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.
The biggest laugh I had over the weekend (more so than the bellyaching guffaws I tried hard to suppress while watching pseudo-hipsters pretend to look impressed by some atrocious art during the West Loop gallery openings last Friday, but that’s a topic for another blog post) was over New York Times theater critic Charles Isherwood’s almost sheepish admission – in print, for everyone to read -that New York theater, specifically Broadway, should be considered the east side of Chicago, given the number of Chicago-originating productions and artists currently on stage in New York. Thank you, Mr. Isherwood, but our fair city already has an east side, so we don’t really need to annex New York City. It was still pretty hilarious, though, to finally see the snobbish, self-promoting, out-of-touch Times theater section admit what many of us passionate theater aficionados have known for a while now – that the vital center of American theater has already migrated from the Big Apple to the City of Broad Shoulders. So while one-step-behind New Yorkers will be drooling over chi-town exports Superior Donuts, A Steady Rain, and David Cromer (making his Broadway directing debut with revivals of Neil Simon’s Brighton Beach Memoirs and Broadway Bound, running in repertory) this fall, theater-forward Chicago audiences will be immersing ourselves in some of the best theater this side of the Atlantic. I’ve compiled below my annual list of the ten must-see theatrical events in Chicago this fall, most of them world premieres, never been seen anywhere; hopefully I’ll bump into many of you in some of them. You never know, but that obscure, low-key, storefront production you paid twenty bucks for may be next year’s frenzy-inducing hot ticket in New York (exhibit A: A Steady Rain).
There’s a compact satellite of the Chicago downtown theater district right off Michigan Avenue at Chicago Avenue. I
‘ve gone quite regularly to the MCA Stage, the performing arts venue of the Museum of Contemporary Art, over the past several months since they’ve had a really exceptionally strong season (including the transformative Gatz, one of my top ten best live performances for 2008). But I haven’t been to the Lookingglass Theater in a while since I’ve never been a big fan of the group (their excruciating The Wooden Breeks in 2007 was one of the most traumatic nights of Chicago theater I’ve had in years), and although I was at Drury Lane Theater Water Tower Place in December for Meet Me in St. Louis, I don’t really make it a regular stop on my personal theatergoing circuit since I find a lot of their shows to be more suitable for the palettes of the tourists crowding the intersection of Chicago and Michigan like spillovers from Epcot Center. So it was quite the coincidence that three of the last plays I’ve seen were ones that were being mounted in the area. I was curious to see what Lookingglass and its reunited famed ensemble would do with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, coming on the heels of an unforgettable version from The Hypocrites and David Cromer which has now transferred off-Broadway. Last weekend, I wanted to catch the Japanese avant-garde performing company, Chelfitsch, which has set the international theater scene abuzz with their unique take on the reaction of Japan’s Gen Y-ers (The Lost Generation) to the war in Iraq, Five Days in March, but had a limited three performance run at the MCA. And then, after a really intense diet of O’Neill, Arrabal, Shakespeare, Shepard, and Peter Weiss by way of Rwanda during the first month and a half of the new year, I needed the rabid theatergoer’s version of an office worker’s mental health day, so I threw all caution and artistic taste to the wind and purchased a ticket for, ok, avid blog readers can gasp now, the touring version of Xanadu, here at the Drury Lane, courtesy of Broadway in Chicago, for an open run. Here then are my thoughts on each of these productions.
It’s all about the “duelling” Our Towns this week in Chicago theater news. The much-acclaimed, and very much sold-out, Hypocrites production, directed by, and starring, the current darling of New York’s theaterati, David Cromer, is closing as scheduled this Sunday, June 8, but will be re-mounted for six weeks in the fall, still at the Chopin Theater, and still (sigh of relief!) with Obie and Lucille Lortel-winner Cromer as the Stage Manager. I was blown-away and mashed to a pulp by the production, which I raved about here- it’s on my top three cultural experiences of 2008, so far. Right on the heels of that announcement, Lookingglass Theatre, which had previously announced a production of Our Town for its 2008-2009 season, to be co-directed by August: Osage County’s Anna Shapiro (a sure bet to win the Tony Award next week for Best Director of a Play) and Jessica Thebus, confirms the cast for their production, scheduled to begin in February 2009, which includes ensemble members Joey Slotnick as the Stage Manager, and the most famous Lookingglass alumni of them all, David Schwimmer, as George. For grins, check out this heated January discussion on Chris Jones’s blog about David Schwimmer’s thespic talents being put to use (for good or for ill depending on who’s point of view it is) in Our Town, in which Mr. Schwimmer ultimately jumped into. I am a very avid fan of Anna Shapiro, and admire Jessica Thebus a lot (her production of When the Messenger was Hot was one of my genuinely heart-warming nights at the theater last year), but I am really hard-pressed to conjecture how their Our Town can surpass the gravity-stopping and emotionally-wrenching brilliance of Cromer’s production for the Hypocrites. The Lookingglass Our Town will be going against such a high standard of artistic excellence, and I certainly am crossing my fingers that it can at least approximate it, not necessarily surpass it. And for the record, for those who have never seen David Schwimmer onstage and only know of his work as Ross in Friends, I think you all just have to bite your tongue black and blue, since I do think he is a superb stage actor which he ably demonstrated in Lookingglass’s The Idiot (which I saw probably around a hundred years ago).
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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