It’s a crazy world we live in people, between face-eating in Miami, Scott Walker-unrecall in Wisconsin, and beauty pageant-rigging in Donald Trump’s House of Miss USA. For my part, I nearly shaved my head bald and ripped my clothes off to run naked in the streets when I read the crazy rumor that Liza Minnelli and Tony Danza were getting married. Liza and Tony married? That’s not one hell of a jumbotron of crazy, but Armageddon. So I’m not surprised that some of our younger playwrights are writing about the delicate balance of mind and heart that our turbulent 21st century world creates in its citizens. My thoughts on two productions I recently saw:
I am Going to Change the World
Something really bizarre happens to John, the main character of Andrew Hinderaker’s ambitious new play, I am Going to Change the World, now receiving its world premiere production at Chicago Dramatists, on his 35th birthday: he physically, emotionally, and psychologically relives the day when he was 22 and on his way to an interview at Goldman Sachs for a job that would be the starting point of achieving his life ambition: to become CEO of Goldman, the largest bank in the world. From this intriguing premise, the play weaves along in sometimes impressively unexpected, in other times frustratingly incomplete twists and turns. I won’t give away the rest of the play’s narrative because Hinderaker, a fresh, interesting, assured voice whose Suicide Incorporated received tremendous buzz a couple of years ago (a buzz I wasn’t as caught up in as the rest of the city’s, uhmm, theater cognoscenti), and ended up being produced by Roundabout Theater in New York, has written a somewhat compelling narrative. I am Going to Change the World is ostensibly about coping with mental illness, but it also contains some painfully honest things to say about failure, disappointment, ambition, and familial expectations.
Unfortunately, like many new plays I’ve recently seen in Chicago, I am Going to Change the World probably requires several more rewrites. The riveting first act, in which you’re not really sure what is triggering John’s lapses into the past, and whether these lapses are reality or only occurring is his mind, gives way to a more conventional storytelling in the second act. If Act One has shades of Memento, Act Two is more In Treatment lite meets a smarter Private Practice without the sultry romances. For me, the shift in tone between the two acts is perplexing. Although John is a multi-layered character, a complicated mix of angst, anger, insecurity, and confused nice guy, the rest of the characters (his parents, his therapist, Dr. Jensen, his faithful best friend Troy) are more sketchily-written. There are also two plot threads that I find frustratingly underdeveloped. First, I never really get a satisfying sense of why John and Troy’s friendship is so deep (the scene near the end of the play when Troy recalls their first meeting is a cop-out, I mean, you don’t sleep in your friend’s room and administer his medication for a year just because he ordered the same wussy drink you did at a bar). Second, in an early scene Hinderaker hints at some motivations on why Dr. Jensen is working with John but never really fully develops it (did she have a research project on John’s specific type of “anniversary” disorder?). And the role is also very reactive, with no engaging visible interior life – again the late revelation that she lost her child comes from nowhere (although Judy Blue is, as expected, marvelous).
Jonathan Berry directs I am Going to Change the World with his usual capable hand, and the cast is outstanding (Norm Woodel as John’s wound-up father is terrific). However, I think the play is compulsively watchable because of Nicholas Harazin’s dazzling turn as John. It is a star performance that heralds the arrival of an exciting young actor in Chicago (Harazin is a recent transplant per the playbill). He is always believable as he navigates the sometimes conflicting sides of John’s personality- both confident and struggling, turbulent and focused. It is an anchoring performance for a play that still needs to find its way.
Tigers Be Still
I don’t think Kim Rosenstock’s affable Tigers Be Still, now receiving an audience-pleasing premiere from Theater Wit under the confident direction of Artistic Director Jeremy Wechsler, has any aspiration to say anything terribly profound about mental illness or emotional disorders. Everyone’s just depressed with life (who wouldn’t be?), and they’re all trying to cope as best as they could. Sherry was depressed for months due to unemployment and overeducation until she gets her new job at the beginning of the play as art teacher and art therapist, and she’s trying to do as well as she can in both. Grace, her sister, is depressed at being cheated on by her fiancée and copes by stealing stuff from his condo, laying on the couch and chugging Jack Daniels, singing Bette Midler off-key, and watching and re-watching Top Gun’s steamy love scene. Zack, Sherry’s teaching assistant and art therapy patient, is depressed at his mom’s death and his frayed relationship with his father so he goes to sleep in his mom’s shoe closet with his face in her used tennis shoes. Mr. Moore, Zack’s dad and principal of the local high school so Sherry’s boss, is probably depressed as well about his wife’s death and his son’s alienation but just doesn’t show it. He however keeps a rifle by his side, supposedly to ward off, if necessary, the tiger that escaped from the zoo and which is now freely and dangerously roaming their unnamed small town.
