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The Motherf**ker With The Hat

At the Steppenwolf Theatre (Downstairs)

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Faced with a troublesome nomenclature dilemma, the print media generally spells the name of Stephen Adly Guirgis’s play “The Motherf**ker with the Hat,” as though replacing two letters with asterisks will somehow mitigate any shock value produced by the profane title. But the name isn’t thrown at the audience for sensationalism. It’s appropriate to the narrative and makes a legitimate contribution to this beautifully written comedy/drama that is receiving a triumphant local premiere at the Steppenwolf Theatre.

         “Hat” is a funny, raunchy, emotional portrait of five Puerto Rican Americans who live in the lower depths in New York City. Veronica (Sandra Delgado) is a drug addict. Since the eighth grade, she has been in love with Jackie (John Ortiz), an ex con and alcoholic trying to get clean under the supervision of his Alcoholics Anonymous sponsor (Ralph D. (Jimmy Smits). Ralph is turbulently married to Victoria (Sandra Marquez. The fifth character is Julio (Gary Perez), Jackie’s cousin, who looks and sounds gay but insists he is a man you mess with on pain of severe injury or death.

                                                                   Photo Credit: Michael Bosilow

         A love/hate feeling weaves throughout the relationships among all the characters. The audience may not care to know these people in real life but on the stage the five are absorbing and even sympathetic, thanks to the terrific dialogue by Guirgis and the perfectly matched set of performances at the Steppenwolf.

There is no linear plot on “Hat.” The hook is a hat that Jackie finds in Veronica’s apartment, a hat he assumes belongs to a lover who visited Veronica while Jackie was elsewhere. Veronica angrily denies Jackie’s accusations, the first of many forays into the subjective nature of truth the play explores with a tantalizing mix of comedy and intense emotion. Truth is very much in the eyes of the beholder in “Hat.” Characters deny they lie until they are forced to concede that maybe they did lie.they claim it wasn’t really lying but an alternate kind of truth. Sexual infidelity and betrayal percolate through the play but nobody accepts blame for any moral transgressions. It’s all a matter of point of view.

The play runs for 100 minutes without an intermission. Most of the action focuses on Jackie as he tries to deal with his turbulent relationships with the other four characters. Toward the end, the dramatic momentum shifts to Ralph D., a man who claims he wants to serve as a beacon of recovery for Jackie while dealing in deception and manipulation. According to Ralph D.’s world view, treachery and deceit really don’t matter in life. What matters is getting through today in order to face tomorrow, and we all will die eventually so what’s the difference. It’s a cynical, amoral philosophy all the more disturbing because it makes sense, at least within the context of the poor souls in “Hat.”

The play ends bleakly. These are characters leading dead end lives and the playwright isn’t interested in falsifying their futures with bogus happy endings. Yet “Hat” isn’t a downer. There is all that robust humor and all those flashpoint confrontations to entertain the viewer.

“Hat” was a success on Broadway in 2011 but I suspect that the Steppenwolf production trumps the New York City staging. There was much criticism of the Big Apple presentation as loud, shrill, and over the top, with the characters screaming at each other at maximum decibel levels. Anna Shapiro was the Broadway director and she also guides the Steppenwolf presentation. Apparently Shapiro has rethought her interpretation because the Steppenwolf production is carefully and subtly modulated to build from comedy to a dramatic credible finish. So when the big dramatic payoffs come as the play concludes, the actors are allowed to ascend an emotional arc that leaves the audience as involved at the end as they were in the opening moments.

                                                                                                                     Photo Credit:  Michael Bosilow

Guirgis’s script is drenched in profanity but the playwright achieves an almost poetic quality from his foul mouthed dialogue. His people use the strong language as a normal means of emphatic expression. It’s not the way members of the audience talk but it’s the natural mode of discourse for Jackie and his colleagues and after the play’s first minutes the audience accepts the language for its rich vein of adult humor as well as its dramatic punch.

Film and TV star Jimmy Smits is the nominal star of the production as Ralph D. (played on Broadway in what must have been a radically different style by black standup comedian Chris Rock). Smits brings a dominating physical presence to his character, but he keeps a low emotional profile, until a showdown with Jackie that results in some fisticuffs and triggers Ralph D.’s caustic disquisition on the essential emptiness of life. Smits also excels in delivering a short monologue that claims nobody makes a real friend after the age of 25 and most people are fortunate if they can claim even one true friend before that age. It’s a statement that will have many viewers pondering its somber wisdom.

