The Misanthrope
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago - “The Misanthrope” at the Court Theatre is a high-risk revival, with director Charles Newell taking a fresh approach to Moliere’s seventeenth century classic comedy. Some of the risks can be disputed, but any quibbles fall away before the superlative performance by Erik Hellman in the title role.
Hellman plays Alceste, a man who despises the hypocrisy and falsity of his society and fearlessly lets everyone know about it. He is totally omitted to telling the unvarnished truth, leaving bruised egos and vanities in his wake and naturally creating enemies. Alceste isn’t just a malcontent. The society of his day was drenched in backbiting and malice. People maneuvered for power and prestige, always ready to plunge the verbal knife in a rival’s back.
It’s this world that Alceste cannot
abide. Unfortunately, he passionately loves a coquette named Celimene who is
just as false and dishonest as the vipers he so fiercely attacks. But love must
have its way, so Alceste is doubly afflicted, outraged by the frivolous society
around him and emotionally tied to one of that society’s most flagrant
representatives.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Alceste is typically portrayed as a comic figure, cutting a faintly ludicrous figure as he carries honesty to the extremes that will make him an outcast in society. Hellman gets his laughs as Alceste mocks a sonnet composed by the pompous Oronte, who is also his rival for Celimene’s love. But Hellman elevates Alceste beyond a two-dimensional scold. We feel the man’s pain as he witnesses the moral corruption around him and his agony as he struggles with his passion for the unworthy Celimene. Without neglecting the humor in the character, Hellman uncovers the humanity in Alceste, lifting the play to near tragedy toward the end. It’s fascinating to watch, and when Alceste flees society at the end of the play to retire to a disillusioned seclusion, our heart and sympathy go with him.
Hellman’s triumphant performance dominates the play and when Alceste isn’t on stage the production slows down perceptible. There isn‘t much plot in “The Misanthrope.” It’s mostly arguments as characters relentlessly criticize each other and after a while it gets repetitive. What saves the production from serious dead spots is the delectable rhymed couplet translation by Richard Wilbur, now the standard version for English language presentations in its incomparable feast of crackling rhymes. Give the Court ensemble credit for speaking the rhymes as language and not as singsong doggerel.
The physical staging is perplexing. The Jacqueline Firkins costume designs emphasize gold patterns on dark fabrics and don’t convey any sense of time or place. The look is vaguely seventeenth century (the play opened in 1666) but the wardrobe concept is distracting rather than illuminating. The ensemble is heavily African American (Hellman is white), which is no problem as far as acting skills are concerned, but if any racial point was being proposed by the casting, it eluded me. The racial element may be more pronounced in the Court revival of “Tartuffe,” which follows “The Misanthrope.” That production will be located in the Hyde Park/Kenwood area of Chicago’s heavily black south side.
Director Newell also ends the play on the wrong foot. Alceste’s departure in despair should be the final note struck, but instead we see an emotionally distraught Celimene alone on the stage as the lights fade to black. But it’s not Celimene’s fate that concerns us. True, her insincerity has been exposed through a series of letters she wrote condemning certain of her associates, but she’s a survivor who will do just fine in the morally corrupt world of her day. We should leave the theater with the image of Alceste departing in despair for a hermit’s life, defeated by the malignancy of society and his inability to control his passion for Celimene.
The supporting cast is well up to the mark. Grace Gealey is properly fetching and devious as the faithless Celimene, who rejects Alceste’s proposal to run away from the falsity that surrounds them to a quiet, honest life. It’s the frivolous, phony society for her. Kamal Angelo Bolden is fine as Philinte, Alceste’s one good friend and a voice of moderation who begs Alceste to temper his tell-it-like-it-is verbal assaults, to no effect. The estimable A. C. Smith is a pleasure as the poet who claims he seeks honesty in Alceste’s critique of his sonnet and turns venomous at Alceste’s withering assessment of the trashy poem.
Patrese McClain plays Eliante, Celimene’s cousin, a decent and affectionate young woman who would happily love Alceste if he would let her. Travis Turner and Michael Pogue play denizens of the brittle and malicious society that so antagonizes Alceste. Allen Gilmore delivers one of the more convincing female impersonation acting jobs I’ve ever seen.
John Culbert designed the basic set
with its abstract floor design. Keith Parham is the lighting designer and Andre
Pluess and Josh Horvath designed the sound.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Audiences willing to settle for comedy will find laughs aplenty in the Court revival. There is much pleasure in watching smarmy people trade high-flown insults. But Hellman gives “The Misanthrope” a depth and intensity too easily missed in versions satisfied to go for the laughs and reduce Alceste to a figure of fun, both as a social critic and as a lover. Not everything in the Court staging works, but Newell has put his stamp on a stimulating evening that virtually reinvents the play as long as Hellman, with his superior melding of anguish and humor, is on stage.
“The Misanthrope” runs through June 9 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars May 2013
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Skylight
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago- “Skylight” is one of those rare dramas that deal brilliantly with both intensely personal matters and issues of wider social importance.
“Skylight” a long play that reunites two people over the course of a single evening as they examine a relationship that suddenly ended, causing both people much pain and emotional confusion. One character is Kyra Hollis, a 30-year old single woman teaching underprivileged children in a London area slum. The other is Tom Sergeant, a wealthy 50-year old London restaurateur and widower. For six years they were lovers while Kyra lived in Tom’s home as a much loved companion to Tom’s wife, Alice, and their two children. Then Kyra suddenly walked out on the family.
As the play begins, three years have elapsed since Kyra’s departure from the Sergeant household. She’s had no contact with any member of family during that time and now, in one evening, she receives unexpected and separate visits first from Edward, Tom’s 18-year old son, and then from Tom himself.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Edward appears at the beginning and end of the story, his presence providing a kind of prologue and epilogue to the main action, which consists of Kyra and Tom revisiting their relationship with much heat and acrimony mingled with moments of sexual passion.
Kyra had entered the Sergeant family by pure chance. She started out as a waitress in one of Tom’s restaurants and quickly captured the affections of both Tom and Alice. She lived with the family, who relied on her for practical help and as an emotional bulwark. It was a happy arrangement until Alice discovered the affair between Kyra and Tom. Kyra immediately left. Alice developed cancer and died two years after Kyra’s flight, her agonizing decline leaving Tom steeped in guilt.
