12-21-07
Old Script Comes Off As... Old
One theatrical marketing truth is that new work is hard to sell to contemporary audiences. There aren’t many fields where the old holds dominance over the new. No one’s re-releasing Casablanca to theatres and watching it outsell I Am Legend, for instance. But in theatre, companies that produce new work can generally count on harsher reactions from critics and relative indifference from a theatre-going public that would rather see The Odd Couple for the fifth time then a new play for the first.
Is it any surprise, then, that Remy Bumppo would choose to trot out an old chestnut during the holiday season? The Philadelphia Story is best known as a movie starring Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, but the original stage play appeared on Broadway in 1939. In it a Philadelphia socialite prepares to remarry with an upstanding self-made man, but finds herself flirting hopelessly with a reporter sent to cover her wedding. Hijinks ensue.
Director Shawn Douglas gets a Hepburn-esque performance from Erica Elam as socialite Tracy Lord. And her supporting men—the ex-husband, played by Grant Goodman, the fianc?, played by Aaron Christensen, and the reporter with whom she dallies, played by Steve Key—all keep up their end of the banter. But somehow, this old warhorse lacks spirit, energy, and problematically, laughs. The New York Times described Philip Barry’s play as “a spirited and gossamer dance of comedy,” but this production feels more plodding than gossamer dance and not particularly spirited or funny. I can understand how this play might have scored with wealthy Broadway audiences of the late ’30s, but today these characters feel smug and clueless.
The unfamiliar three-act structure with two full intermissions for complete set changes doesn’t help the evening’s flow. By the time Tracy Lord has reached her crisis in the third act, it’s hard to care who she marries. Barry makes it clear that all these wealthy characters have cushioned lives, and the two outsiders quickly give up any resentment of the Lords’ advantages for admiration of them as individuals. The play basically arrives at the conclusion that rich people can be nice and poor people can be asses. You just can’t generalize by class.
Well fair enough. But the play feels more like a defense of the wealthy than an appeal for tolerance. For that to still be entertaining—at least to me—there better be some funny bon mots being tossed around. This production has a few, but not enough. Once again Remy Bummpo shows an exceptional command of the theatrical craft. But they choose to lavish it on a script that just doesn’t merit the attention.
The Philadelphia Story, Remy Bumppo
Chris Jones, Tribune—“Remy Bumppo now offers production values much upgraded from its formative days, and this elegantly staged and attired production is no exception. Granted, this is not the kind of standout production that will have New York producers flocking to town. The talented emerging actress Erica Elam is just moving up to complex roles like Tracy. She looks the part and has an appealing presence, but the requisite, seen-it-all toughness mostly evades her. And the scenes between Tracy and the enabling journalist Mike Connor (played with eccentricity by Steve Key) stutter and start, struggling to find their famously ribald rhythm.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“An altogether delicious revival of the original Philip Barry play on which that movie was based is now being presented by Remy Bumppo Theatre, and it is pure theatrical champagne. Not only is the production a sparkling reminder of just what a smart, sophisticated, funny, insightful and engaged playwright Barry could be, but also seeing a cast of flesh-and-blood actors who look as if they were lifted from the most Waspish society pages of a Philadelphia newspaper (circa 1939) only confirms the fact that Chicago’s varied and gifted talent pool can meet any and all stylistic requirements.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Comedies of manners are also comedies of mannerisms: they depend on the arch look and the Bryn Mawr accent. This is particularly true of Philip Barry’s witty, ultimately goodhearted 1939 play, whose romantic quadrangle turns on class. Katharine Hepburn succeeded on stage and on screen not least because she’d so thoroughly mastered the arch and the accent, but in this well-acted Remy Bumppo Theatre Company production, Erica Elam’s princess is warm and common, likable, and all wrong.”
