By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Still Alice” at the Lookingglass Theatre is a straightforward account of a middle-aged woman’s descent into Alzheimer’s disease. It starts with Alice Howland and her family noting early signs of the disease and chronologically follows Alice’s worsening condition until she is far gone into the disease.
It sounds grim, and obviously the subject matter is somber, if not tragic. But the play, adapted and directed by Christine Mary Dunsford from a novel by Lisa Genova, is presented with such honesty and realism that it grips the viewer who may have entered the theater out of a sense of duty rather than in anticipation of an entertaining evening.
Photo Credit: Liz Lauren
The Alice of the title is an eminent professor of psychology at Northwestern University, happily married with two adult children. The narrative covers several years in the development of Alice’s condition, starting with occasional memory lapses and deteriorating to disorientation and confusion and total memory blackouts. Alzheimer’s obviously is painful for any victim but it’s a particularly dismaying affliction for a brilliant woman at the top of her intellectual powers. Alice, in one of her clear-headed periods, says that cancer is preferred to Alzheimer. At least with cancer the victim is in possession of her faculties and can fight back.
The story traces Alice’s decline as well as the impact it has on her husband and son and daughter—their distress and frustration and occasionally their anger at the implacable erosion of Alice’s mental faculties and their helplessness as they watch the woman’s normalcy erode.
Photo Credit: Liz Lauren
“Still Alice” runs about 100 minutes without an intermission. The staging is simple and fluid, moving from the interior of Alice’s home to various doctors’ offices to a vacation cottage in Michigan. In addition to the real life characters in the play, the adaptation adds Alice’s alter ego, played by Mariann Mayberry, who accompanies Alice on her agonizing and irreversible journey. The character isn’t forced or artificial. She basically is Alice talking to herself, an outsider from within.
“Still Alice” passes the essential test of being tasteful and sensitive without sugar coating or turning melodramatic or maudlin. The narrative creates enough sympathy and concern in the audience without belaboring Alice’s condition. And so we watch the ravages of the disease presented with humanity in an almost documentary style. The play never preaches. It portrays, with accuracy and understanding.
The play even has its informative moments, as when it refers to tests that can ascertain whether an individual is predisposed to Alzheimer’s (Alice’s son isn’t; her daughter is). We also eavesdrop on the various therapies designed to at least slow down the onslaught of the illness. Alice, aware of her condition as most victims are, speaks out for Alzheimer’s victims, urging them to meet to share their experiences and comfort each other rather than live in isolation. There are many organizations aimed at the caregivers but very few devoted to the Alzheimer patients.
Ensemble member Eva Barr returns to the Lookingglass after a long absence to nail the role of Alice. Only Barr knows the emotional and physical investment required to crawl inside Alice’s head to capture the perplexity, confusion, fear, despair, and bravery of the woman in her lucid periods and the mental collapses when the disease rules.
Barr is surrounded by an exemplary supporting cast led by Christopher Donahue as her loving, conflicted, and ultimately helpless husband, faced with decisions about Alice’s care that must change both their lives. Cliff Chamberlain is excellent as the son who at first resists facing the truth about his mother’s mental health and eventually breaks down in tears, aching for the return of the woman he loved and admired.
The revelation in the cast is young Joanne Dubach who plays Alice’s daughter with a zest and independence and depth of feeling that energizes the entire production. Dubach has the looks and temperament and acting chops to rise very high in the local theater firmament.
Photo credit: Liz Lauren
Mayberry, who never disappoints, fits in flawlessly with the real Alice, gradually melding into Alice’s mental disarray. The ease of her accommodation into the narrative is a credit to the actress and to Dunford’s writing and directing. The play could have managed without the alter ego but her presence enhances the strength the narrative. The ensemble is completed by David Kersnar and Tracy Walsh as doctors who advise and treat Alice with clinical objectivity.
John Musial designed the basic but functional set. Alison Siple designed the costumes, Mike Durst the lighting, and Rick Sims the sound. The inevitable Mike Tutaj is responsible for the projections that chronologically indicate Alice’s relentless downward spiritual.
“Still Alice” will have particular immediacy for younger viewers who have older friends or family touched by Alzheimer’s disease, as well as more senior patrons concerned they may be candidates for the plague. In short, a large percentage of spectators at each performance will bring their own personal sense of recognition to the play. They will be rewarded with an uncompromising drama sustained by truth and warmth. The acting and staging serve the adaptation so beautifully that the viewer should leave the Lookingglass sobered by the story but exhilarated by its telling.
“Still Alice” runs through May 19 at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 North Michigan Avenue at the Water Tower Water Works. Most performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $36 to $70. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.
Contact Dan : ZeffDaniel@yahoo.com April 2013
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Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” is shrill, pretentious, foul-mouthed, and a slander on the U.S. Marine Corps. And that isn’t a complete list of its transgressions. The play is also too long, lacks a coherent narrative, and is rooted in hugely unsympathetic characters.
“Bengal Tiger” had a decent run on Broadway in 2011, largely, one suspects, because Robin Williams was the star attraction. The Lookingglass Theatre is presenting the play, a departure from its usual policy of developing its own shows from within its talented company rather than presenting a finished work from the outside.
The Rajiv Joseph drama takes place in Baghdad in 2003, shortly after the American invasion of Iraq. In the opening scene, we see a grizzled middle-aged man in a cage. That’s the Bengal tiger played by Williams in New York City and by Troy West at the Lookingglass. West has a head of wild hair and a bushy beard and wears blue jeans and a T shirt. This hirsute look possibly is intended to make West look like a tiger but he looks more like an aging hippie.
The tiger talks conversationally with the audience The animal is droll and articulate, with a propensity for expressing himself with lots of profanity. Its cage is being guarded by Tom and Kev, a couple of Marines on edge because of their immersion in the intensity of the Iraqi conflict. Tom attempts to feed the hungry tiger through the cage bars and the tiger bites his hand off. Kev then kills the tiger with two shots from a gold plated pistol that Tom had looted from the palace of the recently captured Iraqi strongman, Saddam Hussain. The tiger immediately reappears as a ghost, as articulate and profane as ever. The golden gun, meanwhile, falls into the hands of an Iraqi translator named Musa.
