11-24-06
This Fleece Offers Lots of Shine,
Little Substance
Zimmerman’s Argonautika is appealing, but loses direction.Mary Zimmerman may be Chicago’s best known director these days, and she falls clearly into the auteur category. In her work the clear theatrical impulse comes from the director rather than the writer, which is probably why most of her recent work has been directing her own adaptations.
Disclaimer: I have never seen one of Zimmerman’s stagings before Argonautika. It may be that one more familiar with her work could talk about her distinctive style and, indeed, I have heard others make the complaint that all her work tends to fall into the same patterns and choices.
That may be true, but if so, it’s probably because those patterns and choices work.
In Argonautika, Zimmerman sets out to re-tell the story of Jason and the Argonauts, an ambitious undertaking. And things begin well, as we clearly see the genesis of the quest in the jealousy of a vengeful king and the selection of the heroes that made up the crew of the Argos. Lookingglass’ signature circus skills come in particularly useful as the Argos casts off in the face of wind, wave and wrathful gods.
Indeed, all goes well for about two-thirds of the first act, as the Argonauts face challenge after challenge on their way to the kingdom of Colchis and the Golden Fleece. It’s at about the hour mark that the visual artistry on stage begins to be overtaken by the feeling that we’ve all been sitting a little bit too long and Jason’s challenges are all starting to look a little too much alike.
The second act then feels like a race to the end, as though Zimmerman the writer realized she had squandered too much time on set-up and didn’t have enough time to wrap things up. Medea makes her fateful appearance and Jason escapes with her and a big piece of fabric meant to be the Golden Fleece. And then the play kind of…stops. Does Jason confront the king who sent him off to die? Does he find out his parents are dead? We know he marries some other princess, spurning Medea, but it’s not clear why. And Zimmerman’s final point – that big quests rarely achieve the true ends the hero intends – just falls flat.
There’s still a lot here to like, and audience members will enjoy the visual spectacle, even if they’re not completely clear on the story in the end. Zimmerman the author fails Zimmerman the director, with insufficiently developed characters, some overly cutesy dialogue and, in the end, failing to offer up a script as compelling as the theatrical vision.
Argonautika – Lookingglass Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Zimmerman and her close associates at the Lookingglass Theatre Company should take a leaf from The Pirate Queen and think of this debut production – which surely will be a huge hit at the Lookingglass box-office – as a kind of out-of-town tryout. The piece could use more musical strength, and it goes temporarily off the rails in the second act, when the nautical quest for the fleece dissipates, the outer narrative loses its tension and centrality… All of that can easily be fixed. Even now, the show recovers well before the end… And the first act already is a sizzling theatrical adventure, full of mythical flourish and dramatic excitement, but also replete with Zimmerman’s ability to take one step back from the fanciful story and ponder its deeper truths.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “The show is classic Zimmerman – a seamless meeting of actors, designers and episodic text. It also feels like the crowning installment in a long series of her works – Arabian Nights, Metamorphoses, The Trojan Women – that have arrived onstage in the wake of the first Gulf War, the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the current war in Iraq – that either inadvertently or directly speak to those events in a metaphoric way. (And metaphor is always her preferred approach. As the goddess Athena scolds in this production: ‘Don’t be so literal. You miss a lot.’)”
Albert Williams, Reader – “Melding cool whimsy with somber compassion, this adaptation of ancient epic poems includes many dark details omitted in storybook and film versions of the tale. Using a streamlined set, evocative lighting, and simple but expressive puppets to augment the performances of the 14 actor-athletes, the show celebrates the sheer pleasure of theatrical make-believe. But Argonautika also captures the story’s somber subtext, in which Jason’s quest symbolizes the drive to explore the world within as well as around us.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press – “Lightning has struck again with Argonautika, her latest Lookingglass Theatre Company triumph. In 150 minutes Zimmerman, famed for The Arabian Nights and Metamorphoses, employs ingenious props and the daunting athleticism of a 14-member cast to transform a legend about heroes embarking on Greece’s first great voyage into a lesson on glory’s transience and fame’s bitter fruit. We’re moved from Colchis to Iraq quicker than we can resist.”
Boy Gets Girl – Eclipse Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Michelle Courvais, the terrific actress playing the lead in Eclipse Theatre’s production of Boy Gets Girl, makes for a classic Rebecca Gilman heroine. In other words, she reads as smart, droll, urbane and very vulnerable. And Courvais’ top-tier performance is reason enough to see Steve Scott’s pretty decent Eclipse Theatre Company revival of the drama known in certain circles as ‘the stalker play.’”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “While there is much to admire here – and the play benefits from the more intimate space in which it is being staged – both the inherent strengths and weaknesses of this work are on display. Most of the first act is a knockout as it captures, in perfect shorthand, the initial dates between a successful, thirtysomething New York magazine writer, Theresa Bedell (Michelle Courvais is especially good at suggesting her character’s self-doubt), and Tony (Scott Stangland, ideal in a role in which the first impression is all), a bright but not literary Midwesterner who cannot accept ‘no’ for an answer… But late in the first act there is a shift from behavioral study to quasi-thriller, and the literalness of it all, right down to a second act chase, doesn’t quite work.”
