shakespeare’s “The Tempest). For those with an
overpowering need to grasp Beckett’s intentions, the selection of explanatory
theories is unlimited.
Probably the best strategy for watching “Endgame,” or any
Beckett play, is not to analyze the show while it’s happening. There is an understandable temptation to
seize on a symbolic line or image and proclaim “Aha, so that’s what the play is
about.” But the viewer’s mind could end up making so much mental noise that the
play itself gets drowned out. It’s best to avoid parsing the significance of
Hamm’s toy three-legged dog or those two windows that serve as eyes to a
blasted world and engage the play as a whole. Let it suffice that “Endgame” paints a melancholy picture of
the human condition’s futility. A joyless and meaningless life concludes in an
evitable death. Beckett’s famous
“Waiting for Godot” offered a glimmer of hope at the end. Not so in “Endgame.” Nobody would confuse Beckett with Neil Simon, but “Endgame”
does have some humor, not hilarious jokes but verbal exchanges that do evoke a
chuckle from the audience. The language is spare, but realistic. The attentive
viewer should not get bogged down in linguistic obscurities. Considering the
absence of conventional narrative and characterization, the play is continually
engrossing. The meaning may be elusive but the fascination is there. The Steppenwolf revival under Frank Galati’s directing is
refreshingly straightforward. Galati clearly has a firm grasp of “Endgame” and
refrains from directorial grandstanding. The staging does not wallow in
profundities that could intimidate, or bore, the spectators. The ensemble consists of William Petersen as Hamm, Ian
Barford as Clov, Martha Lavey as Nell, and Francis Guinan as Nagg. Lavey and
Guinan appear in brief cameo roles. The play really belongs to Petersen and
Barford, not really ideal casting. Hamm is supposed to be an old man, the surrogate
father to the adult Clov. Petersen and Barford look about the same age and that
costs the play much of its tension between the patriarchal and domineering Hamm
and the younger and rebellious Clov. Petersen also gives a laid back
performance, nicely done within its own parameters, but his interpretation
doesn’t give Barford much to play off emotionally in expressing Clov’s
resentment and anger. James Schuette’s massive gray walls suitably define the grim
environment in which the characters attempt to survive. The lighting by James
Ingalls (who also designed the scruffy costumes) and the sound design by Andre
Pluess reinforce the chilly and gloomy atmosphere. In the end, I admired the Steppenwolf production but I was
never moved emotionally. The pathos and despair on stage should evoke feelings
of some sort in the viewer but other than admiration for the staging, I
remained untouched. Still, the theater should be commended for a full-resources
version of a difficult play with the possibility of considerable box office
risk. “Endgame” runs through June 6 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs
Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday
at 7:30 p.m., with 3 p.m. performances on Saturday and Sunday. There will be
Sunday evening performances at 7:30 p.m. through May 9. Wednesday matinees will
be added at 2 p.m. beginning May 12. Tickets are $20 to $77. Call 312 335 1650
or visit www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a rating of three stars. April 2010 At the Steppenwolf
Downstairs Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—After
more than 30 years, David Mamet’s “American Buffalo” still delivers a dramatic
wallop of verbal ferocity and psychological and physical violence. The play is
also an actor’s bonanza, and the three-man ensemble in the Steppenwolf Theatre
revival seizes every opportunity to race and rant through Mamet’s obscene,
intense, and sometimes comic language. “American
Buffalo” had its premiere in Chicago
in 1975 and has since become an internationally recognized modern classic. But
it remains a Chicago play, set in
the Windy City
in the mid 1970’s with a powerful blue collar Chicago
sensibility. Mamet’s
play features only three characters, with several peripheral men and women
mentioned but not seen. The location is the junk shop owned by the middle-aged
Donny Dubrow, a small time grifter whose only friend seems to be a slow-witted
young man named Bobby. The third figure in the play is Teach, a blowhard yet
sometimes eloquent petty criminal who talks a good game to mask a life of
futility and failure. The
American buffalo of the title is a five cent coin that is a valuable
collector’s item. The sometimes ambiguous storyline centers on a plot to steal
a valuable coin collection. Initially the theft is masterminded by Donny with
Bobby as the designated burglar. Then Teach forces himself into the action,
displacing Bobby. The theft never gets off the ground, the play’s three losers
losing again. Zealous
critics and commentators have located all kinds of themes in “American
Buffalo.” It’s an essay on American capitalism. It’s about friendship and
loyalty and truth and fairness. Like any great play, “American Buffalo” can
withstand even the most fanciful interpretations. But essentially Mamet has
composed a study of two men at the lower end of the social and economic scale,
puffing themselves up with dreams and scams beyond their ability to realize. Audiences
can ponder all the social and philosophical implications in the drama, but only
after the play ends. During the performance the language is so too virile and
the emotions too high to allow the spectator breathing room to reflect on
subtexts and hidden meanings. The language is raw and has its own poetry. Teach
and Donny conspire and fight and banter, focusing a linguistic spotlight on
their own incompetent and seedy lives. The
Steppenwolf production stars Tracy Letts as Teach and Francis Guinan as Donny.
