3-30-07
Golden Child Intriguing, But Slow
Alfred H. Wilson as the title character in Black Caesar at Pegasus.Silk Road has grown by leaps and bounds, seizing on a largely unoccupied niche in Chicago’s crowded theatrical landscape. Showing an impressive awareness of the organizational necessities of running a small theatre company, executive director Malik Gillani and artistic director Jamil Khoury have, in a few short years, gained a theatrical home and, in addition to landing the Midwest premiere of David Henry Hwang’s Golden Child, have signed their first Equity contract.
All that being said (and that’s an impressive set of accomplishments for any small arts organization), the artistic side of Silk Road’s operations doesn’t seem to have quite caught up with the organizational. Not that Golden Child should be viewed as a failure by any means. It’s a workmanlike production of a very good script. But Silk Road has accomplished so much in such a short time, I expected something more than workmanlike.
Full disclosure: I arrived late for Golden Child, and so missed the framing device that contextualizes this historical drama. Andrew (Vic Chao) anxiously awaits the arrival of his first child, concerned about the sort of father he might be. The ghost, or memory, of his grandmother appears and tells him of her father, Eng Tieng-Bin (also played by Chao), a wealthy landlord in early 20th century China who sought to change tradition and overcome the infighting of his three wives.
Hwang’s script has a contemporary feel despite the historic setting. The sort of witty exchange you might expect from an Oscar Wilde play is bandied about, much of it originating with Siu-Yong, the first wife (a delightfully arch Cheryl Hamada). And modern becomes the key to advancement for the three wives, as each tries to cope with Eng Tieng-Bin’s new ideas. This tension – old vs. new – plays out in interesting and gratifyingly subtle twists in the ongoing plot.
Golden Child has two basic weaknesses. First of all, director Stuart Carden, while deserving full credit for gathering a generally strong cast, allows the pace to plod a bit. Scene changes take a touch longer than seems necessary; actor exchanges don’t always clip along like they could. This gives the whole evening a deliberate feel that is appropriate for portions of the play but takes away from the emotionally cathartic ending. Secondly, in the central roles, Chao has a wonderful presence, but lacks the emotional availability to really make Eng Tieng-Bin’s hopes for a new China (driven as they are by love for one of his wives) and then despair when those hopes fail, really resonate.
It seems safe to assume that Silk Road’s artistic vision will catch up with its organizational acumen in the not-too-distant future. But that balance has not been struck in this production, leading to an evening of theatre that’s engaging, but in the end, less than fully satisfying.
Golden Child, Silk Road Theatre Project
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Silk Road’s hard-working director, Stuart Carden, just doesn’t have the experienced horses (or a big enough racetrack) to fully get where this play needs to go. But – with the help of the playwright, who attended some rehearsals – he finds some force and faith in the journey. And although the actors in this sometimes halting production struggle with Hwang’s difficult style – a mix of tempestuous family drama and sardonic jabs at the cliches of the East – this show still represents Silk Road’s best work to date. For the most part, you’re drawn into the story.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald – “The show looks great thanks to Carol J. Blanchard’s sumptuous costumes and Lee Keenan’s set dominated by three bedchambers and illuminated paper lanterns. The play has a few weak spots: it mines no new ground, its first act drags in spots and its two-dimensional characters exist as types. However, SRTP’s production under director Stuart Carden, contains some wonderful moments: the deliciously caustic domestic intrigue as the three wives vie for their husband’s favor; the tense lead-in to the radical unbinding of Ahn’s feet chillingly realized with a blaze of light accompanied by a piercing scream; and Tien’s agony as he wrenches his family into the 20th century.”
Albert Williams, Reader – “David Henry Hwang, who also wrote the 1988 Broadway hit M. Butterfly, penned this smart, funny, touching play, set in 1918 China. When a polygamous Chinese merchant converts to Christianity, his decision dramatically reshapes the lives of his family. The adventurous little Silk Road Theatre Project gives the 1998 play its Midwest premiere, creating a crackling drama that melds cultural commentary with urgent, often witty storytelling.”
Another Day in the Empire, Black Sheep Prods
Jenn Goddu, Reader – “A despairing realtor falls apart at a suburban open house in Steve Spencer’s hilarious dark comedy. But Jack, whose wife has left him, isn’t alone in his angry unhappiness, which makes it easier to laugh at Spencer’s acerbic commentary on globalism, commercialism, and the American Dream. Even small gestures speak volumes in Vance Smith’s attentive staging for Black Sheep Productions and Reverie Theatre.”
Kris Vire, Time Out – “Spencer’s riffs on suburban homogenization and corporate chains are well played if not terribly fresh; it’s to his benefit that Smith has pulled together a top-notch cast for Black Sheep’s inaugural production. In the hands of pros like prototypical sad sack Sean Sinitski, throwaways like, “My wife is the reason babies cry” transmute into gold. The whole shebang rests on the shoulders of Kevin Stark, whose Jack barely leaves the stage. It’s a virtuoso performance, though Stark can’t plug the script’s one gaping hole. Jack raises all the right questions, but he doesn’t get any answers – Spencer admits there may be none.”