In short order we meet the ghost of Uday Hussein, Saddam’s sadistic son, killed in a firefight with U.S. troops in 2003 but preserved in the play as a jaunty ghost. By the end of the play most of the characters have become ghosts after dying violently, including the two Marines. In life they were loud, abrasive, obscenity-drenched ugly Americans, though in death Kev turns more thoughtful, almost intellectual. The Marine Corps can be rightly insulted at the portrayals of Tom and especially Kev, who come across as louts and cretins. It’s difficult to imagine either man being accepted by even the most tolerant Marine recruiting officer.
Photo credit: Liz Lauren
Playwright Joseph obviously has much on his mind beyond the noise made by his main characters. There is the “war is hell” theme, showing how the violence of warfare brutalizes and desensitizes its participants. The tiger delves into more theological issues, calling out God for allowing so much suffering and destruction to run unchecked and demanding answers to why God has shown so much indifference, or maybe incompetence, or maybe malice, toward the living creatures on Earth.
The question of how a perfect all-seeing and all-knowing God can permit such misery on earth has been asked for centuries, but it is unanswerable. The tiger holding God to account for mankind’s suffering (and the animal kingdom’s suffering, too) lends an aura of pseudo-profundity to the play but mostly allows the tiger to make debate points.
The
character of Musa, the translator, is the most interesting figure in the play.
He is burdened with guilt for what he sees as his responsibility for the death
of his sister at the hands of the monstrous Uday Hussain. As a translator he
falls between two stools. His countrymen are engaging in a conflagration of
violence that is ruining his beautiful land. On the other hand, the invading
Americans arrive as Iraq’s saviors, but they rapidly develop their own savage
streak in dealing with the locals. Moral corruption has descended on the land
from all sides.
Photo credit: Liz Lauren
All this may sound like “Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” is a thoughtful and stimulating play that explores important issues in a novel way. And many reviewers and audience members have seen it in that light. There is also a considerable party who write off the play as meandering, nasty, strident, and heavy handed. I side with this party. The writing is episodic and has little narrative arc. The tiger has its moments, but its railing against God generates all heat and no light. In civilian life the translator was a landscape gardener for Uday Hussain, carving animals out of bushes. This topiary garden is represented as an oasis of art and peace in the maelstrom of war-torn Baghdad. There is a metaphor there somewhere, but it eluded me.
The Lookingglass production under Heidi Stillman’s directing seems to give the script a fair hearing. The staging has a minimalist look with just a few props and a large curtain stretched across the rear of the playing area. The main visual images are the shrubbery animals created by Musa. Possibly the Broadway version had a more elaborate physical presence but I can’t imagine any scenic enhancements that could have turned the show into a watchable evening.
The seven-member ensemble acts the play to the teeth. J.J. Phillips’s Kev delivers one operatic rant for after another, with a rawbone Appalachian accent and frenzied behavior that marks him with an IQ in double digits. Walter Owen Briggs as Tom is moderately less abrasive but he fulminates most of the evening about re-acquiring the stolen gold plated gun. Tom sees the gun and a gold plated toilet seat he also stole from Hussain’s palace as the cornerstone of his financial security in civilian life. Tom and Kev are as unenjoyable a pair of characters as I’ve seen on a stage in a long time, meaning no disrespect to Briggs and Phillips, who give their all.
West delivers a smooth, often humorous performance as the tiger, but the character is caught up in too many dead end cosmic questions. Things are better with Kareem Bandealy as the hateful but charming Uday Hussain and Anish Jethmalani as the anguished Musa. Multiple female roles are performed satisfactorily by Amy J. Carle and Atra Asdou.
The Lookingglass acting space has been reconfigured so the audience encloses the stage on three sides. That doesn’t give set designer many options but the look of the show seems fine, abetted by Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes, Christine Binder’s lighting, and the sound and original music by Rick Sims.
I left the theater disappointed and irritated. There doubtless is a dramatic and theatrical play that can be written about the American encounter in Iraq and the toll it took on all sides, but this isn’t the play.
“Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo” runs through March 17 at the Lookingglass Theatre in the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Most performances are Wednesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m., and 3 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday. Tickets are $36 to $70. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 1½ stars.
Contact Dan : ZeffDaniel@Yahoo.com February 2013
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By Dan Zeff
Chicago – The Lookingglass Theatre is reviving “Metamorphoses” again, to the usual critical raves and powerhouse audience response. The production has already been extended a month and one wonders why the theater doesn’t just establish the masterpiece as a permanent fixture on the Chicago theater scene, like “Blue Man Group” and “Million Dollar Quartet.”
The
Mary Zimmerman directed and written show opened at the old Lookingglass Theatre
back in 1998 and has since traveled throughout the world, to unanimous acclaim tinged
with wonder. The current staging is the first in the Lookingglass theater on
north Michigan Avenue, and the production loses nothing in its new venue. This
is my third exposure to “Metamorphoses,” and its imagination and drama are
richer than ever, thanks partly to the deepened performances from several actors
who were in the premiere 14 years ago.
Photo Credit: Liz Lauren
The heart of Zimmerman’s vision is a rectangular wading pool where much of the action is played out. The backdrop consists of a jet black wall, a large doorway that resembles the entrance to an early twentieth century brownstone apartment building, and a large Rene Magritte-like painting of billowing white clouds against blue sky background.
In 90 uninterrupted minutes, “Metamorphoses” strings together about 10 stories inspired by “Metamorphoses,” a collection of tales collected and retold by the Roman poet Ovid in 8 A.D. All the stories are based on Greek and Roman myths and all deal with a metamorphoses, or transformation, of some kind, either physical or spiritual.
Most of the
stories have love themes and mix the gods with mortals. Two of the stories are
familiar, the tale of King Midas and his golden touch and the tragic love story
of Orpheus and Eurydice. Others are little known outside classical scholarship.
In one story, a devoted married couple is transformed into seabirds so they may
be reunited after the death of one of the spouses. Similarly, an elderly couple
is transformed into interwoven trees after their death so they can live
together forever. All the narratives are accessible, with their irresistible
blend of humor, charm, whimsy, haunting beauty, tragedy, and enchantment.
Photo Credit: Liz Lauren
The language is a blend of the poetic and modern street lingo. The tragic Eurydice speaks in a formal literary manner while the brash young Phaeton, lounging indolently on an inflated raft in the pool, whines like a spoiled modern day rich brat. A few of the stories have a moral but the audience is likely to be so entranced with the staging and the performances that intellectual investigation of the play’s content will have to wait until after the show is over and its spell over the viewers is broken.