They don’t just impersonate the two characters,
Letts and Guinan crawl inside their skins. Teach being the more showy
role, Letts grabs most of the audience’s attention as a vivid portrait of a
chiseler trying to rise above his loser (there’s that inevitable label again)
life with sheer bravado. Near the end of the play, Teach freaks out when he learns the coin heist has gone
bust, trashing Donny’s junk shop in an orgy of rage and frustration.
****************************************************************************
American Buffalo
As
Donny, Guinan creates a slightly more humane figure. After all, Donny has a
career of sorts as the junk shop owner and a family of sorts as the father
figure for Bobby. Donny has a bit of a life. Teach has nothing. Patrick
Andrews makes a striking Bobby, speaking in a monotone that barely conceals the
confused feelings churning inside him. I’ve seen the character played with a
wider range of emotions but Andrews’s performance still works. Patrons
fortunate enough to see him as the master of ceremonies in the recent revival
of “Cabaret” at Drury Lane Oakbrook won’t recognize the actor physically but
they will recognize a young actor with a stunning performance range. Kevin
Dipenet’s baroquely cluttered junk shot is a virtual fourth character on the
stage. The technical production is further enhanced by the tacky costumes
designed by Nan Cibula-Jenkins along with
the lighting by Pat Collins and the sound by Rod Milburn and Michael
Bodeen. Amy
Morton’s directing maximizes the play’s strength--its dialogue. This is a play
that doesn’t allow for revisionist interpretations. The actors and director do
well to present the script as written, with its foul language and overheated
characters. Morton may be a female but she has orchestrated this most “guy” of
plays without a false note struck. “American
Buffalo” runs through February 7 at the Steppenwolf downstairs theater 1650
North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 (no Sunday performances after January 10). Tickets are $20 to $77. Call 312 335 1650 or visit: www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a
rating of four stars. December 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. *********************** Fake At
the Steppenwolf Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
Piltdown hoax was one of the great deceptions in the history of archaeology.
Between 1908 and 1912, parts of a jawbone and a skull were found in a gravel
pit at Piltdown in Sussex, England. Some scientists believed the fossil
provided the missing link between the apes and modern human beings. Other
scientists called the discovery a fraud. The Piltdown discovery remained controversial for decades
until it was finally unmasked as a hoax in the 1950’s. Apparently, someone
buried an orangutan’s jaw and a skull from a medieval cemetery, the jaw stained
to make it look old and the teeth filed to make them look human. Some eminent figures in British science allied themselves
with the Piltdown discovery as a great breakthrough and their reputations
suffered accordingly. The perpetrator of the hoax has never been definitively
identified nor has the motive been explained, though there is much speculation
on both questions.
Eric Simonson’s drama “Fake” takes on the Piltdown hoax and a
lot of other themes. The play is receiving its world premiere at the
Steppenwolf Theatre with a blue ribbon cast. Unfortunately, the play is a
disappointment, talky and unfocussed. The possibilities of an entertaining
scientific whodunit (and whydunit) are never fully realized. Simonson separates his narrative into two historical periods,
both in England. “Fake” starts in 1914, when the Piltdown discovery is still
big news. The action then leaps forward to 1953, when the hoax is about to be
unmasked. The five actors in the ensemble play two sets of characters, trying
unsuccessfully to establish a parallel between the happenings in 1914 and 1953. The 1914 scenes benefit from the presence of several actual
historical figures, led by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock
Holmes, a fervent believer in spiritualism, and equally fervent in his
conviction that the Piltdown discovery is a deliberate fake. Doyle gathers together three prominent advocates of the
Piltdown discovery—amateur British archaeologist Charles Dawson, noted
paleontologist Sir Arthur Smith Woodward, and French theologian-paleontologist
Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Completing Doyle’s house party is Rebecca Eastman,
a fictional American journalist come to England to report on the women’s
suffrage movement. Doyle’s mocking of the Piltdown discovery draws the anger of
Dawson and Woodward, who depart in high dudgeon.
The play meanders along from that opening scene, the actors
alternating their characters with rapid off-stage costume changes that reflect
the time shift between 1914 and 1953. By a wide margin, the most interesting
personalities reside in the 1914 segments. A highlight is Teilhard de Chardin
delivering a vigorous and articulate defense of the compatibility of faith and
science, ideas that were not welcomed by his Jesuit superiors. The lady journalist deduces that Doyle himself concocted the
hoax as revenge from the ridicule he endured from Dawson for the writer’s
spiritualism convictions, and Doyle doesn’t deny it. Or maybe the hoax was
inspired by Englishmen who wanted to usurp continental European scientists in
the competition for a hot-button scientific discovery. What a nationalistic
coup it would be for Great Britain if the missing link turned out to be an
Englishman. Possibly the hoax wasn’t a hoax at all but an honest mistake by
scientists who should have known better. Charles Darwin casts a large shadow over the story,
symbolized by a giant portrait of the great scientist lowered periodically from
the rafters. Darwin’s evolution theories tie into Piltdown man as they do in
Teilhard de Chardin’s argument that evolution is a continuing process that
eventually will lead to the fulfillment of creation, the Second Coming of Jesus
Christ. So there is scope here for a provocative play that mixes
mystery with science and religion. But there is no real dramatic arc to the
narrative. The audience knows at the outset that Piltdown is a fake (note the
play’s title). Most of the good stuff resides in the 1914 segments and if
Simonson decides to take a fresh look at his script, he may want to concentrate
on the early historical scenes with their vivid personalities and the immediacy
of the Piltdown discovery. Tom Stoppard might have made the duality work between
the events and sensibilities of 1914 and 1953 but Simonson is not Tom Stoppard.
