Month: April 2015

Stomp (January 22, 2015)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
'Stomp' at Bank of America Theatre
‘Stomp’ at Bank of America Theatre (Source:www.chicago-theater.com)

I wandered into Chicago’s vaunted Bank of America Theatre earlier this week armed with a healthy dose of skepticism. Of course, I was aware of “Stomp’s” reputation as a theatrical staple for the better part of the last two decades, performed in more than 50 countries in front of 24 million people. A work doesn’t often gain that type of cultural traction without quality.

But existentially I wondered if it were truly possible to tell a story with nothing more than sounds — human generated and otherwise. As anyone familiar with the material knows, “Stomp’s” performers “make a rhythm on anything we can get our hands on,” according to co-founder and director Luke Cresswell. Members of the troupe use their bodies, their feet and all sorts of unconventional instruments (brooms, plastic tubing, matchboxes) to generate the most alluring kind of analog, democratic symphony.

It’s in this last observation that audiences pick up the narrative thread of “Stomp.” The ideology tightly woven through two hours of a diverse cast using pedestrian objects to make art is, in its own ironic way, quietly revolutionary. Press materials describe the work’s impact as “a journey through sound, a celebration of the everyday and a comic interplay of characters wordlessly communicating through dance and drum.”

There is no hierarchy in this production. There’s no stratum of entitlement. Instead “Stomp” is a celebration of variety, universality and the simple joy of being really, really noisy in a world that often swallows our individual presence whole. Broadway in Chicago’s all-too brief run of the latest touring incarnation absolutely defies cynicism, offering a sonic and visual delight for audiences of all ages.

The cast is uniformly winning, a nonstop whirlwind of coordinated movement and percussion that serves as an instrument in its own right. The chemistry and talent is so compelling, it’s hard to single out favorites, but Cammie Griffin is a maelstrom. The ugly faces and dirty sounds she imparts with every committed step are a thing of visceral beauty. This gal is committed and you’ll want to get animal with her.

And while it’s typically bad form to use a review as a platform for shameless flirting, I’d like to send a special message to John Angeles. If by chance you have a thing for middle-aged theater critics, I might know just the lady for you (hint: it’s me). Angeles is a dynamic and gifted talent that demands attention. He is also impossibly sexy. The disappointed groans emanating from the crowd as he made his final exit stage right provided solid evidence that this reviewer was not the only one smitten.

In a series of percussive vignettes that don’t let up for a sonic second, highlights include an interlude featuring several performers strapped into harnesses. These cast members dangle from the ceiling, literally bouncing off walls as they play an unorthodox xylophone of kitchen utensils, garbage and metal. It’s like Cirque du Soleil meets the street. Another scene features several male cast members atop giant garbage can stilts like so many tactile, attractive Godzillas.

The show runs nearly two hours without intermission and every moment is mesmerizing. Not a second is wasted and the properly engaged audience member (because the sanity must be questioned of those tuned out) will not have cognitive space to worry about a drink refill or bathroom break. The experience is transformative for even the most seasoned theatergoer. A constant battle against the urge to jump on stage and join the troupe is the only uncomfortable feeling to be expected.

Chicago theater community: I wish we had longer to avail ourselves of more “Stomp,” but we don’t. Buy your tickets before the opportunity ends.

The Clean House (December 12, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
Ana's soul may be serene but breast cancer has hollowed out her body
Ana’s soul may be serene but breast cancer has hollowed out her body (Source:www.stageandcinema.com)

When it comes to metaphors, there are fewer more deceptive than “The Clean House,” an existential truth wholly embraced by playwright, theater company, director, cast and crew in Remy Bummpo’s second production of its 18th season. What appears pristine and organized often belies a most painful chaos, while clutter and mess often represent a careless grasp of life’s priorities. Those who disengage and refuse to get a little dirty, miss everything.

I’ve written previously of Remy Bumppo’s status as Chicago’s best kept theater secret. While the company hardly toils in ignominy, it doesn’t enjoy the same sort of high profile affection of a Goodman, Steppenwolf, or Lookingglass. I’ve lost count of how many Bummpo productions I’ve reviewed for EDGE over the years, but there’s not a clunker to be found. The outfit produces consistently diverse, thought-provoking, quality work. “The Clean House” is no exception.

Written by Sarah Ruhl, a local Wilmette native made good, “The Clean House” was a 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist with good reason. Remy Bummpo Artistic Director Nick Sandys says of the script, “Class, race and gender are absolutely linked to our understanding of the labor of cleaning. And cleaning, and those who clean, have been made invisible because we as a society would rather not deal with it.”