So much for the back story. The play takes place one winter night in Kyra’s ramshackle apartment in a dingy London neighborhood. After some preliminary small talk, Tom and Kyra take the scalpel to their shared past. Tom and Edward both still burn with resentment at Kyra’s abrupt departure three years earlier. She was the glue that held the Sergeants together and her absence sent the family into a tailspin.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Tom grew up in a working class environment. Kyra was from a more privileged background. Now Tom lives within the moneyed business class and Kyra struggles to inject some semblance of education into the lower depths of British youth. The couple go at each other like feverish tennis players, batting accusations back and forth across a psychological net. Kyra believes she is contributing something meaningful to society against horrific odds. She scorns Tom’s upper class for its refusal to commitment anything to the struggle except patronizing criticism. Tom insists that Kyra has a martyr complex, throwing her life away in a useless fight, just to prove some personal point to herself. He wants her back to live a life of comfort and security with him.
That simplified description of the narrative doesn’t do justice to the densely textured verbal confrontations between Kyra and Tom. Each makes points that sound unassailable until the other responds persuasively with equal conviction. What makes the play so engrossing is playwright David Hare’s skill at interweaving the personal with broader social issues so seamlessly. Each character attacks the other’s lifestyle and attitude toward society, but in human terms, not as talking points in an abstract debate. Kyra admits she has always loved Tom and loves him still, but she refuses to compromise her sense of duty to the less fortunate. Tom has an aching need for Kyra and can’t fathom her determination to live in squalor and devoting herself to teaching the unteachable. It’s a stalemate that delivers only pain for each party.
In the Court production, Laura Rook plays Kyra and Philip Earl Johnson plays Tom. Under William Brown’s directing, “Skylight” is mostly Kyra’s play. Rook gives the more forceful performance and thus Kyra’s side of the arguments is more convincing. Johnson’s Tom is an appealing, genial character, a bit fey, a bit sexist, finding Kyra’s idealism impossible to accept or even understand. I can envision a production in which Tom is a commanding, intimidating figure, with a more insecure Kyra withering under his biting humor and skepticism. The Court interpretation is justifiable, and so is a version that makes Tom the power character. That richness of possibility is part of why “Skylight” is a great play.
Much credit also goes to Matt Farabee as Edward, a rootless teenager at odds with his father and feeling betrayed by Kyra’s departure, removing the only stabilizing element in his young and unsettled life.
Todd Rosenthal has converted the Court Theatre stage into Kyra’s spacious but shabby apartment, complete with working kitchen in which Kyra and Tom prepare a spaghetti dinner in front of the audience (it smelled delicious). Rachel Anne Healy designed the costumes, Jesse Klug the lighting, and Andrew Hansen the sound (including the repeated buzz of Kyra’s apartment doorbell that becomes a complementary character).
The play’s title is perplexing. Tom built a luxurious sickroom for Alice that included a skylight that connected the dying woman to the outside world. If that skylight is a symbol that elucidates the meaning of the play, it eluded me. But Hare’s play doesn’t invite one interpretation. It’s a complex work that can change emotional colors depending on the acting and directing. To engage an audience’s attention for more than 2½ hours of constant conversation with very little physical action is a notable achievement.
David Hare rose to prominence in the British theater during the late twentieth century for his aggressive left wing political dramas. There bis no political preaching in “Skylight.” While Hare explores incendiary issues of class in the Britain of the day (the play opened in 1995), he never loses focus on the searing personal struggles of two sympathetic but conflicted characters who unfortunately aren’t able to live their lives on the same page. Great stuff!
“Skylight” runs through February 10 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com January 20, 2013
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James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago –James Joyce is not usually considered a source of Christmas cheer, but the great Irish author did write one Christmas piece of sorts, a short story called “The Dead” that appeared in his story collection “Dubliners.” The tale was adapted into a musical that had a decent run in off and on Broadway in 1999 and 2000. The Court Theatre presented the show in 2002 and 2003 and is now reviving “The Dead” in a tweaked and much improved version.
“The Dead” takes place in Dublin on January 6, 1904, during the Feast of the Epiphany. The occasion is the annual holiday party given by a pair of elderly sisters, Julia and Kate Morkan. The sisters are hosting 10 guests and the audience needs a scorecard to identify all the characters and their relationships (the playbill provides a helpful listing that spectators should prudently absorb before the show begins). In addition to the hostesses, the partygoers includes family members nephew Gabriel Conroy and his wife Gretta, and niece Mary Ann. The guests are rounded out by friends Mr. Browne, Mrs. Malins and her son Freddy, and Molly Ivors, as well as a celebrity opera singer named Bartell D’Arcy, and two music students named Michael and Rita. Lily, the Morkan maid, rounds out the personnel.
There is much bustle during “The Dead,” but little meaningful happens. There is considerable singing and some dancing, a bit of storytelling, a toast, and a little bickering. The musical runs for about 1 hour and 45 intermissionless minutes, during which time the characters gather, interact, and then depart into the night as the party ends. The narrative is presented as a memory play narrated by the rather chilly Gabriel many years later. The only really dramatic event occurs in the final moments. As Gabriel and Gretta ready themselves for bed in a local hotel, the wife tearfully confesses that she had a doomed romance many years ago with a 17-year old lad named Michael Furey who died of unrequited love. The confession devastates Gabriel and the show ends on that somber note.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
The casting at the Court is flawless. The dialogue may be casual but when spoken with an Irish accent the language somehow converts into poetry and the most banal lines sound witty and eloquent. And the entire Court cast delivered their brogues impeccably. But the glory of “The Dead” resides in the musical score by Shaun Davey and the lyrics by Davey and book author Richard Nelson. The music is an eclectic blend of traditional Irish songs, lyrics adapted from Irish poetry and the James Joyce short story, and original numbers by Nelson and Davey. Virtually every character on stage sings at least one showcase number, with the first among equals being Mary Ernster in her sympathetic and sensitive portrayal of Julia Morkan. Susie McMonagle has some golden vocal moments as Gretta, and J. Michael Finley delivers a potent operatic number as D’Arcy.
The most entertaining portrayal of the night comes from Rob Lindley as the alcoholic young Freddy Malins. Normally stage drunks are thoroughly unappealing, but Lindley’s Freddy is funny, passionate, innocently gauche, and poignant. Philip Earl Johnson gives a praiseworthy performance as Gabriel Conroy, our guide through the musical and the character most altered by the end of the show. But the entire ensemble deserves listing on the ensemble honor roll—Anne Gunn as Kate Morkan, Regina Leslie as Mary Jane, Suzanne Gillen as the maid, Steve Tomlitz as Mr. Browne, Lara Filip as Molly Ivors, Jim DeSelm as Michael, Rachel Klippel as Rita and a recreation of Julia as a young girl in a dream sequence, and Rebecca Finnegan as Freddy’s starchy mother.