A flawless ensemble of five men and five women assume a variety of roles as the show flows seamlessly from story to story, in the manner of Zimmerman’s memorable 1994 adaptation of “The Arabian Nights.” The story of King Midas opens the evening and closes it, with Raymond Fox giving a terrific performance that starts out broadly comic and ends on just the right note of melancholy self knowledge. In between, there are superior performances by Usman Ally, Anjali Bhimani, Lawrence DiStasi, Marilyn Dodds Frank, Anne Fogarty, Doug Hara, Chris Kipiniak, Louise Lamson, and Lauren Orkus. Many of these names will be familiar to Lookingglass followers and all 10 capture the Zimmerman magic with a natural performing flow that gives the production an unbroken momentum (and surely stirs in the audience a wistful desire for more stories from the fascinating world of classical mythology as filtered through Zimmerman’s imagination).
“Metamorphoses” runs through December 16 at the Lookingglass Theatre inside the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Most performances are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday and 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $36 to $70. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. October 2012
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by Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Eastland: A New Musical” is the Lookingglass Theatre’s stunning meditation on one of the most terrible disasters in Chicago history. On the morning of July 25, 1915, an excursion boat overloaded with 2,500 people tipped over while docked along the Chicago River in downtown Chicago. The death toll was appalling--848 men, women, and children. They were working class families expecting a lark of a cruise to Michigan City, Indiana, for an all-day company picnic.
Unlike the sinking of the “Titanic,” the “Eastland” calamity hasn’t become a part of the country’s pop culture. But the remarkable fusion of drama and theater at the Lookingglass addresses that neglect, thanks to a superb musical score, remarkable staging, and a brilliant cast of actors who also sing and perform on an array of instruments that evoke the music of the day, including the fiddle, the banjo, the ukulele, and the accordion.
Photo Credit: Sean Williams
The audience can sense it’s in for something special as soon as it enters the theater. The acting space has been transformed into a kind of old time revival tent, with spectators sitting on wooden benches facing a raised rough-hewn wooden stage. About an hour through the 90-minute show a large wall hanging drops from the rear of the stage, revealing three levels of ramps that expand the playing area, allowing the ensemble to fiercely dramatize the horror of the “Eastland” tragedy in its heartbreak.
“Eastland” is not presented as a documentary.
Indeed, the first several scenes give no hint of the disaster to come. Instead,
we meet representative characters who will board the ship that morning, most
never to return alive. They are working class people, mostly immigrants—an
outgoing 14-year old girl, a wife and mother mired in a boring marriage who has
a brief flirtation with a grocer that ends with her death, and a heroic teenager
calling himself a human frog who repeatedly dives into the submerged ship to
retrieve 40 bodies.
The show's numerous mini stories are told through a wonderful score composed by Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman. The program notes call the score a blend of chamber opera, song cycle, an tone poem. They create a musical tapestry that weaves back and forth in time before, during, and after the "Eastland" disaster, always keeping the emotional and narrative lines accessible. The music never descends to operatic melodrama or maudlin sentimentality.
The dozen members of the ensemble take on multiple roles and eight of them provide the musical accompaniment. The cast sings well, some of them beautifully. Every member serves with distinction. First among equals is probably Monica West, the sympathetic, dissatisfied housewife who briefly glimpses a more fulfilling future when she meets the grocer (played with spot-on understatement by Erik Heller).
Doug
Hara is Reggie Bowles, a teenager who risks his life to bring up those 40
bodies from within the boat. But his internalized discussions with magician
Harry Houdini are initially confusing and an unnecessary intrusion of fantasy
into the otherwise gripping realism of the story. Claire Wellin is charming as
the 14-year old girl who survived after being trapped for 11 hours in the boat.
Michael Barrow Smith, an icon in the Chicago folk music scene, is outstanding
as the sullen boat commander who refuses to become the fall guy for the
disaster and stalks off the stage to retire to his farm in Michigan (the real
captain of the boat was acquitted of criminal negligence in the disaster). But
every member of the cast belongs in the performing honor roll—Jeanne Arrigo,
Lawrence DiStasi, Christine Mary Dunford, Derek Hasenstab, Malcolm Ruhl, Scott
Stangland, and Tiffany Topol. We likely won’t see a more versatile ensemble in
any area theater this season.
Working with an outstanding design team, director Amanda Dehnert has orchestrated a production that tells its story with humanity, poignancy, some humor, great drama, and perhaps most important, with unwavering clarity. The images are haunting, especially the dripping bits of clothing hung on wooden pegs, each representing a drowned victim of the “Eastland” horror. Characters roam the theater aisles and emerge from and disappear into trapdoors on the stage. Later in the show, they position themselves on the multi-level ramps and walkways at the rear of the stage. Aided by Christine Binder’s evocative lighting, the production weaves its way from intimate domestic scenes to the full frenzy of the disaster. Mara Blumenfeld designed the period clothing that gives the story its crucial sense of time and place. Josh Horvath and Ray Nardelli designed the sound. Malcolm Ruhl is the musical director.“Eastland” is one of those rare theatrical experiences that is wholly satisfying in its stagecraft, its performances, and its storytelling. It’s the kind of production that makes Lookingglass such a special company. The final heartbreaking moments of the show had spectators tearing up. The two women sitting next to me were so overcome they couldn’t even applaud at the curtain call.
An organization called the Eastland Disaster Historical Society provides information on the disaster, its victims, and its survivors at www.eastlanddisaster.org.
“Eastland: A New Musical” runs through August 24 at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 North Pearson Street in the Water Tower Water Works. Most performances are Wednesday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are priced from $34 to $68. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. June 2012
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At the Lookingglass Theatre
by Dan Zeff
Chicago – The Lookingglass production of “Cascabel” is the toughest ticket in Chicago this side of “The Book of Mormon.” The show is a magnet for foodies, for members of the In Crowd who want to be part of the big buzz show of the season, and for regular playgoers who want to try something completely different, even at prices up to $250 a seat.
“Cascabel” raises dinner theater to a level it will likely never approach again in this town. The hook is the menu prepared by celebrity chef Rick Bayless, who operates the renowned Frontera Grill among other high end eating establishments in Chicago. The official title of the show is “Rick Bayless in Cascabel.”
