2-2-07
Gift’s Blithe on Target in Today’s World
It may be that Americans will discover a growing appreciation for the comedy of manners. While the mythology of our country offers us up as classless (Anyone can grow up to be president!) the plain fact is that the separation between the rich and poor continues to grow. An increasing number of our national politicians come from families of successful politicians. The behavior of our celebrities grows ever more ridiculous and different from the average American. These are all conditions that support potential comedies of manners. The difference is that writers like Noel Coward have no equal among those who write of the rich and famous today.
Given that, The Gift Theatre’s production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit may achieve some resonance for its audience. A smug writer, Charles Condomine, and his equally smug wife, Ruth, arrange for a séance as part of the writer’s research for a mystery novel. However, the psychic manages to summon the writers’ first wife, Elvira, who takes up a ghostly residence in the house, leading to all sorts of complications.
So really, Coward had a lot of situation comedy in him too, and he does milk every possible laugh out of Charles’ predicament. And for the most part, director John Gawlik’s production hits each situation dead on as it arises. As the smug couple, Brendan Averett and Mackenzie Kyle achieve a cold affection that appears to be quite different from Charles’ attraction to his late wife. Elizabeth Hipwell throws herself into her bumbling psychic with a gusto, nicely differentiating herself from the upper-class snobs around her. Hillary Clemens brings both a sexy affection and a childish impetuosity to Elvira. And Lauren Sharpe makes the most of each entrance as the clumsy maid Edith.
Set designer Courtney O’Neill, with the help of light designer Yousif Mohammed, does well to transform Gift’s shallow space into a period drawing room, but there’s not much Gawlik can do in terms of interesting stage pictures—there’s just not enough stage. That’s a minor quibble in the face of a solid production. What flaws exist are mainly Coward’s: the characters are shallow and not particularly engaging; the plot barely manages to hold together for the entire length of the play. But really it’s all about watching the upper class make fun of each other and then lose it as their world turns upside down. It’s a brisk evening that sure beats reading a celebrity magazine.
Blithe Spirit, The Gift Theatre Company
Lawrence Bommer, Reader—“A newlywed couple receives an unwelcome visit from the ghost of the husband’s first wife, in Noel Coward’s classic comedy. John Gawlik’s surefire staging is well paced and well cast.”
Kay Daly, Time Out—“This is veddy British drawing-room farce; to work, actors must paint their characters in broad strokes, all the while spitting out mouthfuls of pithy, wordy, ever-so-upper-crusty dialogue in authentic dialect. And if the Gift occasionally stumbles on the latter, it almost uniformly nails the former. Director Gawlik has produced a nicely paced comedy that doesn’t offer jokes in lieu of character connection. In fact, there are few laugh-out-loud moments, and many more sly smiles.”
Blasted, A Red Orchid Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“[F]rom a formative point of view, it’s a very skilled play. What looks like a standard case of relationship dysfunction in a hotel room is, literally, blasted to the heavens when that hotel room is ripped apart in a horrific explosion. Which, depending on where you live, may or may not strike you as outlandish theatrical fantasy. And so to the Red Orchid production. It’s a very earnest effort that both touches the heart and does honor to the writer. But it does not go all the way.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“That said, however, director Karen Kessler has done a remarkable job with Blasted. Best of all, she has put the spotlight on a twentysomething British-bred actress, Helen Sadler, who has ‘star’ emblazoned all over her. She’s slender as a reed—with a face whose plainness morphs into stunning beauty, with eyes that speak volumes, and with a physical and emotional bravery that sets her apart from the moment she arrives on stage. You are advised to see her here if only to be able to boast a year or so from now, ‘I saw her very early on.’”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“If you like edgy and challenging theatre, if you can take a 90-minute barrage of brutality that includes rape, torture and cannibalism, Sarah Kane’s provocative, disturbing and messy meditation on violence—and the fear, despair and rage that underscores it—is something you might enjoy… Blasted reflects its author’s unrealized potential. Twenty-three when it premiered, Kane committed suicide in 1999 at the age of 28. The play has flaws: It’s messy (Kane throws a lot at her audience), but her characters intrigue and her dialogue rings true. A Red Orchid’s production is well-acted and well-directed by Karen Kessler. But it’s not for everyone.”
Albert Williams, Reader—“Playwright Sarah Kane, who killed herself four years after it was first produced, transformed her own battles with depression into philosophical statements about the need for hope, the urge to connect, the messy intertwining of love, lust, trust, and betrayal, and the impulse to believe in God despite all evidence to the contrary. Kane’s influences—including Beckett, Brecht, Pinter, and Shakespeare—are clear. But in Blasted she speaks with an authoritative, authentic, and passionate voice all her own. This superb Midwest premiere conveys the play’s tremendous intelligence as well as its visceral impact.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“If its too-long-delayed Midwest premiere fails to shock, and somehow it does, in part it’s because daring storefront companies—A Red Orchid chief among them—have offered harder-hitting looks at the human condition in which stage blood and simulated sex meant more than they do here. God knows these three excellent actors can’t be faulted, though; being trapped in A Red Orchid’s broom-closet space with survivalist brutality is supposed to be what’s gripping, but the close proximity to a trio of performances this real means more.”
Tim Sauers, Gay Chicago—“Gloomy? You bet. Do you have the midwinter blues? I wouldn’t suggest seeing this. It will make you even more despondent. However, if you’re willing to experience A Red Orchid’s Blasted under Karen Kessler’s steely direction, the main reason for doing this would be for the stellar cast. Each of the three delivers strong, earnest, galvanized performances, masterful with the language and rhythms of it. The dialogue is terse; the dramatic conflict mostly fiery despite the second half’s wallowing in self-pity and repetition.”