In a deft twist, the characters provide the musical accompaniment, with Leslie playing violin, Gillen the flute, DeSelm the guitar, ands Tomlitz the cello. Other characters join in from time to time on hand held drums. Musical director Doug Peck sits discreetly at the rear of the stage, playing the piano with his back to the audience. Cumulatively the musicians produce a folkish sound that beautifully enhances the elegiac, nostalgic flavor of the entire enterprise.
Director Charles Newell creates some striking stage pictures as he arranges groups of actors on various areas of the stage. The set by Scott Davis is minimal, with doorways at the rear and a mostly open area thrusting into the audience, occupied by tables and chairs moved on and off the stage by the ensemble. Linda Roethke’s costumes perfectly evoke the turn of the last century aura of the period. Josh Horvath designed the sound and Jennifer Tipton the lighting.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Because of the absence of vigorous physical activity (other than the dancing), “The Dead” has been called a Chekhovian musical, with the emotions seething below the ordinary surface of the narrative in the subtle Chekhov manner. Some viewers could find the lack of action tedious and the entire enterprise boring, however commendable the performances. This is a charge that could be leveled at the 2002 Court staging (I took a pass on the 2003 production). The beauty of “The Dead” may be in the eye and ear of the beholder but I think the production is brilliant.
“James Joyce’s ‘The Dead’” runs through December 9 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars. November 2012
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Angels In America
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago –When Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America” plays opened locally at the Royal George Theatre in 1994 they provided a stunning viewing experience. In two sprawling works Kushner brought alive the American national scene of the 1980’s and early 1990’s, mixing raw naturalism with fantasy, dreams, visions, and hallucinations It was a dazzling achievement that was worth every minute of nearly seven hours of cumulative playing time.
The Court Theatre has accepted the enormous challenge of reviving the Kushner plays in a brilliant production that showcases the best in Chicagoland acting and stagecraft. The two plays still require that massive audience investment of time if seen on the same day. The only question is, Do the plays hold up after that astonishing 1994 Royal George premiere. The equivocal answer is, Sometimes but not always.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Kushner subtitled the two “Angel” plays “A Gay Fantasia on National Themes.” All the male characters in both plays—“Angels in America: Millennium Approaches” and “Angels in America: “Perestroika”—are homosexual, though a couple of them are initially in denial. The plays are heavily weighted toward gay love affairs, often sexually graphic, but Kushner also injects trenchant observations on race and politics in America along with explorations of the nature of God and the topography of heaven, neither exploration very favorable toward their subjects.
The core characters are a mix of real life and fictional figures. The dominant real life character is lawyer Roy Cohn, one of the most powerful and detested figures of the McCarthy era of the 1950’s. The major fictional character is a drag queen named Prior Walter, with his tangled romantic relations with politically liberal Louis Ironson and an arch conservative Republic Mormon named Joe Pitt. The other key characters are Joe Pitt’s mentally unstable wife Harper, Joe’s mother Hannah, an angel who ascends periodically from the rafters in a blinding and deafening crescendo of light and sound, and a black gay hospital nurse named Belize.
The action takes place during the period of 1985 and 1986 with an epilogue set in January 1990. The play consists of a series of short scenes usually confined to two or three characters. The location centers mostly in Washington, D.C., but in the fantasy scenes the scene shifts to Antarctica and even heaven.
When the two plays first appeared in the early 1990’s, AIDS was a dominant and traumatic topic in American life, with the disease scourging the gay community. Prior Walter has AIDS and his death seems inevitable and imminent. Roy Cohn also has AIDS but refuses to consider himself a homosexual and insists that he is really suffering from liver cancer.
Kushner wears his liberalism on his dramatic sleeve. His commentary on the personalities of the conservative Regan years is satiric and biting. In “Angels,” the Republicans of the Regan administration are smug, power-hungry, greedy, and intolerant, and Roy Cohn is their poster boy. Cohn is a fascinating character study, a brutal, corrupt, hateful figure but a man with the wit and intelligence to entertain the audience his every moment on stage. In Larry Yando’s breathtakingly virtuoso performance, Cohn is almost endearing in his single minded lust for power and his open disregard for the niceties of the law.
The twin themes of AIDS and the Regan years have retreated in the past two decades from national preoccupations to national history. Kushner’s plays exploded on the American scene 20 years ago to rub the country’s noses in the horror of the AIDS epidemic and the sleaze of right wing political manipulations. The language was raw and the visual images of gay sex were startling and controversial for the time.
Today, the immediacy of the “Angels” themes has diminished and that may cost something in audience emotional response. References to Kate Smith, Shirley Booth, and Jean Kirkpatrick likely will draw a blank for a large percentage of spectators. In addition, scenes, especially in “Perestroika,” have a mystical quality that I found very elusive in 1994 and even more elusive at the Court. “Perestroika” appears in a newly revised version, but the ambiguities remain and its long first act scene between Prior and the Angel is awash in apocalyptic purple prose that sounds eloquent and profound but makes little sense.
In spite of the murkiness of the fantasy scenes the writing holds the viewer, even as the clock ticks toward midnight in “Perestroika.” There is a literacy and an urgency and a quirky humor in Kushner’s writing that will fascinate the attentive viewer. The shifts from reality to a surreal atmosphere flow naturally. “Perestroika” runs about 45 minutes longer than “Millennium,” and could profit from blue penciling. But there wasn’t a moment in either play when I was bored, and given the density of the material, that’s quite a tribute.
Charles Newell’s direction is fluid, resourceful, and in full control of the script. If there are scenes that are cloudy in their meaning, blame the writing and not Newell’s insightful guidance. He uses the entire theater, from the aisles (with the actors scooting across the back of the house to position themselves for their next entrance) to the bi-level set designed by John Culbert. Both plays are mostly talk, but the staging injects a feeling of movement that keeps the shows buoyant and energized.
Newell has assembled a flawless cast of eight, all playing multiple roles. First among equals is Yando, from his cynical early scenes to his frightful death throes as the play concludes. But the story gradually focuses on Prior, a young man terrified by his agonizing approaching death and bitter at the departure of his lover Louis Ironson when Prior needs him the most. Rob Lindley’s performance is a delicate balance of fear, anger, vulnerability, and finally, strength.
Photo Credit: Michael Brosilow
Heidi Kettenring superbly manages Harper Pitt’s shifts from reality into fantasy. Harper is trapped in a loveless marriage and her release into a world of Vallium-induced fantasy is credible, funny, and painful.