The Bayless cookery is the centerpiece of a show set in a Mexican rooming house. The cuisine mingles with a cluster of stunning circus acts, both held together by a rickety plot that escalates into numerous love stories, all ending joyously as the audience completes its desert. “Cascabel” celebrates the sensuality of food and its consummation. It might sound pretentious but the show makes a strong case for dining as an almost erotic pleasure, at least if prepared and presented in the Rick Bayless manner.
Photo Credit: Sean Williams
For “Cascabel,” the Lookingglass interior has been remodeled to recreate a rustic Mexican interior like something out of “Treasure of the Sierra Madre.” But the evening actually begins in the theater lobby, where the audience is treated to hors d’ouevres and free margaritas. The patrons then file into the theater to be seated at communal tables on the main floor or at tables for two in the balcony. The three-course dinner commences, separated by intervals allotted to the circus acts and shards of the plot. The food is prepared a few blocks away and delivered warm to the tables, a dazzling logistical achievement for cuisine of this delicacy prepared for so many diners.
The core characters include a smiling and pompous maitre ‘d (Jesse Perez), a mysterious lady in some kind of mourning (Chiara Mangiameli), a houseboy (Tony Hernandez, also the co-creator and co-director of the show), and the daughter of the house (Lindsay Noel Whiting). Periodically other characters drift onto the stage to execute their circus acts.
Presiding over the entire enterprise is Bayless himself, chopping away at a cutting board in the on-stage kitchen. Bayless doesn’t actually cook for the 142 paying guests. He does a bit of acting and even dances at the end. His calling in life is still food preparation but he doesn’t embarrass himself and the man is a charmer, genially mixing with the patrons during and after the show.
Whiting starts off the circus portion with some deft aerialist work above the stage, with no safety apparatus. Hernandez manages to change clothes while balancing on a high wire, a sight one rarely sees in a Chicago theater. Alexandra Pivaral does a stunning hand balancing act from a bathtub. A couple known only as solitary travelers (Nicolas Besnard and Shenea Booth) meet at the rooming house dinner table and immediately engage in a sensuous gymnastic demonstration (among its other attributes “Cascabel” is a very sexy show). The gardener (Jonathan Taylor) and his wife (Anne Goldmann) deliver a very broad comedy stint, highlighted by catching bits of banana in their mouths as the banana pieces are spit out by their partner. It sounds gross but it’s funny and requires considerable accuracy and dexterity. The Blue Man Group couldn’t do it any better.
The other member of the ensemble is Lookingglass star actor Thomas J. Cox, in what must be the most insignificant role of his career as the wooer of the mystery lady. Carlo Basile performs the atmospheric guitar background.
The food itself is rich and highly seasoned and exotic. There is a single menu for everyone with no substitutions. The individual servings were all very tasty, with the beef entree exceptional. The maitre ‘d orchestrated the consuming of each dish like Ricardo Muti directing a Beethoven symphony, and the audience cheerfully followed all his directions, down to sticking their noses into the opening course to capture the aroma. This course, if I got it correctly, consisted of ceviche-style tuna over passion fruit custard and avocado crema seasoned by bits of jicama, red onion, and tomatillo, all enclosed in a banana leaf. It’s that kind of upscale meal.
The storyline wraps up quickly at the end, with Mangiameli executing a flashy flamenco dance and everyone in the ensemble joining in on the hoofing. By this time, any wall between actor and viewer had been erased and it was party time. Some patrons doubtless had been nicely lubricated by the free margaritas, plus beer and wine were available in small metal tubs on the tables for the convenience of the diners. Water was free but alcoholic beverages were not, and consumers settled up with the waiters at the end of the performance.
A platoon of designers combined to create
the superior visual and aural ambience of the show—Mara Blumenfeld and Lijana
Wallenda Hernandez (costumes), Brian Bembridge (scenery and lighting), Rick
Sims and Andre Pluess (composers and sound design), Maria DeFabo (properties),
and Emilee Peterson (choreography). 
Photo Credit: Sean Williams
The staging, under Heidi Stillman’s lead directing, is a model of efficiency. The dialogue and the circus acts and the food service flow without a glitch. The plot never elevates itself above the silly and the improbable, but nobody cared. The cumulative effect creates an evening of unbroken pleasure. The audience recognized it was participating in one of the most distinctive events in recent Chicagoland entertainment history and it had a ball.
“Cascabel” runs through April 29 at the Lookingglass Theatre inside the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Performances are Tuesday through Saturday at 7 p.m. and Sunday at 5 p.m. Tickets are $200 to $250. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. March 2012
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Mr.Rickey Calls A Meeting
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago –In 1947, Jackie Robinson broke the color line in major league baseball, the first black man in modern baseball history to play in the majors. That’s a matter of record. Playwright Ed Schmidt uses that seminal event in American sports and social history to write “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting,” a fictionalized riff on what might have happened on the eve of the momentous announcement that the major leagues was about to be integrated.
Schmidt’s play was first presented in 1989 and is now being powerfully staged in a revised version by the Lookingglass Theater.
There are six
characters in the play, five of them real people. Branch Rickey was the general
manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, the white man about to install the
black Jackie Robinson on the roster of the Dodgers. Rickey calls a meeting in a
midtown New York hotel room, inviting three icons of black culture at that
time--boxer Joe Louis, dancer Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, and actor-militant
Paul Robeson. Rickey has already decided that Jackie Robinson would join the
Dodgers for the 1947 season, but he wants the seal of approval from Louis,
Bojangles, and Robeson to show the country a united African American front in
support of Jackie Robinson to blunt the firestorm of controversy that will
explode nationally when a black man takes the field in a previously all-white
sport.
Photo by Sean Williams
The playwright acknowledges that such a meeting never took place but it provides the opportunity to put a group of familiar and contrasting personalities together in one confined space to speculate on what they might say to each other. It’s a common device in drama. “Nixon’s Nixon” put Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger together the night before Nixon’s resignation and invents what they might have confided to each other that turbulent night.
After some preliminary, mostly comic, byplay, “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” comes down to a heated and eloquent debate between Rickey and Robeson. Bojangles and Louis support Jackie Robinson’s breaking the color line but Robeson is sternly opposed. He points out that Robinson’s success in the white major leagues will siphon off other star players from the Negro leagues into the major leagues, ending black baseball in the United States and throwing hundreds of players out of work (which actually happened within five years of Robinson’s debut).