Nina Metz, New City—“With director Shawn Douglas at the helm, the production reaches a level of ‘perfectly fine,’ by which I mean the ghost of the movie lingers like a bad hangover. Put another way, the play’s biggest fault is that it isn’t the film… Various family members help to move the story along, but it is hard to become fully invested in any of it. Elam isn’t quite the ‘young, rich, rapacious female’ demanded by the part (she actually comes off as quite the sweetie), and you keep waiting for anyone—the butler, even—to offer a knowing glint that would give this show some zing.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“Yet since Barry’s trifle about a marriage of public convenience that might get exposed by hungry media sharks is revealed here to be a sparkling examination of life under glass, and because the supporting cast is so good, you still wish the three leads had a little more fire. In particular, here the famous second-act drunk scene, in which Tracy Lord and her would-be reporter beau use high-end hooch as a self-administered truth serum, is sober enough to operate heavy machinery. But, as is often the case at Remy Bumppo, the playwright is the star. And as party guests go, Barry is one you never have to pretend to be happy to see.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Shawn Douglass’ direction of this Remy Bumppo production likewise allows us to take our own lesson from Barry’s sermon, giving no special emphasis to the troublesome utterances any more than to the quaint catch-phrases of the period. And while this interpretation is not without its oddities—what’s with the Mary Pickford hair on kid sister Dinah, and who instructed Steve Key, playing the newshound from Indiana, to channel James Cagney for the second act?—its elevation of human values over artificial distinctions and populist compassion for its characters, whatever their status, more than compensate for the occasional stilted moment.”
Good Black, eta Creative Arts
Kay Daly, Time Out—“That said, (director Edward D.) Richardson’s staging has some treats to offer, if you’ve the patience to wait for them. As Dalejean and her lover Rip, Whitehead-Mays and Dorsey, respectively, muster believable chemistry, and you end up rooting for them even when Penny’s stagecraft falters. There are also pleasing performances from the supporting cast, particularly Carolyn Nelson’s amusing and well-crafted rendition of the Holy Roller Sister Louise. Richardson has more trouble managing Good Black’s uneven shifts in tone, which whips from naturalistic slice-of-life to operatic self-revelation with a speed that could give an audience member whiplash.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—“The whole cast also could have worked on their memorization on opening night since a big percentage of lines were flubbed and fixed on the fly. It’s hard to fully buy the characters when they’re hesitating over what they’re saying. Still, there are some great performances to be seen, particularly Carolyn Nelson as Sister Louise, who hilariously evangelizes and praises Jesus at the drop of hat. Whitehead-Mays is a spitfire, particularly when sparring with Johnson’s formidable Jake. Good Black is fun as a period domestic piece reminding how things once were. It lets you judge what changes have been better and worse.”
Lord Butterscotch and the Curse of the Darkwater Phantom, Blindfaith Theatre
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Perhaps if Lord Butterscotch and the Curse of the Darkwater Phantom were a 20-minute sketch—a brief entry in a larger ‘English panto-style’ holiday season variety show—it might be vaguely amusing. But this thuddingly heavy-handed new entertainment produced by Blindfaith Theatre—a collaborative effort by three prominent Chicago playwrights (Brett Neveu, Rebecca Gilman and Lisa Dillman)—runs a tiresome two hours. And its takeoff on those classic Edward Gorey-style Masterpiece Theatre tales of eccentric aristocrats and their sexual peccadilloes is predictable and tedious.”
Albert Williams, Reader—“Dillman, Rebecca Gilman, and Brett Neveu teamed up for this sophomoric spoof of pre-World War I mysteries and romances. They’re gifted playwrights, but parody is not their forte. Their mostly unfunny comedy pokes fun at writers ranging from Mary Roberts Rinehart and Elinor Glynn to D.H. Lawrence and P.G. Wodehouse. The self-indulgent, often vulgar script is woefully short on wit, and Blindfaith Theatre’s production relies on broad physical humor that quickly grows tiresome.”