The articulate program notes in the playbill examine the Piltdown story with
more historical and philosophical coherence than the play. The cast does what it can to bring the verbosity of the
script alive. So high marks to Francis Guinan Alan Wilder, Kate Arrington,
Coburn Goss, and Larry Yando—all more successful in the 1914 characters,
especially Goss as Teilhard de Chardin and Arrington as Rebecca Eastman. Simonson is the director, which may be a miscalculation.
Possibly a director other than the playwright could have identified the
discursive soft spots in the script and worked with the author to smooth them
out. Todd Rosenthal designed the set, Karin Kopischke the costumes, Joe Appelt
the lighting, and Barry Funderburg the sound and original music. “Fake” runs through November 8 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs
Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at
7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $70.
Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a rating of 2 1/2 stars. Sept. 2009 ********************** Up At the Steppenwolf
Theatre By
Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Bridget Carpenter’s “Up” tries to be a hymn to the
imagination and free spirit in a losing battle with the money grubbing and
dreariness of everyday life. In the world of “Up,” the imagination is a haven
for the spirit liberated from the humdrum soul draining demands of daily
existence. The imaginative character in “Up” is a
middle aged man named Walter Griffin, a victim of the slings and arrows of a
realistic world that he can’t accommodate into his inner life. Walter is
portrayed as some kind of hero, ultimately defeated by earthbound daily life.
It’s a seductive line of thought, but at least in “Up” it is all hogwash, in
spite of a fine effort by the Steppenwolf Theatre.
Walter Griffin is a husband and the father
of a 15-year old son. The time of the play is the late 1990’s but Walter’s life
peaked 15 years earlier when he ascended into the skies on a common lawn chair
attached to several dozen balloons. His adventure is based on an actual ascent
by a man named Larry Walters in 1982 (Walters committed suicide 11 years
later). Griffin gained considerable publicity at
the time but his life has gone downhill ever since. He calls himself an
inventor and entrepreneur, but he really is an unemployed drag on his family,
his wife Helen providing the sole financial supper as a mail carrier, a job she
detests. Walter wants to recapture the exhilaration of that lawn chair ascent
but all he does is lead his family to destruction. While the ineffectual Walter muddles
through life, his son Mikey is an unhappy loner. One day at school he meets a
teen-aged girl named Maria six months pregnant. Maria lives with her Aunt
Chris, the girl’s alcoholic mother having kicked her out of the house. Naturally, the love-stared and insecure
Mikey falls in love with the plucky and fetching Maria. Mikey takes a job with
Aunt Chris before and after school as a telephone solicitor that earns him a
considerable salary in commissions. Mikey finds he enjoys selling, an
occupation his father dismisses contemptuously as “bottom feeding.” Mikey’s
pleasure at making money is treated as a character deficiency. Making money is
bad. Dreaming and the imagination are good. By the end of the play Maria has left for
parts unknown with Aunt Chris. Walter’s family is in shambles—bankrupt and
their house destroyed. Mikey is bitter and rebellious and Helen struggles to
understand how her husband let it all go so wrong. So much for the glories of
the life of the imagination. This
may be a sour, earthbound assessment of the play. But nothing in “Up” persuades
me that Walter in anything but a loser, and a lying and cheating loser at that.
There is much humor in the play but the audience likely will leave the theater
feeling glum about the fate of all the characters. “Up” benefits from a strong Steppenwolf
production directed by Anna D. Shapiro. Ian Barford does what he can to make
the ineffectual and pathetic Walter a sympathetic figure. Lauren Katz is fine
as his wife, trying to make ends meet while her husband goes his irresponsible
way. Jake Cohen is very good as the maladjusted Mikey who grows in self worth
as his relationship builds with Maria and her aunt. A newcomer named Rachel Brosnahan is
outstanding as Maria, a girl with the guts and bravery that Walter Griffin
lacks. The always reliable Martha Lavey is fine as Aunt Chris, who probably is
a con woman but a genial and likable one. Tony Hernandez plays Philippe Petit,
an actual French tightrope walker who appears in Walter’s imagination as the
personification of all the daring and success Walter will never achieve. Thanks to Dan Ostling’s set designs and
Ann Wrightson’s lighting, the production delivers some striking visual images,
especially of Petit miming his tightrope walking on a platform above the stage
framed in blue sky. Mara Blumenfeld designed the costumes and Richard Woodbury
the sound, with original music by David Singer. “Up” runs through August 23 at the
Steppenwolf downstairs theater, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are
Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday matinees will be added starting July 29. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call
312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a rating of three stars. June 2009 Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. *********************** The Tempest At
the Steppenwolf Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—The
Steppenwolf Theatre waited 33 years before staging its first presentation of
Shakespeare. But the results are worth the wait. “The Tempest” is a production to
treasure, a scintillating blend of insightful and risk-taking directing,
brilliantly creative designing, and first rate acting. “The Tempest” is probably the last play Shakespeare wrote by
himself and it is one of the most interpreted, and over interpreted, plays in
the canon. The Steppenwolf version is dramatic, theatrical, and filled with
small revelations that will make spectators wiser about the work no matter how
often they have been exposed to this classic.
