Sophocles isn’t the only tragedian currently playing on Chicago stages. One of my favorite Chicago-based playwrights, Keith Huff (whose Chicago-originated A Steady Rain will be produced on Broadway this fall with Daniel Craig and Hugh Jackman playing Chicago cops, a fantasy twosome that deserves another blog post all on its own, ahem), wrote a Greek-style contemporary tragedy about murder, incest, and angel-sightings in a small town, with a happy ending, way back when (actually in 1989). Mud People is now in a Midwest premiere from the ballsy, scruffy, rocknrollin’ Lakeview theater group, Mary-Arrchie Theatre. I think it’s a curious, and ultimately disappointing, blip in the Huff dramaturgical canon, written much earlier than A Steady Rain and the wonderfully compact Pursued by Happiness, part of Steppenwolf’s First Look Repertory of developmental plays in 2008, two much more accomplished and mature plays. In the Mary-Arrchie production, I think strong ensemble acting, a steady hand from director Carlo Garcia, and some crisp, biting one-liners elevate muddled, credulity-stretching, first-draft seeming playwriting.
Mud People is set in a small Midwestern town where incest, murder, reputation-wrecking gossip, quirky townsfolk, and other types of Grand Guignol-like elements are in full swing until a mysterious, mute person seemingly falls down from the sky during a thunderstorm. Of course, as this stranger starts doing even more strange things (healing a dog bite, making a mute teenager speak, “resurrecting” a person whose heart may have given out), the town starts believing that he is an angel sent to redeem them from their sins. Redemption, mysticism, tragic family relationships are all potent themes that could have made for combustible drama. For the most part though, I feel that Huff’s writing in this early effort falls flat. It doesn’t have the clarity and focus of A Steady Rain – the whole subplot involving Buzzy, the failed journalist (played with expected skill and balance by the exceptional young Chicago actor Dan Behrent) who thinks writing about the angel will be his ticket to renown feels tacked-on and underdeveloped; I’m not sure where it’s supposed to go and what it’s supposed to contribute to the story (is it about sensationalism? or is it about objectivity in eyewitness accounting?). The whole healing of the mute teenager and his eventual reconciliation with his child-beating police officer father feels like a false start. It, again, doesn’t go anywhere after one scene, and the actors disappear from the story and from view. The development of the relationship between the lead character, Barb, who bore a daughter with her own father, and the angel also feels rushed- it feels like she morphed from caregiver to interpreter to salvation-recipient in two scenes or less. For most of its running time, Mud People, feels like it’s moving from one strange, somewhat overwrought situation to another without really letting the audience suspend its disbelief completely.
Garcia and his for the most part excellent cast try to do a lot with material that just isn’t there. Garcia’s pacing is tight and confident (I feel the scene transitions, for one, are much more unobtrusive than say those in Our Bad Magnet, the last Mary-Arrchie production I saw that Carlo directed). Aside from Behrent who always gives magnetic star performances, ensemble standouts include Mary-Arrchie founding member and Chicago storefront theater stalwart Richard Cotovsky as Barb’s repulsive father, who comes off both monstrous and empathetic (and wickedly funny) at the same time, and Mary Jo Bolduc as Barb, whose wise-cracking and brittle bitchery seems straight out of a 1940s Lauren Bacall movie, but whose conflicted desperation to escape the hellish life she’s living feels very contemporary. I’m not really sure what to make of Dereck Garner’s performance as the angel, whom Barb nicknames Adam, because he has no dialogue and performs as a blank canvas of emotions. I’m not really sure if this is intentional from Huff’s point of view. Although Garner is an appealing presence, his performance comes off as frigid, rather than luminous (which would have been a more engaging performance, in my opinion).
I think Mud People is ultimately notable for me as an example of the range and aspirations of Huff’s writing, a rare window into the time when he was still a young, evolving playwright, something that would be great to reflect on when he writes better and bigger things after his Broadway debut. On its own though, in this version, I’m not sure I’d be intrigued to see another production soon.
Mud People runs at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan, until July 12.
Tags: Mary-Arrchie Theatre
Recent Comments