10-13-06
Marathon Succeeds Despite Plot
Michael Dailey and Kat McDonnell lead an ensemble cast in Marathon ’33.Could there be a more dangerous subject for dramatic exploration than an endless entertainment event? The possibilities for bad reviews are legion. And when Marathon ‘33, a play with music centered around a dance marathon, debuted in 1963, it ran for only 48 performances before collapsing under its undeveloped plot and schmaltzy dialogue.
In fact, such competitions were relatively common during the Depression. Many were crooked operations run by the mob and the competitors would actually dance for thousands of hours only breaking for 15 minutes or so each hour.
Playwright June Havoc was a child star on the vaudeville circuit (her sister came to be known as Gypsy Rose Lee), before becoming a professional marathoner and, later, a film star. Marathon ‘33 smacks of autobiography, with a convoluted plot, undeveloped subplots and meandering storytelling that speaks of someone more concerned with accuracy than entertainment. June (the central character) arrives at a dance hall to audition as break-time entertainment for a dance marathon, but is coerced to stay as a partner for star attraction Patsy (Michael Dailey in fine comic fettle). Together they compete in the marathon, dancing for over 3,000 hours trying to finish in the money. There’s lots of reference to the pitiless world that awaits them outside, where the Great Depression is taking its toll. Inside, the competition is as fierce as could be expected in such desperate times.
Dailey clearly has a great time and, as the author’s voice, Kat McDonnell grows into the role. Partly due to the script, June appears as something of a whiny twit throughout the first act, but McDonnell navigates it as well as can be expected and really blossoms later on. The ensemble evokes the exhaustion of the dancers almost painfully well. If only their material was better.
But amazingly, Shade Murray’s staging for Strawdog succeeds despite Havoc’s mediocre-at-best script. First of all, you have to marvel at the sheer number of people that fit on Strawdog’s stage – curtain call comes off like a clown car opened in the wings. Secondly, despite the lack of character development in the text, Murray’s ensemble does an astonishing job creating living, breathing people to walk Strawdog’s crowded boards. Finally, Murray creates an environment, so instead of watching a play, it feels rather like you are actually watching a dance marathon. The band keeps playing, the dancers keep dancing and there’s no predicting who might win. This may be the first time I found myself distracted from enjoying a show by the plot. As a story, Havoc’s writing leaves a lot to be desired. But as a theatre experience, Marathon ‘33 succeeds admirably.
Marathon ‘33 – Strawdog Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Strawdog Theatre Company’s season opener is the kind of show that makes one grateful for the robust non-Equity acting pool in Chicago. With a cast of nearly 40 and a seven-piece live band, Marathon ‘33 would be too expensive and too obscure for most regional theaters to tackle. But in the inventive hands of director Shade Murray, June Havoc’s semi-autobiographical account of the hellish world of Depression-era marathon dances comes to sizzling life.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “Though promoted as a musical – and featuring a little live band – the show is musically lackluster, with only a periodic playing of pop songs. In addition, because of a desire for authenticity over theatrical tricks, there are only a couple of truly thrilling dance numbers. A little more showy choreography might have made things pop. All that said, Marathon ‘33 has much to admire in its richly atmospheric production created with a small budget and huge ambition. The cast throws itself into the sweaty, exhausting, often brutal business of the marathon trot with admirable devotion. A host of other portrayals add to the tawdriness of the whole phenomenon. “
Justin Hayford, Reader – “Former vaudeville child star June Havoc penned this semiautobiographical drama about, yes, a former vaudeville child star eking out a living on the marathon dance circuit of the Great Depression. Havoc’s play died a quick death when it opened on Broadway in 1963. Director Shade Murray’s sprawling, noisy revival, which shoehorns 33 actors onto a tiny stage, makes it clear why. Though we spend two and a half hours watching the dancers sink into violence, backstabbing, and physical misery, no relationships emerge; mostly the play wallows in repetitive displays of the wretched exploitation the dancers suffered. Kat McDonnell’s blistering, superbly focused portrayal of June can’t save the evening, but she provides more indelible moments than most performers deliver in an entire season.”