         For most of the play the spotlight shines on John Ortiz’s portrait of the conflicted Jackie, a man with a background of crime and addiction who still comes across as likable, if naïve, fated to place his trust in the wrong people in his life. It’s superbly nuanced performance climaxed by a heartbreaking final moment in the play.

         The two women in the play, both veterans of the Latino Teatro Vista company in Chicago, are superb. Delgado makes the self destructive and faithless Veronica into an almost tragic figure. Marquez beautifully expresses the despair of a woman tied by an unbreakable psychological bond to a man who continuously plays her false and yet still loves her in his own distorted way.

         The trickiest role in the play belongs to Jackie’s cousin Julio. He is a comic figure but a man who leads a lonely and unappreciated life. We can both laugh and sympathize with his expressions of macho bravado. By the end of the play the viewer may not know how to take Julio, but Perez’s performance enriches the play by converting a possible gay stereotype into a very human and sad individual.

     The physical production partners the success of the acting. Todd Rosenthal creates the three living spaces where the action takes place, imaginatively harnessing the Steppenwolf technology to shift locales in a few seconds of mechanized scenery shifting before the audience’s eyes. Linda Roethke designed the costumes, Donald Holder the lighting, and Rod Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound. Jazz trumpeter Terence Blanchard composed the atmospheric background music.

         “Hat” follows the Steppenwolf’s stunning production of “Good People.” I don’t recall any theater in Chicagoland consecutively staging two such important new American plays with such incisive productions.

    “The Motherf**ker with the Hat” runs through March 3 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $86. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

                 The show gets a rating of four stars.

Contact Dan: zeffdaniel@yahoo.com     January 2013

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Good People

At the Steppenwolf Theatre(Downstairs)

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – David Lindsay-Abaire’s “Good People” is a wonderful play receiving a terrific production at the Steppenwolf Theatre and headed by a magnificent performance from Mariann Mayberry. Those are the facts. The rest is commentary.

        “Good People” is set in Boston, especially working class south Boston, where the playwright grew up The central character is a middle-aged single mother named Margaret (Margey to her friends). The opening scene sets the rest of the evening in motion, though it seems innocuous enough at the time. Margey is being fired from her minimum wage job as a cashier for chronic tardiness brought on by the needs of her retarded daughter at home. So now Margey is suddenly among the unemployed, desperately needing any kind of paycheck in a down economy to survive from day to day.

        One of Margey’s friends mentions that her old boyfriend Mike from high school days is now a successful Boston doctor. They hadn’t seen each other for 30 years but maybe the doctor could employ Margey, for old times sake. So Margey visits Mike in his office. The visit is superficially polite but does not go well. The doctor has nothing for Margey employmentwise and her associations with his south Boston childhood clearly make him uncomfortable. But Margey does wangle a reluctant invitation to Mike’s birthday party in a few days where she can circulate among his wealthy guests and maybe pick up a menial job.

        That takes us to the the second act in the doctor’s upscale home. Mike has called Margey to tell her the party has been called off because his child is sick. Margey thinks he’s lying to keep her away from the party where her blue collar manners might embarrass him with his toney friends. So Margey decides to crash the party, only to discover that it really has been canceled because the child was ill. After some initial awkwardness, Margey remains at Mike’s home, joined by his African American wife Kate. That’s when the dramatic fireworks start exploding.

        It’s not fair to disclose the specific matters that come under fire among Mike, Margey, and Kate, but it can be reported that the issues touch on class, money, and how much the defining moments in life come from character, from environment, or from pure luck. There are a number of plot twists, none of them a surprise to the attentive viewer, but cumulatively they give the play tremendous emotional propulsion. Are the characters good people (as the play’s title suggests) or just average people dealt a hand by life that leads to success (Mike) or struggle (Margey)?   

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Three Sisters

At the Steppenwolf Theatre Downstairs

By Dan Zeff

Chicago –Tracy Letts calls his version of Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters” an adaptation, but other than some changes in language it’s still the great Russian dramatist’s play, a human and humane account of characters mired in boredom, disappointment, failure, loneliness, and frustration.

        The Steppenwolf is premiering the Letts revision of “Three Sisters” in a beautifully acted and staged revival that should make believers even out of those playgoers who avoid Chekhov as a tiresome purveyor of ineffectual people wallowing in ineffectual lives.

        Letts retains the play’s setting, a provincial Russian town in the early 1900. The sisters of the title are Olga, Irina, and Masha Prozorov, the cultivated daughters of an army general, now deceased. The sisters and their brother Andrey live with their hopes and dreams in the backwater town populated by mediocrities The only civilized companionship comes from an army brigade stationed in the town. The sisters yearn to return to their Moscow home, where life is cultured and intelligent.

