6-23-06
Side Show Doesn’t Quite Hit the Big Time
Vanessa Panerosa and Andrea Prestinario in BoHo’s Side Show.Bohemian Theatre Ensemble is one of those small companies, and they’ve had their first success with last year’s The Wild Party, which ran to sold out houses. In Side Show, they return to another rarely done musical, and the result is, unfortunately, less than successful.
It’s certainly not from lack of effort on the part of Bohemian and its hard working ensemble of actors. Indeed, there’s a lot to enjoy about Side Show. The unseen orchestra has a good sound, many of the actors do strong work in a variety of roles, the set design, though simple, is nicely flexible and works well. In fact, the middle half of the show, from about half way through the first act to about half way through the second act, moves briskly along with interesting songs, choreography and a well-told story.
Unfortunately, the weaknesses dominate the beginning and the end of Side Show. The orchestra overwhelms the singing on occasion, particularly early, making me wonder if the actors had really warmed up properly. It doesn’t help that Mark Myers’ lighting design, though interestingly expressionistic, lacks front light to such a degree that it’s hard to understand the actors, as their faces are most always in shadow. Director Stephen M. Genovese has a hard time with stage pictures when the whole cast is present, which they are throughout most all of the first part of the show. Later on, his work improves, but early the play feels messy and unfocused. And, while Genovese’s four leads generally hold up their end of the bargain, Eric Lindahl, as the ever-positive Buddy, never finds an acting through-line to match his pleasant voice.
The problems with the show’s ending lie almost exclusively at the feet of Bill Russel’s book, which can only be attributed to Bohemian in that they chose the play. The story, none too intricate to begin with, just trails off, as though Russel realized he had reached two and a half hours of material and just stopped. It’s thoroughly unsatisfying, which is a tribute, in a way, to the success Bohemian has in recovering from a slow beginning and getting the audience to invest in this simple story.
Bohemian’s cast and crew show enough stagecraft to suggest that, with more experience and better material, they’ll reach the heights again, but Side Show stumbles more than it soars.
Side Show – Bohemian Theatre Ensemble
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Granted, you can’t be expected to keep up with every little revival from every emerging, non-Equity Chicago theater company. But beginning right now, you have no excuse. Stephen M. Genovese’s production inarguably is the best non-Equity musical staged here in years. I’ve seen Side Show several times, but this piece has never landed in my gut quite as it lands here.”
Jack Helbig, Reader – “Bill Russell and Henry Krieger’s musical, presented by the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, is based on the true story of conjoined twins Daisy and Violet Hilton, who toured the vaudeville circuit and were featured in Tod Browning’s horror classic Freaks. Stephen M. Genovese’s intensely intimate staging of this morbidly introverted show features nearly perfect performances by a mostly non-Equity cast. Vanessa Panerosa and Andrea Prestinario as the twins and Aaron Holland as their love-struck personal assistant are adept at finding emotional depth in the shallow, mildly campy material.”
Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago – “Wow! Bohemian’s revival, under the musical direction of A. Scott Williams with staging by Stephen M. Genovese, is a reviewer’s dream show. There are no quibbles or complaints from this critic. No ‘if onlys’ or ‘yeah, buts,’ just a sensational show that hits all the right chords. My pen was put away, the notebook closed as I sat back and experienced damn good theatre, allowing my critical eyes and ears a rest.”
The Duchess of Malfi – Writers’ Theatre Chicago
Chris Jones, Tribune – ”[Director Michael] Halberstam hasn’t just revived this show about brothers who object to their sister’s marriage to a servant – he has radically messed with the text. Courtiers have been combined, the order of things changed and archaic language mercilessly excised, so you end up with a zippy, two-hour show of striking clarity. One of Halberstam’s great strengths is his ability to enliven and shape theatrical matter without being so radical that you feel the literary values have been compromised. Ergo, the storytelling here is both reflective and freshly clear. And this affair – ideal for older teens – isn’t boring for even a second. The theatrical ideas are varied and creative.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “The story is stark, full of chicanery and violence, and in many ways surprisingly modern in its consideration of class, gender and (as insightfully cast here) race. Halberstam has found a perfect balance, making the violence ritualistic (with elements of Japanese Noh theater and a touch of choreographer Martha Graham’s Greek tragedy style, too), while the rest of the characters’ interaction is exceedingly real and naturalistic. The emotional effect is electric; the propulsive motion of the storytelling is riveting.”
