From the Ledge

Aug 18

Here and There

I’m not really ready to let the summer go just yet (although I could definitely live without the sweat baths I take nearly every week while interminably waiting in the ORD taxi line to get home on travel-frenzied Thursday late nights). But I’ve already began to plan my theater schedule for the upcoming six to eight weeks as Chicago theater companies unveil their fall seasons; I’m also taking several trips during this time period to see some of the more hotly-anticipated productions in other theater-mad cities like ours. My plate will be quite full, but what a satisfying, bountiful harvest it will contain!

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Mar 28

Second Chances

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Despite the fact that on these pages I sometimes sound like a hipper, sultrier Bette Davis crossed with a litter of hungry cats and the ladies of The View on a good day, I’m a pretty generous guy. I like to think of a glass as half-full, I coo at infants (of course from a distance to avoid getting baby spit on my fab cashmere sweater), and I like to give multiple second chances to theater companies, where earlier viewing experiences might not have been as pleasant or as enjoyable. So I have gone back to the Lookingglass Theatre, which has, over the years, failed to impress me (with my disappointment even greater because of the very visible boatloads of money they spend on their productions in that beautiful downtown space that should have been spent on better shows), and the locale for one of the most heinous nights at the theater I have ever spent in my life (The Wooden Breeks almost made me want to be a Cubs fan instead of a theater aficionado, that’s how awful it was). I’ve also gone back to Remy Bumppo, which I’ve decided not to drop any money on after a disastrous, geriatric-appealing The Philadelphia Story a couple of years back. And, of course, if you regularly read this blog, I have a pretty complicated relationship with the Goodman. I respect its important role in Chicago’s cultural conversation and legacy, so I keep on going back, hoping to find, once again, an unforgettable Ruined or King Lear amidst drifting dreck like Turn of the Century and Ghostwritten. Over the past couple of weeks, Lookingglass surprisingly impressed with the engrossing world premiere of Trust, Remy Bumppo validated with the unsexy Les Liaisons Dangereuses (yes, dear readers, I didn’t even think that was possible, but more on that later!) and the Goodman…well, the Goodman, with the head-scratching, narcolepsy-inducing world premiere of Rebecca Gilman’s The True History of the Johnstown Flood, probably provided one of the worst nights at the theater I’ve had since…The Wooden Breeks.

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Feb 25

Deflated

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I’m a big Philip Seymour Hoffman fan. I remember seeing him on Broadway with John C. Reilly in their Tony-nominated performances in the revival of Sam Shepard’s True West and being just blown away. His Oscar-winning performance in Capote is still, in my opinion, one of the most indelible cinematic performances of recent memory. So when I received the Goodman season brochure late last year and saw that he was going to be making his Chicago directorial debut with a world premiere play in the winter of 2010, I started clearing my calendar to make sure I wouldn’t miss its limited run. My anticipation was built up as friends recounted Hoffman sightings at restaurants or at Steppenwolf (taking in a performance of American Buffalo), and the Chicago press published interviews and articles about him and the play. And yes, he was there at the performance I attended, silently observing from the Owen Theater’s mezzanine level. I was very certain I was going to be blown away, mesmerized, by his production of Brett C. Leonard’s newest, The Long Red Road, about a man broken down by the memories of a tragic past, that chills were going to run up my spine, that my jaws would need to be scraped off the floor,…..but I wasn’t blown away, my spine stayed ramrod stiff, and my jaws lay firmly in place. In fact I was pretty disappointed, not so much with Hoffman’s direction, but with the material, which was muddled, unoriginal, and oddly, somewhat sedate and internalized for a play dealing with such harrowing themes as alcoholism, incest, pedophilia, and accidental murder.

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Feb 10

Viewing List

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In the spirit of constructive feedback, my friend Joel suggested I add a blog section listing any upcoming performances I’m attending, so folks like you, my dear, devoted readers, could decide whether you would want to attend the same shows or performances, as well. That’s probably not going to happen any time soon, since my preciously scarce blog real estate is already quite packed with Twitter feeds, blog rolls, and a listing of shows I had recently attended (which provides a general indication of what potentially would be content for upcoming postings). However, I do listen to my friends suggestions, even if they’re delivered a little curmudgeonly (and I say that lovingly, Joel!), so here then are some of the performances I’m planning to go to this month. February in all its cold, snowy glory is always seen as the “dead zone” of the Chicago winter season, but if you judge by the number of intriguing, lively, potentially can’t-miss shows, it’s probably more equivalent to July in Maui, arts-wise.

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Dec 19

2009’s Theatrical Treasures

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I’m not a theater critic, nor a theater practitioner. I’m just a regular, passionate theater aficionado who writes a blog (and who pays for most shows that I go to see). And it was wonderful to be a regular, passionate theater aficionado who wrote a blog in 2009 in Chicago, when great-not merely good, not just serviceable-theater was available every weekend night. 2009 began with the Goodman Theatre’s Eugene O’Neill Festival, a singular, unsurpassable program of theatrical bravado that I will always remember, and which even long time Chicago residents marveled at. But 2009, for me, was also a year of getting a thrilling first look at world premieres; of seeing plays in random places, whether it was in a warehouse in Ravenswood, inside the rehearsal hall of the Goodman theater, or on the actual stage of the MCA; of discovering new theater companies putting on plays with so much impressive, balls-out fierceness; of finally being validated in my very firm, vocal belief that it is Chicago, not New York City or any other self-proclaiming town, that is the theater capital of the US.

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Jun 05

Baby Talk

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I thought it was pretty ironic that on the way home Thursday night from the Goodman after seeing Rebecca Gilman’s latest play, the “to procreate or not to procreate” drama The Crowd You’re In With, a baby was bawling its tonsils out on my Brown Line “L” car. For me, a screaming baby on the “L”, just like Swiss chard on anything or Paula Abdul’s voice on a record, is just plain unacceptable. Yes, I was irritated. I’m probably not as child-friendly as many of my friends (and I am at that age already where a lot of people I know either have year-old kids, or are on their second or third baby), but I’m not as extreme as some of the characters are in Gilman’s play – to be honest about it, I just don’t see parenting in my tarot cards in the near to medium-term future, but I respect those who have decided to undertake this immense responsibility. The Rebecca Gilman plays I’ve seen have always been about big topics contextualized into personal stories, whether it is poverty (Blue Surge), 21^st century feminism (Dollhouse), or racism (Spinning Into Butter). I think The Crowd You’re In With, although intriguing, contemporary, and exceptionally well-written at times is quite slight, and to be frank about it, mundane. I don’t really see anything revelatory about this play, but maybe that’s just my problem, since the themes are too familiar, are too often part of my Sunday brunch conversations, that I feel that I shouldn’t have gone to the theater to see them dissected, even if there are interesting points being made.