        The audience is tempted to grow impatient with Chekhov’s sensitive characters. They marry disastrously, allow their plans for a better life to peter out, and in general lack the will to take charge of their own lives. Andrey is an intellectual who hopes to become a university professor but he marries a coarse woman from the town who turns into a tyrannical bitch. Masha loves the married army officer Vershinin but tied herself to a harmless but weak schoolmaster. Olga remains unmarried, bound to a local school as a teacher and eventually as headmistress, a job she despises. Irina is the youngest and most optimistic of the sisters but eventually she too is ground down by the tedium of her provincial existence.

        The Letts adaptation follows the original narrative closely, the major departure being in the dialogue. Letts injects numerous modernisms in the language (“you guys”) and lots of profanity, especially from Masha. Letts is obviously looking for a more contemporary gloss to the dialogue, sometimes arbitrarily. In most translations, Masha’s schoolmaster husband in his pathetic optimism repeatedly proclaims “I’m content.” At the Steppenwolf, he repeats “I’m satisfied,” scarcely an improvement.

        Possibly the most significant revision is in the title. Letts drops the customary “The,” possibly suggesting that “Three Sisters” gives the play a more universal inflection than the more specific “The Three Sisters.” If that’s his intent, it’s a subtle change that will be lost on many viewers.

        The chief achievement of the adaptation is not getting in the way of the original masterpiece. The main characters may be maddening in the way they allow vulgarity to triumph over their sensitivity. And they drone on philosophically about the meaning of life and work while they allow life to pass them by. Instead of mooning about it for 11 years, why don’t the sisters just pack their bags and board the train for Moscow?

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The March

At the Steppenwolf Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago– “The March” was a fine Civil War novel and likely would make an excellent motion picture, but as a play it has problems. The ambitious adaptation at the Steppenwolf Theatre certainly gives the E. L. Doctorow book a brave try, but at 2 hours and 50 minutes the production turns out to be a pretty long sit for the audience.

      “The March” describes the Union army’s slash-and-burn march through the Deep South in the waning months of the Civil War from late 1864 through early 1865. Led by Union general William Tecumseh Sherman, the Union forces lived off the land, destroying plantations and towns and appropriating livestock and crops while they moved through Georgia and North and South Carolina. As they plundered through the South, the Union army attracted a vast following crowd of freed black slaves and white refugees, adding to the chaos and suffering of Sherman’s ruthless campaign.

      Doctorow told the story of Sherman’s march as a mosaic of incidents and characters. The novel touched on the lives of dozens of men and women, military and civilian and black and white, representing both the North and the South. Doctorow humanized the war by bringing it into the scale of individuals trying to survive in a maelstrom of overwhelming violence and social disruption.

      The novel attracted the interest of Steppenwolf director Frank Galati, an old hand at epic storytelling for the stage. His adaptations of “The Grapes of Wrath”and “Ragtime” rank among the major works of the 1990’s in the American theater.

It’s easy to see what drew Galati to “The March,” with its many vivid personalities, dramatic episodes, and powerful sense of history in the making. Galati’s adaptation follows the Doctorow novel closely, but what was gripping on the page lacks power and narrative drive on the Steppenwolf stage. The march itself of necessity happens off stage and is recounted through narration. Badly wounded soldiers are carried on and off stage to convey the realities of battle’s savagery, but mostly the audience hears about the war but doesn’t see it, which means the viewer doesn’t sufficiently feel the fear and tension and bravery and cowardice of the conflict.

      The characters crowd the stage but only a few make a real impact, notably General Sherman, a freed slave named Pearl, and a pair of petty criminals named Arly and Will who try to survive the conflict as opportunists, swinging back and forth between the two sides. These characters stimulate much the show’s best acting, from Harry Groener (Sherman), Shannon Matesky (Pearl), and Ian Barford and Stephen Louis Grush (Arly and Will).

    The adaptation relies heavily on monologues that characters speak directly to the audience. The monologues work in the novel but too often they sound arch and literary in the play. Virtually all the main characters take turns delivering verbal essays we would never expect to hear from people in their stations of life. It’s the kind of stage convention that works in a Shakespeare history play but sounds contrived in “The March.”