Tony Adler, Reader – “A noblewoman’s secret marriage to a commoner triggers an extravagantly long daisy chain of murders, in this 17th-century revenge tragedy by John Webster. Adapted and directed by Michael Halberstam, this tepid staging fails to express moral violence. Without bold performances, the highly stylized, Bunraku-influenced production ends up looking merely tricked out.”
John Beer, New City – “The wildness of Webster’s imagination demands a less sedate treatment than it gets from Writers’ Theatre. Despite ingenious costumes by Tatjana Radisic and a brisk pacing by Halberstam, the play never makes the visceral impact Jacobean tragedy demands. Matt Kozlowski is a likable enough Bosola, but neither he nor the severely understated Christopher McLinden as the mad prince Ferdinand convey the sense of menace pervading the court at Malfi, while the transformation of Elizabeth Rich’s chilly Duchess into a ghost is a distinct improvement.”
Jenn Q. Goddu, Free Press – “John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi in the early part of the 17th century, but Michael Halberstam’s staging of his adaptation makes it easy to forget how much time has elapsed. Unfortunately, the updating feels forced. The high-concept costumes, booming dance music and stark set at times overwhelm the actors. Not that the acting is flawless.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City – “The Duchess of Malfi is a domestic story driven by grand passions: the amour fou of the Duchess, the brothers’ licentiousness, the remorse that drives Duke Ferdinand mad, Bosola’s cynicism and the gripping physical horror. However, the outsized emotions are precisely what are missing. As director, Halberstam overvalues rational clarity, making the play surprisingly matter-of-fact. Violence is bloodless, madmen are unseen and cruelties are perpetrated without relish. Even the lust is bridled. The audience never gets a gut-punch. Perhaps Halberstam, doubling as adapter and director, lost sight of the play by burrowing too deeply into it.”
Gaudy Night – Lifeline Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Adaptor Frances Limoncelli has done Sayers before and she’s adept at translating narrative into action. And Dorothy Milne, who directs, finds just the right tone. The show is wry; but never camp. It zips happily along from clue to heartbreak, but the serious ideas are never undermined. In short, this is a long but very smart and entertaining show from the Chicago theater that does this kind of thing with less pretension but more authenticity than anyone else in town.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “A literate and enchantingly comic summer trifle, Gaudy Night features a sublime adaptation by Frances Limoncelli; ingenious direction by Dorothy Milne; reprise performances by Peter Greenberg (as Wimsey) and Jenifer Tyler (as Vane) that finalize their ownership of the roles; an inspired supporting cast that portrays a henhouse of spinsters and widows, plus one terribly spoiled young gentleman, Lord Oakapple (a shrewdly goofy Bradford R. Lund), who just happens to be Wimsey’s nephew.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald – “Skillfully directed by Dorothy Milne and with impeccable acting from an accomplished cast who manages to make exposition entertaining, Lifeline’s excellent production owes much to Frances Limoncelli’s shrewd adaptation, which addresses seriously the issue of duty to oneself, without sacrificing the sense of whimsy that characterizes the series. Add Jackie and Richard Penrod’s compact, appropriately gothic set; Kevin D. Gawley’s creative lighting and Victoria DeIorio’s realistic sound effects and you have a show that looks as good as Sayers reads.”
Jack Helbig, Reader – “Adapter Frances Limoncelli and director Dorothy Milne do a remarkable job carving a two-act play out of Dorothy L. Sayer’s 500-plus-page novel. Set at a fictional women’s college at Oxford University and featuring detective work by Lord Peter Wimsey and Harriet Vane, the book is packed with fascinating eccentrics and witty dialogue. The stage version is almost as rich, partly because the adaptation is so expert and partly because this production is filled with actors whose every gesture and pause speaks volumes. Jenifer Tyler as Vane is spot-on, but Peter Greenberg feels a touch too stiff and self-satisfied as Sayers’s brilliant, dashing, aristocratic amateur detective.”
