From the Ledge

Whew! The past couple of weeks have been a whirlwind blur of commuting every week to the city of the gateway arch, and pulling in long hours on an intense strategy project.  That’s the reason for the MIA, people.  This grueling schedule will continue till mid January 2012 so if I’m popping in and out of this blog just keep mind I’m stuck in the middle of Missouri.  As I read through the scant arts and culture listings in St. Louis’ equivalent of the Chicago Reader, the Riverfront Times, I’m struck by how culturally emaciated the denizens of this fair-sized Midwestern city seem to be.  During the past several weeks, the only things playing in the city has been God of Carnage, the touring production of The Addams Family, Blood Wedding, The Who’s Tommy, and Nuts (which was turned into a movie in the late 1980s and starred Barbra Streisand as a high-class callgirl on trial for murdering one of her clients. Babs as a ‘ho? Seriously, it sounds like a sci-fi film to me).  It’s a meager plate that makes me so thankful for our gloriously diverse and vibrant theater scene: on one weekend two weeks ago, I managed to catch two Chicago premieres of the works of contemporary European playwrights – Trapdoor Theatre‘ s expectedly whacked-out production of Werner Schwab’s OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE – A European Supper, and Sideshow Theater Company’s more restrained staging of a similarly unconventional play, Marius von Mayenburg’s The Ugly One.  Although I’m not a big fan of both,  I’m still grateful Chicago affords me a look into such idiosyncratic material.  I wonder how both will play in St. Louis.

OVERWEIGHT, directed by Steppenwolf ensemble member Yasen Peyankov, is a typical mix tape of Euro-trashy artsy-fartsyness and condescending incomprehensibility.  Ok, I get it, Austrian playwright Schwab is smarter than me, but he doesn’t have to make the point every five minutes through dense dialogue and puzzling (non) narrative. A group of misfits are sitting around in their corner bar knocking each other senseless with insults and belligerence while observing, jeering, and ultimately collectively doing several unspeakable things to a beautiful and wealthy young couple, who unfortunately wandered in to get a sense of the life of the underclass.  I guess there’s a whole point about European social inequalities and injustice, but this point is marred by both the obnoxious playwriting and the sensationalistic end of the first act. Peyankov assuredly creates a thoughtful air of decrepitude throughout the play, an interesting evocation of the problems of a supposedly socialist Europe which has incongruously massive social inequalities.  The cast is first rate, with special mentions to the wonderful, always riveting Nicole Weisner as an abused girlfriend who displays the sole moral backbone among the characters, conveying the haunting yet earthy qualities of Hannah Schygulla; Carolyn Hoerdemann, whose fine comic timing is mixed with a palpable wistfulness as the neighborhood hooker, so nicknamed because she will show the referred-to body part in exchange for coins for the jukebox; and Andy Hager who is creepy-funny as a pedophilic schoolteacher.  The cast is game and no-holds-barred, as is typical of a Trapdoor production, and I salute them for it.  I just wish they have better material to work with, and less bloody skeletons to gnaw on.

Sideshow’s The Ugly One is slight and wispy, though more palatable than OVERWEIGHT.  German playwright Mayenburg creates an intriguing fairy-tale about a really, really ugly man who gets some radical plastic surgery and turns into the most good looking man in the world. He’s so good looking, every guy starts getting the same surgery to look like him.  Mayenburg cleverly explores themes about our obsession with physical beauty, themes that have already been explored with more confidence, depth, and thoughtfulness, and less whimsy in films and TV shows like Nip/Tuck.  Mayenburg doesn’t really say anything new or insightful, and with an hour running time, I’m not sure he intended to.  Director Seth Bockley interestingly stages the fluff as a semi-farce to give it a little bit more gravitas, I presume, and he is ably abetted by the terrific Nina O’Keefe, who was also the fabulous heart of Sideshow’s previous show, Heddatron.  O’Keefe is hilarious, warm, and emotionally engaging in the dual roles of the guy’s wife and a lusty investor in his company who tries to bed him, and truly steals the show. Fred Wellisch and Nate Whelden playing multiple roles are a fine supporting cast.  Although Robert L. Oakes is watchable as Lette, the ugly one who becomes the really hot one (and looks the same before and after, a conceit of the show that implies we are always going to be the same person regardless of how we change physically), I think he is a little too passive for the farce-like approach to the material that Bockley adopts.  I wish Oakes’ Lette plays a little bit broader, with more boil and heat, than simmer.

OVERWEIGHT, unimportant: MISSHAPE – A European Supper has been extended until November 13 at Trapdoor Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Ave.  The Ugly One is running until November 20 at Oracle Theater, 3809 N. Broadway.

Tags: Sideshow Theatre Company, Trap Door Theatre