      In spite of all the characters and incidents, the narrative doesn’t grab the viewer. Things happen, one after the other, without sufficient cumulative impact. Some of the incidents are striking, as when a freed slave dreams of a happy life as a farmer with the 40 acres of farmland Sherman decreed would be allotted to all freed male slaves. With the hindsight of history, the audience knows the black man’s hopes for a good life working the land would crumble in the racist years to come in the South. There are other successful bits scattered throughout the evening, some grim, some passionate, some humorous, but they don’t add up to a cohesive and engrossing dramatic experience.

      The Steppenwolf ensemble gets highest marks for quality of acting. Groener brings Sherman alive as the warrior who destroys the South with no regret during his march. Sherman is the source of the famous phrase “War is hell.” He saw his job as defeating an enemy he despised for trying to break up the union, but at the end of the play Groener’s general displays some ambiguity in his mind about the brutal costs of warfare.

Matesky is superb as the teen-age Pearl, a spunky and intelligent girl who ends up about as happy as any of the main characters. As Arly, Barford dominates the play through the sheer force of his wily personality. His Arly is a rascal with his eye continually on the main chance. But Arly’s poetic and philosophical disquisitions are at odds with a scruffy character trying to survive the war by fair means or foul. There is also solid work from Grush as Will, Philip R. Smith as a Union surgeon, and Philip James Brannon as a variety of black men. Mariann Mayberry, Carrie Coon, and Martha Lavey all flourish as the chief female characters.

The designers do their best to create a sense of the conflict through dramatic lighting (designed by James F. Ingalls), sound (designed by Josh Schmidt), and projections (designed by Stephen Mazurek). James Schuette designed the flexible set that moves fluidly between interiors and the outdoor war zone. Virgil Johnson designed the vast wardrobe of costumes that gives the production its authentic period look.

The action moves in short scenes, with characters coming and going from the rear of the stage and the wings, and occasionally the aisles. Galati does a masterful job of orchestrating the continuous movement, so visually there isn’t a dull moment in the show.But all the creative design work and fine acting don’t add up to a play that should be as compelling as the events it describes. The production falls into the “nice try” category, resourceful and committed but in the final reckoning it doesn’t quite come off.

“The March” runs through June 10 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $78. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

The show gets a rating of three stars.

Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.April 2012

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Penelope

At the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Enda Walsh is one of the great polarizing writers in modern theater. His admirers love the English dramatist’s quirky theatrical imagination and his command of language. His detractors complain that his stories are improbable, if not incomprehensible, and his scripts bloated with excesses of luxurious but ultimately tedious verbosity.

        Walsh has been served locally in recent seasons by productions of “The Walworth Farce” and “The New Electric Ballroom.” Now the Steppenwolf Theatre is presenting Walsh’s “Penelope,” a 90-minute intermissionless comedy-drama that will give comfort to his fans and irritate his detractors once again.

        Walsh builds “Penelope” on a portion of Homer’s ancient epic “The Odyssey.” In that long poem, Odysseus, king of Ithaca, is away fighting in the Trojan War. During his absence a flock of suitors comes to his palace, laying siege to his wife Penelope to demand that she take one of them as her husband on the expectation that Odysseus will never return from the war. The suitors are a dissolute bunch and Odysseus wipes out the last of them after he returns to Ithaca in disguise.

        In “Penelope,” four suitors remain from the 100 who started to woo Penelope years earlier. But there is nothing of ancient Greece about them. The men gather around an empty swimming pool, wearing speed-o bikini brief swimming suits. To expand on the sense of chronological dislocation, the production injects frequent excerpts from recordings by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.

The men are not physically impressive, their middle- aged bodies running to fat as they posture and bicker while pondering ways to reach Penelope and pressure her to choose a new mate before Odysseus makes his way back to Ithaca and causes all of them a lot of grief.

   Penelope herself makes occasional appearances, silently observing the men from her apartment above the main stage area. She never speaks, but the four men do enough talking for her. The men all carry the highly un-Homeric names of Dunne (Scott Jaeck), Quinn (Yasen Peyankov), Fitz (Tracey Letts replacing the originally cast John Mahoney), and Burns (Ian Barford).

        Each of the four characters possesses a distinct personality. Quinn is a bullying and abrasive take-charge guy. Dunne is a pompous blowhard. Fitz is a bookish, mild mannered nerdy type. Burns, the youngest of the four, is in a constant state of anger and unhappiness, largely because of the recent suicide of his close friend and fellow suitor, Murray.