The play is a fantasy about a magician named Prospero who had
been marooned on an island with his infant daughter Miranda 12 years before the
start of the action. Prospero was the Duke of Milan, but he was usurped by his
brother Antonio and confederates Sebastian and Alonso, the King of Naples. The
villains set Prospero and Miranda adrift on a leaky boat and father and
daughter eventually made it to the island. There Prospero displaced the witch
Sycorax and her monster son Caliban and made the island his domain. As the play begins, Prospero has created a tempest that
forces a ship to run aground on his island, a ship containing his former
enemies as well as his wise old counselor Gonzalo, Alonso’s decent son
Ferdinand, and a couple of low comedy servants named Trinculo and Stephano. The play’s action takes place in real time on the island.
There isn’t any real plot, just the adventures of the various shipwrecked
characters separated into small groups and trying to navigate among the
supernatural wonders of the island. Director Tina Landau has taken a high concept approach to the
production, using film projections, aerial antics high above the stage,
startling sound effects, and dazzling spectacle scenes. She even throws in a
bit of delightful hip hop choreography. “The Tempest” requires the director to make countless
decisions, none more important than how to present Caliban. Caliban has been
the darling of many modern critics who see him as a symbol of colonial
oppression and slavery. The character is often portrayed by a black actor to
underscore the point. Steppenwolf casts K. Todd Freeman, an African American
actor, in the role but there is no agenda in his performance. Freeman plays
Caliban as the vengeful, cowardly, pathetic, ultimately defeated character he
is. Any sense that Caliban is the victim of Prospero’s colonial tyranny is
strictly in the eye of the beholder.
Prospero’s sprite servant Ariel comes across as part fairy
and part streetwise inner city lad in Jon Michael Hill’s hip performance. The
production casts Lois Smith in the normally male role of Gonzalo and she is
terrific in evoking the old man’s down to earth wisdom and decency. The
clownish Trinculo and Stephano can be wearisome as they wallow in drunken
foolery but Tim Hopper and Yasen Peyankov are superb in converting the stupid
louts into credible, and entertaining, human beings. The love interest resides in Ferdinand and Miranda, who fall
in love at first sight, as Shakespeare’s young lovers are wont to do. The
rising local actor Stephen Louis Grush adds to his resume with his performance
as an affecting and genuine Ferdinand. Alana Arenas is OK as Miranda but
Shakespeare’s language doesn’t come as easily to her as it does to the
performers around her. The villains are the least interesting characters in the play
but Craig Spidle (Alonso), Alan Wilder (Sebastian), and James Vincent Meredith
(Antonio) do what they can with the roles. It’s not their fault that the three
nasty men are continuously upstaged by characters who are funnier and more
fantastical than they are. There is also good work by three sprites performed
with great athletic agility by Eric James Casady, Miles Fletcher, and Emma
Rosenthal. Which brings us to Frank Galati as Prospero. Galati mines all
of Prospero’s complexities in his beautifully spoken performance. His Prospero
is sympathetic, compassionate, irascible, tyrannical, humane, weary, vengeful,
and finally forgiving. Galati’s deliveries of Prospero’s three monologues near
the end of the play are models of intelligence and feeling. There is even a
touch of King Lear to further enrich an indelible piece of acting. “The Tempest” offers designers limitless opportunities for
visual invention. Takeshi Kata designed a minimalist set that leaves most of
the stage open except for a sloping metal ramp that connects the stage to a
side balcony. The open space liberates the action, like allowing Ariel to soar
high above the stage. James Schuette’s costumes vary from thrift shop grunge to the
sumptuous outfits in the banquet and masque scenes. James Cox’s lighting and
Josh Schmidt’s sound and original music round out the exceptional physical
production. Tina Landau is the true hero of the event, coming up with
endlessly inventive and revealing dramatic and comic touches. The ensemble
clearly bought into her guidance and the result is a staging that is
illuminating as well as entertaining. The production answers one question. Does the Steppenwolf
company, with its reputation for edgy modern drama, have the acting chops to
handle classical Shakespeare? The company’s firm grasp of character and its
lucid delivery of the dialogue answer that question beyond debate. Let’s not
wait another 33 years for an encore. “The Tempest” runs through May 31 at the Steppenwolf Theatre,
1650 North Dearborn Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m.
and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m., with Wednesday performances at 3 p.m. in
May. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. April 2009 *************************** The Seafarer At
the Steppenwolf Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—Through
some deft scheduling the Steppenwolf Theatre is presenting a two-play festival
of Christmas dramas by the hot contemporary Irish writer Conor McPherson.
Although both “Dublin Carol” and “The Seafarer” take place during
Christmastime, don’t expect much ho-ho-ho good cheer. Neither play is a
tragedy, but neither provides the touchy feely sentiment of “It’s a Wonderful
Life” or “A Christmas Carol.”
