From the Ledge

There’s a compact satellite of the Chicago downtown theater district right off Michigan Avenue at Chicago Avenue. I‘ve gone quite regularly to the MCA Stage, the performing arts venue of the Museum of Contemporary Art, over the past several months since they’ve had a really exceptionally strong season (including the transformative Gatz, one of my top ten best live performances for 2008). But I haven’t been to the Lookingglass Theater in a while since I’ve never been a big fan of the group (their excruciating The Wooden Breeks in 2007 was one of the most traumatic nights of Chicago theater I’ve had in years), and although I was at Drury Lane Theater Water Tower Place in December for Meet Me in St. Louis, I don’t really make it a regular stop on my personal theatergoing circuit since I find a lot of their shows to be more suitable for the palettes of the tourists crowding the intersection of Chicago and Michigan like spillovers from Epcot Center. So it was quite the coincidence that three of the last plays I’ve seen were ones that were being mounted in the area. I was curious to see what Lookingglass and its reunited famed ensemble would do with Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, coming on the heels of an unforgettable version from The Hypocrites and David Cromer which has now transferred off-Broadway. Last weekend, I wanted to catch the Japanese avant-garde performing company, Chelfitsch, which has set the international theater scene abuzz with their unique take on the reaction of Japan’s Gen Y-ers (The Lost Generation) to the war in Iraq, Five Days in March, but had a limited three performance run at the MCA. And then, after a really intense diet of O’Neill, Arrabal, Shakespeare, Shepard, and Peter Weiss by way of Rwanda during the first month and a half of the new year, I needed the rabid theatergoer’s version of an office worker’s mental health day, so I threw all caution and artistic taste to the wind and purchased a ticket for, ok, avid blog readers can gasp now, the touring version of Xanadu, here at the Drury Lane, courtesy of Broadway in Chicago, for an open run. Here then are my thoughts on each of these productions.

Our Town - I don’t think anyone who has seen both productions can stop themselves from comparing the Lookingglass production and the Hypocrites production, since the latter show was just remounted last fall after a very successful, highly-acclaimed spring run. Despite unbelievably impressive pedigree (co-directed by Tony Award winner Anna Shapiro and critical darling Jessica Thebus, with a cast composed of all Lookingglass ensemble members, including it’s most famous founder, David Schwimmer as George), this production is cold, uninvolving, frankly snooze-inducing, and I hate to say it, unquestionably inferior to the Hypocrites/Cromer version (my number one best live performance of 2008). I’m really scratching my head as to why Lookingglass, one of the leading theater companies in the city who would have a pick of material to produce, would insist on staging this play less than six months after the Hypocrites did, and then fail to infuse the material with anything fresh or insightful. Unlike the Hypocrites’ younger, non-Equity cast, who fully inhabited their roles, and made the sense of loss, missed opportunities, unrealized dreams and “life passing you by” so palpable, the forty-something Lookingglass cast is mostly unconvincing (I think the terrific Andrew White as Mr. Webb and David Kersnar as the bitter church pianist Simon Stimson are the exceptions), and comes off strangely self-satisfied. I don’t think Schwimmer captures George’s youthful recklessness nor does Laura Eason, the acclaimed playwright-actress-director, Emily’s immaturity in the first two acts, and her painful yearning in the pivotal third act. I think Joey Slotnick’s BFF of a Stage Manager is someone you’d like to have a couple of beers with at a Wrigleyville bar, not someone you’d want to be giving you the dark, painful truths of life (Cromer’s Stage Manager in his production, on the other hand, was so stone-faced, cutting, and focused, that you’re forced to reflect on your own life decisions as you journey with the play’s characters).