Robeson sees a larger issue, the white man’s distributing favors to black people in the old master-servant setup that dominated race relations in America for generations. If Rickey is so dedicated to integration, why not a team of black stars entering the majors instead of one designated poster boy? Robeson demands that black people throw off “Uncle Tomism” and take charge of their own destinies. No tiny, patient steps, no compromises. Robeson ridicules Bojangles and Louis for delivering themselves up to white America and ending broke at the end of their careers. He urges Jackie to reject Rickey’s plan to make him a Dodger and insist on a wholesale entrance of black players into the majors.
Photo by Sean Williams
Rickey, of course, insists that his way is the only way. He insists Robeson’s demands would lead to failure. Placing one black man in the major leagues is risky enough. Rickey and Robeson and eventually Jackie go round and round, delivering one persuasive and deeply felt speech after another. Louis and Bojangles toss in their views but they are minor figures in the debate, along with a young hotel bellhop named Clancy Hope who is mostly a comic figure.
The play delivers a surprising amount of suspense, considering the audience knows how things worked out in real life. There is genuine tension on stage as Robeson tries to sway his fellow black colleagues, including Jackie Robinson. The play runs about 85 minutes without an intermission and the last half is continuously gripping in its clash of strong wills.
A few criticisms could be leveled at the play. First, the speeches, articulate as they are, take on a didactic quality, like prepared addresses at a debate. The play tends to impugn Rickey’s motives in promoting Robinson to the Dodgers roster. Doubtless there was an element of self interest in Rickey’s actions, but the man took an enormous personal and professional risk in trying to break the color line and he remains one of the true heroes of American sports.
More important, the premise of the play is questionable. Did Branch Rickey really need the public support of Joe Louis and Bill Robinson, both at the end of their careers, and the prickly Robeson to go forth with his plan for Jackie Robinson? One would assume that the American black community would enthusiastically embrace Robinson’s pioneering entry into the majors, as indeed they did in real life. The blessings of Bojangles, Joe Louis, and Robeson were hardly necessary and in the case of the controversial Robeson, possibly counterproductive. Still, without those men in that hotel room, bouncing their ideas and passions off each other, there would have been no “Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” and we would have lost a stimulating and, at the Lookingglass, beautifully acted play.
The Lookingglass has assembled a superb cast, tautly directed by J. Nicole Brooks. Larry Neumann, Jr., is terrific as Rickey and even looks a lot like the man, though Rickey weighed 50 pounds more. The mannerisms are there as well as the shrewdness. Ernest Perry, Jr., is an exuberant Bojangles with enough spirit in him to pull a gun on Robeson when the rhetoric gets really hot. Javon Johnson is outstanding as Robinson, desperate for his chance to crack the majors at whatever sacrifice but conflicted after hearing Robeson’s plea not to yield to Rickey’s manipulations. Anthony Fleming III is fine as a brooding Joe Louis preoccupied with his tax troubles with the government. Kevin Douglas earns most of the evening’s laughs as the wide-eyed and eager young bellhop with his own savvy streak.
By the nature of the play, Robeson’s character dominates the play and James Vincent Meredith gives a volcanic performance, whether he is disdaining Rickey and the black men around him or urgently stating his case for the proper course for black people in racist America.
Sibyl Wickersheimer designed the hotel room set. Alison Siple designed the costumes, Brian Bembridge the lighting, and Josh Horvath and Rick Sims the sound.
“Mr. Rickey Calls a Meeting” runs through February 19 at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Performances are Wednesday and Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $27.50 to $68. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 3 ½ stars. January 2012
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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The Last Act of Lilka Kadison
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – Blend the visual creativity we expect from the Lookingglass Theatre with the charm and resonance of an Isaac Bashevis Singer short story and you have “The Last Act of Lilka Kadison,” the charming, romantic, and dramatic short play that ends the current Lookingglass subscription season.
In less than 80 minutes of stage time, “Lilka” (the cumbersome title is one of the play’s few blemishes) shuttles the audience back and forth in time between a home in southern California today and Poland just before and during the German invasion of that country that triggered World War II. The central character is Lilka Kadison, a teen-aged daughter of an observant Jewish family in 1939 and a crusty old lady bedridden with an injured hip in her living room today.
The character that binds the two time frames is Ben Ari Adler, the operator of an itinerant toy theater in Poland in the late 1930’s and his ghost, a visitor to Lilka today as the old woman wrestles with her memories and secrets. The fourth character is Menelik Kahn, an immigrant from Pakistan in this country as a student and now reduced to working as a care giver. Menelik’s present assignment is looking after the irascible Lilka, a confrontational job between the long suffering young and the curmudgeonly Lilka that supplies much of the humor early in the play.
The Lookingglass
interior has been reconfigured into a proscenium stage. The small performing space
is congested with the detritus of decades of accumulated possessions that
imaginatively segways into 1939 Poland, where the young and innocent Lilka
accidentally meets the breezy and cynical Adler. The young man persuades Lilka
to collaborate with him in a play about Solomon and Sheba suitable to be
presented in his portable toy theater, a wagon with crude but clever cutouts
and snatches of printed dialogue (a delightful contraption designed by Tracy
Otwell).
The young Lilka and Adler come from two different worlds of Jewish culture but, unsurprisingly, they fall in love. Their romance lasts just long enough for Lilka to conceive a child as the Germans invade Poland and their lives are forever changed.
And so the setting shifts back and forth, with Adler haunting the aged Lilka’s imagination and occasionally manifesting himself supernaturally to the perplexed Menelik. Gradually we get the story of Lilka’s affair with Adler and her afterlife as she escapes from Poland to the United States and marriage to an American.
The play is credited to five writers—Nicola Behrman, David Kersnar (who also directs), Abbie Phillips, Heidi Stillman, and Andrew White. The story originated in a radio series earlier this decade called “One People, Many Stories.” The playwright-by-committee works surprisingly well, though they stumble in presenting Lilka’s great secret, the paternity of her son, now a 69-year old man living in Maine. Without giving away too much of the storyline, Lilka’s secret just doesn’t make sense, but it does generate some of the play’s emotional trust.
Most of the production’s success resides in utterly winning performances by the four-member ensemble. Marilyn Dodds Frank (the elderly Lilka) and Usman Ally (Menelik) have been A list actors area theater for years. Frank is superb playing a woman several decades her senior. She spends nearly all her stage time prone on a lounge chair and speaks comparatively few lines of the play’s dialogue. Yet she sensitively evokes the woman’s psychological pain as well as the inner strength that made her a survivor during a horrific time in history.
