Arguably, a playwright should have two goals. First, to tell a good, entertaining story. Second, to shed light on some aspect of humanity. By these standards, playwright Andrew Bovell, whose play Speaking in Tongues is now receiving its Midwest premiere at the hands of Famous Door, has not done so well.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Bovell’s script lies in its structure. We spend the first act witnessing two couples that have paired up in unlikely affairs. In the second act, stories from the first come to life as the actors embody and expand on those passing references. Then they shift into another story stemming from a chance bit of dialogue. It’s an incestuous little world of connections that Bovell creates, and it’s best appreciated as a sort of jazz riff. These stories mostly depict failed or failing relationships. The initial two couples are on the ropes, leading to their attempted flings. Another have not seen each other for years—since she blew off their wedding, in fact. Another confronts the change time has wrought on their feelings just before and after an apparent murder.

Famous Door’s quad of actors—Frank Nall, Kirsten Sahs, Larry Neumann, Jr. and Elaine Rivkin—do solid scenework, although one must blame them or director Calvin MacLean their failure to find either humor or love in any of the scenes. Only Frank Nall seems out-of-place as the overly well-spoken cop and blue-collar neighbor. MacLean manages some really nice pictures on John C. Stark’s simple set, but the scene changes, managed only by the four actors, drag on interminably.

Like most productions, though, this one lives and dies on the strength of its script. While it has its strengths, Speaking in Tongues never manages to say enough that’s interesting or illuminating to merit its presence.

Speaking in Tongues—Famous Door

Chris Jones, Tribune—“Andrew Bovell’s play Speaking in Tongues, a self-consciously stylish, complex and portentous work replete with a good strong dose of adultery, lies and murder, does not stray from this model. When the playwright is not demonstrating his mastery of self-reflexive dramatic structure, he’s delivering a veritable orgy of pathetic gropings, cynically self-serving confessions, hapless attempts at inter-marital communication and monologues of booze-soaked misery. In his Famous Door production, director Calvin MacLean makes an earnest attempt to leaven all the depressing plot twists with some cool jazz, a few images of hip urban buildings and the slick theatrical styling of a sultry whodunit, but the text works against him. The show isn’t so much sexy and seductive as terminally sour.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“There is a certain amount of puppet-like manipulation in the intermingling of all these fraught, alienated lives. And the strings of Bovell’s tightly woven plot (with four actors playing nine characters) can seem overly stretched and visible. Yet there also is a deep and passionate wail and ominous warning detectable in these scenarios…Calvin MacLean, that first-rate director who always makes a play better than it appears at first glance, has cast four excellent actors. And each has discovered the very heated pulse of their characters. In addition, John C. Stark’s set design is exceptionally effective.”

Tony Adler, Reader—“The overall message has to do with the paradox of the lonely crowd: the ways in which city life simultaneously enforces intense solitude and extreme interdependence. But Bovell delivers the message so baldly—yet pretentiously—that the interconnectedness of his characters comes across as a set of arty contrivances. Rather than accept his grim comment on modern life, we find ourselves playing Count the Coincidences…Bovell’s failure is especially unfortunate because this production is so very good. I loved John C. Stark’s sleek, witty set, featuring glass cases in which artifacts from the play are exhibited as if for sale. The quartet of actors under Calvin MacLean’s direction is endearing in its anomic awkwardness. Even given the script’s weaknesses, it would not be a waste of time to see this show.”

Nina Metz, New City—“Directed by Calvin MacLean, the Famous Door production has a spare elegance to it, particularly the first half, so fuzzy and ambiguous in its depiction of two couples grappling with infidelity and marital ennui. The missing therapist plotline doesn’t unfold until the second act, and here the play loses some of its sensual bleariness, morphing into a tidy little game of Six Degrees of Separation. But like the film, it is just interesting enough to hook you.”

Crowns—Goodman Theatre

Michael Phillips, Tribune—“(Writer/Director Regina) Taylor works the crowd pretty hard showbiz-wise, and the results have an engineered quality. The prodigiously talented seven-person ensemble, backed by ace percussion man David Pleasant and keyboard player e’Marcus Harper, make so much of every anecdote and ring shout, you may find yourself responding more to the performance wiles than to the stories the performers relay.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“With characters blown up into what too often approaches the grotesque, and with voices amplified to ear-splitting levels in a work that cries out for acoustic sound, the overall effect of the show is to suggest that its writer-director didn’t quite trust the lovely material that inspired it. This is a work that misguidedly prefers to assault you with its 'hattitude’ rather than letting the charm and life experience of the wearers seduce you.”

Rebecca L. Ford, Reader—“But it’s the music that’s the play’s transcendent achievement. The gospel-driven score resounds with one hip-swaying, hand-clapping, number after another. Musicians e’Marcus Harper and David Pleasant, performing onstage near the wings, deserve crowns themselves.”

Nina Metz, New City—“In terms of lump-in-your-throat emotion—full-on euphoria mixed with the uncontrollable urge to bawl your eyes out—gospel music is the best bang for your buck. You’re either dead or deaf if you can’t respond to the knockout vibrancy of the cast singing their hearts out in Crowns, the gospel-infused play now at the Goodman.”