Both plays are set in a world of working class booze swilling
males in or near Dublin. Both display McPherson’s skill at genially
foul-mouthed Irish blarney. The main separation between the two is that “Dublin
Carol” is a modest work and “The Seafarer” is a modern masterpiece. After a meandering opening 45 minutes, “The Seafarer” settles
into an alcoholic poker game among five Irishmen. The game takes place in the
home of Richard Harkin, an irascible old man recently blinded in a freak
accident. Currently living with him is his younger brother Sharkey, a rootless
man struggling with much inner angst. Joining the brothers are Ivan Curry, a comic bumbler who
treats the Harkin house as a home away from home, and Nicky Giblin, a handsome
lay about now married to Sharkey’s ex wife. Nicky brings along the well-dressed
and well-spoken Mr. Lockhart to join others for the evening. Unknown to Richard, Ivan, and Nicky, Mr. Lockhart is the
Devil, come to collect Sharkey’s soul for a favor rendered 20 years previously.
Mr. Lockhart confidently intends to win Sharkey’s soul as the ultimate stake in
a friendly card game. The play’s premise sounds like a fantasy out of the Twilight
Zone, but McPherson’s grabs the audience with the realism of his improbable
tale. All the characters, including Mr. Lockhart, are so richly etched that we
accept each of them as a credible individual, and the climactic poker game
delivers all the suspense and tension of an engrossing supernatural mystery
story. Much of McPherson’s dialogue consists of rough and tumble
backchat among aging men immersed in blighted lives. Gradually we get a group
portrait of four losers blunting their sensibilities with endless transfusions
of beer and liquor. They are drunks, but not slobbering drunks, the type who
can be unendurable to watch on stage. These men hold their booze well enough to
trade insults and comic barbs to mask the despair and futility of their lives. Mr. Lockhart is not above taking his dram or two of liquor,
but he is on a mission, sinister and evil beneath his surface bland good cheer.
The shaken Sharkey asks Mr. Lockhart what Hell is like. The Devil responds with
one of the most riveting and haunting monologues in contemporary theater,
describing Hell as a place of such spiritual desolation and self-loathing that
the audience shudders. At the end of the play, McPherson injects a surprise plot
reversal that suggests man has a shot at redemption in this world. Some viewers
will welcome the plot twist as a satisfying upbeat ending to the story. Others
will resent it as a gimmick out of sync with the spirit of the rest of the
narrative. “The Seafarer” does require the audience’s patience for much
of the opening act. Nothing much happens until Mr. Lockhart transforms the
atmosphere with his appearance. Until then we are witnesses to continuous
bickering and small talk among four grungy, liquor soaked men who wouldn’t be
worth knowing in real life. But from Mr. Lockhart’s entrance to the end of the
evening, the play is pure gold. Four of the five members of the cast are Steppenwolf company
members. I have seen all of them for decades and I’ve never enjoyed a more
complete, persuasive set of performances. This is ensemble acting for the ages.
First among equals is Tom Irwin as the malevolent Mr.
Lockhart. In particular, his disquisition on the horror of Hell is time capsule
acting. John Mahoney has never risen to greater heights as the curmudgeonly
Richard, bullying and wheedling his way through the evening. Francis Guinan is indelible as the tortured, barely
articulate Sharkey, a man adrift in a sea of his own demons. Alan Wilder is a
hoot as the comic Ivan, who may be next on Mr. Lockhart’s shopping list of the
damned. Randall Newsome, the only outsider in the cast, is fine as Nicky,
wandering through his life without a rudder. With acting this good and storytelling this involving, one
looks to the director as the hero behind the scenes. The company has brought
former artistic director Randall Arney from the West Coast. Under Arney’s
sensitive orchestration, the play’s blend of naturalism and the supernatural
comes across with seamless inevitability. The action unfolds in Takeshi Kata’s terrific ramshackle
domestic interior, a littered environment of seedy furniture and discarded
liquor bottles and beer cans. Janice Pytel designed the just-right shabby lower
class clothing. Daniel Ionazzi’s lighting and the original music and sound
effects by Richard Woodbury complete the production’s superb physical
presentation. As always in an Irish play, I didn’t catch all of the
brogue-laden language, but Cecille O’Reilly does a solid job as dialect coach
of keeping the lines accessible for the un-Celtic ear. “The Seafarer” runs through February 8 at the Steppenwolf
Theatre, 1650 North Dearborn Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday
at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There are also several
Wednesday matinees. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwoldf.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. Dec.2008
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Kafka on the Shore
At the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The Steppenwolf Theatre’s production of “Kafka on the Shore” may be this season’s play that audiences either love or hate.
Frank Galati adapted the work from the 2002 novel by Japanese author Haruki Murakami. The program notes commented about the novel “…readers looking to interpret the action through a rationalist framework will quickly find themselves overwhelmed and exhausted.” The same will be true for many viewers at the Steppenwolf, who may also find themselves frustrated and angry. Others will leave the theater exhilarated by the show’s dreamlike images and mind bending “what next” storyline.
“Kafka on the Shore” takes place in modern Japan, both on a realistic and a fantasy level. The spine of the plot is the journey of a 15-year old lad who assumes the name of Kafka. Why he takes the name of that famously elusive Czech writer is never explained. It’s just one of countless elements in the play the audience has to accept on faith.
