9-26-08
Graney's Threepenny One Brecht Would Like
You always know what to expect from a Sean Graney directed show. For the past decade and change he—and by extension the company he founded, The Hypocrites—have brought big visual ideas to classic texts. Graney’s work, at its most successful, pulls the play to a level that matches his conceptual approach. If his ideas work against the text, well those productions crash and burn a little bit. But Graney tends to be very smart about the plays he attacks—choosing those that support his unique approach.
That’s part of what makes The Threepenny Opera such an odd entry into The Hypocrites’ history. In many ways, this is the most conventional approach I’ve seen. Others who’ve seen this production won’t agree, but I would argue that this is just the sort of take on his play that Bertolt Brecht would have favored. Much as he did with 4.48 Psychosis, Graney pulls out the idea of a conventional stage, adding two large platforms that about half the audience sits at as though they were big kidney-shaped tables. The rest of the audience sits against two walls. In the center is the piano and the action ranges over almost the entire Steppenwolf Garage.
This means the audience, particularly those sitting in the center, are constantly searching for the actors and the location of the next scene. Much of the performance happens with full lights up, making it difficult to pick out the characters from the crowd. Graney has room to make strong moves across the space, and his actors can leap atop the platforms. All in all, the massive amount of space means the show must be a cardio-vascular workout for the cast, who are constantly running around and leaping up and down, while singing mind you! It’s a veritable explosion of energy.
Graney also has clearly encouraged his actors to interact freely with the audience. There’s an element of improvisation—an occasional “Brecht couldn’t have written that, could he?” that happens, even in the fully voiced lines. It brings this text, treated perhaps too reverently by academics, fully up to the present.
Graney’s approach also provides some challenges that his production doesn’t always overcome successfully. Most of his cast are clearly actors first and singers second. Music director Kevin O’Donnell has adapted nicely to this, encouraging an aggressive approach to the singing that, even when the performers range off-pitch (and they often do) feels appropriate and authentic. Of course the level of physical exertion being expended can’t make finding pitch easy, and when things are calmer, the voices settle down as well. But these aren’t actors trying to pretend they’re great singers. They’re characters singing the best they can. And if things are a little off, well that’s ok.
It’s unfortunate, though, that Greg Hardigan, in the lead role of Macheath, doesn’t have a stronger voice. Another side effect of the huge space is that it’s almost impossible for one actor to dominate it. And Macheath needs to dominate affairs. One way to do that is through song, but Hardigan’s not up to that challenge, so while he looks the role and is clearly giving his all, he sometimes seems swallowed up by the space.
Graney’s staging also veers between strong moments and awkward crosses. With audience everywhere, natural staging patterns are hard to come by. Some of the best moments come when a portion of the stage is finally delineated, as during the third act jail scenes. With a point of reference for the action, the staging acquires a specificity that is sometimes lacking elsewhere. It doesn’t hurt that Lise “Kat” Evans, in the two-song role of Lucy Brown (Macheath’s other wife) knocks her scene and song out of the park.
While the production may be a bit of a mixed bag, it has some very nice moments (including a great use of cell phones to achieve the emotional distance Brecht sought). If you’ve never quite gotten what Brecht was going for in your college theatre classes, this might be your best chance to see it on its feet.
The Threepenny Opera, The Hypocrites
Chris Jones, Tribune—“This mostly young Chicago cast does not demonstrate the vocal chops to do full justice to Kurt Weill’s famous score. But they never betray a note of insecurity or falsity. Sean Graney’s production has guts, soul and an honorable point of view…The strengths of Graney’s production include its huge visual canvas, provocative style and a gut-busting intensity that raises the stakes enough to sustain the length. All of his insights into the text are inventive and many are quite profound.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Working in the vast open space of the Steppenwolf Garage, director Sean Graney and his troupe, the Hypocrites, have devised a tremendously bold, musically lush, physically ferocious revival of Threepenny. The three-hour show doesn’t fully coalesce. Its storyline sometimes gets muddied amid all the high theatricality, and bravura individual scenes tend to outweigh the whole. But there are so many ideas at work here, and such bottomless raw energy and youthful passion driving it all, that it never gets boring.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“The Hypocrites provocative production—with its contemporary references and its audience asides—illustrates nicely Brecht’s concept of epic theater appealing to intellect rather than emotion, the kind of theater that shakes up an audience, that forces them to shake off complacency and confront real-world issues and not simply immerse themselves in an illusion. If only it sang just a little sweeter.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Graney adds a touch of 21st-century star worship by emphasizing the weird idolatry directed at Macheath—on the familiar principle, apparently, that any outrage can be forgiven if it makes you rich and famous. Robert McLean’s Tiger Brown, in particular, takes the fawning to hilarious, homoerotic extremes. The production also updates Brecht’s consciously artificial theatrical style in sharp ways…. But the space can also work against the production, its concrete floor swallowing most of what’s said or sung when the actors are at a distance from wherever you happen to be sitting.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“Despite the production’s blasé point of view, though, the bigger problem is one of elemental acoustics. The ambition here is as large as the entire Steppenwolf Garage, which is excitingly stripped bare and exposed in a warehouselike nakedness. Unfortunately, the voices aren’t as outsize as the staging (which lacks Graney’s usual scalpellike precision), and the faulty mikes are less than helpful. Though there are bawdy, full-throated exceptions—in particular, blustery autocrat Ehrmann as corrupted strongman Peachum and vicious comic dumpling Sevigny as his wife—much of Weill’s discordant dirge-score can’t be heard.”