Scotty Zacher, Gay Chicago – “Unfortunately, we learn very little about the other dancers, and this is the show’s main flaw. Without the context and background of the other dance contestants, there is no way to really have any empathy towards them as they are eliminated, either by severe exhaustion or medical emergencies. We simply don’t care. This can be mostly faulted by the play itself, but some of the failings can be placed on the director – these missing gaps could have been filled in a bit by ad-libs… This is a very daring and risky production. First of all, it is huge. With 40-plus performers Marathon ‘33 fills this small 72-seat theatre with ecstatic energy.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City – “Shade Murray’s direction cannot wholly focus our comprehension of the text’s meandering progress, given the obstructive sight-lines engendered by the physical proximity of 31 actors on a loft stage measuring no more than 30 by 20 feet, maximum. But so vivid are the individual personalities and so visceral the emotional conflict arising from the kaleidoscopic melee unfolding barely a footstep away from us, that never for an instant do we pause to speculate on the motives behind our own enjoyment of simulated excruciation as spectacle.”
Clay – About Face Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Make no mistake. [Matt] Sax, who graduated from Northwestern University about 30 seconds ago, is headed for a big career. He can do the hip-hop thing fused with the beat-poetry thing in the best tradition of the Chicago slam. That’s great – but so can a lot of other people. What makes Sax’s potential impact so exciting is his ability to theatricalize those free forms. With the help of director Eric Rosen, whose About Face Theatre co-produced, Sax has forged a complicated narrative structure for this one-man tale of a vulnerable young kid who finds cathartic self-expression in the hip-hop form.”
Brian Nemtusak, Reader – “Writer-performer Matt Sax shows off some killer skills in this one-man musical, about a suburban kid who escapes his dysfunctional family and embraces a life in performance poetry. His rhymes and swagger represent the polished ideal aspired to by legions of white-boy rappers, and he snaps in and out of rubber-faced, full-bodied impressions. All his hip-hop coming-of-age tale lacks is urban grit; in its place is an overheated oedipal scenario sprung from the sillier nightmares of Eugene O’Neill. It’s not a bad substitution, but the story gets bogged down in its details, and the ‘say what?’ payoff comes too late.”
Rick Reed, Windy City – “Knowing that I went into this show with such a mindset makes the end result all the more delightful because this is one brilliant piece of work by a hugely talented performer and artist. (Matt Sax is a very recent grad of Northwestern.) I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of the doe-eyed, rubber-faced, chameleonic Sax. If this opening salvo into the world of performing art is any indication, all of you should rush out right now and get your tickets to Clay so you can say you saw Sax in a 50-seat black box theater when he was just starting out. One day, your friends will be very impressed by your prescience, good taste and judgment.”
Hatfield & McCoy – House Theatre of Chicago
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Early on, Pfautsch and director Matthew Hawkins hit on the inspired idea of using shows-within-a-show. We see the Hatfields earnestly acting and singing out their desires – to one another. And we see the McCoys do the same – in a different style… Sadly, the show doesn’t sustain itself in the second act. The show seems to lose its dramatic impetus when Nate Allen’s ‘Devil Anse’ Hatfield decides to welcome young Rose Anna McCoy into his family. The conflict dissipates and only recovers at the clever finale. These problems are exasperated by the length of Act 2. No one expects ambitious new work to come out of the gate fully honed – but, at this point in its history, House must get out of the habit of presenting first drafts on opening night.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “With a smart, tragicomic book (that could use some trimming), and a slew of rousing, beautifully integrated songs, all the work of company member Shawn Pfautsch, plus superb musical direction by Kevin O’Donnell, unusually strong overall direction (and ingeniously brutal fight choreography) by Matthew Hawkins, and a cast of nearly two dozen actors who often double as first-rate instrumentalists – the show is by far the most mature and emotionally compelling work this company has produced in some time.”
