From the Ledge

I promised a couple of weeks back that I would be blogging extensively about Steppenwolf’s phenomenal “August:  Osage County” as it pummels New York City theatre like a hurricane of ever-increasing velocity; unfortunately, it just hasn’t happened.  First, your dear theatre blogger has been using the telephone as an extended body part; I have been on four-hour conference calls every day since Monday working on a client proposal due Thanksgiving week.  Four hours on the phone?  Uhmmm….let’s see I could have watched two movies (or one movie if it’s directed by Peter Jackson or Bela Tarr) or two plays (maybe one and a half if it’s a Eugene O’Neill); completed four rounds of body waxings and facials; played eight games of mah jong; and at least read through a quarter of a Murukami novel. Secondly, and more alarmingly, performances of “August” in New York have stopped due to the Broadway stagehands’ strike (which has closed down all but eight Broadway theatres).  As I mentioned in a previous blog post, the early word from the “August” previews at the Imperial were nothing short of rapturous and stunning; unfortunately, for close to a week now, our beloved Chicago actors like Amy Morton and Rondi Reed, have been unable to cross the striker’s picket line and perform onstage.  As an HR professional, I have definite opinions on labor and employee relations, but this blog isn’t about workplace practices (I’ll leave that to my friend Frank’s much read HR blog), it’s about culture and art.  My great sadness then, as an avid theatregoer, with what is going on in New York, is the practical realization that commerce time and time again trumps art.  It’s a shocking reminder to the system, sort of like the effect of that cold plunge after half an hour in a Finnish sauna.

With the “August” folks benched, the Chicago theatre banner in New York continues to be held high by the festival of Chicago plays called GoChicago! at 59E59 Theaters, a highly-regarded off-Broadway house.  Due to the attention that “August” has generated here and in New York, no one was talking about the fact that three plays which premiered in Chicago and with their Chicago casts and artistic staff intact were also transferring off-Broadway.  The festival started in early October with Steppenwolf’s “When the Messenger Is Hot“, adapted by Laura Eason from a collection of short stories by the fantastic Chicago-based fiction-writer Elizabeth Crane. I loved “Messenger” when I saw it in the summer as part of Steppenwolf’s First Look Festival of New Plays; with its themes of singlehood and parental loss, it played for me like an intellectual “Sex and the City”, with an air of wistfulness, and with afghans and pragmatic self-awareness replacing the Manolos and neuroses.  I thought it was fresh and insightful, unfortunately Charles Isherwood at the New York Times, probably pining for Mr. Big and having guzzled his eight Cosmo, called it “sweet but pedestrian”.  Next in line at the festival, is the better-reviewed “Crime and Punishment”, which was produced by Writer’s Theatre in Glencoe a few years back.  It has the terrific John Judd, one of the few Chicago actors in my book who has never turned in an uninteresting performance.  It runs till December 2.  Finally, opening just this week is the Hypocrites’ ”Fourth Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide” an original play by the very talented, very interesting Sean Graney, the company’s artistic director, which was a critical success here in Chicago.  It also runs till December 2.  It stars another one of my favorite Chicago actors, Stacy Stoltz, who always creates these rich and demanding performances in her work at the Hypocrites (she was unforgettable as the lead in their “4.48 Psychosis” at the Steppenwolf Garage), but seems to be pegged in these one-dimensional, nurturing mother roles at the House Theater.  We won’t talk about the House Theater, as like labor relations, I have very definite opinions about them, but we will talk more about Sean Graney in the future.  I saw a preview of Joe Orton’s “What the Butler Saw” at the Court Theatre last night which he directed, and it was ridiculously good- the review is upcoming.

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