Jenn Q. Goddu, Free Press – “Happily the actresses consistently do so with all the smart confidence and snappishness one might expect of a room full of intelligent schoolmarms. However, the hastiness of the production’s staging by director Dorothy Milne does hinder some character development. The actresses have little time to react to each allegation of awfulness before galloping on to the next part of Limoncelli’s succinct adaptation. This hurry is particularly problematic in scenes meant to hold some suspense… Still the characters are interesting and the dialogue is brisk fun as Limoncelli keeps Sayers’s philosophizing contained enough to avoid being deadly dull.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City – “This Lifeline production has a great deal to recommend it, starting with the likeable and capable performances of ensemble members Jenifer Tyler as Harriet and Peter Greenberg as Lord Peter. They know their characters and they have chemistry within the chaste bounds of the 1930s world in which Sayers sets them… This third Lord Peter is less involving than its two predecessors. There’s too much plot for too little story, and not enough gothic theatrical effect. Director Dorothy Milne has chosen to play it as cool as Lord Peter’s character, rather than build up the show’s thrills and chills. It makes it long – at two-and-a-half hours – and sometimes labored and convoluted, for which adapter Frances Limoncelli partly is to blame.”
Huddersfield – TUTA Theatre Chicago
Chris Jones, Tribune – “And thus Huddersfield becomes both a modern Chekhovian picture of the Serbian slacker and a dissection of the complexities of the Serbian place in a post-Soviet world shorn of obvious historical references. And thanks to the intense direction of Dado in a tiny space, this powerfully realized and superbly acted show has received the kind of Chicago-style American premiere that one could easily imagine traveling to New York.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “Either way, the point is this: It would be one thing to ask actors in the Balkans to play the roles created by Sajtinac, and to get to the very core of the matter. But there is something truly uncanny about the way the Chicago cast – a group of seven young actors who probably rarely gave Serbia a thought until they were cast in this show – has captured the essential spirit of this drama. Applause for them, and for the play’s superb director, Dado. And heaps of praise, too, for translator Duska Radosavljevic and adapter Caridad Svich, whose script captures the American idiom perfectly yet remains infused with another culture.”
Justin Hayford, Reader – “Serbian playwright Ugljesa Sajtinac insists that he’s not writing about his nation’s political troubles in the 2004 play Huddersfield. A coming-of-age domestic drama, it resembles Mike Leigh’s Ecstasy or Eric Bogosian’s SubUrbia, centering on 30-year-old burnout Rasha and his friends Doole and Igor, who spend a day drinking, smoking pot, and trying to come to terms with adulthood. Huddersfield even has the keenly observed, hypernaturalistic dialogue of those plays, fully exploited by director Dado’s passionate six-member cast. But politics seeps into every scene.”
Nina Metz, New City – “The place is a ‘den of fuckwits’ but, because they are a generation shaped by the warped years of Slobodan Milosevic, they seem to have a more legitimate, visible source of angst than, say, their American counterparts who get trashed in mom and dad’s comfy suburban basement. Or so that seems to be the implied message, anyway. Not that Serbian playwright Ugljesa Sajtinac probably had that in mind. Fact is, it’s not clear what he had in mind, judging from this production, directed by Dado for T.U.T.A. The play spirals around woozily without much direction, and offers little insight into a place that is decidedly foreign to American eyes and experiences. The show is not without its unusual charms, but ultimately the production proves as tiresome as Rasha’s rants.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“In general, women on stage are far more captivating than men. This is not the preferences of a lesbian, but rather a thesis on the nature of drama.” – Venus Zarris reviewing Irish Repertory’s production of Love in the Title in Gay Chicago.
Correction:
In the June 9 Review Roundup, I misattributed a quote from the Reader review of Leaving Iowa to Jenn Goddu. That review was actually written by Kim Wilson.