The Girl in the Iron Mask, Babes With Blades
Mary Houlihan, Sun-Times – “Throughout the play, [playwright R.L.] Nesvet hammers home her agenda that the female of the species in this kingdom is much smarter than the male. Despite moments of preachiness, The Girl in the Iron Mask offers excellent storytelling that’s made even stronger by the absence of a pat happy ending. The firecracker all-female cast is guided by Kevin Heckman’s taut direction. Each actor obviously loves this unique take on a classic, and that love shows in their performances.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald – “Empowering and ambitious as it is, this show disappoints. The fault lies mainly with the script adapted by R. L. Nesvet. Nesvet clearly did her homework, but The Girl in the Iron Mask would have been better served had she incorporated her research – which translates as unnecessarily detailed exposition – into program notes instead of the script. The first play produced as part of BWB’s new play development program, it needs work.”
Laura Molzahn, Reader – “Nesvet’s drama provides plenty of opportunities for swordplay, which the performers seize with zest and skill. But the weak script includes characters with no real function (the historical Duchess of Montpensier, a fictional Afro-Caribbean escaped slave), and it ends abruptly and enigmatically. Under the circumstances, Dawn ‘Sam’ Alden gives a surprisingly moving performance as Artemis, the fencing nun, and Alison Dornheggen as Louis/Louise lightens the melodrama a bit in the Sun King’s buffoonish early scenes.”
Tim Lowery, Time Out – “But Girl has problems, simply put, because it’s disengaging. With certain inflections, Nesvet’s script can be interpreted as jokey by the actors, which is usually the case. Playing both of the twins separated at birth, Alison Dornheggen at one point bobs on a bed awaiting a visit from a crush; she might as well have raised her eyebrows twice to the audience and winked. Oh-golly moments like these make the final tragedy dull and long-winded. We’re looking forward to what this unique company takes a stab at next, but it’ll have to be more meaty than this.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City – “The gender dynamics of the time and misogyny of French royal succession are rightly taken to task in Nesvet’s ‘what-if’ scenario. Nesvet’s dreamed-up secret societies of strong fighting women out to change the status quo are also fun, if very hard to swallow. What hampers The Girl in the Iron Mask is Nesvet and director Kevin Heckman’s inability to make plotting points clear or characters easily distinguishable. There is also little consistency in the tone, which runs the gamut from heart-wrenching drama to eye-winking camp.”
Thom Pain (based on nothing), Theater Wit
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Well, let’s stipulate first that Thom Pain is a thoroughly fresh and arresting piece of writing. It won’t change your life or make your year, but it is a very clever retooling of existential angst for the post-modern, cable-friendly era… I’m not sure [Lance] Baker (an actor I’ve long admired) and his director, Jeremy Wechsler, have entirely nailed the style here. What the piece needs is fulsome contrast – sincerity morphing into cynicism; victim into aggressor; jokester into tragedian. That kind of thing. Baker tends to play the whole thing in laconic, deadpan style. It’s funny and not without smarts or satirical bite, but it tends to flatten out the show.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “A cradle-to-grave saga of lost innocence, psychic scarring, passionate love gone amok and hope-turned-to-despair, it even indulges in a shaggy dog cliche (and the dog is paired with a small boy in pajamas). But [playwright Will] Eno is far too smart and self-aware to go down such a road in any pedestrian way. Instead, he gives a feverish brilliance to the ordinary. Baker, an actor with precise musical timing and dry delivery that can grow shockingly sensual, is an ideal choice of interpreter. Handsome in an F. Scott Fitzgerald sort of way, he finesses the work’s many levels of extreme difficulty. The more he performs it, the more intriguing it is bound to get.”
Brian Nemtusak, Reader – “Will Eno’s Pulitzer-nominated play is being billed as a send-up of one-man shows, but that only begins to describe it. Premiering in Chicago after successful runs in Edinburgh and New York, this stream-of-consciousness monologue makes a floppy felt hat of the confessional form, beating the material into numerous conventional shapes, from expressionist fable to romantic elegy to rickety, denial-choked consideration of the whole communicative undertaking. Lance Stuart Baker is a no-duh call for the role of Thom in this Theater Wit production.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “What makes Will Eno’s monologue on the alienated modern man so resonant is that Lance Baker doesn’t play him as such. Both Baker and director Wechsler resist the temptation to treat Thom Pain’s ‘based on nothing’ as a disaffected manner covering empty matter – which would be the temptation with this Beckettian one-man show, an Off Broadway hit in 2005. Telling a sad boy’s sad story and his own sad love affair, Baker’s alienated self isn’t an empty self but one reeling against such emptiness; Baker reels captivatingly.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City – “Lance Stuart Baker is a superb comic actor with a deep dark streak. [He has a] completely naturalistic and self-deprecating manner, as he leaps from point to point and always circles back… Indeed, when Baker invites audience involvement, we aren’t sure what would happen if we really responded. Thom is in control, but possibly just for the moment. Director Jeremy Wechsler clearly is a man Baker has been wise to trust in developing the relaxed tension of his performance.”
Quote of the Fortnight
“There are – when you have the guts to think about it – very few plays about overweight people.” – Chris Jones reviewing Profiles’ production of Fat Pig in the Tribune.