And so on queue, the first character audiences meet is Matilde (Alice de Cunha), a Brazilian domestic in the home of married doctors Lane (Patricia Egleston) and Charles (Shawn Douglass). In Matilde’s personal narrative, she is the love child of two comedic parents who found each other late in life, united by a quest to tell the perfect joke. Now orphaned, Matilde makes her living as a perversely indolent servant dedicated to locating the holy grail sought be her mother and father.

It’s immediately clear that the maid’s supreme funny, if ever arrived upon, would be wasted on her humorless, workaholic boss Lane. As inhabited by Egeleston, Lane is statuesquely WASPy, dedicated to her work and self-deception. She views her longtime marriage to Charles as one born of mutual respect and professional goals, a “clean” and virtuous model that renders a lack of time or passion perfectly logical.

Thus it’s no surprise when a yearning Charles falls under the spell of Ana (Charin Alvarez), a cancer patient who lives in the moment, both as a precedent and antecedent to her illness. She is beautiful, raw and even in the midst of stealing another’s husband, so full of love and honesty, even Lane is eventually disarmed. What’s clean about developing affection for your spouse’s mistress, who also by the way, steals Matilde’s services halftime? It’s a testament to Alvarez’s performance that this tension is completely authentic. For in the end, Ana embodies a raw, fragile fervor that most of the characters have sorely lacked.

If Lane has made a second career out of denial, her sister Virginia (Annabel Armour) knows exactly why she’s obsessed with “The Clean House.” It is clear that her marriage to a never seen husband is devoid of anything pleasurable. Virginia’s commitment to cleanliness in her home, as well as Lane’s, provides a sense of useful purpose. While Matilde entertains her with human interaction and conversation, Virginia does the secret dirty work that keeps this unorthodox family humming — until the return of Ana’s illness forces an end to counterfeit experience.

Though often described as a comedy, the second act of “The Clean House” is poignant and heartbreaking. For the besotted Charles who learns too late that man’s compulsive need to fix problems often prevents him from living in the moments remaining. For the finally awakened Lane who gives up on forcing experiences into neat little categories. For Ana, who is terminally ill, and for Matilde, who reaches the summit of her life’s work with unintended consequences. And even for Virginia, who must find a new place for herself after the dust settles (pun definitely intended).

Directed by Ann Filmer, this character study come Remy Bummpo production is a disorderly winner.

 

Crumble (Lay Me Down, Justin Timberlake) (November 22, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
The cast of 'Crumble'
The cast of ‘Crumble’ (Source:Alex Hand)

A competent critic has to own his or her biases before dispassionately evaluating a piece of art. So when I received an invitation to see and review Jackalope Theatre’s seasonal offering, “Crumble (Lay Me Down Justin Timberlake),” I grappled with three immediate, visceral reactions:

1. Christmas themed material is often treacly, irritating and unrealistic.
2. How is actor Tim Parker going to play a building?
3. Harrison Ford and Justin Timberlake as characters? Oy.

Had I refused to set aside these prejudices and surrender to playwright Sheila Callaghan’s bizarre holiday masterpiece, I would have missed the work’s central message: Rituals are supposed to provide predictability. But we don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t have anything figured out. All we can do is dream, love and cope.

Press materials describe “Crumble” as a “narrative of an aftermath that is irreverently odd, acutely genuine and absurdly hilarious.” I believe that’s the closest one can come to a synopsis of Jackalope’s first show of its seventh season. And yet there’s so much delicious stuff that’s hard to pigeonhole. Would you believe it possible to watch Janice (Kristen Magee), a damaged 11-year-old girl, lose a hand in a Christmas morning incident of her own design and have it serve as a hopeful turning point for her family?

The Christmas prior, Janice and her Mother (Charlesann Rabensburg) lost father and husband, respectively, in a freak household accident that may or may not have been influenced by a bitter, neglected old building. The Apartment (Tim Parker) is a frayed remnant of its prior glory days as a stately mansion, with a storied occupational history. With the patriarch gone, the domicile is inhabited by a grieving and disturbed (in Janice’s case) mother and child who have so much trouble trying to communicate, there’s no energy left for basic maintenance.

Appalled by the idea of being overlooked to death, the Apartment assumes an active agency that the work’s human characters desperately lack. It’s a weird and awesome story arc with legitimate suspense that is so because of the magnetic work of Tim Parker. He emotes, he leaps, he agonizes, he strategizes. It is a sharp and satisfying contrast to Mother’s listlessness.

Janice is a live wire, but contains her hyperkinetic thoughts within the perimeter of her depressed and cold bedroom. There she indulges in emotionally raw exchanges with her broken Barbie dolls and dreams of love and salvation in the form of a 1990s era Justin Timberlake (Curtis Jackson, who also convincingly plays the Father and — go with it — Harrison Ford).