        Spectators who don’t read the program notes before the play starts will have no idea who these men are or what their situation is until gradually they reveal their plight as desperate suitors for the aloof Penelope. There isn’t much physical action for the first two thirds of the play but plenty of speechifying, especially two interludes when first Dunne then Fitz takes a microphone and launches a long monologue (televised live to Penelope’s apartment) making their case as Odysseus’s replacement. The monologues show Walsh at his best in concocting eloquent arias of language that will captivate some listeners and pass over others as so much beautiful verbal noise.

        Near the end of the play the characters suddenly launch into a silent manic dumb show that involves lots of quick costume changes off stage and has the frenzied quality of a Marx Brothers sketch. The audience has got to love the scene, even though some viewers may not understand where it’s coming from or where it’s going.

        The sensibility of “Penelope” has a whiff of Samuel Beckett if Beckett was in a farcical, long winded mood. The four characters are trapped in their situation, unable to extricate themselves for all their planning. They find themselves confined to a physical space with little hope of release.

        But say this for Walsh. The man really knows how to write for his performers. Actors must love the challenge of speaking his elaborate language and interpreting his offbeat plots and bizarre characters. In Walsh’s plays, the major characters are star turns for the actors, and “Penelope” is no exception. Jaeck, Peyankov, Letts, and Barford all get at least one spotlighted monologue that displays Walsh’s rich, not to say opulent, language. And there is genuine humor in the banter among the four men as well as frequent moments of violent-tinged tension (one of the characters is stabbed to death on stage in a typical out-of-left-field Walsh plot twist). An actor has to be really good to perform in a Walsh play and the four men in “Penelope” are exceptional.

Logan Vaughn plays as Penelope. She spends her few appearances elegantly seated, standing, or walking, showing only a bit of facial expression in the play’s final moments. She is an oasis of restraint and mystery among all the talk below her.

        Director Amy Morton has done a splendid job of orchestrating the performances so they make their own internal sense, however perplexing the actions on stage might be for the audience. Walt Spangler’s bi level set and James Ingalls’s lighting give the production the visual look of a slightly seedy David Hockney painting. Ana Kuzmanic designed the beachware costumes, with their tacky bathrobes and flip-flops and swimsuits intended for much younger, more buff males. Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen provide the sound design and original music.

        “Penelope,” like all of Walsh’s plays, takes the viewer on a wild, improbable ride. His admirers will thoroughly enjoy the journey while others will once again wonder what his point is. I liked the play for its imaginative riff on classical literature and even more for allowing four gifted actors to do their thing, especially when displaying themselves in unflattering bathing attire.

        “Penelope” runs through February 5 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 p.m. (with Wednesday matinees at 2 p.m. on January 18 and 25 and February 1). Tickets are $20 to $78. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

        The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.

        Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

           Visit Dan on Facebook.  December12, 2011

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Clybourne Park

At the Steppenwolf Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – “Clybourne Park” at the Steppenwolf Theatre is another unsettling mind-churner by Bruce Norris. I suspect that the post-show discussion following a performance will be unusually well attended and argumentative. Norris touches lots of nerves in this one.

        “Clybourne Park” is about race, or about how Americans tap-dance (a term used often by the characters) around the subject. We use evasions and euphemisms, side-stepping our true feeling about whites and blacks in this country. We pander to perceived sensitivities on the subject with lame liberalism, telling racist jokes that, the teller insists, are meant to be in broad minded good fun and not offensive. We will go around the block verbally to avoid speaking what we really believe when it comes to race.

        Norris divides “Clybourne Park” into two acts. The action takes place in the same house, separated by 50 years, in a neighborhood in Chicago. The first act, set in 1959, puts us in “A Raisin in the Sun” territory. A white family is selling their house in an all white neighborhood to a black family. A representative of the white community visits the white owners to dissuade them from selling, playing the fear card, warning that one black family will open the floodgates for more black families, driving property values into an irreversible downward spiral. The implication is that the issue here is more economic than racial prejudice, but wariness of black people is the subtext.

In the 50 years before the start of the second act, the neighborhood has indeed gone all African American,  becoming a kind of historical monument to black aspirations to a better way of life. But now a young white couple has purchased the house and plans to tear it down, rebuilding it in a style that clashes with the other homes. A black woman tells the white buyers by demolishing the house, they would be violating the heritage of black achievement the house represents.

        The white dialogue in 1959 is patronizing, if superficially well meaning, giving the audience some chuckles at how the white characters demonstrate their racial bias by insisting they have no racial bias. The second act portrays, amidst much comedy, how we have not advanced much in our attitudes in the last half century. The white dialogue may be more overtly polite but underneath, the feeling remain the same. “You stay on your side of the racial divide and we’ll happily stay on ours.”

