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.
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!
At the beginning of the audience talkback right after the performance of Kafka on the Shore, Frank Galati’s radiant adaptation of Haruki Murakami’s novel, that I attended, someone rightly asked Steppenwolf Theater Associate Artistic Director, David New, “So could you tell us what this means?”. I am an avid Murakami fan, and when I read “Kafka” several years ago, I found it compelling, poetic, vividly etched like one of those rare dreams that give you a sense of triumph and boundless energy when you wake up. I also found it elusive, evanescent, intellectually challenging, full of metaphors and references that were almost, at times, indecipherable. It was a great example of a truly metaphysical novel, with the twist of Japanese magical realism- quintessential Murakami. So I was really curious to see how Galati would take the qualities that were great on the page and translate them into equally great theater. Unlike “After the Quake”, the collection of short stories that Galati also dramatized a couple of Steppenwolf seasons ago, I thought “Kafka” - with its reordering of time and space, its fusing of characters points of view such that you wonder whether one was an extension, a doppelganger, or a reverse mirror image of the other, it’s surreal imagery- was more permeable, less able to be taken into a literal context , something that is, most of the time, important in live theater. I think Kafka on the Shore, the play, is terrific, which I enjoyed a lot, but it is not for all theatrical tastes and sensibilities (people who are heavily left-brained, or who have pretty conventional concepts around what theater is, would be terribly frustrated). I admire Steppenwolf for courageously selecting this play as their first play of the new season, despite the risk that it will leave audiences cold and alienated, since it does set the right tone for the theater’s focus on the theme of “imagination” (something that I think we will all be better off if we had some more of; there were a LOT of people who left their rations at home during the performance I attended).
Francis’s Fall Picks: Top 10 Must-See Productions in Chicago
Culture, Dance, Music, Theater Add comments
For anyone outside of Boystown and Andersonville, there is so much more going on this fall in Chicago than the Madonna concert (which, for those of you who have just come back to the city from the island of Tuvalu, is scheduled for October 26-27 at the United Center). Everyone (well, the Chicago Tribune and TimeOut Chicago that is) have made up their lists of the top fall live performances (theater, opera, dance) that they recommend you attend, which is a good thing - it’s both the blessing and the bane of living in a great, lively, cultural center like Chicago, that you can go to see a show every night, and still not see it all, so guidance is imperative (plus the fact that no one really has an unlimited art consumption spending budget) . Here then, in no particular order, are From the Ledge’s picks for the must-see performing arts events of the fall - they’re an eclectic lot, showcasing both the best efforts of local Chicago talent as well as top international artists making pitstops in our wonderful town, confirming our stature in the global artistic community. Varied in discipline, theme, and artistic approach, they all, nevertheless, promise exciting, memorable, uniquely impactful nights at the theater. I’ll be at all of them, so if you see me, say hi!
Great news to start the month - most of the original Chicago/Broadway cast members of Steppenwolf Theater’s production of Tracy Letts’s monumental modern dramatic classic, August: Osage County will be reprising their roles in the National Theater production which will run in London from November 21, 2008-January 21, 2009. Tony winners Deanna Dunagan and Rondi Reed will be back, as well as Tony nominee Amy Morton (Bummer for us Chicago theater lovers that Amy has been away from our stages for so long, first on Broadway, and then now London, but it’s great for our community, and our global reputation, though. I guess she won’t be directing William Petersen anymore in Dublin Carol at the Steppenwolf, since that play is supposed to run during the Christmas holidays). I hope London’s a big enough city to contain the velocities created by having these three ladies on stage at the same time. Original Chicago cast members Ian Barford, Steppenwolf co-founder Jeff Perry, Sally Murphy, Mariann Mayberry, Kimberly Guerrero, and Troy West are all going to London, as are Broadway cast members Michael McGuire and Molly Ranson. Only Paul Vincent O’Connor is new to the London cast - he’ll be taking the role of Rondi Reed’s husband, Charlie, played magnificently in Chicago and New York by ensemble member Francis Guinan. It would have been great if Guinan went too but he’s in the first two plays of the Steppewolf season: Kafka on the Shore and The Seafarer, so we’ll have the pleasure of seeing him in town this year. The role of the sleazoid boyfriend “Steve”, played in Chicago by ensemble member Rick Snyder and in New York by Brian Kerwin, still has to be cast. The Broadway production is still in full swing, and so far, there’s been no news that it’s going to close any time soon, so later this year, there’ll be two productions of August running in two global theater capitals. We should continue to be proud of August’s success- but wouldn’t we be so much prouder, and happier, if there is also a hometown production running simultaneously? I’m still astounded by the number of people I meet who are kicking themselves for not seeing the original Chicago production. The 2009 national tour is not soon enough to have August back where it started, and if we can have sitdown productions of gulp, Wicked and Jersey Boys, why not a play that was nurtured, and originally championed and embraced in Chicago?
For me, the dog days of August seem to be almost interminably crawling by, with an overall hazy, languorous feel to them that makes me all the more want to stay cooped up in my air-conditioned apartment watching the men’s springboard diving at the Beijing Olympics (if cutting-edge NASA technology was used to develop the new aerodynamic Speedo body swimsuit the swimmers are wearing, I wonder what technological marvel could have come up with Alexandre Despatie’s diving trunks? Uhmmm…I’m sure you Halsted queen bees have a multitude of theories running through your, ahh, heads…). There hasn’t been a lot of arts and culture events to go to (or at least any that I am particularly interested in), so I have been catching up a lot on news of what’s coming up.
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