One of my most infuriating theater experiences last year was the Victory Gardens production of Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, a play which attempted to portray grief and personal loss through the lens of a whimsical, stylized take on the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. I have major issues with Ruhl’s playwriting as a whole, but I had a particular issue with how she treated the subject matter of grief in that particular play- in a blatantly artificial, shallow, unbelievable manner. I wished she took some playwriting lessons from Jenny Schwartz, whose abstract but wonderfully touching play God’s Ear (an off-Broadway sensation last year), essentially about a family who loses its eldest child, is currently being given a knock-you-senseless production by the up-and-coming storefront theater Dog & Pony Theatre Co. Having lost my mom two years ago, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of how it feels to lose someone so close to you, and I just didn’t recognize myself in any of Ruhl’s characters or situations, that’s how dishonest I felt the play was. In God’s Ear, though, I recognized the overwhelming disorientation, the inability to communicate, the continuous loop of ache, the sense of abandonment that losing a close loved one creates in you, despite the fact that like Ruhl, Schwartz packs her tale with outrageous whimsy (a flossing Tooth Fairy anyone? What about a transvestite flight attendant? Or maybe a GI Joe toy soldier that comes to life?). I think that’s the difference though between real playwriting, and well, hack playwriting.
I think one of the great things about God’s Ear is that Schwartz accurately captures the indescribable surreal-ness that grief brings to your life. You don’t feel like yourself for a long, long time; you say words that don’t seem to have any meaning to anyone, not least of all to you; you continue on with your life knowing that a lot of the things in that life don’t really mean that much anymore. During the first six to eight months after losing someone really close, you literally feel like you’re living in a parallel, conduction anesthesia-ized universe – and Schwartz gets this. Her central characters of the mother, the father, and the younger daughter talk in redundant clichés and colloquialisms, they talk pass one another, they walk around in a disbelieving stupor, they engage in fantasy lives. They talk to the Tooth Fairy, or the transvestite flight attendant, or to a crazy airport hotel bar pick-up who may or may not be a role-play figment of the imagination, as if they’re real people, as if they’re more real than themselves even are. These episodes pointedly, and yes heartbreakingly, communicate that complex state of grief and painful loss that no one can really fully comprehend unless they go through it. I have to admit it’s really hard to write about grief, without coming off either maudlin, awkward, inarticulate, or looking like you have an unfortunate case of schadenfreude, but Schwartz’s use of highly-stylized theatrical devices, in my opinion, clearly, and for the most part, effectively, drive home the point. Of course, by the end of the ninety minutes, some of the writing feels repetitive and superfluous (but never annoyingly precious like Eurydice), and you can only get so much of the topic without needing to pour yourself a scotch too.
Dog & Pony Theatre Co. gives God’s Ear a terrific production. I came to the play with a little bit of skepticism, since I wasn’t particularly enthused about their fall production of The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler, but I knew how much people raved about their early 2008 success As Told by the Vivian Girls (which I unfortunately missed). Hey, but this play once and for all confirms Dog and Pony’s ascendant role in the Chicago storefront theater scene. Director Kristy Vanderwarker’s directorial hand is sure, but is also confident enough to let the incongruity and the absurdity of some of the lines and situations come through. I love Grant Sabin’s all-white stage design on a runaway platform in the Viaduct main stage, with audience members on both sides. The staging really reinforces a sense of disassociation, of being voyeuristically watched – a feeling that is created when people feel like they have to be nice to you, or to tiptoe around you, because you just lost your mom, or your husband, or your young daughter. I think the performances are spot-on, painfully honest but not sentimental, with the standout from the seven person ensemble being Gina D’Ercoli as the way-off hotel bar pick-up, hilarious and wacky on the surface, but with deep layers of painful self-awareness and brutalized experiences underneath. Her monologue about catching her boyfriend doing the nookie with her cousin (and getting his shoe on her face as they’re on their way out to go to Starbucks) is unforgettable. Finally, Abraham Levitan’s (of Baby Teeth, one of the darlings of Chicago’s indie rock scene) original musical score, not quite rock, not quite pop, hard-edged at times, wistful at others, and surprisingly kooky one or two times, frames Schwartz’s writing admirably.
God’s Ear is only playing till this Sunday, April 26, at the Viaduct Theatre mainstage, 3111 N. Western Ave. Catch it before it closes!
Tags: Dog & Pony Theatre Co.
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