Lifeline’s long history of literary adaptation boasts more than its share of successes, but not every great book corresponds to a great stage experience, no matter its initial appeal. A Long Way from Chicago by Richard Peck must have seemed to have good theatrical potential—there’s a strong narrative voice; an identifiable locale; interesting, character driven action—but in the end its problems outweigh its successes.

Joey and Mary Alice Dowdel live in Chicago, but each summer they’re packed off to their Grandma Dowdel’s home in rural Illinois. James E. Grote’s adaptation includes five summers beginning in 1929, each with its own plotline and each demonstrating the slightly immoral resourcefulness of Grandma. She subverts the law to feed some drifters, she tricks a local kid into revealing his sabotage and blackmails the local bank owner into giving a friend her house back after foreclosing.

Unfortunately, each summer doesn’t really build on the previous one, so the show lacks any kind of arc. It is, instead, reduced to a series of amusing, but independent, anecdotes. As a result, things don’t truly hang together, offering some enjoyable moments, but not a truly satisfying evening. Joey’s final monologue describing a train ride through his Grandma’s home town, many years later, on his way with his regiment to take part in World War II, has the strongest impact in this time of war, drawing tears from the audience.

Director Shole Milos’ production assays each summer’s story competently, if with little inspiration. The cast handles their various characters well, particularly Nick DuFloth in the widest variety of roles. A Long Way From Chicago may just be one workshop short of ready for full production, or it may be that Peck’s novel just doesn’t fulfill its stage promise. In any case, Lifeline’s efforts may be enjoyable, but aren’t must-see material this time around.

A Long Way From Chicago—Lifeline Theatre

Chris Jones, Tribune—“With its lovable band of rural eccentrics, Peck’s book makes for a quirkily entertaining little show, albeit one that’s a good notch below Lifeline’s very best work in terms of theatrical invention and staging sophistication. But then that’s a high bar. The production is aimed at a family crowd—and folks looking to introduce kids from, say, 8 to 13 to the notion that the world does not end at I-294 will find this makes for a warm and funny collective experience.”

Jennifer Vanasco, Free Press—“James E. Grote’s adaptation of Richard Peck’s young adult novel, directed by Shole Milos, elegantly evokes rural Illinois early in the last century without dipping too heavily into the saccharine sweetness of nostalgia… This is a play for families. That doesn’t happen much in the theatre—usually plays are for adults or for young children and their suffering parents. But A Long Way From Chicago, if not revelatory, is fun and mysterious and entertaining.”

Jeff Rossen, Gay Chicago—“Sounding like it’s playing on an old Victrola, a recording of ‘When You’re Smiling’ sets the tone immediately for director Shole Milos’ wonderfully entertaining and warmhearted staging of James E. Grote’s very funny and deeply touching adaptation of James Peck’s homespun novel. Like Joey and Alice, we’re not sure what we’ll encounter when we enter Grandma Dowdel’s rural world, but what greets us all is a place of intriguing wonder and mischievous guile. And our guide is a cross between Annie Oakley and Granny Clampett. Melinda Moonahan’s headstrong Grandma is a grand performance of pure honesty, the completely believable realism that Moonahan conveys striking a fascinating contrast to the unbelievable pranks and deceits the old woman concocts.”

The Garden of Delights—Trap Door Productions

Michael Phillips, Tribune—“[Director Beata] Pilch’s Trap Door production is interested in the pain, but not the mask. Without sufficient rhythmic variation, the more impressive aspects of the show get smothered. Virginia Worley works hard and sometimes arrestingly as Lais. There’s a stark, blood-red tableau after a wolf slaughters all the actress’ sheep. Only death brings quietude in this universe. Elsewhere, Pilch acts (in the role of Miharca) the same way she directs: By screaming everything. This isn’t The Theatre of Panic, it’s the Theatre of Enough, Already.”

Kerry Reid, Reader—“[T]here’s one overwhelming good reason to make the trek to Trap Door: Virginia Worley. Worley plays Lais Arrabal’s Norma Desmond-like star, ensconced in her home with a small herd of sheep, a lustful monkey, and her tormented memories of convent school and her conflicted love for a classmate and a mysterious older man, Teloc… But even Worley’s incredible talent and stamina can’t keep the show from running out of steam before the end. Arrabel is a clever chronicler of nihilism, but downbeat isn’t always deep.”

Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago—“There are so many beautiful moments and so many moments of frantic pandemonium. It moves like a high-speed train that crisscrosses time and reality. If nothing else, it is an ambitious and grueling challenge for the extremely talented cast. Its tackling of this complex, intricately ridiculous, sometimes beautiful and physically exhausting script is remarkable to behold. There is nothing random about the skill behind all of the chaos. This is a high-velocity freak show complete with a masturbatory monkey man and six very sexy sheep women who tempt and tease in their own little musical chamber of naughtiness, linens and pillows.”

Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—“Perhaps one problem is Pilch’s double duty as director and acting the roles of Miharca and the oppressive nun. It feels like an outside observer would have had a clearer eye with such alienating material. Pilch lets some scenes speed by when they could use more dramatic introspection (like when Lais’ believes she is dying from a sinful transgression when it’s actually her first menstruation) while others drag on without rhyme or reason—what exactly is happening when the sheep lose their wigs whilst being reanimated?”