Unfortunately, the writers strayed into turning the woman momentarily into a foul-mouthed harridan late in the play. The lapse in taste momentarily disrupts the flow of the narrative in the cause of extracting a few cheap laughs from the audience.
Usman Ally elevates Menelik from merely serving as a comic foil for Lilka into a character with his own moving back story. The character, in Ally’s insightful performance, fleshes out issues of family central to Lilka’s saga.
The revelations in the production are Nora Fiffer as the young Lilka and especially Chance Bone as Adler. Both have resumes in second tier and storefront theater in Chicago but this is their biggest exposure on a major Chicagoland stage and they come up very big. Bone and Fiffer create instant chemistry in spite of the improbable connection of their two characters back in Poland, Adler a skeptical secular Jew and young Lilka a cloistered Jewish female in a patriarchal religious society. Bone’s Adler moves easily and persuasively between old world Poland and contemporary America, with his ingratiating personality that doesn’t mask a young man of resource and even heroism.
It’s hard to identify David Kersnar’s specific contributions to the production but the flow of the action back and forth in time is smooth and credible, which must be credited to his deft if invisible hand.
There are no difficulties in identifying and praising the designers who bring this humorous and ultimately stirring story to life. In addition to Otwell’s delightful toy theater, the staging features scenic design by Jacqueline and Richard Penrod, Mara Blumenfeld’s costumes, Christine Binder’s evocative and sometimes starting lighting, Rick Sims’s sound and original music, and property designer William Anderson, who must have ransacked a lot of thrift shops to assemble the debris in Lilka’s California residence in such eye-catching clutter.
“The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” has the shimmer of a folk tale. It’s sentimental but not kitchy, natural in its humor (except for Lilka’s sudden late out bursts of profanity), and engrossing in its narrative. We’ve seen the Lookingglass triumph in sheer stagecraft before, but rarely has the theater joined so much substance with such an imaginative presentation.
“The Last Act of Lilka Kadison” runs through July 24 at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 North Pearson Avenue. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $34 to $62. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. June 2011
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Ethan Frome
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Ethan Frome” isn’t your typical Lookingglass Theatre presentation. There are no tumblers, acrobats, trapeze artists, or whiz bang special effects. Instead, the company is presenting a somber realistic drama compressed into one 85-minute act.
Lookingglass ensemble member Laura Eason adapted “Ethan Frome” from Edith Wharton’s 1911 short novel about unhappiness and thwarted love in a bleak New England rural setting around the turn of the last century. The Wharton tale had previous been converted into motion pictures and a well received Broadway play in 1936.
“Ethan Frome” has a whiff of Eugene
O’Neill’s New England drama “Desire Under the Elms” in its tale of suppressed
eroticism leading to a semi-tragic conclusion in an inhospitable New England
environment. The Wharton story concentrates on three characters. Ethan is a New
Englander trying to scratch a living from his saw mill. He marries Zenobia, a
woman who turns into a whining hypochondriac. Into this loveless marriage comes
young Mattie, a poor relation taken into the household as a servant girl and Zenobia’s
helper. 
The audience knows where the story is heading seconds after Mattie makes her first appearance. She and Ethan will be attracted to each other as a pair of poor, deprived souls aching for affection. All that remains is the resolution to the story, and even at the brief playing time the story moves at an ostentatiously deliberate pace to its somber conclusion.
There are no R-rated adulterous meetings between Ethan and Mattie. The two don’t even touch until the final minutes of the play. Then they finally bring their mutual passion to the surface and clinch before electing to commit suicide by riding a sled into a tree. But the suicide attempt misfires, leaving both characters crippled, ironically under the care of Zenobia, who is converted from patient to caregiver.
It’s a grim saga told in a minimalist style in which characters speak in short muted phrases, never using two words when one will suffice. Voices are rarely raised and pregnant silences can be as expressive as the clipped dialogue.
Eason uses the flashback format, with a narrator continuously on stage, sometimes playing a minor character. He’s the audience’s guide through the gradual accumulation of feelings between Ethan and Mattie that leads to the story’s violent climax. The bleak, wintry background underscores the grim and humor-deprived narrative. But the story still has the rising intensity that grabs the viewer, thanks to the perfect pitch production directed by Eason.
Philip R. Smith plays the large-boned, brooding Ethan with just the right mixture of resignation and resentment. He’s locked into a life without joy in the present or the prospect of joy in the future. Smith conveys Ethan’s helplessness as he confronts his fate with a flat vocal delivery and bowed body language. Louise Lamson is superb as the self effacing Mattie, who doesn’t admit her passion for Ethan until the fateful final minutes of the play. Lisa Tejero is first-rate as Zenobia, an unsympathetic character with her own grievances and cross to bear, at least in her own mind.
Andrew White is fine as the narrator who serves as a kind of stage manager, filling in the blanks in the story as the action eases along. Erik Lochtefled resourcefully portrays several local residents with the understatement that colors the entire play. Lochtefeld even manages a few bits of humor in a story that definitely doesn’t seek chuckles from the spectator.
Eason’s spare adaptation omits the final irony, with Zenobia’s role reversal from sick woman to caregiver, tending the limping and emotional empty Ethan and the complaining invalid who is now Mattie. Another five minutes of performance would have tied up the narrative neatly. But the play still exerts a strong pull on the spectator through the rising tension of the story. And the suicidal sled ride is rendered on the stage with the visual inventiveness we expect from a Lookingglass presentation.
“Ethan Frome” is something of a mood piece. Audiences conditioned to tragic love stories in the modern manner, filled with bare skin and heavy breathing, should be prepared for Eason’s “less is more” approach. But the success of the Lookingglass production proves there is still room on the stage for effectively presented nuance and understatement, even with the subject deals with the fiercest of emotions.
The design credits belong to Daniel Ostling (set), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), Christine Binder (lighting), Rick Sims (sound), and Kevin O’Donnell (original music). They all serve this powerful, if low-keyed, drama very well.
“Ethan Frome” runs through April 17 at the Lookinggglass Theatre, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $34 to $62. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com. March 2011
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Peter Pan
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – “Peter Pan” may be a story about children, but that doesn’t make it a children’s story. Consider the interesting if problematical adaptation at the Lookingglass Theatre.