Nina Metz, New City—“’What’s that I smell?’ burls the gamekeeper, played by Chris Hainsworth, as he strolls through the library of the big house. ‘Why it’s the unmistakable stench of the filthy rich.’ Hainsworth attacks the role like he just wandered off the set of Braveheart. It’s a very funny performance, though the script—penned by Lisa Dillman, Rebecca Gilman, and Brett Neveu—can’t sustain its breakneck pace for very long. (Nicholas Minas and Noah Simon co-direct the Blindfaith Theatre production.) ‘He is a man among men—if the men are without penises,’ was my favorite one-liner. But there aren’t enough of these gems to go around.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“[T]he plot of Lord Butterscotch is of little consequence, and in fact exists solely for the purpose of unspooling itself. Frankly, the first act is so convoluted we stopped paying attention to it. The real point is the second half, when we learn that the servants are actually royalty and the vicar is really a swish, as well as other predictable but satisfying reversals of fortune. Act II is when the almost embarrassingly good cast comes alive, too, taking its Carol Burnett Show–style characterizations of naughty maids and horny aristocrats to a new unhinged level; they have the kind of ludicrous, bouncing energy one associates with needing to go to the bathroom.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“Well, with three playwrights, two directors and two lighting designers, it’s not surprising it’s a hodgepodge. Initially, I was convinced that the fault lay with the production and not the play. I thought esteemed authors Lisa Dillman, Rebecca Gilman and Brett Neveu—Chicago-based playwrights of national repute—had written a parody of a period British mystery/thriller and that co-directors Nicolas Minas and Noah Simon had misinterpreted it as a broad burlesque, parody and burlesque not being the same. But as Lord Butterscotch continued, it became apparent the authors had no more idea what they were about than the directors.”
The Turn of the Screw, Writers Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“Writers’ Theatre Chicago is adding to the seasonal horrors on the North Shore (traffic, crowded malls, visiting in-laws) with a decent and genuinely creepy new production of Jeffrey Thatcher’s skilled, two-actor dramatic adaptation of a James story that’s a good deal more than pulp. As James fans well know, The Turn of the Screw not only is an exceedingly scary yarn, but also a strangely modern and disrupted kind of text that can be read for its Freudian themes, its psychological complexity and its lingering sense of gothic sexual guilt.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Deftly adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher and elegantly directed by Jessica Thebus, the show features just two actors. And both are wholly sublime. Kymberly Mellen (glowing and articulate despite what on opening night was obviously a terrible cold) plays the young governess who comes to the grand estate of Bly House after a rather eerie job interview. She assumes the care of two very troubled, orphaned children—the wildly precocious Miles and his mute younger sister, Flora. LaShawn Banks plays multiples roles (narrator, master of the estate, housekeeper and Miles) and does so brilliantly through the subtlest shifts in voice, intensity and intention.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Jeffrey Hatcher’s 1997 stage adaptation is smart but a blunter instrument than Henry James’s novella, exploiting the erotic subtext that James was content to treat as, well, subtext. One of the governess’s two charges, Miles, is particularly sexualized. But if Hatcher’s content gets coarse, his telling stays wonderfully smooth, especially in this production, staged for maximum momentum and creepiness. Kymberly Mellen as the governess and LaShawn Banks as all the other characters give bravura performances.”
Dennis Polkow, New City—“[S]ince this is a work in which the difference between what is actually seen and what may be imagined to be seen is so vital to the story, the idea of one actress remaining the governess throughout while a single male actor takes on all of the other roles in the story there is an unintentionally uncanny quality to a single performer ‘becoming’ these various characters so effectively that we as an audience become startled in watching a grown man make such unnatural transformations. That distracts us from evaluating the potential reality of what is happening, since even what is unquestionably real is often not there in this production.”
Kris Vire, Time Out—“As the haunting backstory comes to light (and J.R. Lederle’s evocative lighting design goes dim), Hatcher’s adaptation proves surprisingly and creepily suggestive. Exactly what Miss Jessel and Peter Quint, the former governess and valet, did to young orphans Miles and Flora is never explicitly stated, but it’s crystal clear thanks to Thebus’s precision and Banks’ chops. The question of our narrator’s sanity, on the other hand, is left maddeningly in the dark.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Kymberly Mellen anchors the shivery action with just the right measure of delicate obsession under Jessica Thebus’ direction, though the more active duties fall to LaShawn Banks, playing an array of characters ranging from the capable, but befuddled, housekeeper to the precocious boy undone by his own desires. After factoring in Jack Magaw’s veil-and-shadow scenic design, the result is 90 minutes to engage crime-fiction and bodice-ripper fans alike.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“In the world of spectacle theater, you have to get your central metaphor right.”—Chris Jones reviewing Redmoon’s production of Hunchback in the Tribune.