Geoff Packard is outstanding as Joe Pitt, the model of pristine Mormon conservatism who finally finds emotional liberation by recognizing he is a gay man imprisoned in a hyper-straight lifestyle. Mary Beth Fisher is a stylish Angel among other roles, confidently floating in mid air by barely visibly cables. Eddie Bennett is a tragi-comic figure of Jewish guilt and political passion as Louis Aronson. Hollis Resnik is excellent as Joe Pitt’s no-nonsense Mormon mother from Salt Lake City, and Michael Pogue is terrific as the cynical Belize, especially in his verbal sparring with the bigoted and hospitalized Roy Cohn
The designers are required to make essential contributions to the production and they all come up big. In addition to Culbert, they consist of Nan Cibula Jenkins (costumes), Keith Parham (lighting), Joshua Horvath and Kevin O’Donnell (sound), and Mike Tutaj and Rasean Davonte Johnson (projections).
The “Angel in America” storyline may meander and Kushner’s more spiritual ideas are a long way from clear, but the shows still form some kind of masterpiece, for their ambition, their invention, and their vibrant writing. The plays can be enjoyed separately, but for the maximum impact, patrons should set aside those seven hours to absorb the experience in one shot. We may not see a production at this level again for a long time, so the moment should be seized.
“Angels in America” runs through June 3 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Tickets are $45 to $65 for each play. Performance dates vary. For schedule information, call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. April 2012
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Invisible Man
At the Court Theatre
by Dan Zeff
Chicago – Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” is a complex, panoramic, symbolic novel that’s an unlikely candidate for adaptation to the stage. It’s a sprawling work crowded with characters and incidents and drenched in the author’s densely textured prose and his elusive view of the plight of black people in American society. That makes for a daunting and possibly unwinnable challenge for an adapter. “Invisible Man” is a classic on the printed page but it struggles for coherence in live action, at least in the Court Theatre’s ambitious presentation.
The Court‘s world premiere version runs three hours with two intermissions. It’s a brave try that should please patrons familiar with the original. For others, the play can be murky, confusing, and ultimately tedious. But the most vociferous critic of the adaptation will have nothing but praise for the heroic performance by Teagle Bougere in the title role.
Photo by: Michael Brosilow
“Invisible Man” traces an unnamed young African American’s search for his identity in modern American society. The man is the narrator and chief character in the story, which begins in the Deep South and travels to the Harlem district in New York City.
The invisible man tells his story as a flashback as he nests in his bizarre home beneath the streets of New York City, a large room illuminated by hundreds of lights powered by electric current stolen from the city power company.
The man’s story begins on the campus of a black college in the South. The man is brimming with youthful optimism and wholesome hopes for the future, but he is betrayed by the unscrupulous president of the university, who sends him North with sealed letters of introduction that will ruin any changes for employment.
In New York City, the invisible man is manipulated by both white and black forces. He ends up as a spokesman for a Communist-style organization and competes against a militant black nationalist group. Finally, disillusioned and bitter, the man burrows into his hole beneath the ground where he tells his story directly to the audience.
Adaptor Oren Jacoby cherry-picks major incidents from the novel. Many of the episodes are portrayed with considerable dramatic power and vivid stagecraft, but they lack connective narrative tissue. It’s difficult to follow the story as the man is buffeted by social forces beyond his control and often beyond his understanding. The dramatic arc largely fails to coherently trace the invisible man from naïve optimist to eloquent orator and finally a person who buries himself in his hole. Much happens but little makes overall narrative sense. The invisible man’s continual references to his search for identity are difficult to grasp, though his identity crisis forms the crux of the novel.
Photo by: Michael Brosilow
Ellison published his novel in 1952 and the action time frame, though unspecified, takes place during the 1930’s and 1940’s. That gave the story a certain immediacy when it first came out. But much of that immediacy is dissipated six decades later. The flood of more than 20 characters often becomes a blur as the viewer tries to follow the many episodes, some naturalistic and some hallucinatory and nightmarish. For some audiences the play will be exciting, and for others boring and pointless.
The Court has assembled a cast of 10 to portray the multiple characterizations and ensemble. Teagle Bougere is remarkable as the invisible man. He is on stage virtually the entire play and delivers a majority of the play’s lines (all the words come from Ellison’s novel). The role is immensely demanding from a physical standpoint and requires enormous skill in articulating the invisible man’s transformation from gullible young idealist to cynical dropout. If the man’s many character permutations don’t coalesce, it’s not Bougere’s fault. He gives a resourceful, dynamic performance, as good as we’ll see all season
Christopher McElroen’s directing keeps the pace brisk, sometimes dizzying, especially when the performers move portable doorways around the stage in a high energy square dance of props. McElroen guides the complex production smoothly from scene to scene, fighting an ultimately losing battle against the herky-jerky nature of the adaptation.
The supporting cast does flow from character to character and location to location with commendable precision. The ensemble consists of Lance Stuart Baker, Kimm Beavers, Tracey Bonner,Chris Boykin, Kenn E. Head, Bill McGough, Paul Oakley Stoval, A. C. Smith, and Julia Watt. They all have highlight moments, they all work well together, and they all seem to understand what’s happening on stage even when the audience is struggling to make sense of the fragmented narrative.
The designers include Troy Hourie (sets), Jacqueline Firkins (costumes), John Culbert (lighting), and Josh Horvath (sound). They have combined to create a production of considerable visual and aural dynamism.
This is the first time “Invisible Man” has been dramatized and it’s understandable why it’s taken this long for a theater to take on the novel. Possibly a production a couple of hours longer would clarify the narrative thrust of the story, but where is the audience for a five-hour play? Bougere’s performance will be enticement enough to bring in connoisseurs of fine acting. And the play does supply those fine individual moments, but not enough to sustain an entire evening.
“Invisible Man” runs through February 19 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars, largely for Bougere’s performance. January 2012
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An Iliad
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – The spectator is likely to leave the Court Theatre after Timothy Edward Kane’s stunning performance in “An Iliad” marveling how the actor can do this show seven times a week. One-actor shows are by their nature demanding, but “An Iliad” is an exceptionally staggering test of a performer’s physical and emotional resources—90 uninterrupted minutes of the most volcanic storytelling.
“An Iliad” is a retelling of the famous epic “The Iliad” attributed to the ancient Greek poet Homer. The epic has been adapted by Denis O’Hare and Lisa Peterson from a highly praised modern translation by Robert Fagles.
Homer’s epic
portrays the last days of the Trojan War between the invading Greek armies and
the city of Troy. At the time the poem opens the two warring sides had been at
it for nine bloody and exhausting years. Homer tells how the Greeks, led by
their hero warrior Achilles, finally overwhelmed the Trojans.