Adapter and guest director Amanda Dehnert takes a dark view of the story about the boy who would not grow up. Forget the Disneyfication of the J. M. Barry play. At the Lookingglass, Peter is a self absorbed and slightly cynical lad. He’s also played by a young man (Ryan Nunn), rejecting the traditional casting of a female (often a very mature female) in the title role.
Captain Hook is a real nasty, a vicious man with plenty of hate boiling in him. Even that standard charmer Tinker Bell is a particularly bitchy fairy, except when she sacrifices herself by drinking the poison intended for Peter. Then she writhes on the stage in graphic and chilling agony.
The final battle between Peter and Hook is a genuine fight to the finish. Curiously, the defeated Hook walked to his death into the jaws of the invisible alligator with a resignation that calls to mind the heroic Sidney Carton walking up the steps to the guillotine in “The Tale of Two Cities.” Overall, there is enough intensity in this production to raise a caution warning for pre teen visitors.
The first act is all about the staging. The performers interact with the audience as the play begins, asking for help in turning on light bulbs that represent stars. The actors wear grungy clothes on the empty stage. There is no sense of the Barrie Edwardian atmosphere in the production. The audience can admire the staging devices, including some aerial work with ropes and harnesses, but this show begins as a self referential presentation that shuts out the emotion, and narrative drive, of the original. The nuts and bolts of the staging are on display, but there is little heart and soul in the first act.
The tension picks up in the second act. The prolonged swordfight between Peter and Hook employs steel platforms on wheels spun around the stage by the other characters, an impressive, and dangerous, display of coordinated motion. There is even a bit of humor in a production notably surprisingly lacking in comedy when Peter cajoles the audience into saving the poisoned Tinker Bell through their laughter. Based on the fairy’s previous behavior, Peter is hard pressed to rouse the spectators to rally round the dying Tinker Bell. She had not earned our good will through her disagreeable attitude toward the virtuous Wendy.
Wendy, of course, is the oldest of the three Darling children captivated by Peter to escape with him to Never Land. There she’s to fulfill the function of storytelling mother for the Lost Boys in the land. One of the Lost Boys inadvertently shoots the flying Wendy out of the sky. It’s a scene of sudden violence that might rattle a young and impressionable viewer until Wendy rises from the dead to go her chipper way as the proxy mother.
The 14-member ensemble is a mix of Lookingglass regulars and Northwestern University students. The students fit in nicely, especially Nate Trinrud as Toodles, the boy who shoots Wendy. Another NU student, Royer Bockus, also does a nice Lisa Kudrow turn as Nana the dog.
Thomas J. Cox, a Lookingglass stalwart, is an almost operatic villain as Captain Hook. Amy Carle gives real emotional depth to Mrs. Darling, grieving for her missing children. Kay Kron is a strong and persuasive Wendy. Molly Brennan is Smee, Captain Hook’s second in command and a character with ambiguous loyalties. Aislinn Mulligan gives Tinker Bell that unconventional creepy spin. Jamie Abelson (John) and Alex Weisman (Michael) play Wendy’s siblings. Weisman is a Northwestern student but his skills as an actor elevate him way beyond the apprentice level.
This being the Lookingglass, the physical production is inventive, particularly when characters soar above the stage. Captain Hook and his henchmen make their first entrance in a burst of light and sound that will jolt even the adults in the audience.
By the time I caught up with this production, the first wave of reviews was out and they were mostly uncomplimentary. The show does have its difficulties, especially in the dramatically soft opening act, and the ferocity of the second act scenes are a matter of taste. I preferred them to the saccharine kiddy-oriented manipulations that often afflict revivals. The final minutes of the show are legitimately bittersweet and poignant, even if credit goes almost entirely to Barrie’s words.
Dehnert wanted to give the story a different look and sensibility and she succeeded. Traditionalists may not be amused but there are as many virtues to the production as demerits, presuming the viewer buys into Dehnert’s concept. Assisting the director in realizing her vision are Dan Stratton (scenic design), Melissa Torchia (costume design), Lee Fiskness (lighting design), and Andre Pluess and Michael Griggs (sound design). And much praise goes to Matt Hawkins as movement director. That swordfight scene is a gem.
“Peter Pan” runs through December 12 at the Lookingglass Theatre in the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue. Most performances are Wednesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 2 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $62. Call 312 337 0665 or visitwww.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of three stars. November 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.
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Hephaestus
By the Lookingglass Theatre
At he Goodman(Owen)
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO—The circus is back in town, under the appropriately descriptive title of “Hephaestus: A Greek Mythology Circus Tale.” The Lookingglass Theatre first presented the show in 2005 and remounted it in 2008. Now a third version is being presented at the Goodman Owen Theatre. It was a remarkable 80 minutes of entertainment the first two times around and it’s even better now, circus wizardry at the very highest level.
The show begins quietly enough with a little girl in her nightdress fearfully overhearing her offstage parents quarreling bitterly. The child then starts reading from a book on Greek mythology to escape the tensions of the parental hostility. Specifically, she reads about Hephaestus, the lame blacksmith to the gods on Mount Olympus who was flung from the heavens to earth by the goddess Hera, his mother, who was repulsed by his physical deformities.
Once we get through the prologue, the circus acts take over, within the context of the Hephaestus’s workshop beneath a volcanic island where he produces miraculous inventions at his forge. And what circus acts they are—a graceful ensemble ballet on fabric hangings above the stage, high wire walking, bungee jumping, hand balancing, tumbling, contortion, gymnastics, a performer rotating within a giant metal wheel—all up close and personal in the intimate space of the Goodman Owen Theatre. The breathtaking finale is a seven-person pyramid that travels across a high wire above the stage.
The show is nonverbal except for some narration and singing provided by the little girl. The setting is highly dramatic, thanks to expressionistic lighting effects, science fiction style costumes and makeup, and a terrific New Age musical score. A trapdoor provides an entrance and exit to and from a mysterious underground workshop evoked through smoke and lights. Periodically drummers pound away at stage level or on a balcony above the action. Visually and aurally, “Hephaestus” is the complete package, creating a magical mythical world where mind-boggling feats of grace and daring are part of the natural order.
Unfortunately, the playbill does not match the performers with their individual circus acts so I can’t place most of the artists by name with their contributions. There are three members of the famous Wallenda family of circus aerialists—Erendira Vazquez Wallenda, Lijana Wallenda-Hernandez, and Nik Wallenda. Other featured artists include Katia Dmitrieva, Rani Waterman, and Almas Meirmanov. Let their names stand honorably for the 20 or so performers who collectively make up this memorable presentation.