I don’t expect Shapiro and Thebus to come up with some magnificent theatrical inversion such as the one that Cromer adopted for Act III in his version (that “twist” just cannot be topped), but I did expect more from their collaboration. I think the scenes are slowly, leisurely paced which lost me half way through the show. There’s no innovative staging or blocking (although the set design of objects and furniture hanging over a mostly plain ground-level set is interesting for a while). Kevin O’Donnell’s sound design isn‘t particularly emotionally affecting. This is a boring, stale Our Town, the kind of production that gives the play it’s undeserved pariah reputation among theatergoers. This is unfortunate for the audience, since there is a lot of talent working on this show who could have given us a truly illuminating night of theater; which is ironic, given the play’s themes of unrealized potential and missed opportunities.  At the end of the Hypocrites Our Town I was so emotionally affected, I was bawling; at the end of this Our Town I wanted to rush home and watch a rerun of Top Chef.

Xanadu - In his TimeOut Chicago review, Christopher Piatt says “You don’t need to be gay to dig Xanadu; you need to be gay enough. And despite the film’s long association with a devout queer fan base, in this case “gay enough” means a capacity to receive joy is a prerequisite.” I think this is the perfect description for this show which revels in its lowbrow, campy, wink-wink, to-hell-with-art-let’s-give-the-audience-a-grand-time sensibility. Despite my initial misgivings (and I guess a lot of my friends’, whose collective jaws dropped when I told them I was planning to see it), I enjoyed myself immensely! Douglas Carter Beane’s (of Little Dog Laughed fame) intentionally sends up everything that was unintentionally funny in arguably one of the worst movies ever made (the crazy plot of a Greek goddess becoming mortal to inspire a moping artist and ends up falling in love with him and running a rollerskating joint, it’s Venice Beach setting, leading lady Olivia Newton-John’s “Australian-ness”) and tacks on a bunch of other 80s pop culture references from the movie Clash of the Titans to legwarmers to theater insider jokes. It’s really funny! There’s also a lot of other wacky business such as a flying carousel horse, a be-tasselled centaur in heels, and on-stage seating which allows for good-natured audience participation. The game, athletic cast is bedecked in lots of satin, lame, sequins, headbands, and is gayer than Liza’s closet on a good day! Elizabeth Stanley, who plays the Olivia Newton-John role with a faux Australian accent, is like a very funny, unrestrained, fag haggy Kate Winslet, and Max von Essen, who plays the romantic lead Sonny Malone, comes off as a semi-butched up hairdresser in short shorts and a tank top who’ll turn femme at the drop of a hat (or at least at the sight of hair product). The cast performs the songs (which surprisingly hold up well, for the most part, in all their cheesy glory) with so much buoyant, infectious enthusiasm, you’ll be standing up, singing and dancing along to the title song, at the end of the show (and possibly waving little plastic flashlights). People expecting a bold, loud, brassy, polished Broadway-in-it’s-heyday musical are probably better off spending their money at Jersey Boys. For those of us who just want to have a good time, Xanadu is a well-spent 90 minute diversion.

Since Chelfitsch’s Five Days in March already closed last Sunday, I’ll just post a couple of quick comments on the production. I do have to complement the MCA for being audacious and forward-thinking enough to program such cutting-edge performance art. This is the kind of production that truly solidifies our reputation as a sophisticated theater town. Ostensibly a simple, casual recounting by a rotating group of actors of a Japanese twentysomething couple’s anonymous hook-up over a span of five days, the five days at the beginning of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, it was ultimately an impressive marriage of physical movement and text. The actors all delivered their lines with these shaky, sometimes repetitive, highly stylized movements which according to Artistic Director Toshiki Okada, as far as I could figure out during the talkback, were meant to both reflect their inner lives and unearth the subtle meanings of the text (supposedly written in highly colloquial Nihonggo). I understood about half of what Okada said during the talkback (due primary,in my opinion, to an inadequate interpreter from the Japan Society) and I still am mulling over certain parts of the play itself. But it was quite the memorable, adventurous, exciting, unique experience, something that the MCA, with its highly innovative programming, is getting to be known for among savvy Chicago theatergoers.

Our Town is at the Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan Ave., until April 5.  Xanadu is at the Drury Lane Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut St, at least until the middle of March, probably longer.

Tags: Broadway in Chicago, Drury Lane Theatre, Lookingglass Theatre, MCA