Rosenstock’s writing is light and good-natured, without making fun of people with depression. She is also able to quietly yet forcefully navigate tragic themes such as the death of Zack’s mom without taking away from the overall crispness of the writing. And her writing is smart, brisk, sardonic, with many memorable quips courtesy of the CVS employee with anger management issues Zach and the dumped bride-to-be with obsessive fixations Grace. I’m not sure ultimately what Rosentock is saying, other than everyone can overcome their emotional issues when they put their mind to it. There’s nothing earthshaking or innovative there, but Tigers Be Still is still an entertaining night at the theater anyway. And the cast is terrific, Mary Winn Heider as Sherry, Guy Massey as Mr. Moore, and the peerless Matt Farrabee (whose line readings are always astounding) as Zack all give luminous, committed performances. Show MVP though is Kasey Foster’s balls-out, outrageous, yet poignantly vulnerable, Grace. It’s a terrifically memorable performance: when she leaves her ex-fiancee a rambling rendition of Midler’s “The Rose” on his cellphone voicemail, you want to both strangle and hug her.
You can catch I am Going to Change the World at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave., until July 1. However, you only have until June 16 (it has been extended once already) to catch Tigers Be Still at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont.
Tags: Chicago Dramatists, Theater Wit
August 8th, 2012 at 8:40 am
When an extremely inorganic and generally bad play is so well pedigreed, produced and performed that many perceive it as a great work, those who love truly great theater are morally required to speak up — regardless of the consequences. For our primarily loyalty has to be to the well-being of theater (and the world), not to any particular playwright. And Andrew Hinderaker’s “I am Going to Change the World” is not simply a bad play (which could simply be ignored), but one that has potential to do great harm if those who haven’t drunk the you-know-what don’t speak up.
To that end, kudos to: FromTheLedge’s Francis Sadac for his extensive criticisms of this play (I recommend reading them) and his conclusion that it needs “much more work”; ChicagoNow’s Katy Walsh for not hiding her extreme disappointment in the second act; Sun-Times commenter “Hor” for his brief (but spot-on) critique of the play (and of Weiss’s baffling review); and StageAndCinema’s Samantha Nelson for certain comments (such as “Prone to melodrama at times”, “an unnecessary scene where John’s psychiatrist reveals why she’s been helping him pro bono”, and “much of the show’s power comes from its perfect cast”).
Having avoided reading any reviews before seeing the play (since I find they usually give too much away),
I went into the play expecting (based on the title and advertising) that it was probably about a smart, caring guy who eventually realizes that, instead of working for Goldman Sachs, he can do much more to help people by using his special abilities to greatly reduce the power Wall Street companies like it have over the economy. (As shown by how complicit they were, and are, in the severe economic downturn – along with politicians such as Bush and Obama, as outlined in the 2010 documentary “Inside Job” as well as the recent four-hour PBS Frontline special.)
Instead I soon discovered that the play is about a guy (John) who is actually 35 years old and is so whacked-out that he has been living in his parent’s basement for fourteen years after not getting a job at Goldman Sachs! And, furthermore, that his 35th birthday has made him honestly think that today – not fourteen years ago – is his big interview!
This basic set-up is so unbelievable that many reviewers and audience members found it easier to believe (incorrectly) that he was flashing back to his big Goldman Sachs interview practically every day (a la “Groundhog Day”, an INFINITELY better work). Though I thought it was clear (if extremely contrived) that these “flashbacks” are a relatively rare occurrence, brought on by special events such as his 35th birthday (the time by which he wanted to be rich and able to buy his parents and hundreds of others apartments in the Sears tower).
In a well-written play the characters, whether the situation they find themselves in is realistic or fantastic, should be organic; that is, they should behave in accordance with how real humans behave – not in artificial ways to suit a contrived plot. Alas, this play presents us with a totally unbelievable character and situation, then treads water for a while (further straining credibility as more information is revealed), then ends by contending that this character, even though he is intelligent and caring enough that he really could “change the world” (that is, help make things better for a LOT of people), should instead be satisfied with putzing around in his parents basement with a friend.