Kafka flees his tyrannical father, a noted Japanese sculptor, and journeys through several encounters, some of them realistic and some of them fantastical. There is a second story stream in the play that traces the journey of Satoru Nakata, a 60-year old mentally challenged man. As a boy, he was a survivor of a bizarre event immediately after World War II in which a group of 16 Japanese children picking mushrooms in a forest unaccountably fall into a trance following a mysterious flash of light in the sky.
Then there is the appearance of Johnny Walker (yes, the famous whiskey icon), who turns out to be a killer of cats and may be Kafka’s father. He cuts off the heads of the felines and does even worse to their bodies, as graphically displayed in one horrific if funny scene. In another scene, Colonel Sanders (the fried chicken man) makes an appearance as a pimp. The colonel is the key to the search for the “entrance stone,” finally located within a Japanese shrine. Chalk up the significance of the stone as one more puzzlement in the play.
Kafka spends some time working in a library, hiding from police who want to talk to him about the recent violent murder of his father. Kafka finds himself wearing a T-shirt soaked with blood and no recollection of how the blood got there. He is befriended by another worker in the library and eventually has a love affair with the library manager, who may be his long lost mother.
The play is filled with bits and scenes that are accessibly comic or dramatic on their own, but do not seem to relate to other scenes. So for spectators who want their theater coherent, “Kafka on the Shore” will be maddening. I don’t recall any play that left so many plot loose ends unresolved. But the lack of narrative resolution does not lie with any ineptness by the novelist or Galati. Both the novel and the play are visions of a world that drifts between reality and what can be termed non-reality, an open ended existence that supplies no neat endings.
I’m firmly in the camp of audience members who find “Kafka on the Shore” imaginative, theatrical, dramatic, and fascinating. Having read the novel, I was prepared for the puzzles of the narrative. People will be best served by taking the play as it comes and make no attempt to arrange the events into a conventional story that connects all the dots.
The production is a visual abundance of lighting effect and sudden burst of sound. The staging brings all the Steppenwolf theater’s high tech capabilities to the eye and ear, including an elevator that allows characters and props to ascend and descend through a trapdoor in the stage. The action is conducted at stage level and also on a balcony high above the stage, giving the action vertical as well as horizontal energy.
Galati directs like a man who is confident of what he wants to show on the stage, even if his production may baffle literal minded customers. The script does get a little abstract toward the end, like the audience didn’t have enough to get their arms around without a lot of mysticism being thrown at them. But the language is often poetic and there are moments of lyrical eroticism, as well as classical music, philosophy, and pop culture references. All in all, a considerable feast for the open-minded spectator.
The 10-member cast draws heavily on Asian performers. Some of the acting is a little artless but the players all seem to know exactly what they are doing in the play and their assurance encourages the viewers to go along for the ride. Francis Guinan is a hoot both as Johnny Walker and Colonel Sanders. Christopher Larkin is Kafka, a little old for the role and he often needs to project more strongly, but overall he delivers a solid performance. The remainder of the cast, most in multiple roles, consists of Christine Bunuan, Gerson Dacanay, Mary Ann de la Cruz, Jon Michael Hill, Aiko Nakasone, Andrew Pang, David Rhee (terrific as Nakata), and Lisa Tejero.
The design plaudits go to James Schuette (scenery), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), James F. Ingalls (lighting), and Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman (sound sand original music).
“Kafka on the Shore” runs through November 16 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Thursday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with matinees on Saturday and Sunday at 3p.m. There are also some Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.
The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars. Sept 2008
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
Superior Donuts
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—It’s the misfortune of Tracy Letts’s
“Superior Donuts” to open right after the playwright’s “August: OsageCounty,” now riding the wave of national acclaim.
Comparisons will be inevitable, to the detraction of “Superior Donuts.” But a
play can be very good and not be as good as “August: OsageCounty,” and “Superior Donuts” is very good. Superficially, the Letts play
resembles another new play that recently opened at the Goodman Theatre, Bret
Neveu’s “Gas for Less.” Both dramas are rooted in Chicago, each taking place in a small store that
has seen better days as the neighborhood around it changes. Both look back
nostalgically to a disappearing Chicago of mom and pop stores and a strong sense
of community amidst ethnic diversity. But “Superior Donuts” is a much better
play and it would be a shame if its many virtues were downgraded because it’s
no “August: OsageCounty.”
The play’s title refers to a seedy
little donut shop in Chicago’s Uptown area. The proprietor is a
second-generation Polish immigrant named Arthur Przybyszewski. Arthur also is
the store’s sole employee until a 21-year old African American named Franco
bumptiously enters, answering Arthur’s advertisement for a store clerk. Much of the first act is a funny
series of exchanges between the diffident Arthur, who looks like an aging
hippie, and the brash Franco. There are also encounters with a pair of police
officers come to inspect the damage caused by vandals who broke into the shop
just before the play begins. An outgoing Russian named Max owns a
DVD store next to the donut shop and wants to buy Arthur’s place to expand his
own business. A bag lady named Lady appears each morning to start her daily
routine consuming one of Arthur’s donuts. The play shifts from comedy to
melodrama with the appearance of Luther and his henchman Kevin, a pair of
hard-case bookies who seek payment from Franco for a huge gambling debt. Beneath Arthur’s mild manner the man
is sublimating some serious emotional baggage, partly centered on his broken
marriage and his alienated daughter and partly connected to his father’s
rejection after Arthur fled to Canada to avoid serving in the Vietnam War.