The adaptation is not a straight reading of “The Iliad,” or at least what can be accommodated in a 90-minute play. For “Iliad” idolaters, the Court sponsored a 24-hour “Homerathon,” a 24-hour reading of the complete epic on the Court stage.
The adaptation mixes excerpts from the poem with modern interjections, a few of them comic and flippant but most of them stark contemporary commentaries on the hell that is warfare.
Kane plays a nameless poet dressed in grungy modern clothes. Todd Rosenthal’s set conveys the crumbling ramparts of a city wall, two levels separated by a steep incline. Kane frequently dashes up and down the incline at some hazard, never missing a beat in his narration.
Kane addresses the audience directly throughout the evening, starting with some banter (and a few quotations from the ancient Greek) before launching into his story. Kane covers the essential narrative points in the epic, how Achilles petulantly retired to his tent and refused to fight after being insulted by the Greek military leader Agamemnon. With Achilles removed from the action, the Trojans, led by Hector, drive the Greek forces to the edge of the sea. But after his friend Patroclus dies in battle, the enraged Achilles returns to fight and leads a massacre of the Trojans and the death of Hector.
The final scene portrays King Priam’s supplication to Achilles for the body of his son Hector so the man could receive an honorable Trojan burial. It’s a beacon of humanity in a story largely devoted to carnage and political infighting.
The adaptation extends Homer’s story into a condemnation of mankind’s insatiable lust for war throughout human history. The most remarkable moment in the play comes when Kane recites a litany of wars from ancient times to today’s conflict in Afghanistan. It’s an astounding feat of memory as well as a stirring cautionary statement that war has always been with us, in all times and in all places.
Kane has thoroughly invested himself in the story as he roams around the stage, shouting and whispering and gesticulating as the narrative shifts in mood, and occasionally pausing to drink from a canteen while he collects himself emotionally. Kane brings the story alive in all its sweep and violence. In the process. he makes the story of “The Iliad” both accessible and relevant to the modern spectator. For middle school and high school students, Kane’s performance would be a wonderful introduction to one of the great works of world literature.
Kane operates within a striking physical production of theatrical lighting and mood-enhancing sound. The lighting varies from a single match flickering in a darkened theater to a blinding searchlight and dramatic expressionist effects. Kane is in continual motion. Often he descends to the front of the stage, talking intimately to the audience. Another time he retreats to the rear of the stage, speaking from halfway up an iron ladder. This is the most animated one-person play I’ve ever seen.
Charles Newell directs the show. How much of the action comes from Newell and how much emerges directly from Kane is impossible for the spectator to identify. But the performance comes across as a seamless whole, unfolding with riveting inevitability. It’s a marvel of commitment from a talented actor at the top of his game. The Court has captured theatrical lightning in a bottle in this extraordinary merging of a brilliant performance with one of literature’s great stories.
For the record, Keith Parham designed the extraordinary and complex lighting, Andre Pluess the haunting sound, and Rachel Healy the costume. They all share honorably in one of the events of the season in Chicagoland theater.
“An Iliad” runs through December 11 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Spunk
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – First “Porgy and Bess” in the spring and now “Spunk.” The Court Theatre really knows how to nail stories about poor black folks in the Deep South during the last century.
“Spunk” consists of three short stories by Zora Neale Hurston as adapted for the stage by George C. Wolfe. Hurston did write a story called “Spunk” but it’s not included in the threesome at the Court Theatre. The plays are small and intimate but they come up big on the Court stage with their irresistible blend of blues singing and guitar playing, warmth, humor, and sentiment, leavened with moments of high drama.
All three short plays explore male-female relationships in some manner. In “Sweat,” the first and most serious of the trio, a poor woman physically and emotionally abused by her lay-about husband struggles to find the strength to carry on. The third play, “The Gilded Six-Bits,” is another domestic drama about a loving young husband and wife. The marriage comes apart after the wife allows herself to be seduced. Both plays take place in the all-black town of Eatonville in rural Florida, the locale of much of Hurston’s fiction and her birthplace.
The middle play is the purely comic “Story in Harlem Slang” about two fast talking zoot suiters in Harlem trying to mooch a free meal from a black maid on her afternoon off. The play is really an extended vaudeville sketch as the two men trade jive insults and braggadocio to hide their poverty and all-round lack of prospects.
The production, smartly directed by Seret Scott, is deceptively uncomplicated. There are two named characters, Guitar Man (Kelvyn Bell) and Blues Speak Woman (Alexis J. Rogers) and a chorus consisting of three men (Chris Boykin, Kenn E. Head, and Michael Pogue) and a woman (Patrese D. McClain). Bell provides the bluesy musical accompaniment and Rogers belts out the exuberant blues and sashays through the action. Head and McClain play the dysfunctional married couple in “Sweat,” Head and Pogue are the Harlem hipsters trying to sweet talk McClain in the middle play, and McClain and Boykin are the young married couple in the finale.
The ensemble does a superb job of evoking the language and dialect (occasionally impenetrable) of the characters. All three tales portray an enclosed black society with whites rarely mentioned. Hurston’s people just try to get along, not even showing the spunk of the title. There are no demands for racial justice in the plays, though heaven knows the characters suffer from institutionalized racism. The characters involve the audience on a different level—basic humanity—enriched by the blues, the music that best expresses the lives of the impoverished southern blacks.
The production has a genial informality, with Bell on stage throughout the evening, contributing his guitar picking and singing to the action and occasionally tossing in a bit of commentary. Rogers pops up from a second level window or struts down the theater aisles, singing her sassy blues arias. All the action is played out in front of Tom Burch’s weathered wood set that evokes the rough-hewn life of poor blacks. Janice Pytel’s costumes take us realistically into both dirt-poor Eatonville and the flash of the Harlem streets. Marc Stubblefield’s lighting and Joshua Horvath’s sound complete the impressive physical production.
“Spunk” doesn’t venture into the symbol laden and intense world evoked in the plays of August Wilson, several happily presented at the Court. Hurston’s characters are outwardly simple and unsophisticated, but they feel deeply, seriously in the first and third plays and comically in the Harlem piece. They are not patronized and they aren’t treated artificially as noble savages. In their pain and joys they are audience high and they make for fine company at the Court.
Hurston died in 1960 in obscurity, her works mostly neglected. The folklore-ish nature of her fiction did not suit the aggressive civil rights mood of the mid 1900’s. But after her death her writings underwent a major reevaluation and she gained recognition for her sensitivity to the culture of poor southern blacks. She is the first black American to collect the folklore of African Americans and there is a folklore quality to scenes in “Spunk.” George Wolfe used Hurston’s own words in his adaptations, giving spectators authentic exposure to a really remarkable writer. Court patrons unfamiliar with the woman’s work are in for a revelation. Hurston zealots can rejoice in hearing so vividly some of the words they have enjoyed on the printed page.
