It has been “all-theater, all-the-time” during the month of January. Hey, I’m not complaining – the extraordinary, singular, multi-month Eugene O’Neill Festival at the Goodman Theater, for one, is worth every single freezing minute on the Brown Line “L” platform painfully waiting for a train to arrive. This city’s cultural audiences owe a huge debt of gratitude to Goodman Artistic Director Bob Falls for devising, curating, and tirelessly promoting this fantastic Chicago cultural event of the season, if not the year. But there were also a lot of other must-see productions to go to in the Chicagoland area, some of them immensely satisfying, others gravely disappointing, some of them flawed but still a great night of live performance. Here are impressions on other plays I’ve seen during the last month:
As regular readers of this blog would know by now, I am the biggest fan of refurbishing dramatic classics. What I hate the most is going to the theater and coming away underwhelmed and unsurprised, seeing something that I could have seen at a high school drama club production for free or for much less money. I strongly believe that classical theater is universal and timeless, so a clear-minded, courageous, inspired director and/or adapter can transpose a play’s themes to different milieus and time periods and have them resonate with a wide variety of audiences. Additionally, directors can reinvigorate classical text by introducing various theatrical devices and elements (a reimagination of the set design, evocative musical scoring, new sound effects, etc.) that the playwright might not originally have included in the play. Over the past couple of years, I have had the pleasure of seeing fresh takes on classics many, many times, but two of the most memorable had been Robert Falls’ magnificent King Lear at the Goodman in 2006 with Stacy Keach, set during the Balkan civil war, which gave unexpected layers to the power themes of Shakespeare’s play; and Charles Newell’s hip, modern, radical redo of another Shakespeare play at the Court Theater last year, Titus Andronicus, set during an initiation rite at an elite boys’ prep school, which also took the play to startling interpretations (you can read my blog post here). Serious lovers of theater can warm themselves up this frigid season with Falls’ and Newell’s new reimaginings of classical drama – Desire Under the Elms, the centerpiece of the Goodman’s extraordinary O’Neill Festival, and Henrik Ibsen’s The Wild Duck at the MCA Chicago, respectively. I think both are notable, much, much better than any other night in many of the theaters in this theatergoing town, which says a lot. So on that level, I think both of these productions have succeeded. However, although I found Desire Under the Elms riveting and I was blown away by many of Falls’ directorial choices, I still came out a little baffled and disconnected. The Wild Duck, for me, is the bigger disappointment. I was really looking forward to Newell’s take and came out not just perplexed also with some of his directorial approaches, but also with the feeling that the production, despite good intentions, was stale.
After last week’s combustible, jaw-dropping Wooster Group production of The Emperor Jones, the Goodman’s O’Neill Festival unveiled this week the first of three one-act adaptations of O’Neill’s early Sea Plays from the Brazilian theater company Companhia Triptal, the marvelous and creative Zona de Guerra. Triptal, which is making their US debut here in Chicago, will have one new production in the Festival for the next two weeks; I am particularly looking forward to the last one, their acclaimed staging of Bound East for Cardiff, called Cardiff, which will have 30 actors, and which will reconfigure the Goodman’s Owen Theater to allow for audience participation in the play’s merchant ship setting. Zona de Guerra, although much more conventionally-staged, is quite the stunner also. Both the Wooster Group and Companhia Triptal incorporate so many well-thought out, specific, insightful, fresh artistic choices in the shows they’ve brought to the O’Neill Festival that they make many of the recent theater I’ve seen seem like community college productions. Zona de Guerra, an adaptation of In the Zone, about sailors in a merchant ship during World War I who suspect that one of them is a German spy, is so richly and imaginatively conceived by Triptal Artistic Director Andre Garolli, that this staging really transcends O’Neill’s text. The very specific, World War I-set original story about the suspicions and rivalries of a claustrophic group of men becomes a powerful commentary on fearmongering, xenophobia, mob mentality, social status resentments, themes that are so relevant and contemporary to audiences anywhere in the world, not just the US or Brazil. Also, as my fellow theater blogger Rob Kozlowski mentions, the first ten to fifteen minutes of this sixty minute play is stunningly performed in silence, the better to evoke the world of the play and to enthrall us and ease us into it, complete with a visually arresting tableaux of the actors where you can’t figure out which limb belongs to whom and where one body ends and another one begins. I also felt very privileged to attend the talkback last night where the smart, articulate, accessible Garolli (who looks like an intellectual cousin to Cristian Ronaldo twice removed) spoke of his vision and directorial touches (in Portugese too, with a translator), elements that O’Neill probably had no inkling could be derived from his play: the use of animal movement to characterize each sailor’s persona and reactions to the situation; the integration of Catholic symbolisms to cleverly comment and expound on the sailor community’s rituals and superstitions, which border on religiosity; the imaginative use of space to communicate social hierarchy. Beautiful! With the brilliant, sparkling, one-of-a-kind first two weeks of the O’Neill Festival, I feel the Goodman has already regained a lot of the luster it lost when it foisted the heinous Turn of the Century on the unsuspecting Chicago public. There are four more performances of Zona de Guerra: Saturday, January 17, at 2pm and 8 pm, and Sunday, January 18, at 2 pm and 7:30 pm. Run to get your tickets!