 Some characters in act two connect with characters in the first act. The outwardly subservient maid in 1959 becomes the aggressive young woman  in 2009 who wants the white couple to consider black sensibilities before destroying the house and thus erasing a symbol of black progress. In one nifty bit of irony, Karl Lindner appears in 1959 to dissuade the white family from selling to the blacks. This is the same Lindner in “A Raisin in the Sun” who tries to convince the black Younger family not to move into the neighborhood.

The Steppenwolf ensemble is exemplary. Karen Aldridge is superb as each black female character. Cliff Chamberlain is terrific playing both sides of the racial coin. He’s Karl   Lindner in the first act and the man buying the house in the second act, a character whose racial attitudes may not  be as opened minded as he claims.

Stephanie Childers has a throw away role of Lindner’s pregnant deaf Swedish wife in the first act but is a prime mover in the second act as Chamberlain’s wife. John Judd is outstanding in the first act as the white seller, bitter over the death of his son, a Korean War veteran. Brendan Marshall Rashid, a minor figure in the second act, nicely plays a clergyman in the first act whose attempts to be a bridge over troubled racial waters fail miserably. And James Vincent Meredith plays the two black men in the story, self effacing in the presence of white folks in the first act and more confident and assertive in the second.

Director Amy Morton does a wonderful job of orchestrating the contrasting tones of the two acts, the tension-filled opener and the broader and more comic closer.

The final scene in the play returns the action to 1959. It’s an affecting coda to the story, but I’m not sure how it fits with the main narratives. That’s certain to be a major talking point in the post-play discussions.

The action is set in the house--middle class white realism in the first act and dilapidated in the second, both flavorfully designed by Todd Rosenthal. Nan Cibula-Jenkins designed the costumes that nail the two historical periods. Rod Milburn and Michael Bodeen designed the sound and Pat Collins the lighting.

“Clybourne Park” won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for drama and for once the prize committee got it right. This is a stimulating, challenging, funny, stirring play that will send spectators out into the night with their minds whirring with interpretations. It’s one of those rare shows where you want to go out for a beer with the playwright after the show and go over the multiple ramifications of his work.

“Clybourne Park” runs through November 6 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday and October 19, 26, and November 2 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call  312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

        The show gets a rating of four stars.   September 2011

                   Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com .

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The Hot L Baltimore

At the Steppenwolf Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Lanford Wilson’s “The Hot L Baltimore” ranks high in the long tradition of saloon dramas in American drama. Those are the plays in which a motley collection of derelicts, prostitutes, dreamers, and other miscellaneous losers gather in a seedy bar and tell their sad stories. The only difference in the Wilson play is the setting: a rundown hotel instead of a rundown saloon.

        The Steppenwolf Theatre is reviving the 1973 play in an intermittently effective production. Either “Hot L Baltimore” hasn’t aged well or the Steppenwolf staging doesn’t quite hit on all cylinders. Wilson has been something of a house playwright for Steppenwolf so the modest results of the company’s revival are a disappointment.

        The play’s title is the name of a once elegant hotel now on its last legs. Its decline is symbolized by the burned out “e” in “Hotel” marquee. Also on their last legs are the residents of the hotel, all soon to be evicted from their shabby home because the building is scheduled for demolition.

        The residents include prostitutes Suzy, April, and a teenager known only as the Girl (an innocent with a heart of gold). Millie is a pleasantly dotty old Southern lady. Jackie and Jamie are a brother and sister alone in life with each other. Jamie is slightly retarded and Jackie has a dream, owning a farm in Utah. She thinks she’s bought quality property in the state but she’s been swindled, another failure in a failed life. Mr. Morse is an elderly man who complains a lot. A young man named Paul Granger comes to the hotel looking for his vanished grandfather, the young man himself on the run from a prison farm while serving a two-year sentence for marijuana possession. An elderly woman named Mrs. Bellotti is saddled with an unstable son evicted from the hotel for his disorderly behavior, and she doesn’t know where to turn.

        There is no narrative line in “Hot L Baltimore,” just a series of conversations and confrontations interspersed with reveries and confessions. This is a tacky group of people, but Wilson sentimentalizes them into heartwarming stereotypes trying to survive in a world that gives them no breaks. None of them has a future but they soldier on, buttressed by their illusions and their pluck and their stubbornness.

