One of the great challenges facing live theatre lies in differentiation. What does the stage offer that film and television don’t? Or are we doomed to go the route of opera—perceived as increasingly irrelevant to modern audiences?

Theatre’s future lies in its differences, which makes productions like Our Lady of 121st Street so frustrating. Set in present-day New York, Our Lady is set around the attempted wake of Sister Rose, a dead, alcoholic nun, whose body is inexplicably missing. Trapped in limbo, waiting for the wake, the characters argue, fight, and periodically go out for drinks. In the end…well, nothing much happens.

In fact Our Lady is remarkable for its astounding lack of story. None of the characters have anything to do with Sister Rose’s missing body. In fact, the question of whether they might isn’t really ever broached. Instead, the missing body acts as a device to keep everyone in the old neighborhood so they can…well, not do much.

Only slightly less remarkable is Our Lady’s lack of character development. Only one character, Rooftop (played with high energy, but few levels by E. Milton Wheeler), undergoes a significant journey, but the bulk of it happens offstage. Instead the audience watches characters who might change, who approach changing, who consider changing, but then don’t.

Structurally, the first act mainly resembles sketch comedy. There’s a man with no pants talking to a stranger in the waiting room of the funeral home. There’s the drug using, cheating, lying, radio personality going to his first confession in 30 years. There’s the gay couple, one closeted and returning to his old neighborhood, one all swish and incapable of acting straight. Short scene follows short scene, with long hydraulic-powered shifts between.

The second act more closely resembles a movie, with longer, more dramatic conversations. In fact, it would probably work better as a movie, allowing more subtle work than can be accommodated by Steppenwolf’s large stage. Unfortunately, there’s nothing in the script that recommends Our Lady as a piece of theatre.

On the plus side, Stephen Adly Guirgis can certainly write a punch line, and the first act particularly has some very funny moments. The cast acts the heck out of what they have, and can’t really be blamed for the play’s overall lack of journey. Director Will Frears keeps the pace up and finds the funny, but doesn’t really take advantage of Steppenwolf’s large stage. Most of the scenes take place in a very flat playing area without much of interest in terms of stage pictures.

In the end, Our Lady of 121st Street would probably work better in a smaller space or on the screen. Steppenwolf gives a solid effort, but they haven’t made a very interesting choice in material.

Our Lady of 121st Street—Steppenwolf Theatre Company

Chris Jones, Tribune—“The set-up here is that the nun’s body has been stolen. But in the end, that teasing plot goes nowhere interesting. You can see that as insufficient attention or resistance to necessary structure, or view it as a triumph of character-based drama, and a metaphor for the alienation or culpability of those left behind. Either way, Our Lady of 121st Street gets you mightily fired up. It’s a very exciting and provocative show, ably done, and never dull for a second. It’s well worth seeing, unless you require clear thematic declaration or explicit narrative resolution. Guirgis will get there in the future, but he doesn’t here. Maybe he doesn’t need to. You could argue that all he needs for fame and fortune is his voice.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Our Lady, directed with a sharp, often shrill, but perhaps properly non-realistic intensity by Will Frears, is less a play than a collection of thinly interrelated scenes. To be sure, Guirgis can generate a fierce manic energy in his dialogue; this was evident in his far better earlier work, Jesus Hopped the 'A’ Train, presented at Steppenwolf a couple of years ago. But while some of the scenes in Our Lady bristle and sparkle with a kind of heightened, jewel-encrusted language of the streets that feels like graffiti transformed into poetry, many others are utterly mundane. And these weaker scenes leave you with the feeling that Guirgis, a 39-year-old writer and actor based in New York, simply watches too much television. As for the play’s 12 actors, they tend to give as good (or as bad) as they get from the writer.”

Tony Adler, Reader—“A little surprisingly, Will Frears’s direction emphasizes the sense that each interaction is a set piece. There are no concessions to naturalism: deeply personal arguments and flesh-rending admissions are never toned down in acknowledgement of public surroundings. The combatants just stand there and go at it, full out. Tom Lynch’s set is possessed of the same spirit; featuring a chapel floating in a cityscape, it’s a formidable, fanciful thing. And so is the show, once you get over the expectations of coherence.”

Nina Metz, New City—“The series of vignettes that form this uneasy reunion are not so much plot-driven as character-driven, and for the most part that’s okay—who needs plot when you have characters like Rooftop (loose-limbed E. Milton Wheeler in a standout performance), a fast-talking DJ living large in L.A., and Father Lux (Robert Breuler), a cantankerous priest with only a tenuous connection to his faith? Their scenes in the confessional—jokey but substantial—are really the heart of this play with a riveting quality that is otherwise lacking. But there’s something about the way Guirgis writes dialogue—so profane and poetically offhanded—that sustains your interest even when the individual storylines do not.”