I submit nobody actually knows anyone like this (so smart and accomplished, yet so mentally ill from not getting a job at ONE certain company) in real life. So why do characters such as this seem to pop up so often in modern plays, movies, and TV? Because it makes it so much easier on the writer! Mental illness is simply a crutch to make a plot (or scene) work whenever the audience would otherwise not believe that a character would behave that way.
Such a device is a contrivance, however, not organic — and thus stories built around it have nothing to do with better understanding the human condition or the world in which we live (the primary purpose and essence of theater) (ideally while also being entertaining). Theatre should be a place for realistic characters (though sometimes in non-realistic or surrealistic situations). Real people have a sufficient range and depth of problems that it should almost never be necessary to have someone with an overt mental illness of this kind be the main character. Would “Of Mice and Men” be such as classic without George, if Lenny were the main character? Of course not. And of course there is no value to a play that is little more than a character sketch of a character that couldn’t exist (as I submit is the case here).
Note that I’m NOT talking about “normal” mental illness, the kind many people have. I’m talking about the kind of wacked-out stuff where (as in this play) the character genuinely often (at convenient moments for the plot!) can’t distinguish reality from illusion. (By the way, regarding the other extreme, I don’t like superhero movies either since the outcome of the conflict usually just depends on which character is given better CGI special effects. However I did like (for example) “Aliens” because the main character was so recognizably human — in fact her strong human drives played a key role in the movie [particularly in terms of Newt].)
Another one of the play’s problems is that John has been trying to deal with things for fourteen years (!), and the play ends with him in about the same situation as just before the play started! The playwright attempts to get around this lack of much happening by having the shrink tell John (and more importantly the audience) that he has made big progress because of his statement that he now knows that he can never work at Goldman Sachs or have his former girlfriend (now married with kids) back. But it’s hard to believe that in fourteen years John hasn’t made these statements before… only to eventually get his hopes up again. So why is this time any different? Because we’re watching! (And because two hours have elapsed and it’s time to send the audience home, sans about thirty bucks each.)
Yet another one of the play’s problems is the very fact that John gets so upset about his first choice company (Goldman Sachs) not working out. Which makes no sense because it is clearly established that John’s fundamental motivation is NOT to work at Goldman Sachs, but to help people like his parents have secure housing. (Heck, he didn’t even know that Goldman Sachs was the biggest bank until he looked it up!) Thus it would only make sense for him to freak out if he wasn’t able to get ANY kind of high-paying “Wall Street” type job. (And by “freak out” I mean the kind of stuff any of us might do, since to accomplish what he already has in life John almost certainly had to overcome various disappointments and set-backs without becoming overtly mentally ill… even though the world of this play doesn’t seem to realize this [another condescending thing about it].)
Another unbelievable thing about the play: Who in the post-9/11 world would feel MORE secure living in the Sears Tower? Even people who work there put pressure on the then-mayor to get rid of Meigs Field, in order to FEEL safer. (Even though in reality it didn’t make them much safer since any plane flying into O’Hare could divert to the Sears tower before anything could possibly stop it, and Meigs only had light planes that weren’t likely to do much damage.) Most people would prefer a nice house in a good neighborhood rather than have a long elevator ride to a swaying, porch-less/yard-less terrorist target. So this is yet another contrivance that makes it hard to take John seriously. And if the main character is impossible to relate to, then what is the point of the story?
By the way, before I go on let me state that I realize I’m unlikely to change the mind of anyone who liked this play. My purpose, rather, is to provide solace to those who didn’t like it but were too afraid to say so because of all the “official” reviews that said that it was great.
Apparently those who like this play (not counting those low-lives who simply like seeing an ambitious, intelligent, person – no matter how caring – knocked down a few pegs) like it because it reinforces the notion that even though most of us may not be able to “change the world” in a larger socio-economic sense, we can still have a profound affect on the people in our lives. No argument there, but did you really need this play to tell that to you? And do you honestly think that anybody who doesn’t already realize this will be enlightened by this play, given how contrived and outside-the-norm the main character is?
Of course not. Which is why this play is such a profound illustration of what is so often wrong with modern plays, and thus why theater these days so often isn’t of much interest to “normal” people (those who aren’t related in some way to the people involved in the production): too many modern plays center on a character we feel superior to (in some sense), as he or she learns a lesson we already know (often a trivial or cliche lesson to boot). Rather than WE (the members of the audience) being so engaged with the story and characters that we (along with them) learn something about ourselves (and the human condition in general) that we didn’t already (consciously) know.
