You never know what you’re going to get with a Martin McDonagh or a Bruce Norris play, which is a significant part of the pleasure of going to them. You may leave the theater aghast with the revelation of what the itch is in Norris’ funny, searing The Pain and the Itch. You may be repulsed by the tortuous stories in McDonagh’s The Pillowman, certainly one of the best, most provocative plays of the past ten years in my opinion. You’ll feel unsettled and goaded by writing that doesn’t hesitate to critically expose your fallibilities, or ragingly question your belief systems, but you’ll also feel exhilarated, entertained, and to be honest, enlightened to an extent. I’m a big fan of both writers, so, of course, in the past couple of weeks I took the opportunity to see productions of their works – in Los Angeles a couple of weekends ago, I caught the Center Theatre Group production and LA premiere of McDonagh’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore, starring Star Trek hunk Chris Pine and staged by its original Broadway director Wilson Milam. Last weekend I was at Steppenwolf Theater’s world premiere production of Norris’ latest work, A Parallelogram, directed by Tony winner Anna D. Shapiro. I’m not a big fan of the McDonagh work; although provocative, I’m not sure I’ll place the Norris work at the top of this favorite playwright’s oeuvre.
It’s been more than a week already since I saw it, but I’m still mulling over how to respond to Steppenwolf’s current production of Samuel Beckett’s Endgame. It’s gotten some of the best reviews of plays currently onstage in the city, which is always so heartening for me as a Steppenwolf subscriber and a member of the theater’s Auxiliary Council. It is a near-flawless production – Frank Galati’s masterful direction brings out the comedy and the echoes of family dynamics in this Theater of the Absurd classic about a man who can’t stand, his servant who can’t sit down, and his parents, who may or may not be imagined presences, who live in trash cans, all seemingly the last people in a world surrounded by endless water (all played in pitch-perfect fashion by Ensemble members William Petersen, Ian Barford, and Martha Lavey and Francis Guinan, respectively). It is a near-flawless production, if you get Beckett. But in 2010 Chicago, how many people, who are not theater critics, theater practitioners, and theater and literature majors of some form at some point in their lives, can actually say that they get Beckett?
At intermission during the superb Redtwist Theater production of Martin McDonagh’s brilliant, intricate The Pillowman, I overheard the two women of a certain age sitting beside me in the cramped theater smugly, disgustedly ask each other: “Who can you recommend this play to?” In fairness, before coming to the theater, they might have been hunched over the whole day cutting-out reindeer cookies while wearing their snug wool sweaters with Frosty the Snowman embroidery on them, singing along to their Perry Como holiday CDs, tasks and outfits that tend to cut oxygen to the brain, but…I shot them the patented withering look nonetheless. Who do you recommend The Pillowman to – one of the most riveting, most provocative, most smartly-written and surprising scripts of the past decade? Well, people who embrace the power of great theater, for one. Folks with cultural taste more sophisticated than theirs, for another. When I saw the play’s Chicago premiere a couple of years ago in a heartbeat-stopping Steppenwolf production, directed by a pre-Tony nomination Amy Morton, starring a pre-Pulitzer prize Tracy Letts and a pre-Oscar nomination Michael Shannon, I didn’t think this play could be improved. It was a great play, period. But in Redtwist’s production, creatively staged by director Kimberly Senior in a suffocating, sometimes malevolent, ultimately affecting manner, the impact of the play’s theme of the power and legacy of storytelling comes through wondrously. It’s definitely one of the best Chicago productions for 2009.
Is it March already? It seems like I spent most of the first quarter that is about to end waiting in tundra-like winter weather for the Brown line to get me to and from the Goodman Theater. Although I’m out of town this weekend, and will have to miss the final entry in the brilliant Eugene O’Neill Festival, the Neo-Futurists’ four and a half hour production of Strange Interlude directed by Greg Allen, I have to say that the Festival is an unqualified success. This city owes a tremendous amount of gratitude to Bob Falls and the Goodman staff for enriching our artistic lives permanently, and here’s hoping to more world-class theater in the future!
I’m on my regular Thanksgiving sojourn in Minneapolis this week, but I couldn’t help but take note of the to-be-expected phenomenal reviews that our very own Steppenwolf Theater’s London transfer of August: Osage County received after opening on Wednesday night at the National Theater. Deanna Dunagan, Amy Morton, Rondi Reed, Ian Barford, Jeff Perry, Sally Murphy, Maryann Mayberry, Kimberly Guerrero, and Troy West all reprise the roles they created here in Chicago and took to Broadway; Steppenwolf ensemble member Gary Cole (recently of Desperate Housewives), Broadway understudy Molly Ranson, and newbies Chelcie Ross and Paul Vincent O’Connor (taking over from original Chicago and Broadway cast member Francis Guinan, who had stayed in Chicago to be part of the soon-to-open The Seafarer on the Steppenwolf main stage) join them. Our very own Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune was first on the scene, saying August “kicks London in the gut” and finally, after three reviews, calls Amy Morton’s shattering performance as the eldest daughter Barbara “one of the great theatrical performances of the modern era”. The London critics were a little bit more reserved than that, but the usually crotchety Guardian drama critic Michael Billington admiringly compares Tracy Letts to British dramatic icon Alan Ayckbourn in his four-star review, singles out the performances of Dunagan, Morton, Perry, and Reed, and says the whole play is full of “buccaneering vigor”. Although Charles Spencer at the Telegraph says he isn’t “persuaded that this is the the first indisputably great American play of the 21st century”, he gives it four stars and calls the production “consistently gripping, moving and often wildly funny”. Benedict Nightingale, at the Times, rightfully gushes at the ensemble acting, and says the actors give performances that are so “so robust yet so punctilious they’d have had Stanislavsky dancing round Red Square.” OK, so the Brits liked the play a lot. It’s so wonderful to see the continuous triumph of this proudly Chicago-made play in the great, discerning, been-there-seen-that theatrical capitals of the world, New York and London, but …. when do we see August again at home, in this production, with this cast?
With Chicago’s ascendant star in the national cultural scene, it has been a delightful fall arts season in the city, since there’s been quite a diversity of the productions on view. Where else in the country, except for New York City, can you go to a rarely-produced play by an acclaimed Irish playwright starring a major television actor returning to his Chicago theatrical roots and directed by a Tony Award nominee on one night, and then hop on over the next night to the world premiere of a politically-charged new play by a hot young playwright and MacArthur Genius grant recipient, right before it’s New York City premiere? So, in less than a week, I was at the Steppenwolf to see Conor McPherson’s Dublin Carol (which was not part of the theater’s subscription season) starring William Petersen, on leave from his last season on CSI, and directed by Amy Morton, in between Broadway and London August: Osage County jaunts; and at the Goodman for Lynn Nottage’s new play, Ruined, which will play off-Broadway with the same cast and director, at co-producer Manhattan Theater Club’s home turf in January. But what is so uniquely thrilling about Chicago (and a key differentiator from New York, IMHO) is that the storefront theater milieu, the vibrant roots of Chicago theater (where Petersen and Morton both emerged from), continues to thrive, admittedly with mixed results, amidst all these major theatrical events. So in the same week as Dublin Carol and Ruined (and the altered-state-inducing triumph, Gatz, too), I also saw Greasy Joan & Co.’s collection of Chekhov short stories, Chekhov’s Life in the Country, and A Red Orchid Theater’s brazen A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant, which, I can bet, will be one of the wackiest, most unique, most fall-off-the-chair-and-hope-you-don’t-crack-your-spine production you’ll see this season, or any season.
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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