Paragon Springs—TimeLine Theatre Company

Michael Phillips, Tribune—“While director (William) Brown flatters the piece with a purposeful staging, aided by Sidney Bembridge’s aqua-blue spalike set dominated by parched, lifeless trees, things may begin to bug you halfway through. For example, treating the emancipated schoolteacher (Whitney Sneed) not simply as a proto-feminist, but an uber-proto-mega-feminist, doesn’t amplify any of the arguments…So the question for TimeLine shifts to aesthetics. Can this respected troupe secure the future it deserves by doing good productions of historical doggerel like The Lion in Winter, or workmanlike adaptations like Paragon Springs? No. It cannot. Not long ago, TimeLine mounted a revival of Awake and Sing! good enough to wow anybody, anywhere. It won’t be easy. But it’s time to get back to, or near, that level of achievement.”

Kerry Reid, Reader—“Ibsen did it well enough the first time that Dr. Stockman’s larger points—most famously his 'the majority is always wrong’ speech—still resonate. But one wonders why Dietz didn’t go all the way and set the play in contemporary America, where the mass media echo chamber is now as pernicious as the bacteria in the town’s springs. Dietz does attempt to explore the rise of radio in manipulating public opinion. But his fledgling radio station acts only as a framing device and as an excuse to rattle off factoids like Babe Ruth’s batting average. William Brown’s direction is solid but not terribly inspired, and his blocking is handicapped by a distracting array of dead trees in Brian Sidney Bembridge’s otherwise cleanly designed set.”

Nina Metz, New City—“Though the themes may feel timely, this uneven production, directed by William Brown, comes off as deliberately didactic and strident. Brown, so good with subtlety, doesn’t achieve many gray areas here, and much of that is due to the play itself. Dietz (whose very funny riff on Reagan-era politics, Halcyon Days, was also staged by Brown for TimeLine two years ago) lays out all the ethical dilemmas foursquare, but there’s a righteous tone to his script that drowns out the murkier questions within.”

Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“William Brown’s clear and present staging drives home that immediacy with a slew of potent TimeLine performances. Paul Noble plays Stockman with invincible but never showy integrity, while Thomas Edson McElroy oozes unctuousness as his slippery politician brother. Jason Vizza and Steve Haggard incarnate American moral relativism as the easily manipulated local media. P.J. Powers seems to have lifted his fence-straddling businessman straight out of Sinclair Lewis’ small-town hucksters. Most moving is Millicent Hurley-Spencer as Peter’s anguished wife, a woman who because she refuses to embrace her husband’s martyrdom ends up as isolated as he is.”

Some Americans Abroad—Remy Bumppo Theatre Company

Chris Jones, Tribune—“(Playwright Richard) Nelson has that academic paradox down cold—and Some Americans looks at its effects on the human psyche of its stakeholders and victims. It gets a very savvy, sharp and snappy revival by Remy Bumppo Theatre Co. Production values at this company are developing very nicely under its shrewd and highly experienced artistic director, James Bohnen.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Whether splitting the bill at a fancy restaurant, reading poetry in a downpour at Westminster Bridge or chatting about the food at the National Theatre buffet, the play has an almost tape-recorder-like veracity. And director James Bohnen—backed by Tim Morrison’s clever Union Jack and postcard-festooned set and Judith Lundberg’s character-revealing costumes, clearly knows the territory, too.”

Lawrence Bommer, Reader—“James Bohnen’s perfectly orchestrated staging expertly twists Nelson’s many knives. Mark Richard as the department head oozes opportunism while Mark Montgomery is passionate as the colleague who actually dares to like what he sees. The play’s women are basically peacemakers and so are less subject to Nelson’s volleys; Erin Neal is particularly touching as a student wise to her elders’ eccentricities.”

Jennifer Vanasco, Free Press—“Some Americans Abroad supposedly pokes fun at two targets: academics nested in academic circles and Americans who romanticize Europe. But Remy Bumppo’s production of Richard Nelson’s play isn’t scathing or scorching—it isn’t even that funny. Instead it’s a mean-spirited play about mean-spirited people who quibble over every glass of wine on the restaurant check…Under James Bohnen’s direction, almost all the characters are morally bankrupt, out to get whatever they can for themselves. But the pointed humor in Nelson’s script is bleached out by lackluster pacing and a sense, in the production I saw, that the actors were stumbling a bit over their lines.”

Rick Reed, Windy City—“Likewise, there’s no denying that Remy Bumppo is the kind of theatre group who can take material like this and run with it. Yet, I couldn’t help wanting more by the end of Some Americans Abroad. As it stands, it’s a great portrait, but portraits alone do not make a great play. What a horrible bunch of people, indeed. But then…so what?”

Critic’s Quote:

“What I detested most about Eve Ensler’s highly successful show The Vagina Monologues was the way in which it paired the narcissistic complaints of over privileged middle-class white women who seemed to have missed the feminist movement with the plight of women caught up in the horrors of the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.”—Hedy Weiss reviewing Apple Tree Theatre’s production of Necessary Targets in the Sun-Times.