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago—“There are many intriguing components to the production, but the sheer chaos of it, coupled with an unsuccessful attempt to creatively utilize the cavernous Steppenwolf Garage, creates a detached and anarchic exercise within the framework of this socialist critique of the capitalist world, set to music. The large and open space is approached as a huge canvas but instead of a cohesive portrait it resembles someone taking the script, music, and physical production, cramming them into a shotgun shell and blasting the canvas with a splatter of concept and conviction.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“The Hypocrites give Threepenny a bold and highly visual physical production…Graney and choreographers Tommy Rapley (dance) and Matt Hawkins (fight) keep the troupe in almost constant motion, sometimes running in a pack…No question, it’s a visual wow. But scale and acoustics also create problems. Graney makes physical demands of his players that a veteran musical theater director would avoid and Actors Equity probably would forbid… It’s engaging nonetheless, although Graney, too, hasn’t decided where to place emphasis beyond the clear political message.”
Dashiell Hamlet, City Lit Theatre Company
Nina Metz, Tribune—“Detective novelist Dashiell Hammett knew a thing or two about grizzled style, and the basic gestalt of his Sam Spade books is the guiding aesthetic of the play. But somehow, it all feels very average in this production. City Lit is working with its typically small budget, and the little things like obviously pinned cuffs on a costume give the show a less-than-polished look. The actors here deserve better, though many in the cast push too hard and end up as caricatures. That, and our local anti-smoking ordinances do the show no favors—what is noir without its burning cigarettes?”
Dr. Egg and the Man With No Ear, Redmoon
Chris Jones, Tribune—“[Director Jessica] Wilson’s visual storytelling is exceptionally strong and disciplined and this show has more polish than anything I’ve seen at Redmoon in years…It’s very sophisticated fare. And if you’re interested in computer animation, this is a play not to miss. For me, though, it all ends a bit too abruptly. A tad too much indebted to pastiche, Dr Egg tends to lay out issues rather than getting into what can or should be done about them, which leaves you hanging on your way out of the theater and wishing there’d been a second act. But then, such a wish is also quite a rare and pleasurable thing.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“An Australian-bred production—based on an original story by Catherine Fargher and ingeniously directed by Jessica Wilson, who has remounted her work here—Dr. Egg comes with quite a bit of back story, all of it related by a snakelike Narrator. The show’s live action and its many forms of theatrical wizardry are nicely meshed, with Jonathon Oxlade’s artful design, Jamie Clennett’s lovely animation and Graeme Davis’ delicately jointed puppets particularly appealing. But this is definitely not kids’ stuff.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“With the exception of John Horan’s somber lighting and Lara Golan’s appropriately unsettling music, Redmoon’s production is a remount of a show Australian director Jessica Wilson premiered in Sidney last year. Artfully integrating her pitch-perfect ensemble with Jamie Clennett’s ingenious animation and Graeme Davis’ puppet doppelgangers, Wilson’s staging is nothing less than inspired. Like many Redmoon offerings, Dr. Egg flirts with the macabre. Yet the brief but satisfying show keeps its chills in check, the better to get its point across.”
William Scott, New City—“This fantastical moral exploration of new developments in biotechnology and genetics is sweetened, but made no less potent, with beautifully sparse animation, precisely exaggerated gesture, and delicate puppetry that is hilarious and heartbreaking. This production will enthrall both children and adults. In fact, one of the best parts of my experience was seeing the way a 4-year-old boy took it in, and then observing the 60-year-old woman right beside him. Both were riveted. With spectacle, craftsmanship, and heart, Redmoon Theater makes it hard to blink.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“If you’ve never encountered science fiction before, you’re welcome to see it as groundbreaking social commentary. But the wonderfully amoral narrative is still less impressive than the fact that every single design stroke—Graeme Davis’s colorful, Henson-looking puppets; John Horan’s deft lighting; and, best of all, Jamie Clennett’s projected black-and-white animation, which blends seamlessly with the live action—is inspired directly by the material. Creatively, it’s a treat. Visually, it’s a new standard.”
Catey Sullivan, Windy City—“Graeme Davis’ extraordinary puppets depict the tragic mutations that result from Dr. Egg’s genetic tinkering as grotesque, sad-eyed creatures floating in jars that serve as monstrous wombs. Davis’ work is equally memorable in a dream sequence when the father is pursued by hundreds of disembodied ears flittering about like mutant butterflies. Lara Golan’s original music provides an ethereal, moody backdrop as it dips and diving between light-hearted and foreboding. Factor in performers Rebecca Mauldin as the devoted daughter, Brandon Boler as her brooding, single-eared father, Dominic Green as a hissing snake of a narrator and Adam Shalzi as the wild-eyed Dr. Egg, The Man With No Ear stands as one of Redmoon’s finest efforts.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“We don’t need a presidential election to spark a cultural war. All it takes is a fun little musical based on ABBA songs. Pick your side: If you adore the stage show or the movie version, you might as well cancel your subscription to The New York Review of Books—before they cancel it for you. If you avoided or hated Mamma, you’re safe. You don’t even have to brandish your Whole Foods shopping bag for us to get the idea: You’re sophisticated.”—Julia Keller in a preview piece on Mamma Mia in the Tribune.