Kerry Reid, Reader – “Rebecca Gilman’s 2000 drama, about a female reporter stalked by a blind date, is in some ways a smarter, more insightful version of the woman-in-peril movies clogging the Lifetime channel. What comes through clearly in Eclipse Theatre Company’s production is the conflict between cultural assumptions about romance and how they play out in real life; Boy Gets Girl exhibits a welcome messiness and uncertainty, especially about human motivation. Director Steve Scott and an outstanding cast give emotional complexity to the script’s acidic observational humor and pervasive sense of menace.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “Half the time, however, Gilman treats her characters as just the opposite, as theory-tools maneuvered to make (granted, cogent) points about gender relations. Mercer observes that Theresa’s stalker acts just as Hollywood teaches men to act: Boy chases girl, boy gets girl. Such mouthpiece speeches lend Boy Gets Girl an educational-film tone. But the other half of the time, Gilman writes with from-the-gut honesty. And what ultimately renders Theresa less theory, more reality is the flesh-and-blood performance of Courvais, completely credible as the driven, in-command magazine writer whose world turns topsy-turvy.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City – “Though it’s thoroughly entertaining, Boy Gets Girl does feel contrived at times with its issue-oriented focus. It’s too convenient a coincidence that Theresa is assigned to interview aging sexist filmmaker Les Kennkat, known for exploitation flicks of busty women, while she’s facing down a stalker. Theresa’s co-workers, Howard and Mercer, also throw common sense out the window when they start collecting personal items from her trashed apartment. (You want to scream out, ‘You’re getting your fingerprints all over the crime scene!’) But aside from these lapses, Boy Gets Girl remains a smart exploration on this uncomfortable subject of obsessive stalkers.”
Drag – The Neo-Futurists
Nina Metz, Tribune – “At first glance, the material seems well-suited for the meta-theatrics regularly employed by this experimental Chicago troupe. Drag, more than anything, is about performance, and a show like this has the potential to illuminate the illusion… Whatever ideas they jotted down on note cards have yet to be executed fully in any meaningful way… So what are the many different kinds of drag artists exploring and/or exploiting? Surprisingly, Drag (co-directed by Evans and Sharon Greene) seems to lack the intellectual curiosity to find out – or at the very least to toss around a few maybes.”
Laura Molzahn, Reader – “Two ‘straight-ish’ male cross-dressers, one confirmed drag queen, one drag king, and a gorgeous male-to-female transsexual take center stage in this collaborative study of gender image and identity. This wildly uneven 90-minute collaborative show, conceived by Dean Evans and codirected by Evans and Sharon Greene, can be amusing and moving, but much of it feels unfocused and undigested, a suite of unfinished stabs at therapy and incomplete intellectual analyses.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press – “Depending on your charity level, you could call Drag a generous collage or sloppy stuff. It’s questionable whether Gabrielle Schaffer’s affecting tale about being shunned by her father after she underwent a sex change is relevant to drag, a binary art that, however outrageous, depends on the ability to switch back. The actors’ conversations about accepting each other’s sexuality, then disguising it in drag, go on so long they lose any power to illuminate. It might have been wiser for Dean Evans, whose interest in drag is obvious from his seriousness on stage, to share more stories about the gay subversion he brings to the art.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City – “So many charged feelings of fun and defiance are mixed into the act and art of drag, making it an ideal subject for the Neo-Futurists to explore theatrically. Too bad that the Neo-Futurists’ expansively titled Drag turns out to be such a glib and scattershot show… The one exception to Drag’s shallowness is Schaffer’s delivery of grounded and touching monologues as a transsexual… More of Schaffer’s openness and honesty from the other performers would have made Drag so much more meaningful and enlightening. As it’s made up now, Drag only flirts with its topic instead of embodying all its exuberant and anarchic qualities.”
Side by Side by Sondheim – Theo Ubique Theatre Company
Tony Adler, Reader – “Given songwriter Stephen Sondheim’s ability to voice the subtle self-reflexiveness of the 20th-century urban sophisticate, it’s easy to see his musicals as pure art and forget their playful, pastiche-y showmanship. This revue of material from Anyone Can Whistle, Company, Follies, Gypsy, and other Sondheim shows supplies an entertaining reminder. The Theo Ubique Theatre Company’s production, directed by Fred Anzevino, goes in heavily for old-fashioned, hand-shimmying, boa-whipping ingratiation.”
Dennis Polkow, New City – “Sondheim fans have always valued witty words over mediocre music, and there are plenty of both in this remarkably entertaining showcase in which five spirited performers, an offstage narrator and singing pianist perform these songs as if their lives depend on it. The cast captures the ‘devil may care’ sophisticated subtlety and cutting-edge irony of even the most familiar Sondheim numbers and the punchy counterpoint of the ensemble numbers – no small feat. For those who savor Sondheim, this revue is the best area production since Ravinia’s Sondheim at 75 series. For those seeking to understand what all of the fuss is about, this is the perfect primer.”
Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago – “Director Fred Anzevino has assembled an inviting and unbeatable ensemble delivering every number from the humorous to the sublime with an alluring appeal. He’s donned them in black tuxedos and gowns for a formally intimate and personal staging at the No Exit Cafe. They know how to sell their material to an audience invested in every minute with each having the opportunity to shine in the spotlight as a soloist, in pairs or trios, or as the whole group.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City – “Theo Ubique is also blessed with a uniformly capable cast unafraid to put its own stamp on the more threadbare selections. Jeremy Trager’s rendition of the aforementioned ‘Losing My Mind,’ for example, replaces the hankie-wringing torchiness with Pagliacci-level resentment. The diminutive Dana Tretta belts forth the vitriolic ‘Could I Leave You’ with never a hint of shrillness. Danielle Brothers’ delivery of ‘Send In The Clowns’ crescendos with seamless subtlety to finish in full-out passion. And Elizabeth Lesinski dons LED pasties for the playful ‘You Gotta Have A Gimmick,’ only to be upstaged by Eric Lindahl’s cross-gender turn as the sassy Louise.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“I suspect if the show could find some truth, the score would sound a lot better than now is the case.” – Chris Jones reviewing The Pirate Queen in the Tribune.