Despite all the reading up I did prior to going to see the Wooster Group’s much-talked about take on Eugene O’Neill’s The Emperor Jones, the explosive initial production of the Goodman’s O’Neill Festival, I still wasn’t prepared for that first glimpse of the great actress Kate Valk in blackface as Brutus Jones, the titular lead character. I was stunned. I was infuriated. I felt highly uncomfortable. But then, as director Elizabeth LeCompte’s brilliantly, savagely, provocatively conjured world, a world greater than the intentions of the text, took shape and grabbed hold, I moved beyond that initial reaction. Some people didn’t and froze at that first view of a Caucasian actress in blackface playing a black man, as was evident during the emotion-laden talkback after the Friday evening performance I attended, and I couldn’t blame them. I think the audience response to this particular production could only be a highly individual one, refracted through the person’s experience and world view. I ultimately felt, as the show progressed, that blackface, or minstrelsy, was one of the theatrical devices (which also included elements of the Japanese Noh theater, video projections, and electronically synthesized sound and musical scores) that the Wooster Group and LeCompte used to construct a production that challenged the audience’s preconceptions about race and gender, yes, but also our views on colonizer and colonized, oppressor and oppressed, survivor and non-survivor, civilized and primitive. The production was jarring, thought-provoking, distressing, highly unforgettable; theater, not as entertainment or spectacle, but as a charged debate between the practitioner and his or her audience members. It was theater at the highest level, which cultural-savvy Chicagoans were very fortunate to experience, despite the limited five night performance schedule.
In the midst of compiling New Year’s resolutions that I’ll most likely not be able to follow through on (do thirty sit-ups a day, eat more fruits, stop flirting with straight boys even if they offer to buy me a sidecar, finally break my vow never to see a Renee Zellweger movie again), I’ve been browsing the action-packed January calendars of the various arts and culture institutions in Chicago. After the cultural wasteland that is the month of December (really, how many Ghosts of Christmas Pasts and Snow Queens can you stomach outside of the Boystown Halloween parade?), the beginning of the year is offering quite frankly, and wonderfully, an embarrassment of artistic riches.
I have to admit I’m a bit of a Scrooge during the holidays (well, a lot of my close friends would probably say it’s not just “a bit”…). I really can do without the materialism and sentimentality, and to be frank, insincerity (I can’t believe I get Christmas cards from people I haven’t heard from since the previous year…if they really wanted to keep in touch, they probably should have sent an Easter card, or better yet picked up the phone instead) that’s prevalent during the Christmas season. I normally can’t wait for December to be over, but this year, I can’t get this month to move fast enough. If I’m going to spend Christmas, I’d do so in January 2009 since that’s the start of the most highly-anticipated theatrical event of the winter season, the Eugene O’Neill festival at the Goodman. It’s an ambitious, unique, highly commendable project to bring the best of world-class theater to Chicago, and I’ve been breathless with excitement and tingling all over since the line-up was announced a couple of months ago. The Goodman is offering a terrific value with it’s O’Neill Explorer pass, which at $124, offers a 20% savings on the total cost of seeing seven of the eight plays being showcased in the Festival. Desire Under the Elms, O’Neill Festival curator and Goodman Theater Artistic Director Robert Falls’ Broadway-bound version is not part of the Explorer Pass. I’m convinced that it’s worth it to buy tickets for Desire Under the Elms (it’s one of the more histrionic O’Neill dramas, which I LOVE), especially after seeing this promotional picture: I can’t wait to see Brian Dennehy’s Owen Wilson-meets-Carol Channing-on-crystal-meth blonde wig! I think January’s highlight though will be the play that kicks-off the Festival in the first week of January- the acclaimed, experimental New York theater company Wooster Group’s Emperor Jones. Regular Wooster Group leading lady Kate Valk plays Brutus Jones, the lead role, played in previous productions by acting titans like Paul Robeson and Ossie Davis. Yes, Kate Valk is female; yes, she is white; and yes, she will be playing the role in blackface, as she did in New York and Philadelphia. It’s a performance whose power and impact the New York Times’ drama queen, I mean drama critic, Charles Isherwood has compared to Sandra Bernhardt’s in La Dame aux Camelias, Laurette Taylor’s in The Glass Menagerie, and Maria Callas in Tosca. Wow, that’s quite a pantheon to live up to. I think this production of Emperor Jones will be provocative, political, and highly contemporary, and I can’t wait! The other January productions will be the three one-act plays that comprise O’Neill’s Sea Plays. The Brazilian theater group, Companhia Triptal, will stage a US premiere under the umbrella title, Homens ao Mar. It seems that these plays will be highly-theatrical, and staged in surprising, boundary-expanding ways. I haven’t heard a lot about Zona di Guerra (In the Zone) and Longa Viagem de Volta pra Casa (The Long Voyage Home), but I’ve seen a video of Cardiff (Bound East for Cardiff) where the audience is right up there on stage with the actors. Delirious!
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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