        The play is realistic in tone, notwithstanding its tendency to romanticize some of the characters. Director Tina Landau attempts to break up the naturalism of the setting and characters with moody interjections. A well-dressed man invisible to the characters visible to the audience meanders through the hotel, never saying a word. Late in the play he joins with Millie (who claims she has the power to see ghosts) to sing an elegiac duet version of “Stardust.” We never learn the identity of the man, but presumably he is the shade of the grandfather Paul Granger so urgently seeks. The audience is left to speculate, and be distracted, by his presence throughout the play.

        The play’s numerous mini-dramas are played out within an architecturally imposing two-level set designed by James Schuette. The sheer magnitude and detail of the set are impressive, and a little overwhelming. I remember back in the 1970’s seeing a brilliant production of “Hot L Baltimore” at the long-gone Ivanhoe Theatre in Chicago. The large ensemble operated within a theater-in-the-round setting and their proximity to the audience was a major plus in bringing to life the characters with their overlapping dialogue. Schuette’s set is a stunner but I wonder if the production might not have worked better in the intimacy of the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre.

        The teenager known as the Girl tends to dominate the play with her innocence, energy, sympathy, optimism, and eagerness to engage everyone around her. It’s a tough role and Allison Torem gives it a commendable effort, but this rising young actress needs a little more experience to carry off such a central role.  As her fellow hookers, Kate Arrington (the hard on the outside naïve on the inside Suzy) and de’Adre Aziza (the brassy and cynical April) fare better.

        Among the men folk, Yasen Peyankov is splendid as the gruff Mr. Morse and his clear, stentorian voice was a blessed relief for the audience ear. Some of the other performers need to project more fully. Alana Arenas and Namir Smallwood are an affecting brother and sister, perhaps the most doomed characters in the play. Samuel Taylor is fine as the questing Paul Granger. Sean Allan Krill makes a nicely spectral figure wandering about the set, perplexing the spectators with his unexplained presence. Jacqueline Williams is painfully effective as the distraught Mrs. Bellotti trying to deal with a mentally disturbed adult son who has no place in the world. Molly Regan is superb as the dreamy Millie and displays a first rate singing voice in her “Stardust” duet with Krill.

        The hotel staff, mostly preoccupied with their own problems as the eviction notices are circulated, are well played by Jon Michael Hill, James Vincent Meredith, and TaRon Patton.

        Ana Kuzmanic designed the costumes, Scott Zielinski the lighting, and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound.

        “The Hot L Baltimore” runs through May 29 at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Most performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 P.M. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $20 to $73. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

        The show gets a rating of three stars.  April 2011

           Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com.

                     Visit Dan on Facebook.

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Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

At the Steppenwolf Theatre

By Dan Zeff

Chicago – Edward Albee was in Chicago checking out the rehearsal of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” at the Steppenwolf Theatre. The playwright must have left town well satisfied. It’s hard to imagine a better acted, more powerful production of Albee’s classic drama of middle-class marriage gone off the rails.

    The drama is a masterpiece of modern American theater but it isn’t to everyone’s taste. Many people find the venomous infighting between George and Martha distasteful and they sit through the three-hour play in acute discomfort. For these spectators, “Virginia Woolf?” is an unpleasant exercise in sadomasochistic viciousness, never mind how well written.

        The play may be brutal in its verbal (and occasionally physical) violence, but it’s mesmerizing in its intensity. But it is often very funny, a quality sometimes ignored amidst all the cutthroat ferocity of the savage “games” George and Martha play with and against each other during that one booze-soaked late night.

        George and Martha have entered the pantheon of American pop culture, symbols of married life at its most disagreeable. George is an associate history professor at a small New England college. Martha is his wife of 23 years and the daughter of the college president, who never appears on stage but nevertheless is a strong felt presence. For Martha, George is a failure as a teacher, as a husband, as a human being, a “flop.” She heaps on the abuse while George battles back as best he can. We pick up on their conflict in the first minutes of the play. Their running antagonism apparently is an every night event. But on this night Martha has invited Nick and Honey, a new young biology professor and his neurotic young wife, over to their house for a post-midnight nightcap. The interaction between the two couples sends the strife between George and Martha over the brink.

        “Virginia Woolf?” has no plot. It’s just an alcohol-soaked fugue of bashing, with George and Martha fighting for the psychological high ground. Nick considers himself a young man with a future in academe. He has a plan to ascend the college faculty ladder with strategic politicking and “plowing a few faculty wives.” He’s cocky and smug, but he’s in way over his head competing against a pair of demolition experts like George and Martha.