“Spunk” runs through October 9 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
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Porgy and Bess
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – No definitive version of “Porgy and Bess” exists, so the Court Theatre exercised an opportunity to carve out a personal, even idiosyncratic interpretation of the George and Ira Gershwin classic. The Court’s choices mostly work and the end result is an affecting, ultimately powerful new vision of a show that has been called an American opera, a folk opera, and a musical comedy.
“Porgy and Bess” really transcends any specific genre, a one of a kind achievement in American musical theater history presented in a one of a kind production at the Court Theatre.
“Porgy and Bess” is a simple love story about an unlikely and ill-fated love affair between a crippled beggar named Porgy and a sluttish street woman named Bess. The locale is the Gullah community in Charleston, South Carolina, a black culture that gives the show much of its atmosphere.
Court director Charles Newell establishes the novelty of his interpretation in the opening moments. The 14-member ensemble of African American performers enters dressed in white. The stage is a minimalist square with five members of the orchestra seated along one rear wall while the sixth member presides over a battery of percussion instruments along a neighboring wall. So the production sacrifices all the ambience of Catfish Row in Charleston. Visually the costumes and set provide no sense of place, a matter gradually overcome by the accents, songs, superstitions, and folkways of the characters.
Most of the performance is sung, with occasional patches of spoken dialogue. The evening starts on familiar ground with the singing of “Summertime,” maybe with “Stardust” one of the two most popular numbers in the American songbook. But this is not just a survey of the score’s greatest hits, though, of course, we do get the familiar songs—“It Ain’t Necessarily So,” “I Loves you, Porgy,” “I Got Plenty of “Nuttin’,” and the like.
It takes a while for the storyline to kick in and for the spectator to adjust to the unusual presentation. Gradually we become familiar with the key characters, Porgy, Bess, the villainous stevedore Crown, and the sinister if ingratiating drug dealer Sporting Life. The Court adaptation follows the main storyline of the 1935 original with some fidelity, especially its violence and passion. There are some potent set pieces, climaxed by a rendering of a hurricane portrayed with drama and grandeur by a savvy blend of lighting, sound, and the body language of the massed characters. Indeed, the brilliant manipulation of crowds is one of the hallmarks of Newell’s staging.
The women have the best of it in singing Gershwin’s score, though there are terrific performances by James Earl Jones II as Crown and Sean Blake as Sporting Life. Blake injects the show’s only moment of wry humor with his saucy interpretation of “It Ain’t Necessarily So” and Jones, a menacing figure built like a muscular fireplug, displays a fine operatic voice. As Porgy, Todd Kryger had some vocal insecurity early on but gained in musical and dramatic stature as the story moved along.
But the women in the cast were the dominant performers. I’ve seen Bethany Thomas in several supporting roles in small Chicago theaters, but with her performance as Serena she instantly jumps from the category of Performer Deserving of Wider Recognition to full-fledge star. A woman of imposing physical presence, Thomas displayed a blast furnace voice and expressive acting manner that are breathtaking. Her long impassioned lament over the body of her husband murdered by Crown is stunning.
Alexis Rogers sings well as Bess, though she could have upped the wanton element in this feckless character, an essentially weak woman destined to break Porgy’s heart. There are no reservations about Harriet Nzinga Plumpp’s Clara (who sings a stirring “Summertime”), Wydetta Carter (Maria), Adrienne Walker (Annie), and Joelle Lamarre (Lily).
Matt Holzfeind provides a telling cameo as the only white character in the story, a law officer who brings home the intimidating white world that surrounds the cloistered black society of Catfish Row.
There has been some controversy over the portrayal of the denizens of Catfish Row, some critics accusing Gershwin of trivializing the Gullah culture to the point of racism. That’s a contention that musicologists and social historians can chew over. Assessing “Porgy and Bess” as a piece of musical theater, a viewer has to give the Gershwins the highest marks for their ambition and for composing one of the titanic scores in the history of American musical theater.
The orchestra is composed of an unusual instrumentation of trumpet and flugelhorn (Stephen Orejudos), woodwinds (Nick Moran), violin and viola (Chuck Bontrager), piano (Doug Peck), bass (Christian Dillingham), and percussion (the resourceful Brent Roman). Peck is the music director and wrote the new orchestrations and is one of the production’s heroes.
John Culbert’s set allows sufficient space for crowd movement and dances, and the addition of a series of screens that descend from the rafters converts the open area into abstract enclosures, especially in the stirring hurricane scene. Jacqueline Firkins designed the all white costumes. Brian Scott (lighting) and Joshua Horvath (sound) make essential contributions to the production’s look and sound.
A number of years ago a full-scale production of “Porgy and Bess,” with detailed realistic sets, played the Auditorium Theatre. The show ran at least 31/2 hours and was one of the most tedious evenings I’ve ever spent in a theater. So “Porgy and Bess” isn’t foolproof, its wonderful score notwithstanding. The Court Theatre interpretation, which runs a bit under 21/2 hours, isn’t the only way to present the show, but it is beautifully thought out, inventively staged, and superbly sung by a half dozen big league voices. It may be a long time before any local company attempts this daunting classic, so catch it while you can.
“Porgy and Bess” runs through July 3 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $45 to $65. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. May 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Orlando
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Orlando” at the Court Theatre is a play I admired more than enjoyed. I admired the commitment of the performers and the often whimsical and clever staging. But the dramatic heft of the evening doesn’t match its visual merits. In the end, the audience reaction to the play will highly personal. Some people will be charmed and entertained, others irritated.
“Orlando” is Sarah Ruhl’s adaptation of Virginia Woolf’s 1928 fantasy novel about an Elizabeth nobleman named Orlando who wakes up one morning to find himself transformed into a woman. As a female, Orlando travels through time through the eighteen and nineteenth century to modern days, aware that she possesses the secrets and desires common to both men and women.
The novel occupies a central place in feminist literature, advocating that women are the intellectual equal of men (Orlando is a poet both as a male and a female). The work is also drenched in a gay sensibility. The lesbian Woolf was inspired by the life of her lover, the cross-dressing Victoria Sackville West.
The stage version under Jessica Thebus’s direction is heavy on whimsy and artificiality, sometimes tinged with camp. Orlando (Amy J. Carle) is on stage throughout the evening. A Russian princess named Sasha (Erica Elam) weaves in and out of the story as Orlando’s inconstant romantic interest. A clutch of other characters are impersonated by four men who make up the Chorus. They are dressed in a mime tradition and change costumes, usually on stage, to represent real and imaginary figures, both male and female.