Arthur suppresses his psychic wounds until he finally takes a stand to redeem
his personal sense of worth with a grueling fight late in the play. “Superior Donuts” touches a lot of
theatrical bases. It’s funny, sometimes poignant, occasionally wistful, builds
to a crescendo of violence, and ends with a sense of loss modified into
redemption and an acceptance that the past belongs to the past. The play is presented realistically,
but periodically Arthur addresses the audience directly from a dimmed stage, a
device that could be artificial and mood breaking but in fact effectively works
to allow the audience a glimpse into Arthur’s soul. It might be argued that
Franco is a little too articulate and witty for a young inner city product with
limited education, but the character remains credible, and his scenes with
Arthur flow with assurance, humor, and some intensity. If “August: OsageCounty” is a turbulent symphony of a drama, then
“Superior Donuts” is a chamber work, smaller in scale but still with resonance
beneath its deceptively simple surface. The prestige of Letts’s name and the
merits of the play should earn the script a life beyond its Steppenwolf run.
But future producers would do well to retain the present cast in its entirety.
Under Tina Landau’s spot-on direction, the ensemble creates a set of flawless
performances.
Michael McKean doesn’t play Arthur, he
IS Arthur, mild manner and yielding on the outside but wrestling with his
demons within. It’s an understated performance of enormous nuance and droll
humor. Jon Michael Hill is McKean’s perfect foil as the ambitious and outspoken
but inwardly vulnerable Franco. Yasen Peyankov is just right as the Russian
with a relentless determination to acquire his portion of the American dream. A half dozen supporting actors all
make major contributions. Robert Maffia is both human and chilling as the
bookie who wants his money from Franco, or else, with backup from his flunky,
played by Cliff Chamberlain. Jane Alderman is funny and heartbreaking as the
bag lady. Kate Buddeke is fine as the lady cop who has eyes for Arthur. James
Vincent Meredith is her partner, a black man with a passion for “Star Trek.”
And in a funny cameo, Michael Garvey plays the massive young Russian Max brings
in to supply some muscle in the big fight scene in the second act. All the action takes place in Loy
Arcenas’s wonderfully atmospheric and detailed shop interior. The physical
production is further enhanced by Christopher Akerlind’s lighting, Ana
Kuzmanic’s costumes, and the sound design and original music by Rob Milburn and
Michael Bodeen.
“Superior Donuts” runs through August 17 at the Steppenwolf Theatre,1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $68. Call 312 335 1650.
The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2008 For more information about the show, visit www.steppenwolf.org. Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Carter’s Way
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—In 1935, this country was bogged down in the Great Depression, but Kansas City was booming. It was a town wide open under the control of Democratic Party machine boss Tom Pendergast, who controlled the thriving entertainment scene, notably the many jazz clubs playing the swing music that was sweeping the United States, a music partly spread by live radio broadcasts from the KC clubs and by recordings of such jazz giants as Count Basie, a Kansas City home boy.
That’s the historical and cultural background of “Carter’s Way,” a new play written and directed by Eric Simonson at the Steppenwolf Theatre. At the heart of the play is Oriole Carter, a headstrong black jazz saxophone player who lives only for his music. “Carter’s Way” is thus partly a portrait of a self-destructive genius. It’s also about a doomed interracial love affair leading to the all too predictable violent ending.
Most of the play takes place in a Kansas City jazz club called the Planet Mars operated by Peewee Abernathy, a black man trying to navigate the treacherous waters between the demands of the white world of payoff-expecting gangsters and his temperamental saxophone star. Carter is so self-involved he refuses to make records or perform on those live radio hookups, an eccentric rejection of the two most prominent paths to fame and fortune for black jazz musicians in the 1930’s.
Carter’s already unsettled life takes a fatal turbulent turn with the appearance of Eunice Fey, a young white woman attached to crime henchman Johnny Russo. Eunice dreams of becoming a professional singer. She immediately falls in love with Carter in a society that sends black men to jail for the most casual contact with white women. Once Eunice enters Carter’s life, the audience knows the musician is tagged for destruction. Eunice abandons Russo for Carter and the viewer knows it’s just a matter of time before the thug appearance to take his revenge. So the narrative turns into a “when will it happen” suspense play that distracts from a more significant exploration of race and this country’s abuse of its talented artists and the artists abuse of themselves.
“Carter’s Way” starts slowly and by the intermission it hasn’t accomplished much beyond establishing the main characters. The intensity ratchets up in the final act, leading to the anticipated violent finale. The main storyline revolves around the Carter-Eunice love affair and raises the question, Why didn’t Carter leave town with Eunice before Johnny Russo realized what was happening? That would have made sense but would also leave Simonson with no second act.
The narrative may have major credibility problems, but the production does what it can to make “Carter’s Way” work. James Vincent Meredith is a sexy, dominating Oriole Carter, the man who stands alone, scorning the friendship and good advice of people who want to help him.