Which brings us to the Anastasini brothers from Spain—Guiliano and Fabio. Their act consists of Fabio lying on an incline board, using his feet to juggle his brother while Guiliano performs somersaults and twists in mid air, each time miraculously landing on the soles of his brother’s feet. It is a truly astonishing act that produced some of the most fervent audience cheering I have heard in a theater in a long time.
It should be noted that all the acts are performed without a safety net or safety cables, adding an edgy element of danger to the grace and creativity and athleticism of the performances. The high risks embodied in most of the performances had the audience alternately holding its breath and squealing in apprehension.
The mastermind behind “Hephaestus” is Tony Hernandez, who created the production, co-directed with Heidi Stillman, and plays the crippled title character. He is aided immeasurably by Brian Sidney Bembridge’s scenic and lighting design, Lijana Wallenda-Hernandez’s costume design, and the brilliant sound and music accompaniment by Ray Nardelli, Andre Pluess, and Josh Horvath. They all make “Hephaestus” a feast of the theater arts as well as a celebration of circus performance of wondrous achievement.
An organization called Silverguy Entertainment gets co-production credit for the show and contributes many of the performers. They hire themselves out for parties and similar events and based on their work in “Hephaestus” they must put on quite a show.
Regrettably, “Hephaestus” is being offered for a limited run. It would be an irresistible attraction for summer tourists roaming the Loop and near north side. You couldn’t ask for a better family show.
“Hephaestus” runs through May 23 at the Goodman Owen Theatre, 170 North Dearborn Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $25 to $70. Call 312 443 3800 or visit www.lookingglasstheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of four stars. April 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .
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Trust
At the Lookingglass Theatre
By Dan Zeff
CHICAGO - ‘Trust’ at the Lookingglass Theatre is informative, engrossing, disturbing, and superbly staged. It’s informative in revealing one of the most insidious plagues of our high tech age, sexual predators using the Internet to prey on teen-age girls. It’s engrossing in dramatizing the psychological toll the predator takes on the victim and her family, and disturbing because this is a social problem that flies under the radar of national concern.
‘Trust’ was co-written by Lookingglass ensemble member David Schwimmer and Andy Bellin and co-directed by Schwimmer and Heidi Stillman. The production is as up to date as its subject, utilizing a back wall of projections, videos, photographs, and texting in that arcane condensed language that young people use to communicate with each other.
Annie is a 14-year old girl, apparently well adjusted but inwardly insecure about her looks and her place in the popularity pecking order among her peers. Her parents give her a laptop computer for her birthday and Annie soon makes a connection with a male who at first claims to be a teenager. They build up a highly erotic Internet relationship, though the audience learns about the development and nature of the relationship after the fact.
The predator sets up a face-to-face meeting at a mall where the Internet correspondent turns out to be a 35-year old man who takes her to a motel and seduces her. That all takes place in the first half hour of the 105-minute intermissionless production.
The rest of the play concentrates on the impact the seduction has on Annie’s father, who becomes consumed with rage and
guilt at his daughter’s violation. His obsession with the predator threatens to destroy the father’s career and tear his family apart. So ‘Trust’ becomes as much a drama about the consequences of the seduction on the victim’s extended family as it is about the trauma inflicted on the girl. Indeed, for much of the play Annie is in denial about the nature of her seducer. She angrily defends him in the pathetic conviction that the man is not a pervert but really loves her and is being driven away from her by the meddling of her father and the investigation conducted by the FBI.
‘Trust’ originated as a screenplay and it has a cinematic flow with its short scenes and its emphasis on visual as much as verbal presentation. Six actors in the nine-member ensemble play multiple roles like friends of Annie, an FBI agent, a counselor, and the father’s boss. The story would open up scenically as a motion picture but there is an immediacy to the tale that profits from the kind of live, intimate staging the play is receiving at the Lookingglass.
‘Trust’ can be taken as a cautionary story for parents of girls in their extremely vulnerable teen-age years. Parents should monitor, or at least be aware, of their daughters's activity on the Internet, more easily said than done with girls jealously protecting their privacy from adult eyes.
The play profiles a probable victim as a girl in her early teens looking for love and acceptance beyond her social circle. The girl is not beautiful or a member of the school 'in' crowd, at least in her own eyes. That makes her prime pickings for the predator, who conducts the electronic relationship with sophistication and charm until he moves in for the live kill. The predator probably is very skilled in using the Internet and thus elusive to corner. He tends to blend into the social landscape, as the final chilling moments of the play portray.
Schwimmer is passionate about this subject but to his credit he has co-written a work that holds the stage theatrically and not just as an infomercial for a serious social problem. There is suspense and tension in the play but no melodrama. For Annie and her father the drama’s ending might be considered, if not happy, at least setting them on the path to healing. One wonders how many real life victims and their families enjoy such an upbeat aftermath.
Allison Torem is beyond superb as Annie, a mass of conflicting emotions bundled into the mind and spirit of a girl who shouldn’t have to carry so much emotional and psychological baggage. Torem is one of the legion of brilliant teen-age actresses with their roots in the Profiles Theatre and she should be an ornament to the Chicagoland theater scene as long as she stays in the area.
Philip R. Smith is memorable as the father, possibly sacrificing his job and the mental health of himself and his family in his single-minded search for revenge against the predator. Raymond Fox is totally persuasive in his few scenes as the villain, a low-keyed and unsettling performance. Amy Carle is strong as Annie’s mother, desperate for both her daughter and her husband. Morocco Omari, Dorcas Sowunmi, Christine Dunford, and Keith Kupferer play multiple adult characters and Spencer Curnutt, Marianna Oharenko, Zanny Laird, and Zoe Levin effectively play assorted young people in Annie’s life. The story must give the young performers some uneasy thoughts.
The outstanding physical production is the combined work of designers Dan Ostling (scenery), Mara Blumenfeld (costumes), Chris Bindert (lighting) and Michael Griggs and Rick Sims (sound), all led by the multimedia design of Bridges Media.
‘Trust’ runs through April 25 at the
Lookingglass Theatre at the Water Tower Water Works, 821 North Michigan Avenue.
Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at
3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $28 to $62. Call 312 337 0665 or visit www.lookingglassgtheatre.org
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars. March 2010
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.