Another point: Just because a production is well-attended doesn’t mean it was well-liked. A rave (if nonsensical) review, backed up several mostly-positive reviews, can certainly fill a small theatre for 24 performances (or whatever). The real question is, what affect will the experience of this play have on future attendance at this and other similar theatres? If most “normal” people felt like it wasn’t worth their money (and time), then they may not decide to take a chance on another small play (at ANY of the many possible venues in Chicago) for a long time to come.
Chicago is blessed with a great many wonderful, dedicated actors, and a lot of writers. One almost never sees a play where the problem is the acting or poorly-written dialog. The usual problem is that the overall story simply isn’t compelling enough to get people to spend the time and money to come to the theater. And I don’t want to see theater die (or become something that only fellow theater people attend) just because it is easier for to hope things will turn out okay (based on a playwright’s reputation) rather than tell the playwright that he (or she) will have to wait until the play is really ready before it will be scheduled for production. Given all of the tremendous resources that go into producing a play (especially all the time the actors put in on rehearsals and performances) I don’t think this is too much to ask (as tough as it might be for the person who has to tell the playwright).
PART II: WE MUST CHANGE THE WORLD!
The problems of the play go beyond the hopelessly contrived main character and lack of story or plot, for we must indeed change the world – and yet many people will come away from this play reinforced in the notion that they can’t change the world (and anyone who thinks they can must be must be mentally ill); that the fate of the world should be left to those in charge and we should just putz around in our little circles, working on our personal problems. (As if most politicians don’t have far worse personal flaws than we do!)
The United States (and the world) is in a time of great crisis. The same day as this play opened the latest monthly national jobs report came out, proving once again that things are even worse than the establishment (which has so often told us that things are getting better) has heretofore admitted. And this was confirmed again with the following month’s report on July 6th, just a few days after the final performance of the play! Talk about appropriate bookends! And recently the CBS evening news led off its broadcast by saying how “this is the worst economic recovery EVER”!
At times such as these it is more vital than ever for playwrights (and others) to provide real insights as to what has been going on (and ideally the aspects of the human condition that caused it), and inspiration to correct these socio-economic injustices. The last thing we need is a play that simply fiddles while the country is burning. Or, even worse, throws gasoline on the fire by trying to convince people that we just have to wait for those in charge (or the passage of time) to rectify matters, that those of us who aren’t in authority can’t possibly change the world until we have first driven out every flaw of our character, every demon in our soul.
But those currently in power will never fix the problem, for they are beholden to the very people (such as Wall Street and the military-industrial complex) who caused, and profit by, the current system. So they tell us that things are too difficult for us to understand – as they bail out the Wall Street firms and not only let everyone keep their jobs (much less go to prison), but actually give them million-dollar bonuses!
But what happened it isn’t that difficult to understand – as the documentary “Inside Job” details, it was basically just simple fraud. But the vast majority of the both the democrats and republicans refuse to hold them accountable (with rare exceptions such as Dennis Kucinich and Ron Paul), so as long as people keep blindly voting mainstream politicians back into office nothing is going to change.
Half the people worship Obama, the other half Romney/Bush. Both are wrong. Only understanding economics and changing behavior will change things; not “faith” or “believing in” politicians… or “patience.” (The night this play opened Obama has his 145th fundraiser! And his administration refuses to include in the official unemployment statistics (as bad as they are) the long-term unemployed, those who are only working part-time (without benefits) after having worked years at a full-time job, and recent college graduates. If all these are included, the unemployment rate is more like 15%!)
I don’t fault the playwright (and certainly not the cast or production team); he is talented and certainly has a lot of potential (especially given his previous works). (Although I think to praise him so highly this early in his career for such a sub-par work is not doing him any favors.) No, the fundamental fault is that the mendacity promoted by politicians and the media is so pervasive that it is picked up subconsciously by almost everyone, including (alas) many writers.
Perhaps part of the explanation for the overall positive reaction to this play is that anyone who can afford the admission price has probably not yet been severely affected by the bad economy (or saw it for free, as in the case of most reviewers). Those who can afford to go theater regularly (or see if for free) may not have yet been affected by the bad economy, and thus can feel free to condescendingly say “change yourself first”. But whether Obama or Romney is elected in November, if people don’t wise up and start worrying about changing the world, the day will come when there will be no theater for anybody – except perhaps for the violent, deadly bread and circuses so popular in ancient Roman coliseums.