This month will be theatergoing month on steroids. There’s a lot of significant productions opening in Chicago in the next several weeks, and I’m hoping I’ll have enough time to go to most of them (I do have to work, too, in my day job, you know, so I can afford to go to all this theater!). Of course, the centerpiece of my month, the one production I am both breathlessly anticipating and apprehensive about is the Elevator Repair Service’s much-acclaimed seven-hour Gatz, on stage at the MCA next week, which combines a complete reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby with a play set in a dumpy office, in which the employees start taking on the personas of the book’s characters. This could either be a transcendent experience, or utter folly. I can’t wait- I’ve been preparing like a triathlete for it: reading up on The Great Gatsby (I read the book in high school and saw the Robert Redford-Mia Farrow movie decades ago), meditating, doing extra gluteal exercises (at the gym! get your minds out of the gutter!) to ensure that I can actually sit and focus for seven hours straight. Chris Jones seems to be as excited and apprehensive as I am, and reports that Gatz tickets are going fast- wow! I’m also seeing Radio Macbeth at the Court Theater next weekend, Anne Bogart and the SITI company’s take on Macbeth framed by a ghost story and supposedly using sound as a dynamic and innovative theatrical device. It has already been shown at the Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, New York’s annual showcase for cutting-edge work, where it received very good reviews. Right before Thanksgiving, the British production A Midsummer Night’s Dream, which sets the famous Shakespeare comedy in the Indian subcontinent and incorporates Indian language, culture, and sensibility, opens at Chicago Shakespeare. This production has toured Europe and Australia, and has received unqualified raves everywhere it’s been staged. Despite the fact that I nearly puked the last time I was at the Goodman because of the horror that was Turn of the Century, I’ll be spending quite a bit of time there this month. I’m catching a preview for Ruined, Lynn Nottage’s new play about the victimization of women during the Congo civil war, co-produced with the Manhattan Theater Club, which will premiere off-Broadway in January 2009, right after it’s Goodman production,with the same cast and director, Kate Whoriskey. The Goodman is also holding a series of staged readings for Noah Haidle’s work-in-progress opus, Local Time, “twelve two-act plays that trace a 24-hour period in the life of a town”, according to the theater’s website. I already have tickets for the first one, 5-7 AM, about a young couple who takes in a baby left on their doorstep and is horrified to see the infant grow into a chain-smoking, coffee-guzzling, human-condition pondering adult in 20 minutes. Sounds precious, and I sometimes feel that Haidle is like the male version of Sarah Ruhl, but it also sounds intriguing. Plus this is a good opportunity to see new work by a playwright with a rising national profile. I’ll be getting tickets for the other two readings depending on what I think about 5-7 AM. At the Steppenwolf, despite what I think is pretty low-key marketing, many performances are already sold out for Dublin Carol, Conor McPherson’s intimate play about an alcoholic undertaker seeking redemption, starring CSI star William Petersen and directed by August: Osage County goddess, Amy Morton. Collaboraction has already opened Jon, a world premiere adaptation of hip novelist (and MacArthur Genius grant recipient) George Saunder’s much-talked about short story. Saunders worked closely with director and adaptor Seth Bockley, and has been doing press to support the play. Although I’ve found many Remy Bumppo productions in the past to be more effective than Ambien and Lunesta combined, I am curious to see their version of Beaurmachais’ The Marraige of Figaro, the basis of the famed Mozart opera, in a new translation by Ranjit Bolt. It’s also being directed by up and coming Chicago theater director Jonathan Berry, so I’m hoping that the snooze factor is low to non-existent. Finally, TUTA (in support of full disclosure, I’m on their Board) is unveiling The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet (yes, it’s that famous play by our man Bill) later this month. TUTA is always gutsy, imaginative, and singular in their theatrical concepts, so I’m betting this isn’t going to be stand-and-declaim Shakespeare. Whew, so many plays, so little time!
Wow, what a night. Everyone expected that Steppenwolf’s production of August: Osage County would win big at the Tony Awards last night, but to sweep five of the six categories it was up for is quite a big deal. I was at the Steppenwolf Tony viewing party in the downstairs theater last night, and the applause, yelling, hooting, and noise-making for every August win during the ceremony, projected on two large screens, was thunderous. Now, I know how my college sports fanatic friends feel when they’re sitting in their designated school bar during the NCAA championships games, because that’s exactly how I felt last night watching the Steppenwolf crew, Chicago artists all, take trophy after trophy - swoony, heady, feeling like I just got vacuum pumped with adrenaline. It was a glorious night for Chicago theater, and our folks gave the most sincere, most gracious, most elegant, most down-to-earth speeches of the night (unlike mega-diva Patti Lupone, winner of Best Actress in a Musical for the new Gypsy revival, who growled while the orchestra was trying to play off her extended, phoney, very arrogant-sounding acceptance speech, or Best Actor in a Play Mark Rylance who quoted a pretty long, obtuse passage from an obscure Minnesota writer instead of thanking anyone from Boeing Boeing, just to be different). Best Featured Actress in a Play winner, Rondi Reed, thanked her artistic families in her speech and dedicated her award to August playwright’s Tracy Letts’ recently passed father, Dennis Letts, who played the Weston patriarch both in Chicago and during its initial run on Broadway. Best Director Anna D. Shapiro brought goose-bumps and tears to many in the downstairs theater (especially me!) when she mentioned that her six nephews and nieces didn’t care about any of this, “they just wanted tickets to The Little Mermaid”. Best Actress in a Play, the magnificently unforgettable Deanna Dunagan, was so refreshingly honest and humble (again a contrast to her counterpart winner in the musical category, monster diva Patti) when she said “…none of us dreamed we would be (at the Tonys). I certainly didn’t. After 34 years in regional theater I never even thought about it. I watched it on TV like everybody else…” And of course the brilliant Mr. Letts, accepting the Best Play award (with the fabulous Steppenwolf Artistic Director Martha Lavey beaming by his side) concluded his speech with a huge thank you to the Chicago theater community “…who made this possible.” I was pretty bummed that we didn’t get to see the full acceptance speech that Barbara Gaines, Artistic Director of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre gave for the Regional Tony Award, since the award wasn’t part of the telecast, but I think she summed it up beautifully for all of us who love this city, who scream our voices hoarse proclaiming the talent and artistry that this city overflows with, when she said that founding Chicago Shakespeare was a risk and that “…we only could have taken that risk in Chicago, a world class city, a place where the arts are cherished and where theater is celebrated with generosity and passion”. To anyone who says they’re flying to New York City to see a Broadway (or even off-Broadway show), I’d like to say to them, save the fare and spend it instead on seeing the plays at Steppenwolf, at Chicago Shakespeare, at the Goodman, the Hypocrites, Redmoon Theatre, Lookingglass, the Next Theater, and the other hundreds of theater companies in Chicago where real theater lives, breathes, and dynamically evolves. For a complete list of Tony Award winners, click here. Picture: Deanna Dunagan accepts her Tony, one of the most richly deserved in decades!
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