3-31-06
Trap Door Falls Through
Chicago theatre is best known for the sort of gritty, in-your-face realism that leads to sweat and spittle flying off the actors and on to the patrons in the front row. Thanks to the success of Steppenwolf in its early days, outside industry professionals expect a Chicago trained actor to be a theatrical blue collar, Stanley Kowalski kind of guy. That, or trained at Second City.
Chicago theatre is not particularly well known for difficult style pieces: farce, comedies of manners, experimental works and so on. This makes Trap Door Theatre’s success in occupying exactly that niche all the more impressive. However, occupying a niche successfully does not always equate with presenting those works successfully.
In The Fourth Sister, Trap Door has the kind of project that should be right up their alley. This modern day farce of three sisters trying to survive Moscow is less an adaptation of Chekhov’s Three Sisters than a play written with Chekhov in mind. The three sisters here include Wiera, the oldest (played by the director Beata Pilch), who’s in love with a married neo-fascist politician; Katia (Carolyn Shoemaker), who falls in love with an American documentary director; and Tania (Nicole Wiesner), the youngest who’s been taking dance classes, and is an incurable romantic. Each finds an incompatible love and love uses them in return. Tania’s beau, a low-grade Russian mafia member, is hit just before their wedding and his mother Babushka (Holly Thomas) becomes the spokesperson for a line of bullet-proof garments. The documentary filmmaker is looking for prostitutes willing to talk about their situation, and the sisters send an orphan boy, Stiopa (Kim McKean) in drag to him, and together they win an Oscar. Wiera gets pregnant and is left.
There’s plenty of material here and a few genuinely funny moments. The industry event promoting the bulletproof vests is ridiculous enough to be sublime, and the closing massacre perpetrated by Wiera’s newborn, who emerges from the womb with a machine gun killing everyone except Babushka in her personal armor, is beyond absurd.
Unfortunately, the bulk of the show is made up mainly of complaining. Complaining about Moscow, complaining about each other, complaining about their circumstances, complaining about the West. If the stereotype of Chekhov is that everyone is bored, here everyone bitches. It ceases to be interesting almost immediately. And Pilch has attempted to coax a broad, comic style from each of her performers, but the text mostly doesn’t support it. Instead, each actor does his or her own thing, shouting and sawing the air without really listening to others on stage.
It may be that Pilch, since she’s also in the show, lacked the perspective necessary to ensure the basics of good theatre. Communication. Story-telling. But The Fourth Sister lacks either, and instead we have a sea of mugging and bitching with the all-to-rare moment of bizarre hilarity.
The Fourth Sister—Trap Door Productions
Kerry Reid, Tribune—“Directors Beata Pilch (who also plays the world-weary Wiera) and Krishna LeFan mostly keep the show on its careering track, though a palpable sense of repetition creeps in toward the end of the second act. Ballasted by a strong cast, including the hyperkinetic Nicole Wiesner as Tania and smoldering Carolyn Shoemaker as Katia, this production skillfully switches from moments of hilarity to instances of existential dread in a manner that is almost, well, Chekhovian.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“You’d expect a man like Janusz Glowacki to savor the nasty ironies of post-Soviet Russia, and does he ever… In fact, the intensity of his appetite for the subject is what gives this Cinderella-meets-Chekhov-and-goes-to-Hollywood farce its raucous vitality. It’s also what ultimately drains that vitality away, making the play too long, too elaborate, and too much to take. High on energy but low on narrative control, Beata Pilch’s production aggravates the problem.”
John Beer, New City—“Glowacki’s frenetic script never cuts its pitch-black wit with sentimentality, and Trap Door Theatre’s ferocious production attacks the tangled plot with brio. Even though Nicole Wiesner’s Tania occasionally takes her cartoonish role over the top into stridency, and the second-act business involving an accordion player remains pretty impenetrable, the cast’s savage energy and intelligence nevertheless make of Glowacki’s bitingly funny play another feather in Trap Door’s vagabond cap.”
