Abigail’s Party At
A Red Orchid Theatre By Dan Zeff CHICAGO—There are
two parties going in “Abigail’s Party.” The gathering of the play’s title is
rollicking off stage where a group of teenagers seem to be having a great time.
The other is an adult affair on the stage of A Red Orchid Theatre, a ghastly
affair presided over by Beverly, the hostess from Hell. “Abigail’s Party” was written in 1977 by Mike Leigh, an
English writer better known in the United States for his movies (“Secrets &
Lies,” “Topsy-Turvy”). The play is a funny and rancid send-up of the middle
class English. That sounds like a parochial premise of small interest to an
American audience, but Leigh transcends national cultural boundaries with his
scintillating dialogue and grotesque but entertaining characters.
Leigh has written a spot-on satire that I suspect never
looked or sounded better in England than it does at A Red Orchid. It’s early in
2010 to anoint any show as production of the year, but this staging sets the
bar very high for the rest of Chicagoland theater companies. The play takes place in the living room of a residence in
suburban London, where Beverly and Laurence preside over a small gathering for
an evening of chat, drinking, and listening to LPs. The guest list consists of
Angela and Tony, a young married couple recently moved into the neighborhood,
and an older single mother named Susan, the parent of Abigail, the 15-year old
girl sponsoring the party next door. Beverly is the engine that drives the play, a brash, vulgar
thirty something woman who bullies her party guests, and her woebegone husband,
with superficial good cheer. Beverly is one of those annoying, abrasive figures
who never takes no for an answer. She’ll force cigarettes on people trying to
quit smoking, and repeatedly tops off the glasses of people who don’t want, or
need, any more alcohol ion their systems. She belittles her husband and
intimidates her guests, especially the passive Susan. Beverly, with her
stentorian voice and manner, can make any house guest cringe in defensive
embarrassment. The guests try to be civil and polite, only to be mowed down by
Beverly’s relentless and domineering good cheer.
There is no real plot in “Abigail’s Party.” The narrative
interest resides in the skillful way that Leigh peels away the outer layers of
his characters’ personalities. We recognize almost immediately that Laurence
and Beverly are horrendously mismatched as husband and wife. Tony and Angela
seem pleasant enough at the outset but gradually their marital discontents are
revealed. Poor Susan is the only likable person in the play but her timid
sensitivity is no match for Beverly’s aggressive backslapping. Beverly herself may be lonely and unhappy beneath her
abrasive façade, at least we hope so. This is one disagreeable woman and we
rejoice in any misery that life may visit on her. “Abigail’s Party” demands ensemble playing of the very
highest order, like what the play receives in the stunning A Red Orchid
revival. Kirsten Fitzgerald is remarkable as Beverly. Fitzgerald is a tall,
heavyset woman and her imposing physique meshes perfectly with Beverly’s
overwhelming demeanor. Fitzgerald delivers a titanic performance and any area
theater contemplating a revival of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” (which shares
some similarities with “Abigail’s Party”) need look no farther for the perfect
Martha. The other four performers complement Fitzgerald perfectly. As
Laurence, Larry Grimm creates a vivid portrait of a man of some culture and
sensibility drowning in the atmosphere of bad taste created by his wife. Mierka
Girten (Angela) and Danny McCarthy (Tony) are just right as a couple with the
fissures of their marriage already starting to crack wide open. And Natalie
West is funny and pathetic and heartbreaking as Susan, the type of
self-effacing, nice person who is red meat for a predator like Beverly. Shade Murray directs with a strong sense of pace, unspooling
the dialogue and confrontations like the audience is eavesdropping on a real
party, with all its comic horrors. Daniel Stratton designed a nicely detailed
living room interior that fits comfortably within the ultra intimate Red Orchid
playing area. Melissa Torchia designed the costumes. Her outfit for Beverly
instantly brands the woman as the vulgarian she is. Samantha Szigeti designed
the lighting and Joe Court the sound. Special commendation goes to Eva Breneman, the dialect coach.
