Walter Thon and Rob Belushi in Serendipitiy’s girl 20

In girl 20 by Ellen Fairey, Serendipity Theatre Company has a script that embodies this last tendency. Blackouts punctuate its choppy structure and realism, for the most part, rules the day. Director Matthew Miller, in addition to some legitimate theatre credits, serves as a casting director for a local agency, and one of its cast members is actually the son of Jim Belushi.

Still, much of this works as theatre. Two students, an undergraduate film major and a graduate psychology student, share a small, run-down viewing room where the graduate student, Sam (Walter Thon) is observing therapy sessions through a one-way mirror. Film student Marty (Rob Belushi) is there to help with the equipment, which basically gives him a cushy way to pick up a couple of credits without doing much work. One of the students in therapy is Jade (Rachel Sondag) with whom Sam becomes progressively obsessed.

The Hitchcock influence is readily apparent, but Fairey also has a nice ear for dialogue. In Sam and Marty she has a classic personality pairing: the always hung over, sloppy ladies man undergrad and the wound-so-tight-it-hurts, goal oriented grad student. It’s like the Odd Couple under pressure. And Belushi and Thon occupy their parts well. Thon appears to be trying harder, but his breakdowns, as they come, really resonate, while Belushi has the friendly, slacker energy down perfectly, as well as the timing to get the most out of the play’s humor. Sondag also does well with what she’s got, although her character, while the focus, remains mostly an enigma.

While the performances really stand out, the production has its problems. Sam Porretta’s box-within-the-theatre set obscures most of the upstage area for audience members on the sides and, unfortunately, Miller has exacerbated that problem by staging much of the action in the up left and up right corners. The ending’s somewhat obligatory fight occurs in slow-motion and still looks awkward, getting titters from the audience the night I attended. And, speaking of the ending, it’s vintage “Twilight Zone,” playing, a little too neatly, with the audience’s perception of the play’s reality.

Still, Ellen Fairey tries some interesting twists, writing-wise. Dialogue gets mirrored in a way that, I suspect, is intended to foreshadow the ending, although it doesn’t quite come off. And keeping two characters under mutually exerted pressure for a full hour-plus definitely requires a certain amount of skill. I suspect her next play will be better than this one and she’ll be worth watching down the road.

In the meantime, girl 20 offers strong performances and a storyline that’s compelling almost all the way through. Add to that a promising playwright and it’s a worthwhile way to spend an evening.

girl 20—Serendipity Theatre Company

Chris Jones, Tribune—“The play has one whopping strength—it dangles viewers on a knife-edge, unsure of whether they’re watching a conventional sexual-exploitational thriller or some kind of surprise, feminist counterattack. That’s the main source of its tension. And thanks to a smart, carefully honed and visually sophisticated piece of direction from Matthew Miller for the Serendipity Theatre Company, this thing sure keeps you on the edge of your seat for 90 minutes.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Though very much rooted in the decidedly Darwinian world of contemporary American college life, Ellen Fairey’s new play girl, 20 also pays homage to that 1954 film classic by Alfred Hitchcock, Rear Window. Her 90-minute drama is not nearly as tense, convincing or tightly wound as the Hitchcock movie. (What could be?) But it has a definite creepiness factor, with the elements of voyeurism, paranoia and a fear of sexual impotence all at play. Think of it as a kind of precocious student variation on a favorite cinematic model, and its mix of the real and the imagined, the true and the manipulated, works some effective mind games.”

Zac Thompson, Reader—“[F]irst-time playwright Ellen Fairey focuses instead on the two young men who (improbably) observe the therapy sessions through a two-way mirror—one of them a psychology grad student, the other a film student running the AV equipment. Though both fall in love with the girl, Fairey’s two-way mirror is less a tool of voyeurism than a symbol of her characters’ inability to connect. Serendipity Theatre Company’s faintly desolate production—dimly lit and performed with an air of quiet desperation—suits the piece perfectly.”

Jenn Q. Goddu, Free Press—“Marty and Sam are diametric opposites and it is interesting to observe them interacting in the confined space of Sam Porretta’s set. There are laugh-out-loud funny lines in their odd-couple clash of personalities, but there remains something real and captivating about the way in which each man taps into a different part of himself as the two begin to open up to one another…

Fairey can be credited with creative plot twists but fleshing out Jade’s character further would make this promising piece even more successful.”

Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“It’s possible I missed some important exposition, for director Matthew Miller consistently has actors Walter Thon and Rachel Sondag portray intimacy by speaking so softly they cannot be heard in the fifth row of a 75-seat theater. Too-soft-to-hear is not the same as either intimate or intense. The quiet technique also loses several potential laughs with which Fairey wisely leavens the script. Only Rob Belushi as Marty is audible all the time, and not because he’s shouting. Son of Jim Belushi, he’s sharpening his acting chops as just another young Off-Loop actor, and more power to him. He brings boyish, raffish charm and a shot of energy to girl, 20.”

The Coast of Chicago—Walkabout Theater Company

Chris Jones, Tribune—“One’s impression of this final result will likely hinge on expectations. If you’re expecting a short, simple, Chicago-style, affectionate rendition of the gritty work of a favorite literary son, it will likely appeal. If you’re expecting a major Mag Mile theatrical event with top-tier acting and direction—and theatrical emotion expressed in full-throated gasp—this piece will seem only partway there. And these are downtown prices.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“What a lovely, haunting surprise. The Coast of Chicago—Laura Eason’s winningly woven stage adaptation of several short stories by the widely honored Chicago-bred writer Stuart Dybek—turns out to be a poetic, emotionally vivid, beautifully acted ’portrait of the artist as a young man.’ And the production, expertly directed by Gary Zabinski, puts Chicago on the map in much the same way that, a century ago, James Joyce’s stories on the same subject breathed life into a Dublin boyhood.”

Jack Helbig, Daily Herald—“Lookingglass ensemble member Laura Eason adapted for the stage three of Dybek’s stories, and I am thrilled to report that Eason’s translation to the stage is brilliant. Her work has lost none of the moody, moving melody of Dybek’s prose. In fact, certain scenes, such as the sad, brief tale of a beautiful Latina woman who falls to her death, is all the more haunting acted out. The image of a red scarf drifting down from the rafters (representing the falling woman) will stay with me forever.”

Kerry Reid, Reader—“Stuart Dybek’s wistful, poignant stories of life in mid-20th-century Pilsen locate the miraculous in the everyday and the mysterious in the mundane. Laura Eason’s adaptation captures that tone with quiet assurance… The script contains a smidgen more narration than is necessary, but the dozen actors and director Gary Zabinski have a firm grasp of Dybek’s world in both its profane and profound aspects. Overall this 90-minute piece triumphs as both a travelogue through a now vanished world and a valentine to what’s left of the city’s ethnic working classes.”

Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Though perhaps too short for the wonders the book offers, Gary Zabinski’s staging casts some deep and long spells. It’s interesting that this rich reflection of the real Chicago is equally available to the tourists on Michigan Avenue as well as the natives of Pilsen. Everyone in between should see it too.”

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“This Walkabout-Lookingglass collaboration is PRECISELY the kind of theatre that should have gone into the Water Tower Works’ space from the day its doors opened. Adapted by Lookingglass company member Laura Eason to a trim 80 minutes, Stuart Dybek’s stories of growing up in Chicago’s Pilsen district is a look at the ethnic influences contributing to our city’s cultural heritage—presented not as historical pageant, but a personal memoir resonating among citizens the world over struggling to make a home in a new land.”

The House of Blue Leaves—Shattered Globe Theatre

Chris Jones, Tribune—“[T]here’s no question that this is a very decent Blue Leaves, anchored by [Doug] McDade in what’s surely the performance of his career. All at once, he’s weird, understated, empathetic and compelling. And he’s thoroughly truthful. You can’t say that about everyone in the show, but [director Ann] Filmer nonetheless holds her very impressive production on the right side of credibility, deftly directing gobs of farcical action involving nuns on the top of furniture and maintaining the necessary tension between pain and amusement.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Though I’ve seen this play many times, I never quite understood what all the fuss was about, even if its setting could hardly have been closer to my childhood home and history. But director Ann Filmer’s blistering production—cast to perfection, and bruising in its roller-coaster ride from the comically manic to the sadistically pitch black—is revelatory. And the play’s themes, whether the obsession with celebrity culture or the terrorist impulse, seem chillingly timely.”

Lawrence Bommer, Reader—“John Guare’s thinking farce, set on the eve of the pope’s 1965 visit to New York, concerns a thwarted songwriter, his good-hearted but crackbrained wife, and his celebrity-crazed good-time girlfriend. The trick is to make the play both achingly funny and painfully real—as Guare says, equally Strindberg and Feydeau. This Shattered Globe Theatre production succeeds, hilariously. Director Ann Filmer’s five-star revival erupts in a kind of comic fever; the consummate cast never drops the energy or condescends to the neurotically needy characters.”

Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“[I]t’s a compliment to director Ann Filmer that her well-cast, well-paced and worthy revival of this 35-year-old tragicomedy allows one to not only laugh carelessly but also to think carefully… This is still a funny yet also a surprisingly darker production of The House of Blue Leaves than I would have ever expected, and it’s also emotionally richer for it.”

Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago—“Director Ann Filmer compiles an excellent cast and keeps the fast-paced script rolling without a hitch. Her handling of the slapstick chase scenes and explosive lunacy is exceptional. With the aid of Arow Blackdragon’s terrific prop design, Kevin Hagan creates a perfectly detailed knickknack-filled apartment in Queens for the crazy characters to play out their whimsical indulgences… All of the components come together so well to create the idiosyncratic story, so why was I struggling to laugh? For me, no amount of dead-on performances can salvage this cute but gimmicky script.”

Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Fortunately, this Shattered Globe production has at its helm Ann Filmer, a director with the logistical focus of an air-traffic controller. On a classroom-sized stage further cluttered by console television sets, 16-foot telephone cords and a Serengeti of stuffed animals, her agile-footed actors never waver in their polarity, but keep the confusion always firmly rooted in character and the dizzy logic of their universe to retain their grip on us right up to Guare’s unexpectedly dark ending.”

Valentine Victorious—House Theatre of Chicago

Chris Jones, Tribune—“This is not the best House show to date, nor is it the strongest of the ’Valentine’ trilogy. That’s mostly because the trademark visuals are blander, and the emotional content, vital to this troupe’s aesthetic, gets insufficient attention. I still think it’s a terrific night out, chock full of fun, invention and break-the-mold ideas. Of course, that might be verging on a Pavlovian response by now. The victim never knows.”

Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“As in the earlier installments, Valentine Victorious is endlessly ingenious in its staging (credit director Dennis Watkins and choreographer Tommy Rapley). It also is exuberant and imaginative in its musical scoring… So, you got a problem, lady? Well, yes. For despite the abundant energy, style, ingenuity, playfulness and earnestness, the weak link here—as it is in most House shows—is the script. Much too long and convoluted, and overly saturated in that action comic style that tends to have infinite appeal only for adolescent boys, it grows wearisome and repetitive.”

Tony Adler, Reader—“Valentine Victorious is longer than it needs to be, and neither its pseudoscience nor its pseudoplot makes much pseudosense. But Dennis Watkins’s staging for the House Theatre of Chicago is full of generous fun, bright energy, good music—and great, cheap coups de theatre: a nuclear explosion, for instance, realized by means of green umbrellas. Writer-star Nathan Allen cavorts like a kid before his bedroom mirror.”

Nina Metz, New City—“[L]ike its predecessors, the show is overstuffed with narrative—unwieldy and scattered—the antithesis of the self-contained panels and efficient storytelling of the comic-book milieu. It would have been nice to see this company and director Dennis Watkins finally reign in their creative instincts and tighten things up with few sharp, delineated corners. As it is, the House clings to its clunky esthetic, which is quickly losing its appeal. On the plus side, the non-set set—basically, a bare bones warehouse—is a nice, minimalist touch. And Jake Minton’s performance as the one good guy cop finds just the right balance between send-up and seriousness.”

Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Typical of this hot House, the action erupts with ingenious props, Michael Griggs’ enormously effective sound design, Tammy Rapley’s visceral choreography and Hawkins’ rather tepid stage combat. More sure-footed than Curse, this final installment of Allen’s pop mythology is invigoratingly staged by Dennis Watkins and often rewards the tireless adoration of the all-forgiving opening night claque. But, as always, a little of this goes a long way. Because Allen’s rather plodding performance hardly suggests the dashingly romantic superhero that Valentine is supposed to be, no one could wish this trio a quartet.”

Quote of the Fortnight:

“The Broadway musical has always been a bipolar art with those frothy, upbeat shows (think of Spamalot and Hairspray) on one end of the emotional spectrum, and others like Sweeney Todd, Miss Saigon, Carousel and Cabaret dancing right up against the world’s dark injustices.”—Hedy Weiss reviewing Bailiwick Repertory’s Kiss of the Spiderwoman in the Sun-Times.