The most recognizable historical character is Queen Elizabeth 1, impressively played as a haughty drag queen by chorus member Lawrence Grimm. Orlando has a kind of love affair with the queen before his gender transformation. A Romanian archduchess, later changed in sexuality into an archduke (Thomas J. Cox), invades Orlando’s life as a relentless lover.
The meat of the play comes in the second act. Orlando is a woman with a male’s mindset. She now sees life from the other side of the gender street and quickly recognizes she has to apply a woman’s wiles to get her way in a man’s world. She has lost the male privilege of knocking a man over the head. Instead, she must insinuate and cajole to get her way. Ultimately Orlando’s sexual desires are stirred as a woman and she marries an English aristocrat, a marriage that is an erotic success.
The narrative does not travel in a straight line. Much of the action seems almost improvised, cadenzas of language and movement intended to be sufficient unto themselves. Some of the language is delivered as dialogue, but the characters often speak directly to the audience in monologues. The touch is frequently light to the point of triviality.
Carle’s performance is a marvel of stamina and acting chops. She is on stage the entire play and speaks a large percentage of the show’s words, often while in animated motion or prone on the stage. The solidly built Carle may not be an ideal physical representation of the androgynous Orlando, but her performance remains impressive. Carle receives fine support from Elam and the Chorus (rounded out by Adrian Danzig and Kevin Douglas). The ensemble performed in confident control of the script, assured in their performances even if some spectators were bemused by the play’s elusive.
The production relies heavily on the complex lighting designed by Jaymi Lee Smith and Linda Roethke’s exotic costumes. Andre Pluess’s sound design provides the atmospheric musical swatches that bridge the show’s many scenes. Collette Pollard’s scenic design features an open stage, sometimes populated by furniture props, notably large four poster beds wheeled on and off by the actors.
The feminist substance of “Orlando” may have been revolutionary back in 1928 but the concept that women are the mental equals of men in a man’s world strikes few sparks today. “Orlando” will work for the viewer as a visual extravaganza, humorous and quirky and occasionally intellectually stimulating. Props to the Court Theatre for offering the show in an imaginative and handsome production, but “Orlando” remains a niche drama, not for every taste.
“Orlando” runs through April 10 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars.March 2011
Contact Dan atzeffdaniel@yahoo.co
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Three Tall Women
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Three Tall Women” restored Edward Albee to the forefront of the American theater after more than a decade of failures, earning him his third Pulitzer prize. The play is Albee’s most personal and perhaps his most humane, especially in the luminous revival at the Court Theatre.
“Three Tall Women” centers on Albee’s adoptive mother, a willful woman who sustained a fractious relationship with the playwright for many years. The play is autobiographical but it’s also fictional, transcending the conflict between Albee and his mother to explore the meaning of life’s various stages, from the hopes and expectations of youth through the cynicism of middle age and the calm resignation of old age with death at the doorstep.
Both acts of “Three Tall Women” take place in a stylish bedroom, converted into a sickroom. There are three characters, labeled by the playwright only as A, B, and C. A is the elderly sick woman. B is her sardonic middle-aged paid companion. C is a young woman visiting the old lady representing A’s law firm to get some papers signed.
The first act is mostly realistic banter. The elderly woman is prickly and demanding. She’s physically frail and mentally unstable, often losing her train of thought as she relives incidents from earlier in her life. The woman may be difficult but she touches our sympathy with her infirmities.
At the end of the first act the elderly woman suffers a stroke. The second act remains in the bedroom. A dummy representing the incapacitated A lies on the bed. The three characters of the first act now assume the three stages of A’s life, each with her own perspective—youth, middle age, and elderly. A, B, and C each analyze life from their points of view, knowing only what they know from the standpoint of ages 26, 52, and 91. Time and experience are everything, and A has the final word, welcoming the finality of death as trumping the wide eyed enthusiasms of youth and the acerbic world weary attitudes of middle age.
The dramatic temperature of the second act is altered subtly by the sudden appearance of the mother’s son (the Albee stand-in) who silently sits on his dying mother’s bed, thinking his own thoughts and at one time breaking into tears.
The second act contains some of Albee’s most deeply felt and eloquent writing. It’s an extended “ages of man” survey like Jaques’s monologue in Shakespeare’s “As You Like It.” There is insight and humor in the various disquisitions by A, B, and C as they state their cases for life as they see it at their stages of life. The play ends with A carrying the day with her almost eager acceptance of death as the pinnacle of life’s experience.
It’s interesting to compare the ferocity of Albee’s 1961 stunner “Who’s of Virginia Woolf?,” now receiving a brilliant revival at the Steppenwolf Theatre, with the air of acceptance and resignation put forth by A in “Three Tall Women,” which premiered 30 years later. The incendiary passions of the first play have been banked into an almost mellow view of the human condition.
In spite of the unorthodox dramaturgy and the lofty themes, “Three Tall Women” is one of Albee’s most accessible plays once the audience absorbs the shift in style from the first act realism to the second act fantasy. And the Court Theatre production under Charles Newell’s directing underscores the humanity of Albee’s vision. I’ve seen stagings with A as a more abusive woman and Lois Markle doesn’t stint on A’s truculence. But Markle soars in the second act when A looks back on a long and turbulent life, happy to say goodbye to it all. It’s a compassionate reading of the role that could bring tears to the eyes of spectators.
Mary Beth Fisher has played astringent and intelligent characters for years on area stages and she fits the role of the middle-aged B perfectly, climaxed by a wonderful aria of anguish and resentment in the second act. Maura Kidwell does what she can with the callow role of C, but her character is overmatched by the older, wiser, more opinionated, and better spoken A and B. Joel Gross takes the cameo of the silent young visitor.
Leigh Breslau has designed the single set dominated by the plush sickbed. Ana Kuzmanic designed the costumes and Marc Stubblefield the lighting.
“Three Tall Women” is singular Albee. Perhaps he has exorcized some demons with his understanding and insightful drama. He certainly has given his audiences a rich and revealing playgoing experience.
“Three Tall Women” runs through February 13 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $40 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit wwwCourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. January 2011
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The Comedy of Errors
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago- No Shakespeare play is more abused than “The Comedy of Errors.” It’s an early farce with little of the dramatic heft of the great Bard comedies to follow. So directors have a field day fiddling with what is generally considered to be a frivolous vehicle that could stand some improvements.