To my uneducated ear, all the performers nailed their working class English
accents, essential to establishing the social ambience of the play. “Abigail’s Party” runs through March 28 at A Red Orchid
Theatre, 1531 North Wells Street. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at
8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $25 and $30. Call 312 943 8722 or visit
www.aredorchidtheatre.org. The show gets a rating of four stars. February 2010
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Mistakes Were Made
At A Red Orchid Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—“Mistakes Were Made” has its flaws, but it allows Michael Shannon to deliver a stunning performance, so all is forgiven.
The play is installed in the snug little A Red Orchid Theatre where it has become a very tough ticket. And no wonder. First, Shannon, a Red Orchid company mainstay, has become a major actor on the Hollywood scene after being nominated for an Academy Award last year for his role in “Revolutionary Road.” Local audiences have always been quick to react to the presence of a celebrity in their midst.
Second, the buzz is out that Shannon is astounding in the one-actor play. The virtuosity of Shannon’s performance, especially in the up-close-and-personal environment of the Red Orchid theatre, makes the show a must see not only for celebrity watchers but for anyone interested in state-of-the-art acting.
Shannon plays a theater producer named Felix Artifex. The entire action takes place in his disheveled office where Felix feverishly is attempting to get a new play called “Mistakes Were Made” ready for production. The play is a spectacle about the French Revolution and a preposterous choice for Broadway, but Felix is undeterred in his zeal to put all the pieces together to get the show on a stage.
Felix is the only person on the stage (except for a cameo appearance by his secretary late in the play) but the play is still crowded with characters, all of whom exist on the other end of the telephone. They include a temperamental movie star Felix is trying to flatter into starring in the new play, the artsy playwright, the pretentious director, the overwrought designer, and a clutch of people involved in a bizarre subplot involving 10 truckloads of sheep in the Middle East.
The tone throughout the play is one of frenzy as Felix fights one brush fire after another, lying and cajoling over the phone while he pops pills to keep his motor running. Shannon is not only brilliant as Felix, but he has a remarkable ability to flesh out the overbearing and furious people at the other end of the phone. By the conclusion of the play we feel like we know movie star Johnny Bledsoe with his inflated ego and Steve Nelson, the playwright from the Midwest who mistakenly thinks that Broadway is about art and artistic integrity and not commercial compromise.
The play is often bull’s-eye funny and satirical about the theater and the people who inhabit it. Shannon sustains the script’s humor and the satire even though the story has no real narrative arc. It just lurches from crisis to crisis in a spiral of absurdity and frenzy. And therein lies one of the script’s problems. It gets to be too much of a muchness. The show runs 1 hour and 40 minutes without an intermission and should be blue-penciled down by 20 or 25 minutes.
The play also needs a better ending. The script turns dark and despairing near the end, an emotional jolt that doesn’t mesh well with the free wheeling frenetic comedy that precedes it. Felix suddenly descends from a hilariously desperate manipulator and facilitator into a tragic anti-hero, but the emotional shift in gears doesn’t work.
Still, for the bulk of the show, Shannon rivals Zero Mostel and Nathan Lane in the Hall of Fame of magnificent theatrical con men, except that Shannon’s Felix really loves the theater and has a grasp of how it works on the ground, not in the airy artistic fantasies of an ivory tower playwright. There is enough truth in “Mistakes Were Made” to make the audience ponder how any play finally makes it to opening night.
The only other live human in the play is Esther (Mierka Girten), the secretary, whose stressed voice is heard over the intercom alerting Felix that still another outraged or impatient caller is on the line demanding instant attention. There is even a tropical fish named Denise in a tank on stage who plays a role as Felix’s confidante.
Tom Burch’s marvelously rumpled set perfectly captures Felix’s physical environment of barely organized chaos. Tiffany Bullard designed the costumes, Matt Gawryk the lighting, and Joseph Fosco the sound. Dexter Bullard’s directing keeps the basically one-note turmoil of the story buoyant with sweaty comedy and clever in-jokes until the storyline takes its wrong turn at the end.
The problems with “Mistakes Were Made” can be easily addressed. A judicious trimming and a rethinking of the final 10 minutes should polish the script nicely. But as long as Shannon is in the show, all script blemishes are obliterated by a performance to be wondered at and treasured.
“Mistakes Were Made” runs through October 31 at the A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 North Wells Street. Performances are Thursday through Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 3 p.m. Tickets are $30. Call 312 943 8722 or visit www.aredorchidtheatre.org. Sept.2009
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com