Web Behrens, Free Press—“(T)he show's a joy. The full-voiced cast is uniformly high-caliber, the songs are infectious, the hats by Emilio Sosa a feast for the eyes. Riccardo Hernandez's very spare set—really just a pair of the world's largest hat racks—works with Scott Zielinski's lighting in creating striking shadow play during some energetic dancing.”

Mary Shen Barnidge, WINDY CITY—“The seven-member ensemble featuring Desiré Dubose, Gail Grate, Tina Fabrique, Karan Kendrick, Barbara D. Mills and Bernardine Mitchell, with Chicago’s own John Steven Crowley as an assortment of bewildered males, generate jubilation intense enough to make the sun shine at night, assisted by stageside musicians e’Marcus Harper on piano and David Pleasant on Everything Else. And if you don’t find yourself caught up in the spirit, by the 30-minute mark, you might just as well hang up your hat for good.”

The Man Who Had All the Luck—Raven Theatre

Chris Jones, Tribune—“Other moments splutter in an honest but uneven production from director Michael Menendian that's laudably well-paced but lacking sufficient strength and subtlety in the difficult minor roles. Nonetheless, the family members at the core of the work—(Jeremy) Glickstein, (Greg) Caldwell, Eva Wilhelm as Hester Beeves—are all well played. The self-effacing Glickstein, though, needs to take more charge of the play and he needs help in that from his director.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Though clunky, repetitive and ham-fisted at times—and sometimes even laughable in its melodramatic turns—the work is unquestionably intriguing for the way it reveals how Miller's obsessions and preoccupations have stayed with him for well over half a century. And to his credit, director Michael Menendian (who last season did such a superb job with Odets' Golden Boy) never tries to pretty up the mess; he just asks his cast of 11 actors to be true to the script, for better or for worse.”

Jack Helbig, READER—“Arthur Miller's first professionally produced play opened in 1944 when he was only 29 years old; it closed two days later, after receiving indifferent to blistering reviews. Watching Michael Menendian's lean, elegant production, it's hard to understand why so few critics recognized the potential in the playwright's cliche-free dialogue and fully realized characters.”

Emily Lee, Gay Chicago—“Director Michael Menendian must shoulder some blame for both the stumbling appeal of the show and its ineptitude. He has amassed a very solid non-Equity cast, but the first half of the show moves too slowly and lacks the simple discoveries of a fable necessary to hook us into the surprising dramatic turn of events in act two.”

Sin—Bailiwick Repertory

Chris Jones, Tribune—“Most people—especially parents—who see this Sin will leave the theatre simmering with anger at Law, his so-called 'delegates’ and the chummy structures of the Catholic Church. But if Sin is to have a future life as a major theatrical work…Murphy will need to alleviate some of the sense that the play keeps piling on long after it has demonstrated Law's culpability. That sense comes in part from the structure of the work. Since Law here is almost always answering hostile questions, he's perpetually on the defensive and given little opportunity to tell his own story.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Throughout it all, actor James Sherman captures Law with a hugely impressive sureness, solidity and intelligence. The little signs of smugness, the acerbic laughter, the general unflappability, the self-righteousness, the lack of insight and the stunning lack of remorse or compassion, except for "his own kind," ring utterly true. Sherman gives us a man who, in the final analysis, seems wholly lacking in spirituality—which, of course, is a pretty damning thing given his position as a "blessed guardian." Law was, it seems, the consummate careerist, little else, and Sherman captures this fact with great subtlety.”

Justin Hayford, Reader—“Director David Zak has done this important play admirable service in a straightforward staging that allows the script to take precedence. The actors put a premium on textual clarity for the most part avoiding emotional display (except for the final ten minutes, when the characters’ hysterics destroy the credibility of an otherwise meticulously constructed stage world).”

Nina Metz, New City—“The play is somewhat unevenly paced and works best when director David Zak keeps things as understated as possible—the actual words here, spoken by the victims, the lawyers for both sides and Law himself, are potent enough without any added embellishment. With uniformly capable performances from the entire cast, the show really belongs to Jim Sherman with his booming basso profundo, who portrays Law as a gruffly conflicted, religious equivalent of a disgraced CEO who is evasive even when forced to own up to his repeated moral failings.”

Web Behrens, Free Press—“Important theatre isn’t necessarily stunning. Zak deserves plenty of credit for helping playwright Michael Murphy develop the show. But it’s still sometimes challenging to watch, not just because of the subject matter but on a dramatic level. Murphy extracted most of his dialogue from actual deposition transcripts and the play never leaves the courtroom setting. Thus, at times it lacks the punch and the looser structure of a Judgment at Nuremburg.”

Rick Reed, WINDY CITY—“James Sherman portrays Law in all of his shades of gray and admirably creates a sympathetic rendering of a man who could easily be played as a monster…Zak directs a mostly deft ensemble (especially Sherman and Naomi Landman in a variety of portrayals, all pitch perfect) and handles the proceedings with a minimum of histrionics (the climactic second act speech by a suitably outraged attorney could be toned down a notch, despite its justification).”

Critic’s Quote:

“May the Muses bless Boxer Rebellion, a troupe that consistently chooses difficult works and lays itself on the line. The Vortex is a not-entirely-successful curiosity, but it’s an interesting curiosity. I’ll take interesting over safe and dull every time.”—Jonathan Abarbanel reviewing Boxer Rebellion’s production of The Vortex in WINDY CITY.