Catey Sullivan, Windy City—“But the perpetually manic energy and broad acting that permeate the production plays into a problem inherent in the translation (by Glowacki and Eva Nagorski) of the script itself. In Glowacki’s story, nobody really grows or changes. The characters are desperate and frenzied through beginning, middle and end. Some are killed along the way, some change clothes, and one gives birth, but on a fundamentally emotional level, everyone stays static. That’s not to say the production doesn’t have merit—Trap Door has mounted an adventurous show with the verve and heart that defines the company.”
Angels in America, part I—The Hypocrites
Chris Jones, Tribune—“There’s another difficult issue in play here. It’s one thing to newly explode a period realistic play such as Salesman with an arresting and telling theatrical metaphor. It’s entirely another to try and re-orient a post-modern polyglot such as Angels, which already was far removed from realism in its initial conception. Frankly, we’d all have been better off if Graney and his team had worried a bit more about squeezing every last note of truth from some of the best scenes ever written about the intersection of personal sexuality and political power.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Graney’s innate sensibility—his fascination with suffering, redemption, blocked communication, the tragic in ordinary life—is custom-made for Kushner’s epic. So is his flair for both the absurd and expressionistic. And his actors, who have moved with him through fresh interpretations of everything from Arthur Miller to, most recently, Sarah Kane (4.48 Psychosis) prove to be expert interpreters of Kushner, as well.”
John Beer, New City—“The Hypocrites’ Sean Graney may not have Tony Kushner’s sheer intellectual firepower, or his cozy place in the hearts of the New York press, but the Hypocrites’ artistic director shares with the playwright both a fearless theatrical ambition and a tendency toward self-indulgence. Both are on display in this co-production, with Bailiwick, of the first part of Kushner’s magnum opus. When Kushner and Graney’s strengths align, the results are frequently magical… But persistent weaknesses in performance highlight the script’s talkiness and lack of dramatic momentum… Graney has nailed the look of the play, but he hasn’t yet cracked bringing Kushner’s difficult creations to life.”
Jenn Q. Goddu, Free Press—“Four caskets become the production’s set pieces, transformed into a telephone booth, men’s bathroom, dressing room or hospital bed. It’s an eloquently stark choice that allows an awareness of death to pervade this already tense and emotional production… The entire cast makes an impression, although in this first half of the two-part production it is certainly [Steve] Wilson, Scott Bradley’s Prior and Mechelle Moe’s Harper who leave the biggest mark.”
Rick Reed, Windy City—“The Hypocrites, of whom I am a big fan, seem to be overreaching. This Angels in America looks more like community theatre than anything I’ve seen the company do to date. There’s taste and elegance in the creative design, but there’s also a curious distancing factor in these areas. The stripped-down set, economical for certain, doesn’t allow us to step into a world of people we care about, which is essential for this play… Graney’s use of multiple coffins, too, is heavy-handed…and seems stolen from his more subtle motif of doors he utilized for his excellent production of Death of a Salesman.”
autobahn—Profiles Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“[T]his is a rather engaging couple of hours in the best Chicago storefront tradition. You could easily double or triple these roles (no characters return), but director Darrell W. Cox apparently has a lot of mainly young actors anxious for the work. Thus, despite the tiny size of this theatre, we see a dozen vastly different Chicago actors, which surely keeps things interesting. And because radios are part of road culture, Cox underscores all the door openings and closings with a cool mix tape. Almost all of the scenes are competently performed—and a couple of them are a good bit better than that.”
Brian Nemtusak, Reader—“Because while LaBute has a point—people are, on balance, nasty—he can be a bit of a broken record… Often, once the basic power dynamic becomes apparent, you could call “scene”—something I wanted to do halfway through each of Autobahn’s six unpleasant interludes. That said, there isn’t a bad performer in the cast. In the play’s darkest, most genuine moments, Jack McCabe and Veronica Sheaffer are downright riveting. John Zuiker’s set design is efficient and evocative, and the show never fails to convey a sense of momentum. It just has nowhere to go.”