1984—Lookingglass Theatre

Michael Phillips, Tribune—“Adapter/director White has whittled the material down to a fairly absorbing 100 minutes. Yet the scenes often lack real urgency and compression. You never feel the colossal risk Winston and Julia are taking. Part of this relates to the acting. The eight-person ensemble draws real strength from its best portrayal, that of Anthony Fleming III as O’Brien. It’s a lovely example of how to play a man who holds every card and every ounce of power. The pearly voiced Fleming gets angry exactly once, and he makes it stick. More often, and just as effectively, the actor works with a low burner.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“There is intelligence and feeling in this production—most particularly in the chilling performance by the near-skeletal Thomas J. Cox as Winston, the man who rebels and endures terrible punishment for it. There also are deceptively soothing performances by Anthony Fleming III as O’Brien, a mastermind of the terror, and by Garry Wingert as a cuddly antiquarian whose lures include a snow globe and beautifully bound diary. On video there is Mike Nussbaum as Goldstein, the Jewish theorist whose book is considered heretical. It’s all very artful, but in the final analysis it is perhaps not quite as frightening as our own world.”

Albert Williams, Reader—“The play doesn’t capture the book’s grit or its suspense. There’s no urgency in the relationship between Winston and Julia—their lovemaking looks more like a modern-dance routine than a subversive act. And the interaction between Thomas J. Cox as Winston and Anthony Fleming III as O’Brien lacks the eerie psycho-sexual dynamic of dominance and submission conveyed by Orwell’s book and by the harrowing John Hurt-Richard Burton film. But to his credit, adapter-director White coherently conveys the essence of Orwell’s philosophical arguments, thanks in no small part to the authoritative onscreen presence of Mike Nussbaum as Goldstein. This 1984 is a disquieting cautionary exercise in paranoia.”

Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Given the ferocious sound design by Joshua Horvath and Andrew Pluess, film sequences by John Musial and video and live feed design by HMS Media, Lookingglass makes it more than menacing. This world is drained of color but crazy with noise. The too-brief, retrospectively quiet moments seem stolen from a better time. As the hapless lovers, Thomas J. Cox and Jenn Sava Ryan discover new depths of doom. The rest of the cast commit to conformity and regulation with a vengeance (even for actors). Overall 1984 is both enriched and depleted by its source. This is an invigoratingly austere look at a fear-ravaged England but it’s also 100 minutes of very dark energy.”

Puntila and His Man Matti—Strawdog Theatre Company

Chris Jones, Tribune—“Why turn to the stolid Eric Bentley when you can have the author of Cooking With Elvis? Because Hall’s quirky, clever, colloquial, uber-contemporary whimsy can get in the way of the comprehensibility of the darn play, that’s why. Unless the director is very careful. Unfortunately, Nathan Allen, the main creative force behind the House Theatre of Chicago, is a young director endowed with more talent than caution. And there’s enough invention—and also enough over-the-top nonsense—in his undisciplined Strawdog Theatre production of Hall’s translation of Puntila and His Man Matti to suggest that Hall and Allen are a double act inclined to squelch Brecht past the point of useful recognition. Not that this Puntila is without its yuks and eye candy.”

Misha Davenport, Sun-Times—“Director Nathan Allen, known for fast-moving physical theatre at his own company, the House, presents a surprisingly lethargic production here. Some dexterous movement comes in the second-to-last scene, when Puntila and Matti transform Tom Burch’s patchwork of skeletal frames into a jungle gym from which they climb and hang, but it’s a little too late. Costume designer Aly Greaves presents a colorful palette that breathes life into the proceedings, but I couldn’t help thinking that her costumes would be put to better use in a production of Guys and Dolls. Critics have called previous productions of this show ‘Karl Marx meets the Marx Brothers.’ There’s too much Marxism and not enough Groucho, Chico, Zeppo and Harpo here.”

Tony Adler, Reader—“Strawdog has borrowed House Theatre’s Nathan Allen to direct, with happy results. He brings huge dollops of the increasingly famous House energy and smarts to this show: this is echt Brecht, with none of the deadly earnestness that kills even the singing in so many productions. Kevin O’Donnell’s music and Tommy Rapley’s choreography well up from the core of the action rather than putting the brakes on it. Yet Brecht’s consciousness-raising distance is preserved, and by the simplest of strategies: Strawdog simply tells the story to us, the audience, with full-out commitment, a ruthless sense of humor and even something like wonder now and then. Engaged alienation, as it were.”

Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Rambunctiously directed by Nathan Allen, Strawdog’s frenzied, neo-vaudevillian, interactive take on this play sometimes loses the polemical satire in the 90-minute slapstick. A very loud but crowd-pleasing Carmine Grisolia plays the bi-polar capitalist like a cross between a splenetic Jackie Gleason and the glad-handing, selfish and infantile Mr. Toad of Toad Hall. Peppy, tongue-in-cheek songs alternate with hit-and-run sketches depicting the insidious ways that money perverts human nature and undermines relations.”

Quote of the Fortnight:

“This group is funnier than anything at Second City, more genuinely creative than anything at Lookingglass, and does more good than all the other non-profit theatres in town put together.”—Christopher Piatt reviewing Barrel of Monkey’s production of That’s Weird, Grandma in the Reader.