As Eunice, Anne Adams evokes a young woman knocked around by life while still retaining a sense of innocence. Adams’s Eunice is both winsome and determined and even sings a more than decent blues when called upon. Keith Kupferer takes on the standard thug role as Johnny Russo but creates a convincing portrait of a man who yearns to rise to the top in the rackets but lacks the imagination to win the respect of the city boss. Russo is a repellant figure but there is also a pathos to the character who ends up as consumed by events as Oriole Carter. 
K. Todd Freeman is exemplary as Peewee Abernathy, a kind of Greek chorus who watches the narrative take its tragic turn with bemused resignation. Ora Jones, as always, is excellent, this time as Carter’s pianist and arranger, a woman who loves Carter futilely and angrily.
Robert Breuler plays Boss Jack Thorpe, the Pendergast figure, as a cultivated man growing weary of fighting off a crusading district attorney. Breuler’s Boss Thorpe senses that the times are changing and his crime days may be numbered. He doesn’t understand or like jazz, but if there is money to be made from the music, Thorpe will tolerate it.
The Steppenwolf production is outstanding, both visually and aurally. Neil Patel’s scenic design features an accumulation of authentic looking props to place the audience realistically back in the music joints of Kansas City during the Great Depression. The costumes by Karin Kopischke further enhance the show’s 1930’s look. Darrell Johnson composed the original jazz score, flawlessly faked by the Meredith and Carter’s on stage band.
As a slice of Americana “Carter’s Way” has its attractions. But the final tragic outcome is telegraphed so obviously that the plot undercuts what could have been a resonating exploration of America at a certain time and place when revolutionary music was being created in spite of racial prejudice and the evils of organized crime.
“Carter’s Way” runs through April 27 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., with 3 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $20 to $68. Call 312 335 1650.
The show gets a rating of three stars.
For more information: www.steppenwolf.org March 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
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Good Boys and True
at the Steppenwolf Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO- 'Good Boys and True' at the Steppenwolf Theatre is a jumble of ideas in search of a coherent drama. Once author Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa decides what kind of play he wants to write, he may come up with a meaningful play that holds together much better than the present version.
'Good Boys and True' is set in an elite Jesuit boys prep school in suburban Washington, D.C., in 1988. We learn at the outset that St. Joseph's is a very upper crust school, oozing wealth and privilege. The boys all plan to move on to Ivy League colleges and then take their place among the movers and shakers of American society, if not of the world.
Among these anointed students is Brandon Hardy, a 17-year old senior with two successful doctors as parents and an early acceptance at Dartmouth College in his pocket. Like the other lads at St. Joe's, Brandon has it made, until a videotape is discovered at the school portraying an anonymous young man having very explicit sex with a girl. The male in the video looks very much like Brandon from the rear. At first Brandon denies he¹s the guy in the cassette, but the news of the film spread throughout the school and, as copies of the video circulate, a full-blown scandal erupts.
To this point, 'Good Boys and True' seems to be a cautionary tale about the morality, or non-morality, that becomes part of the culture of the wealthy and privileged. These young men think they can get away with anything, including exploiting a female for sexual diversion, expecting their school and family and connections to form a safety net around them.
Brandon did a terrible thing, but as much as he manipulated the unknowing female partner of the video, he was manipulated by his father and was victimized by his school athletics coach. Those manipulations extract the fangs from a potentially disturbing examination of how wealth and privilege can morally corrupt young men, which was the best thing the play had going for it.
By the end of the evening, the play has descended to a family tale about a sterile marriage that passed on bogus values to the only child, leavened by a sense of injustice that had been lurking for 27 years, waiting to break out. The spectators leave the theater not sure what they were supposed to take from the play.
There are difficulties on the dramaturgical level. Brandon's best friend is a homosexual (the term 'gay' wasn't current in the late 1980's) named Justin Simmons, a tortured but articulate and cynical young man and an engaging character, but his relationship with Brandon seems muddled in the larger scheme of the play's narrative.
We meet the girl in the video twice, once in a flashback when Brandon picks her up at a mall, and then after the fact when she has been identified as the female half of the video sex escapade. Based on these two glimpses, it's difficult to accept that this savvy, blue collar girl would make the equivalent of a stag movie with a young man she's known for only a couple of hours, no matter how dazzled she was by Brandon's pedigree at St. Joseph's.
The performers give the play their best shot, led by Martha Lavey as Brandon's mother, trying to make sense out of a senseless scandal that could ruin her son's life. Kelli Simpkins gets in some nice wisecracks as the mother's sister and Kelly O'Sullivan does what she can with her two scenes as the victimized girl.
On the male side, Stephen Louis Grush looks a little old as the teen-aged preppy Brandon but he makes the lad credible enough. John Procaccino is strong as the coach until he reveals his plot twist, at which point I stopped believing in the character. Tim Rock, who bears an eerie resemblance to actor Steve Carrell, does very well as Justin Simmons, the most complex character in the play.
Pam MacKinnon directs with unforced realism but she can't paper over the potholes in the storyline. Technical credits are fine from Todd Rosenthal (set design), Nan Cibula-Jenkins (costumes), Ann G. Wrightson (lighting), and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen (original music and sound).
'Good Boys and True' runs through February 16 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There will be 2 p.m. matinees added on January 23 and 30 and February 6. The show gets a rating of three stars.
For more information: www.steppenwolf.org Jan, 2008
Contact us : zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.