Sean Graney is one of the edgiest of the younger generation of Chicagoland directors and the Court Theatre has entrusted him with staging “The Comedy of Errors” filtered through the Graney theatrical sensibility. And Graney has answered the call. He’s shrunk the play down to 80 minutes of intermissionless playing time. The 20 characters in the play are performed by six actors. And Graney doesn’t hesitate to embroider Shakespeare’s original dialogue with very modern lines of his own.
The Court revival will have its partisans and also its detractors. The partisans will insist the production is a laugh riot, filled with quirky verbal and physical invention. Sure it tampers with the Bard’s original script, but it’s not as if the revival was messing with a masterpiece, so lighten up.
The detractors will counter that Graney too often strays into the realm of dumbed-down silliness, like Second City on a very bad night. Granted there are some clever comic touches, but if you throw enough shtick at a play, the law of averages states that a few bits will stick among all the mugging and pratfalls and simpering and desperate reaches for laughs.
The reduction of the cast to six performers does work pretty well, in spite of the storyline that revolves around two sets of identical twins. At the Court the Dromio twins and the Antipholus twins are each played by a single actor, which means much split second timing in entrances and exits and speed-of-light costume changes back stage.
The sextet of performers, given the chance, all do well with the shards of Shakespearean dialogue allowed to stand unblemished amidst all the slapstick and self indulgence. I would be happy to see Erik Hellman, Stacy Stoltz, Steve Wilson, Alex Goodrich, Elizabeth Ledo, and Kurt Ehrmann in a legitimate presentation of the play. I think they would do well. Hellman and Goodrich are particular effective as the two sets of twins.
But ultimately the worthy elements in the production are drowned out by the “anything for a laugh” stabs at humor like anachronisms that attempt to reach for laughs in a can of diet Coke or the sudden utterance of a four-letter word.
Tom Burch’s set consists of several doors (this is a farce, after all) set among a graffiti-desecrated wall with trash littering the stage. The significance of the garbage strewn background eluded me. Jacqueline Firkins designed a wardrobe of outlandish costumes, including a pair of ball gowns for Stoltz and Ledo that couldn’t be less flattering. Heather Gilbert designed the lighting and Michael Griggs the sound.
Revisionist productions like this disarm criticism. The spectators either go along with the director’s manic flights of fancy or they grit their teeth and look at their watch. The performers all seemed to be having a good time and expend an unstinting amount of energy in the cause of Graney’s reanimation of the play. The performance on opening night drew lots of laughs. Whether people were reacting to what they thought was funny or what was supposed to be funny is between them and their conscience. I thought the evening was a mess, with some redeeming elements--midway between a disaster and a display of creative directorial daring.
“The Comedy of Errors” runs through October 17 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30, Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $30 to $60. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 21/2 stars.
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Sizwe Banzi is Dead
At the Court Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – The Athol Fugard mini festival is concluding with a stunning revival of the 1972 one-act drama “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” at the Court Theatre. It’s the third Fugard drama this season, following “’Master’ Harold and the Boys…” at the TimeLine Theatre and “The Island” at the Remy Bumppo Theatre.
The earlier two productions were solid presentations of Fugard’s exploration of the evils of apartheid in South Africa, but “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is the real capstone of the threesome, 100 intermissionless minutes of brilliant acting in the service of engrossing and disturbing storytelling.
Fugard, who is white, was actually co-author of both “The Island” and “Sizwe Banzi” with black actors John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who were also the complete casts for both plays.
“Sizwe Banzi” is set in a black township in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. The first 40 minutes is a virtuoso monologue by a black man named Styles. He begins by recounting the farcical preparations his white bosses make in anticipation of a visit from the American owner of the automobile plant where Styles has a menial job. The monologue then shifts to Styles’s establishing himself as a professional photographer in a ramshackle and cockroach-infested studio.
Enter Sizwe Banzi a diffident young black man who wants to have his portrait taken. Up to this point the play has been largely comic, though a grim picture emerges of the racial oppression black South Africans endure on a daily basis.
The narrative then shifts to Sizwe Banzi, a diffident and frightened black man who makes the acquaintance of another black man named Buntu. Sizwe confides to Buntu that he is in trouble. His passbook, which all black Africans must carry, has a stamp that doesn’t allow him to live or work in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe must leave the city to return to his wife and four children in a desolate and drought-stricken village 150 miles away.
One night Buntu and Sizwe stumble onto the body of a man who apparently died a violent death. Buntu urges Sizwe to swap passbooks with the dead man, thus acquiring the government stamp that would permit Sizwe, using the dead man's identity, to live and work in Port Elizabeth. Sizwe would have to give up his own identity forever, but he would be allowed to earn a living wage and save his family from possible starvation. Sizwe agonizes over a choice between destitution and personal pride. The choice turns out to be no choice at all.
By the end of the play, the audience is exposed to the dehumanizing effect of apartheid, especially its Kafkaesque bureaucratic snares. Sizwe and Buntu sound notes of fierce anger and defiance before Sizwe yields in humiliated capitulation. But before the high drama of the conclusion the play has offered plenty of rueful humor, including one of the few drunk scenes I’ve ever seen on a stage that worked. Both Sizwe and Buntu go into the audience to josh with the spectators, injecting a light and whimsical touch to a narrative that ultimately turns tragic.
The cast of Chike Johnson and Allen Gilmore crawl into the skins of the three characters in the play to create indelible performances. The two are physically contrasting, Johnson solidly built like a football running back and the slender Gilmore wearing a woebegone expression as the injustices of apartheid erode his sense of self.
The acting is all of a piece with the script, projecting a sense of immediacy and authenticity that leaves the viewers with the feeling that they are witnessing the only way the play could possibly be performed. That means director Ron OJ Parson flawlessly has his finger on the play’s emotional and theatrical pulse throughout the evening. I don’t know how much the perfection of the performances emerges from the actors and how much from the director, but it doesn’t matter. The staging is seamless—funny, poignant, bitter. It’s a stirring reminder of how monstrous apartheid was in the everyday life of black South Africa, a condition receding into the historical past now that apartheid has been gone, at least officially, since 1994.
The production gets a boost from Jack Magaw’s functional setting, with photos of black South Africans looking down from the rear of the stage mutely observing the plight of the characters. Christine Pascual designed the costumes, Lee Keenan the lighting, and Nick Keenan the sound.
“Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is an exceptionally rich playgoing experience and the acting is superb in its commitment and artistry. It’s all there—humor, outage, frustration, poignancy, and fear. A most powerful and rewarding evening.
“Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” runs through June 13 at the Court Theatre, 5535 South Ellis Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Thursday at 7:30 p.m., Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 3 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $32 to $56. Call 773 753 4472 or visit www.CourtTheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. May 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.