There’s been very little going on, arts and culture-wise, the past two weeks, other than film, film, and more film, since I basically parked myself at the Chicago International Film Festival almost every night (and most of the day on weekends). So this past weekend was playing catch-up time. Since I don’t typically celebrate Halloween, I decided on Friday night to finally cave in and see the Goodman’s Turn of the Century on its last performance weekend. Well, it was indeed Fright Night at the Goodman, since Turn of the Century was scarier and more heinous than Saw V (or a drunken Lincoln Park Trixie’s version of a sexy French maid costume). On Saturday, I stopped by the American Theater Company for a matinee of their production of Itamar Moses’ Celebrity Row, first written and staged in 2005 but which had been re-written and re-edited for this Chicago premiere by the hot young playwright, who was in town working with the play’s director, my idol David Cromer, the actors, and ATC Artistic Director PJ Paparelli. In the evening, I hopped on over to the Lyric Opera (thanks for the tickets Tom!) for the majestically overwrought production of Georges Bizet’s The Pearl Fishers, full of gargantuan Buddha statues, operatic overacting, lighting and thunder effects, and endless views of American opera’s hunk-o-rama‘s, Nathan Gunn’s, magnificently defined torso. I loved it!
Whoever thought Turn of the Century was a good idea (was that you, Robert Falls?) must have been hit by lightning and suffered a momentary lapse of taste. I wanted so much to have my preconceptions about the show (shaped by the mixed reviews it had received, including this one from From the Ledge friend Kris Vire of TimeOut Chicago) proven wrong, especially at the beginning when Jeff Daniels and the luminous and wonderfully talented (not to mention heroically game) Rachel York magically sang the beautiful Rodgers and Hart ballad, “Where or When”. Unfortunately, there were very few magical moments in the show; most of the time, Turn of the Century felt like the cringe-worthy entertainment portion of a Rotarian convention in Lisle (I was on the lookout for a buffet table to be rolled into the Albert theater!). The whole time-travel premise (Daniels and York fall through, I don’t know how, a rip in the time and space continuum and find themselves in 1899 New York instead of 1999 New York, where the play initially begins) was atrociously inane and nonsensical. Most of the musical numbers were insipid, clumsily-staged and choreographed, and cheesier than Gouda, Netherlands- especially galling for me were the “Original Three Tenors” performing “My Way” like a rejected audition for a Bartoli pasta commercial and the “Floating (or was is Flying, whatever) Septuplets” hacking into the feminist anthem “I am Woman” like a fourth-rate advertising agency’s pitch for a feminine hygiene product’s marketing campaign. It was so awful, I thought notorious American Idol reject Renaldo Lapuz directed this turkey, instead of musical theater great Tommy Tune! Jeff Daniels probably recognized Loserville when he saw it, so his performance was totally uninvolved and phoned-in. I admired, pitied, and, frankly, was embarrassed for Rachel York, whose talent and bravado lit up the stage whenever she was on it, particularly in the first rendition of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” (another one of the oh-so-rare magical moments). She worked really, really hard, like a camel transporting a whole tent city in the Kalahari desert, to make this stinker smell less sewage-y than it was. Although the theater was packed, I didn’t think most of the Goodman audience members were impressed (there was no standing ovation, and boy, the Goodman audiences stand up at the least provocation, and one of my seat neighbors sniffed that this would play better in Fort Lauderdale!), but the suburban dad two seats down from me was guffawing so obnoxiously loud and heartily (and nothing was funny!), I thought he was in danger of inhaling the toupee of the gentleman sitting in front of him!
The American Theater Company continues it’s splashy, attention-grabbing season with Itamar Moses’s Celebrity Row, which has an intriguing premise: in the early 2000s, Timothy McVeigh, Ted Kaczynski, World Trade Center bomber Ramzi Yousef, and Latin Kings chief executive Luis Felipe were neighbors in the same cell block at the Colorado Supermax prison - what if they had the opportunity to talk? What did they talk about? What kind of people were they? Although all extremist ideologues, how different or similar were they from each other? And if there was a naïve, idealistic, liberal female lawyer who unwittingly falls into their path, how would they engage with her? How would they treat her? It’s a fascinating concept which unfortunately could have been better than it actually plays out. I think Moses is extremely talented, but there are so many ideas hitting you from different vantage points in the play, like a philosophical debate gone ADD, that you don’t really come away with an overarching impression of the play’s themes or it’s ultimate message. Is the play trying to paint the drivers and enablers of the extremists’ ideologies? Moses is pretty articulate about McVeigh and Felipe, but is fragmented and obscure about Kaczynski. Is this an indictment of liberal politics? The way the lawyer is portrayed at the beginning seems to say so, but the final scenes take on a more ambiguous tone. Is this a debate about the social effects of incarceration? I’m not really sure. I think David Cromer and his cast, who are all exceptional, work very hard to focus attention and illuminate, but I think there’s a lot more tightening and editing that Moses has to do to truly make this play fulfill its spectacular promise.
After recently seeing several conceptual takes on opera (like Dr. Atomic and the Chicago Opera Theater’s version of Don Giovanni), I actually was looking forward to seeing a classic opera classically (maybe more aptly, traditionally) staged. And The Pearl Fishers did not disappoint. Although not as highly regarded as Carmen, which was written after it, Bizet’s music is undeniably gorgeous (including the haunting, unforgettable “Au fond du temple saint” which is one of the most famous duets in all of opera). The melodramatic plot is well, sooo, fabulously, improbably operatic (two hunky, bromantic BFFs fall in love with the same virginal high priestess; make a vow not to pursue her; one of the cuties breaks the vow and romances, chastely, Miss Vestal Virgin, if that‘s even possible; they are found out by the villainous, possibly sex-starved, high priest and brought to other BFF who, as king of the Pearl Fishers has the sole power to pardon and punish; several dramatic arias later, lovers escape, and powerful BFF is beheaded by high priest). The Lyric, as always, visibly and haughtily demonstrates the results of its substantial endowment and grants largesse and its sky-high ticket prices, with an over the over-the-top set design and other production elements, which includes two giant Buddhas, one sitting, the other reclining; a sexy tent for powerful BFF Zurga; a temple; and other goodies. Eric Cutler and Nicole Cabell, as the lovers, sing and act wonderfully, but are of course, absolutely, irrevocably upstaged when Nathan Gunn’s six pack arrives on stage. Objectively, Gunn is an excellent baritone and a pretty good actor (he is starting to crossover into the theater, having starred as, what else, the hunky Lancelot, in the spring New York Philharmonic production of Camelot), but really when he is barechested (like two minutes after his first entrance, and during the entire Act III) and wearing flimsy harem pants, what else would you be looking at onstage? Definitely not the building-sized Buddhas! In Act III, when he sings about the torture he is feeling for having to sentence his butch BFF, Nadir, to death, almost, dare I say it, homoerotically, and with that bare chest in full, uhmmm, heaving view, you could almost see the multitudes of gay men at the opera last Saturday having epileptic seizures!
The run of Turn of the Century has mercifully ended. Celebrity Row has been extended one more week, so you can see it until November 16 at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron St. The Pearl Fishers and Nathan Gunn in all his glory (as demonstrated by the photo accompanying this blog post) has one more performance: November 4, at 7:30 pm at the Lyric Opera House, Madison and Wacker.
Tags: American Theater Company, Goodman Theater, Lyric Opera
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