8-18-06
Eclipse Spins an Interesting Debate
Kerry Richlan, John Ruhaak, Robert McLean, Cheri Chenoweth and Larry Baldacci in Eclipse’s Spinning into Butter.You have to give Rebecca Gilman credit for tackling a difficult subject. Plays that deal with racial prejudice tend to let their audience off the hook by portraying racists as simplistic or fundamentally evil, but in any case, as essentially different from me – the usually white, usually liberal butt in the seat. But if all racists were stupid and stereotypical, racism would have vanished long ago. Prejudice is more insidious than that, and, in Eclipse’s production of Gilman’s Spinning Into Butter, it’s a nearly invincible opponent.
Sarah Daniels (Kerry Richlan) has a new job as a dean at the largely white and affluent Belmont College in Belmont, Vermont. We see her pursuing a scholarship for a young student of color, Patrick (Gerardo Cardenas), a Nuyorican whom she convinces to call himself Puerto Rican on his application to increase his odds. We see her dealing with the high-on-intelligence, low-on-common-sense faculty who make up the rest of the deans. And we see her dealing with a racial incident – violent, hateful notes that are attached to an African-American student’s door.
The other deans elect to pursue a campus-wide forum to discuss racism, and chastise Sarah for informing the police of the incident. As the situation spirals out of control, the inherent prejudices of each of the faculty members, including Sarah’s, come to light.
Gilman’s script has its problems. It starts slowly and has to make some excuses early on to get the necessary people into Sarah’s office, the only setting in the play. Director Anish Jethmalani keeps things moving along in the scenes, but the script is plagued with repeated black-outs, which slow the action. As the script starts to pick up, so does the production. Richlan brings Sarah’s central quandary well to the fore, evoking a woman who knows her flaws and can’t find a way to overcome them. Robert McLean, as professor of art Ross Collins, manages an interesting combination of ineffective and insightful. Larry Baldacci’s Dean Burton Strauss captures every effete, intellectual bit of snobbery possible.
In the end, Jethmalani’s production succeeds in getting its audience to identify with Sarah, the first step in forcing everyone to examine their own racist tendencies. The piece offers a fairly pat solution, but it does its best to venture into difficult territory. Its limitations probably stem, in part, from just how difficult and complex that territory really is.
Spinning into Butter – Eclipse Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Eclipse has come up with quite a decent and well-paced little revival of one of Gilman’s best plays. Spinning Into Butter is likely to snag renewed attention for this fine Chicago writer once the forthcoming movie starring Sarah Jessica Parker and Miranda Richardson finally gets released. And this is a good chance to see the source play – produced with integrity and a good deal of truth. It’s a much less flashy production than the Goodman premiere, but it has moments that benefit greatly from director Anish Jethmalani’s simpler, gentler approach.”
Mary Houlihan, Sun-Times – “Spinning Into Butter, which takes its name from the children’s book The Story of Little Black Sambo, can feel manipulative and forced at times, but under Anish Jethmalani’s sharp direction, the actors invest their characters and the play with a sense of easy realism. Despite her incendiary subject, Gilman is not without a sense of humor; her satirical view of academia is priceless. Gilman’s style is often compared to David Mamet, and there are similarities, but to dismiss her work because she does not reach his heights would be a mistake. Instead of Mamet’s in-your-face rants, Gilman delves into the deeper, more subtle valleys of the human psyche and leaves us all thinking.”
Jennifer Vanasco, Reader – “The harassment of a black student at a small New England college sets in motion the action of Rebecca Gilman’s 1999 drama. This critique of hidden white liberal racism has worn well, in part because it’s thoughtful and doesn’t resort to cliche, in part because of its snappy, often funny, dialogue (though there is a bit of preaching in the second act). The Eclipse Theatre Company’s production is helped considerably by Anish Jethmalani’s sensitive direction, which makes it engaging as well as claustrophobic and disturbing.”