Nina Metz, New City—“LaBute’s style is less successful in this short format, where the unrelated plays—long scenes, really—quickly become formulaic and game-like. You spend your time trying to guess at the perversity instead of becoming emotionally involved with the characters. It doesn’t help that director Darrell W. Cox tends to push his actors to overplay their moments when subtlety would get the job done more effectively. The strongest piece is the first, about a young couple parked in a secluded make-out spot… The same can’t be said for the remaining five, which are flat and slow-going despite all the nasty LaButian undertones.”
Jenn Q. Goddu, Free Press—“We spend at least an eighth of our lives in cars. Or at least that’s what a character in Neil LaBute’s autobahn has read somewhere. It’s easy to imagine that this statistic was what inspired the playwright to write this particular series of short plays. The works in Profiles Theatre’s Midwest premiere production of autobahn are, after all, each set in automobiles… All the plays have an edge, as LaBute toys cleverly with vocabulary, yet some feel as if they’re only reaching 35 mph when we want them to rev it up.”
Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago—“Normally, we find Darrell W. Cox front and center in Profile’s productions, but this time he takes the helm directing this rather young cast to its fullest potential. He meticulously guides his ensemble at playing the truths behind LaBute’s script, paying close attention to the manipulation of the language and silence embedded in the writing. As he does this, he gets solid performances from each pairing as they struggle for understanding amidst the oftentimes nightmarish landscape of their predicaments.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“Viewed at a late preview, Autobahn was in sure hands under director Darrell W. Cox, whose cast of 12 was well on top of its game. The performances were cogent, believable and even stylish within the ultra-naturalism of the script and its minimal physical demands. The company features several young artists in their Chicago stage debuts and they blend perfectly with the veterans in the cast. Not to pick favorites, but Jack McCabe’s pederast coach chilled with his utter blandness, aided by Amy Speckien’s callow runaway girl, while explosive Joe Jahraus as the cuckolded husband and Katie Crawford as his dryly descriptive mate were very funny.”
Two for the Show—Theater Wit
Kerry Reid, Tribune—“Will Clinger and James Fitzgerald’s Two for the Show, now in a world premiere with Theater Wit under Jeremy Wechsler’s crafty direction, is a smart and goofy tribute/pastiche inspired by the Bing and Bob road movies. It’s an uncomplicated delight from start to finish, as affectionate in its jabs toward the source material as Dames At Sea is to Busby Berkeley extravaganzas. Clinger and Bret Tuomi star as Will Rice and Jimmy Shine, and the physical contrasts between the two are played for many cheap and satisfying laughs. Clinger, the former “Wild Chicago” host, has a manic demeanor and a physique just this side of consumptive, while Tuomi is portly, balding and choleric.”
Ryan Hubbard, Reader—“Will Clinger and Bret Tuomi exude the spirit of Hope and Crosby (but look more like Laurel and Hardy) in this Theater Wit musical, written by Clinger and James Fitzgerald… The cast brings lighthearted, tongue-in-cheek energy to each scene: the wisecracking is whip smart, the melodies have hooks, the lyrics are catchy, and the whole show moves at a ba-dum-bum pace. Director Jeremy Wechsler gets clever gags out of inaccurate spotlights and out-of-sync sound effects and destroys not only the fourth wall but the first: occasionally he uses the curtain at the rear of the stage as a front curtain for Rise and Shine’s shows within the show.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Director Jeremy Wechsler never allows the madcap mayhem to slip into chaos. Katrina Williams Brunner’s dances, Angela Webber Miller’s scenic design and an agile stage crew shepherded by Lara Maerz likewise keep the slapstick antics always in control. But the evening belongs to Clinger and Bret Tuomi as the mischievous Rice and Shine, along with Lindsey Pearlman as the luscious Louise and Kingsley Day as the tombstone-faced Piano Player. Together, they keep the wit and sparkle coming in such abundance that we hardly notice that two hours have gone by.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“Yes, Little Sally. Nothing can kill a show quicker than a bad title. Unless of course that title happens to be Urinetown.”—Misha Davenport in a feature on the upcoming production of Urinetown in the Sun-Times.