The numb and stagnant little family is completed by Mother’s sister Barbara (Rachel Slavick), an infertile, bereaved cat lady who still serves as the story’s highest functioning human being. Barbara’s love and commitment to Janice and her mom is both enabler and salvation – one of many authentic narrative tensions.

At the top of this review, I mentioned a reservation with holiday material. It is often bombastically inauthentic. Everyone’s a winner, safe, warm, full and loved. It’s a turnoff for the alienated many who feel excluded from the reverie. Christmas is not a celebration for all mankind, and in other cases, seasonal lessons and family bonding might take place in a hospital emergency room rather than around a festive dinner table.

Sometimes we need to “Crumble,” (traditions, sense of self, environment) before we can build something new and more healthy. Seeing this truth articulated onstage is a different flavor of community identification.

Jackalope’s production is not all dourness and pain. Excellent comic relief is provided by the versatile Curtis Jackson, who plays the titular Timberlake as well as Mother’s escape fantasy man, a whip wielding Harrison Ford. A different form of gallows humor is offered by the nuanced psychotic ramblings of Janice.

Kristen Magee absolutely nails a troubled, intelligent pre-teen. After the loss of her beloved father, Janice will only allow death or romantic rescue as options until her frayed mother’s unconditional acceptance forces her to open her mind, figuratively and literally.

“Crumble” is my first Jackalope experience. As I wound my way out of the theater company’s venue, Broadway Armory Park, I considered the synthesis between environment and material. The Armory is a historical treasure of old architecture, meandering hallways, locked doors and trapeze classes. Random, curious and kind of thrilling. That’s also an appropriately concise judgment of Jackalope’s production.

Both Your Houses (October 8, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
The cast of 'Both Your Houses'
The cast of ‘Both Your Houses’ (Source:Johnny Knight)

No mid-sized Chicago theater troupe puts on a period drama with the panache of Remy Bumppo. Pick an epoch. It doesn’t matter. Though not exactly toiling in obscurity, the company lacks the high-profile visibility of a Steppenwolf, Goodman or Lookingglass Theatre. May the opening production of Bumppo’s 18th season “Both Your Houses,” finally put an end to that injustice.

A witty political satire that feels ripped from the headlines with themes of patronage-influenced stagnation and Congressional corruption, playwright Maxwell Anderson’s 1933 script provides the gifted Bummpo cast with more than just an opportunity to look stunning in late-Prohibition Era costumes (kudos to designer Emily Waecker). In press materials, the production is described as capturing “the charm and fervor of the classic film ‘Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,’ and hit television series ‘The West Wing,’ while simultaneously challenging the plausibility of change a la ‘The Daily Show.'”

It’s a credit to Anderson’s work that he’s able to weave whimsy, romance and sharp dialogue into a deadly serious and effective fabric. In a deliberately nonpartisan way, “Both Your Houses” argues that in the first half of the 20th century, one’s vote hardly matters. Either guy (and yes, the candidate is almost certainly a man) is going to bring the same MO to Washington: load up on legislative pork, bring it back home, get re-elected, repeat. Of course everything has changed since then and the American governing process is cleaner, more honest…

Yeah… not so much. If anything, the lobbyist-infested halls of Congress are more inert and cynical than ever. Remy Bumppo’s choice of season opener could be viewed as a present-day civic statement, and the production’s press release doesn’t discourage the interpretation: “[It] will run throughout the lead-up to the 2014 midterm elections, in which 435 seats in the House of Representatives and 22 seats in the Senate will be up for re-election.”

The statement appears to be this: the system is broken. The good guys and the bad are nearly indistinguishable. Sometimes doing what it takes to protect the country looks an awful lot like criminal activity. In other situations, the right action is taken for all the morally worst reasons. But it’s not the officials who protect the status quo. We do. The voting public. And we don’t have to.

And such fun the audience has while receiving a critical warning. The sharp costumes and snappy discourse, a multi-layered plot that includes romantic intrigue and familial piety — all executed with control by Remy Bumppo Artistic Director Emeritus James Bohnen.

Bohnen’s affectionate history with the company is evident in the intimate vulnerability he elicits from the performances of the cast, which includes Artistic Associates David Darlow and Linda Gillum, as well as Ensemble Members Peter A. Davis and Eliza Stoughton. Darlow and Gillum, who both delivered searing, emotional work in Remy Bumppo’s late 17th season triumph, “Our Class,” are back stealing scenes respectively as a battle worn Congressman with a taste for illegal spirits, and a scheming Gal Friday with a sharp tongue.

