With a travel schedule that is, to say the least, brutalizing (anyone want to swap with me on my five-day weekly sojourn to the city of the gateway arch?), it’s been quite a challenge to catch all the fall theater openings. I did manage to go to several over the past couple of weekends, and I talk about three of them below. (Photo: Redtwist’s Elling with Andrew Jessop and Peter Oyloe)
I have gotten several concerned emails from my avid readers regarding the lack of theater-related entries recently. No fear, I’m in town for the next couple of weeks and trying very hard to catch-up with Chicago’s blazing, swinging winter theater scene. Last weekend I caught two recent openings – Neil LaBute’s recent Broadway foray reasons to be pretty in its Chicago premiere at Profiles Theatre, directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Rick Snyder, and Irish playwright Enda Walsh’s The New Electric Ballroom, which received raves when it ran at New York’s St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2009, another Chicago premiere at A Red Orchid Theatre, directed by Robin Witt. I think the plays present an interesting study of contrasts – both written by male playwrights, the two of them are as different as night and day. reasons to be pretty is definitely what you see is what you get, but raises the disturbing question of whether you really want to get what you’re getting, while Electric Ballroom is packed full of symbols and subtexts that, ultimately, you’re quite disoriented as to what it is you’re actually getting.
With their recent critical and box-office successes Mistakes Were Made and Abigail’s Party, extremely well-directed and well-acted productions that I felt were more conventional than the ballsy, infuriating, impressively and unabashedly idiosyncratic plays of seasons past such as Blasted and The Fastest Clock in the Universe that I’ve come to love them for, I thought A Red Orchid Theatre was growing soft in its middle age. Then they open their season with the Chicago premiere of Paul Mullin’s Louis Slotin Sonata, a ballsy, infuriating, wacky, a little too precious play about the real-life story of a scientist in the Manhattan Project whose fingers slipped while handling a piece of plutonium, and exposed himself to deadly nuclear radiation. It’s a play I cannot imagine any other theater in Chicago taking on, and clearly demonstrates Red Orchid’s strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, I’ve always thought that Porchlight Music Theatre is the city’s foremost interpreter of Stephen Sondheim’s genius musicals in an intimate yet heart wrenching manner. Two of the best Sondheim productions I’ve seen in Chicago were their takes on Company (with a formidable “Ladies Who Lunch” from the then-unknown Rebecca Finnegan, now one of the city’s leading musical theater performers) and Assassins. Their most recent Sondheim productions were disappointing either in performance, conceptualization, or both. In their 15th year, they decide to tackle Sunday in the Park with George, Sondheim’s Pulitzer Prize winner and arguably the most sophisticated work in his oeuvre. And my disappointment continues with this low-wattage, frankly, at times, dinner-theaterish rendition that failed to capture the exquisiteness and the toughness of the best stagings of the musical (Exhibit A: Gary Griffin’s luminous, minimalist version at Chicago Shakespeare several years back). I’m left confounded.
If I were to ever write a memoir of my theatergoing experiences over the years, two of the most memorable nights I would single out would be ones I spent at A Red Orchid Theater’s tiny, cramped, highly atmospheric theater in Old Town. In the fall of 2004, I became a passionate fan for life when I saw its unforgettable, unmatchable, cojones-bursting production of Philip Ridley’s already outrageous, not-for-all-tastes, but insanely brilliant The Fastest Clock in the Universe. Nearly two years later, in the spring of 2006, BFF Camela and I were two of the fourteen mesmerized audience members, as seventeen actors (yes, there were more people onstage then in the seats) literally sweated their guts out over more than three hours in Eugene Ionesco’s demandingly obtuse, uncompromisingly intellectual Hunger & Thirst, directed by founding ensemble member Michael Shannon. For me, these two nights signify why Red Orchid is such an essential, irreplaceable part of Chicago’s artistic life – it is a theater company that assumes a theatergoing audience wants to be challenged and provoked, inspired but not pandered to, inflamed but sufficiently educated. Despite the critical acclaim, and since its productions can, at times, be a little too much even for the most committed, sophisticated theatergoer, I don’t think it has had the commercial success over the years that it deserves to have in this highly competitive, theater-mad town. As Chris Jones notes though, it seems like the theater’s fortunes are turning up – there are sold-out houses, hissy fits by patrons who couldn’t get a seat, and a lot of deafening buzz about the theater and its season-opener, the world premiere of Craig Wright’s Mistakes Were Made, starring the now hyphenated Oscar-nominated actor Michael Shannon. As a long-time supporter, I am thrilled for the box-office success, but I am even more excited that Red Orchid, the theater, and Michael, the committed theater actor, stayed true to what I love and respect about them – the folks standing in line to see an Academy Award nominee and Hollywood star up close and personal will discover as well (or instead?) a theatrical production that demands as much from its audience as itself, in the Red Orchid tradition. And that’s a great thing.
The long Memorial Day weekend is coming up, and many theater companies are sprinting towards the finish line of their respective seasons, so there are a lot of plays currently running on Chicago’s stages. I thought I’d be able to publish, on a semi-regular basis, the list of upcoming performances I was planning to go to, but it just hasn’t happened, since I had to first keep up with actually being able to go to the theatre with the numerous selections on view (plus my day-and-night consulting job got really busy over the past couple of weeks). For my dear blog readers clamoring for guidance on what to see next, here are some options to consider (and I’d love to hear what folks think after I post on them): Read the rest of this entry »
Recently Attended Events
- 2/04/2012: Six Characters In Search of an Author (The Hypocrites)
- 2/02/2012: Disgraced (American Theater Company)
- 1/29/2012: Time Stands Still (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 1/28/2012: Ameriville (Victory Gardens Theater)
- 1/22/2012: Enron (Timeline Theatre Company)
- 12/21/2011: Penelope (Steppenwolf Theatre)
- 12/17/2011: Spring Awakening (Griffin Theatre Company)
- 11/12/2011: Red Light Winter (Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.)
- 10/16/2011: The Ugly One (Sideshow Theatre Company)
- 10/15/2011: Overweight, Unimportant: Misshape - A European Supper (Trap Door Theatre)
- 10/08/2011: Follies (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre)
- 10/02/2011: Elling (Redtwist Theatre)
- 10/01/2011: Becky Shaw (A Red Orchid Theatre)
- 9/25/2011: Violet (Bailiwick Chicago)
- 9/18/2011: Clybourne Park (Steppenwolf Theatre)
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