Harmless, TimeLine Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune—“Harmless, which is given a simple but pleasingly cryptic and elliptical premiere from director Edward Sobel, is only about an hour long. And the stakes aren’t always high enough. Still, an hour proves sufficient duration for [David] Parkes to paint a strikingly rich picture of a teacher whose insecurity threatens his craft, and for [John] Jenkins to spin some notably malevolent (and shrewdly counter-intuitive) silver-haired charm. You’re not ready for the play to end: Its climax feels uncomfortably premature. In some ways, that indicates a dramatic theme that could and should be expanded and deepened. In other ways, it cleverly makes Neveu’s point that people in power rarely like to look too deeply at something—or someone—that might threaten their position.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“In his new play, Harmless, now in its world premiere at TimeLine Theatre, Brett Neveu intentionally hammers the audience over the head. In fact, he makes both the sound and the substance of his arguments excruciating to hear, and well before the play’s hour-long running time unwinds a sort of willed deafness sets in. Given the subject matter, this may be the whole point, but the play ends up feeling like a stylistic exercise that simply ends up turning in on itself and devouring its own tail.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“Initially Harmless, in its world premiere at TimeLine Theatre, plays like an argument for free expression when actually it’s an examination of power and its shifting balance. But Neveu is far too clever and subtle a writer to leave it at that. This taut little playlet, concisely directed by Edward Sobel, is an indictment of the war and the inability of the U.S. government and mainstream America to address, let alone resolve, the problems plaguing returning vets. Instead, they make the problem disappear, leaving no one to take the blame and placing everyone at risk.”
Justin Hayford, Reader—“[A] troubled college freshman submits a disturbingly violent first-person story to his fiction-writing class, consequently pitting a teacher’s insistence on the student’s free-speech rights against the college president’s need to protect his institution’s reputation. But when the student turns out to be an Iraq war vet and a military psychologist shows up to investigate the possibility of war crimes, Harmless becomes a Mametian cat-and-mouse game full of ethical ambiguities and sickening betrayals. It takes director Edward Sobel a while to get his three-person cast up to speed in this world premiere, but once he does he turns 55 minutes of stage time into an engrossing and harrowing ride.”
Nina Metz, New City—“The character is a canny piece of work from Neveu, director Edward Sobel and actor John Jenkins, suggesting a man who is both an idiot and yet very, very clever. The guy is impossible to pin down, especially when he plays power games with the writing professor [David Parkes] whose assignment sparked the offending story. The interaction between the two is like watching a child pull the wings off a fly. And sometimes, you can’t help feeling the fly deserves it.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“[A]lthough the acting in Sobel’s production is more pointed than necessary, and Neveu’s coffee-mug small talk can be occasionally unconvincing, TimeLine and Neveu have the nerve to ask you whom you believe, and then bring the curtain down before you’ve had adequate time to decide.”
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago—“I am inclined to think of Harmless as pointless. That is not to say that it is totally worthless or useless, but despite it being somewhat interesting, it is thin on content and derails inconclusively. The dialogue and delivery thereof is tight with strong instances of impressive dramatic build, but the circumstances of the story prove to be insufficient motivation for the dramatic crescendos of the script. The two short acts of the play are more interesting scenes for acting exercise rather than a complete piece of thought-out work.”
You Asked For It, The Neo-Futurists
Chris Jones, Tribune—“On one of those clever meta-levels, this sounds as if it might be a fun night nonetheless. Trust me, it’s not. Both shows are insufferably boring. The cast wanders many miles from its conceptual theme into dark, unfathomably esoteric worlds, and the writing lacks satiric bite. There are no obvious comedians on the stage. There’s not much thematic discipline, either, so most of the possibilities suggested by the brilliant concept end up totally wasted. Aside from the lobby display, the only enjoyable part of the night is the reading of the survey results.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“The opening 15-minute segment of You Asked for It also is quite amusing as it reveals the results of the survey and drolly draws conclusions (for example, 86 percent of respondents said theatre was important; 81 percent came primarily for entertainment; ‘man vs. self’ was the most desired conflict to be explored; 87 percent of the audience wanted multiple climaxes in their dramas, and wanted them to occur on stage). You get the idea. The show should have stopped there but unfortunately did not. And the presentations of the ‘least desired’ and ‘most desired’ scenarios proved equally dreadful, proving not only that you shouldn’t write a play (good or bad) by the numbers, and you certainly shouldn’t have to watch it.”
Justin Hayford, Reader—“The ‘best’ and ‘worst’ plays, created by Allen and four winning performers from the data, are understandably unwieldy: Americans apparently most want a secular, realistic play starring an inspiring god and ‘an ordinary undead.’ Too often the company skirts scripting challenges by defaulting to its usual self-consciousness, and the evening is too long, but freewheeling performances make it appealingly goofy.”
Nina Metz, New City—“It is all a bit of intellectual hokum, actually. The plays (playlets, really) are patently absurd, and that seems to be the point: If you spend all your time asking audiences what they want, the results will be ridiculous—and useless. The perfect irony is that I favored the least-wanted play over the most. It had something with actor Steve Walker playing an alien that resembles Bea Arthur in tin foil ears. Really? Is that what American wants least?”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“It may be heresy to say this, but there are few Shakespeare comedies that wouldn’t benefit from some major trims.”—Hedy Weiss reviewing Chicago Shakespeare’s production of Short Shakespeare: The Taming of the Shrew in the Sun-Times.