The characters are drawn somewhat formulaically and a 21st century observer might bemoan the lack of a strong central female. There’s not much diversity to be found here. Blame it on 1933. Be that as it may, the work onstage is faultless.

As sort of a Remy Bumppo and Artistic Associate Greg Matthew Anderson superfan, I initially took the latter’s absence from the cast list rather hard. But the company’s talent roster is such that the disappointment couldn’t last. I settled for a press opening glimpse of Anderson in the crowd, and enjoyed another satisfying synthesis of intelligent subject matter, historical perspective and winning performances from the dependably entertaining Remy Bummpo.

Carrie: The Musical (June 5, 2014)

Becky SarwateLeave a comment
Callie Johnson in Bailiwick Chicago’s premiere of ’Carrie: The Musical’
Callie Johnson in Bailiwick Chicago’s premiere of ’Carrie: The Musical’ (Source:Michael Brosilow)

 

I’m nursing a complicated reaction to Bailiwick Chicago’s Windy City premiere of the 2012 Off-Broadway revival version of “Carrie: The Musical.” From one angle, the timeless plot of high school bullying leading to disastrous consequences for everyone involved seems more urgent and necessary a story than ever. And there can be little doubt that the production employs catchy musical numbers sung and danced most admirably by a tremendously talented cast.

And yet I have two big “buts.” The lesser is a Margaret White, Carrie’s extremely and destructively Christian mother, played with entirely too much sympathy by an otherwise gifted Katherine L. Condit. The actress displays the occasional terrifying delusion required by the part, the background needed to account for Carrie’s utter and complete sense of earthly abandonment and isolation. But there’s just a touch too much sweetness, an underlying suggestion of good intentions gone wrong that makes the subplot’s culmination unbelievable. Condit’s Margaret would never kill her child.

The decision also neutralizes the impact of the character’s religious extremism at a time when the culture wars, particularly for women, have never felt more threatening. Because I have no way of knowing if the call to play Ms. White this way was made by Director Michael Driscoll or Condit herself, I will only say it’s a mistake that cuts two ways. Happily there is still time to correct it before the show’s run concludes on July 12.

The larger objection I have to the production can be found at the back end of this review’s first sentence: “Windy City premiere of the 2012 Off-Broadway revival version” of the musical. If it takes that many adjectives to describe a work, there’s a chance it’s going to come off as derivative. And indeed the conclusion to Bailiwick’s 2013 – 14 season does feel used in many instances.

It’s like a game of theatrical telephone. You start with Stephen King’s seminal 1974 novel, followed closely by the 1976 film starring Sissy Spacek. You pass through the original Broadway musical in 1988, followed by the revival in 2012. We all try to forget the 2013 cinematic reimagining before we end on the Richard Christiansen stage at the Victory Gardens Theater.

Like the childhood game of telephone, if the initial message is pleasant, the result will retain some or all of its features. But there’s no denying that the final product is a little diluted. And that’s what we’re left with at the conclusion of Bailiwick’s “CARRIE: The Musical.”

A special salute to Samantha Dubina in the role of head mean girl Chris. She is alternately funny and frightening, a modern, bitchy caricature of the one percent youth class.

As I said, the cast is winsome and with the exception of Condit, surely not to be faulted for the production’s secondariness. A special salute to Samantha Dubina in the role of head mean girl Chris. She is alternately funny and frightening, a modern, bitchy caricature of the one percent youth class.

The actress nails the showstopper “The World According to Chris” toward the middle of act one. With her powerful voice she manages beautiful and snide at the same time. That is no easy balance, especially in song. When Chris gets what she richly (pun intended) deserves on prom night, you’ll both cheer and regret the end of Dubina’s presence.

Molly Coleman displays great comic timing as Frieda, the only other person who seems as happy as Carrie about the approaching end of high school. At the opposite end of the spectrum there’s Sawyer Smith, the darkly attractive actor who brings surprising life to the character of Billy, a slacker ball of hormones.

If there’s anything truly perfect about the production however, it’s Callie Johnson as mousy, mystical anti-heroine Carrie White. We take our seats knowing how the story ends, but in Johnson’s hands, it’s hard not to root for a different outcome. We want this Carrie to go to her 20-year reunion with a PhD after her name and a handsome husband (or wife) in tow. The whole ability to move objects with her mind thing becomes oddly incidental as the audience basks in the actress’ aching vulnerability.

I have the impression that this review reflects the disjointedness of the Bailiwick’s project overall. Perhaps that’s as it should be. And to further complicate matters, despite the strong criticisms herein, the production is worth a look. Just don’t put it at the top of your early summer viewing list.