        Albee called the first act “Fun and Games” and the second act “Walpurgisnacht.” In both acts George and Martha carve each other up, delivering emotional body blows to Nick and Honey along the way. The third act is called “The Exorcism” and gives a new spin to the George-Martha relationship. The previous two acts dealt marginally in truth versus illusion, a theme that consumes the final act.

The concluding act centers on a fictional son produced by George and Martha, a fantasy that tenuously holds the marriage together. I’ve never been able to accept the son as anything other than a dramatist’s device to wind up the play, though the Steppenwolf staging gives the son a more credible place in George and Martha’s marriage universe than I’ve ever seen. The outing of the son as a fantasy figure leads to a concluding note of bleak reconciliation I found obscure and unconvincing.

        In every “Virginia Woolf? production I’ve seen, beginning with a preview of the original Broadway version in 1962, it’s basically been Martha’s play. The foul-mouthed and frustrated woman has the showier role that dominates the more passive and defensive George, a man who acts rather than reacts to his wife’s onslaughts. It takes nothing away from Amy Morton’s brilliant performance as Martha to cede the dominant performance to Tracy Letts, a George who gives as good as he gets and maybe even emerges as the winner, if there is such a thing as a victory amid all the carnage. As George, Letts is astringent and combative, not a personality to take his wife’s depredations lying down. His assertive performance shifts the play’s balance of power from wife to husband, revealing depths in Albee’s writing that had eluded me in previous viewings.

        Madison Dirks as Nick and Carrie Coons as Honey hold their own against the volcanic George and Martha, a considerable achievement. Dirks effectively creates a portrait of a smarmy, self confidence young man on the make. But Nick is locked into a bad marriage with an unstable, alcoholic young woman, played with convincing pathos by Coons. “Virginia Woolf?” then is really a portrait of two marriages that don’t work.

    The play is presented within Todd Rosenthal’s detailed, authentic living room set. Nan Cibula-Jenkins designed the costumes, Allen Lee Hughes the lighting, and Rob Milburn and Michael Bodeen the sound. Director Pam MacKinnon injects no bright ideas into the play. A director and the cast have their hands full just bringing the densely textured script to life as written, even without the playwright looking over their shoulders during rehearsal. Whether the stronger George is MacKinnon’s contribution or the natural result of Letts’s potency as an actor doesn’t matter. The shift elevates an already incendiary viewing experience into a richer, even more dramatic audience experience. Third act problems notwithstanding, this is a stunning theater event.

   “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” runs through February 13 at the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Sunday at 7:30 p.m. (no Sunday evening performances after January 16) with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. and some Wednesday matinees in January and February. Tickets are $20 to $75. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

    The show gets a rating of four stars.    December 2010

       Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                        Visit Dan on Facebook.

The Steppenwolf production serves Norris’s play with four perfect-pitch performances. Kate Arrington, almost unrecognizable with her normal blonde hair turned brunette, plays young Bee with a superb mixture of confusion, indignation, and tranquility. Tom Irwin gives another spot-on performance as a basically decent man who is also a smug jerk (described somewhat more pungently by the older Bee). A Roosevelt University student named Tom Bickel is just right as the Hispanic yard boy who weaves in and out of young Bee’s life.

For the audience, the play’s most delectable performance comes from Marylouise Burke as the older Bee. Her character has the play’s funniest, and wisest, lines and Burke brings them home with a casual flair that is irresistible.

Time travel stories are normally filled with exciting scenes leading to a dramatic finale.

“A Parallelogram” takes the “less is more” approach. Norris doesn’t force feed a lot of philosophical pseudo profundities into his time travel narrative. If there is a moral to the story, it’s that life goes on and probably it’s better that way. Not a very dramatic conclusion, perhaps, but there is enough humor and fantasy and humanity in the play to keep the thoughtful observer’s mind continuously engaged, and entertained.

Thanks to Anna Shapiro’s directing, the production flows naturally and credibly. Todd Rosenthal’s sets provide the proper atmosphere for the story’s three locations, assisted by James Ingalls’s lighting. The mechanical change in setting from home interior to hospital room at the end of the first act in full view of the audience is stunning.

       “A Parallelogram” runs through August 29 

at the Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street. Performances are Tuesday through Friday at 7:30 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday at 3 and 7:30 p.m. There will be 2 p.m. performances on August 11, 18, and 25. Sunday evening performances end August 15. Tickets are $20 to $70. Call 312 335 1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org.

       The show gets a rating of 3½ stars.     July 2010

               Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com

                         Visit Dan on Facebook.

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