Jack Helbig, Reader – “The famed fussin’ and feudin’ families inspired this new musical by Shawn Pfautsch and Kevin O’Donnell, presented by the House Theatre of Chicago. Though Pfautsch fiddles with the facts to make a better story, its bare bones are true: a McCoy girl and Hatfield boy fall in love, adding fuel to the fire of a long, bloody battle between the clans. Some writers would have given the well-known story a light treatment, but Pfautsch and O’Donnell use it as a jumping-off point for a full-fledged Shakespearean tragedy and a nuanced portrait of Appalachians that would have made James Agee proud.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press – “Embellished by Kevin O’Donnell’s decisive musical direction, the House’s focus is on the domestic tragedy between the blood gangs, erupting in the 1882 slaughter of one Hatfield and three young McCoys and culminating in a worse slaughter and arson in 1888… Vendettas are intrinsically theatrical: The House clan succeed well in exactly depicting the era’s melodramatic excesses both in life and art. The song contest between the foes, adjudicated by the audience, is as charming as the violence is inevitable. It’s sad and true to watch as, over and over, these two-dozen dedicated haters reinvent both Shakespeare and the Bible – and learn nothing from either source.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City – “All this notwithstanding, the opening-night show was still at the unready: plot complications are introduced, only to be abandoned. The final confrontation(s) between the intransigent patriarchs continue far longer than necessary. And director Matthew Hawkins’ vigorous choreography requires further cleaning. But following on the heels of last season’s The Kentucky Cycle, The House Theatre of Chicago presents a sweeping and astonishingly compassionate pageant of the dark chapter in our nation’s chronicles, engendering stereotypes of trigger-happy hill folk to this day.”
Editor’s Note: The Kentucky Cycle was done last season by Infamous Commonwealth Theatre.
Raisin – Court Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “In Newell’s typically minimalist version – which continues the Court tradition of chamber versions of big musicals using reduced casts and orchestras – the Youngers remain inside their tiny apartment, where they sing of dreams deferred and needing room to grow. A small group of ensemble members sits at the rear of the stage, providing backup vocals, occasional minor characters and commentary on the interior action. This strikes me as a weird choice – musicals badly need to roam. And to confine the action back in the living room begs the question of why Court is not just doing the play.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “What is the ideal way to approach a classic? As Court Theatre’s artistic director Charles Newell has demonstrated so often in recent years one good way is to strip it bare and expose its bones and sinews… Newell has applied this technique once again with his revival of Raisin, the rarely produced 1973 musical version of Lorraine Hansberry’s Chicago-bred classic, A Raisin in the Sun, a play that first took Broadway by storm in 1959 and was both of its time and decades ahead of it… Newell’s production, which opened Saturday, gets off to a slow start. But take heed: It eventually delivers a knockout punch that sends you reeling.”
Kerry Reid, Reader – “This affecting and lovely musical version of A Raisin in the Sun has rarely been revived since its 1973 debut. Charles Newell’s intimate staging, which stars the luminous Ernestine Jackson as the matriarch, restores the piece to its roots in Chicago’s south side, and Hansberry’s portrait of resilience in the face of racial oppression remains powerful. Slow to start, the musical – created by Hansberry’s ex-husband, Robert Nemiroff, with Charlotte Zaltzberg, Judd Woldin, and Robert Brittan – quietly draws us in with a series of ballads and a couple of rousing gospel numbers.”
John Beer, New City – “Raisin retains the sharp, at times almost overwhelming, kick of its inspiration. Above all, a blistering, authoritative performance by Ernestine Jackson as Lena, the family’s matriarch, gives the production a profound and compelling center. While none of the supporting cast quite rise to the level of her musical and dramatic sensitivity, David St. Louis’s growling, frenzied Walter and Malkia Stampley’s earnestly seeking Beneatha vividly realize the frustration and love that roils this South Side family. Executed with passion and deep intelligence, this Raisin offers a fresh, if occasionally awkward, look at an enduring classic of our theater.”
Jeff Rossen, Gay Chicago – ”[F]or some unexplainable reason, the work is rarely performed. Court Theatre corrects that oversight to open its 52nd season in a style that has become the theatre’s trademark when it comes to musicals: A stripped-down, chamber musical format…And Court and director Charles Newell have another winner here with a production that is so intimate that it’s sometimes almost painfully raw and relies on the potency of the material and its performers instead of the grand trappings of standard musical theatre.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“Theater needs writers who challenge, unsettle and intrigue. And it needs provoking, artfully constructed, brutally funny plays that are difficult to watch and impossible to forget.” – Barbara Vitello reviewing Steppenwolf’s production of The Pillowman in the Daily Herald.