John Beer, New City – “Richlan does her level best to make her disparate assemblage of traits cohere, but Daniels remains a highly implausible proposition. Robert McLean, John Ruhaak, and Larry Baldacci work valiantly to breathe life into their more conventionally imagined types, including (God help us!) the saintly security guard who really knows how to run a college. Eclipse’s production is crisply intelligent, but Gilman’s play, while it has the courage to puncture Toni Morrison, doesn’t demonstrate the intelligence to know why she actually deserves it.”
Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago – “Richlan brings sincerity, candor, sympathy and astuteness to her role of Sarah. She’s a performer who knows how to convey both the subtle and obvious of language and action in her performance. If you’re an avid theatergoer, you might have seen her deliver some meaty, award-winning performances as an ensemble member with Profiles Theatre. Her last name was Cox in those days… Environmentally, Kevin Scott designs a lovely academic office setting complete with granite walls, wooden wainscoting, handsomely masculine furnishings and, of course, ivy-covered windows. Seth Reinick’s appropriate lighting evocatively shifts the passing of time.”
Closer – MOB Productions
Nina Metz, Tribune – “Not surprisingly, director Mike Nichols’ cinematic effort in 2004 wasn’t exactly box-office gold. One good thing did come out of it, though. Julia Roberts set the bar so low with her dead-eyed performance as the conflicted photographer, Anna, that any portrayal by another actress would be a major improvement. And so it is with Audrey Francis, who gets some clever help from costume designer Anya Baily. Suddenly, Anna is a specific person whose romantic vacillations finally seem of a piece. Francis has an acting partner her equal in Vincent Teninty as Larry, the dermatologist she marries and quickly divorces. Teninty has a low, rumbly voice, and his performance suggests a barely submerged hostility that has indeterminate sources. Their scenes together give the play some heft.”
Tony Adler, Reader – “British writer Patrick Marber’s play charts the desperate, sometimes violent couplings and uncouplings of four damaged souls involved in an obsessive sexual round-robin in contemporary London. Marber’s 1997 play can get tedious under the best of circumstances. But it needn’t be the wreck MOB Productions makes of it. Director Brian Sage’s decision to drop the English accents is as damaging as it is incomprehensible, obscuring important class themes while causing Marber’s Briticisms to clank loudly.”
The House of Yes – Easy Street Players
Nina Metz, Tribune – “Somehow the movie managed to be funny, whereas this production lacks a dark current of absurdism. It’s a decent cast, though, and they deserve better from director EJ VanderVoort, who has forgone the services of a scene designer. The end result is cheap and cardboard-looking. It’s a novice mistake for the young company, but if Easy Street hopes to have a future in Chicago, that kind of thinking isn’t going to fly.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Reader – “Wendy MacLeod’s dark comedy about brother-sister incest in a twisted family that draws on Kennedy-assassination mythology is performed by the Easy Street Players, whose production of MacLeod’s grotesque little cartoon is redeemed by sympathetic performances.”
Tales of the Lost Formicans – Circle Theatre
Nina Metz, Tribune – “I was abducted by aliens the other night. They did not demand to see my leader. Instead, they made me sit through Constance Congdon’s Tales of the Lost Formicans at Circle Theatre in Forest Park. Apparently it is some sort of comedy on their planet, though you won’t find many humans who share that view. I would tell you more, but they must have drugged me because I was comatose most of the time. All I know is two hours are missing from my life.”
Lawrence Bommer, Reader – “Alien nation: a group of interstellar explorers tries to make sense of the strange, extinct culture it’s been observing – ours. Kristin Gehring’s staging of Constance Congdon’s dark, glum 1984 comedy plods, despite ingenious props and video and down-to-earth performances that feel too real to have been written in advance.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“Despite Plato’s argument for separation of body and mind, anyone doubting the connection between material comfort and spiritual values need only note the preponderance of deaths by violence and infant mortality in communities where unemployment is also widespread.” – Mary Shen Barnidge reviewing Halcyon Theatre’s production of The Visit in the Windy City Times.