3-16-07
Caesar Lacks Focus
Alfred H. Wilson as the title character in Black Caesar at Pegasus.There’s no doubt that the success of African-Americans always occurs in the context of racism. In most cases it’s a challenge overcome, but in some situations it can actually serve as a route to achievement.
David Barr’s Black Caesar follows the predictable path of theatrical biography. The Great Man (in this case fictional publisher and newspaper man CJ Caesar) has died. He leaves behind a legacy filled with paradox and someone (in this case reporter T. Darryl Heggans) must unravel that legacy.
Heggans spends a lot of time talking to the audience, commenting wryly on the characters he meets, as well as Caesar himself. And the whole affair has the feel of a somewhat rambling story that’s in no hurry to be told. Heggans has a deadline to unravel Caesar’s legacy; if he doesn’t finish a fluff piece on the recently deceased man, he’ll lose his job. But that deadline doesn’t add the urgency this piece desperately needs. Instead Heggans wanders from meeting to meeting with key figures from Caesar’s past, most of which offer an excuse for a flashback to some key point from his life.
Barr sets out the play’s central quandary early: are you a reporter first, or a black reporter? Is the obligation to tell the truth secondary to the obligation to protect your people? Barr makes Caesar the champion of the black reporter first choice, while Heggans takes up the opposing view. It’s an interesting question with no easy answers, and the rise and fall of CJ Ceasar definitely provides the most interesting part of the show, helped along by a powerhouse performance by Alfred H. Wilson. Unfortunately, there’s also a sub-plot concerning Heggans’ struggle with alcohol and bitterness about his own firing by Ceasar. Of course this all comes back to the central quandary, but it still feels peripheral and distracting. Is Heggans the focus or the vehicle for the story?
Unfortunately, director Alex Levy allows his cast to adopt a pace that can only be described as glacial. Andre Teamer, in the difficult role of Heggans, can’t overcome the character’s lack of definition within the play’s structure. And the flashbacks to Caesar’s life don’t make much sense from a temporal standpoint. It seems everything that happened to the man was crammed into a few short years towards the end of his life.
Perhaps this world premiere script was rushed to production, but regardless, it has a number of flaws that the Pegasus production fails to address. There’s an unforgivable lack of clarity in the rush to argue big ideas that ultimately derails Black Caesar.
Black Caesar – Pegasus Players
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Since Barr is drawing a rich character and asking a provocative question – Is the first responsibility of an African-American journalist to be a journalist or an African-American? – you hope this plays gets the drastic overhaul it will need for any further life. Black Caesar requires a skilled editor. Little factual details are awry. Scenes dribble on well past their natural conclusions. It is too long, too woolly and lacking in focus. More crucially, Barr hasn’t yet decided whether he’s writing Caesar’s story, or focusing on the boozy, self-doubting reporter (shrewdly played by Andre Teamer) who has the job of writing a profile of his former benefactor and who wants both to lift him up and take him down.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “Barr is a writer who makes no small plans. This is both his strength and his weakness. His tendency to overwrite, and juggle far more ideas than he can comfortably handle, can be distracting. Yet at the same time, he has an admirable boldness… Director Alex Levy has done a solid job of making most of the pieces fit. There is much to be mined – and much in need of refining – in Black Caesar.”
Tony Adler, Reader – ”[P]laywright David Barr III fritters away his great and valid idea, principally by drawing our focus away from Caesar to the alcoholic reporter assigned to write Caesar’s journalistic epitaph, thus gumming up the narrative. Director Alex Levy completes the debacle by failing – just for instance – to make sense of the script’s hopscotching chronology. Jack Magaw’s scenic design is the show’s one smoothly functioning element.”
Megan Powell, Time Out – ”[T]he events (and characters) of Black Caesar don’t so much as happen as they are vigorously described. It’s a shame the obviously capable seven-person cast in Pegasus’ production struggles to flesh out its characters, because there’s a compelling legend here worth representing. But Caesar’s story and the more sweeping issues that Barr tries to inflame here – particularly black-advocacy journalism – are flattened into a landscape of similes and metaphors.”
Bach at Leipzig – Writers’ Theatre Chicago
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Although an amusing soupcon, Bach at Leipzig ultimately is far more trivial than, say, Stoppard’s best works. At times, this over-long and intermittently pretentious play feels too glib, too fey and sophomoric in its humor, and (most importantly) too scared to fully embrace the significant cultural themes it so cleverly raises and abandons. But then (playwright Itamar) Moses still is just beginning what will surely be a notable career… Time and again, I found myself wishing that [Nick] Bowling, a very capable director, had leaned against the play a little more, instead of flying so straight into its winds. Clearly, Moses needs someone pushing back.”
Tony Adler, Reader – “Itamar Moses’s comedy, set in 1722, concerns seven musicians competing for the post of organist at the prestigious Thomaskirche. Moses has written a play that’s lovely, wise, tender, strong, ostentatiously gimmicky, assertively academic, and chock-full of amusing quirk. Director Nick Bowling’s production is a carnival of ensemble craftsmanship.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out – “If this labored music lover’s comedy by young playwright Itamar Moses had (a young) Tom Stoppard’s name on it, we might not have known the difference. A trifle about seven cut-rate composers vying against an unseen Bach to succeed a deceased organist, Leipzig teems with hyperliterate references and bloody clever self-assessments (defeating the play’s own point about real genius). Yet with diabolical Larry Yando as its anchor, this all-male cast creates seven schemers so delightful you often lose yourself.”
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago – “It is almost as if the line, ‘One marches boldly forward only to learn, after the fact, that they are facing the wrong direction,’ illustrates the transition from the first to the second act as Act Two draws us in immediately and never lets up. The brisk pace, laugh-out-loud humor and thrilling creative observations and illuminations create a riveting event. The ensemble work goes from adequate in Act One to brilliant in Act Two. The cast becomes a well-tuned instrument delivering the lyrically delightful script with a virtuoso’s expertise.”
Edward II – Bohemian Theatre Ensemble
Chris Jones, Tribune – “In Chicago theatre circles, the emerging Bohemian Theatre Ensemble is known for uncommonly decent young actors. Head over to Edward II at the new BoHo Theatre behind the Heartland Cafe, and you’ll see the evidence – Sean Walton’s compelling Edward, Esteban Cruz’s disarmingly moving Gaveston, Sean Parker’s splendidly unpleasant Mortimer. If only these fine individual performances were in a sharper production with a more zestful and consistent point of view.”
Albert Williams, Reader – ”[I]n Elizabeth Christine Tanner’s earnest but uninspired staging for the Bohemian Theatre Ensemble, raw passion plays as sentimental romance, and the horrors Edward endures register as mere discomforts. The actors’ declamatory line readings and stiff posturing suggest they’re preoccupied with just getting through the verse dialogue without stumbling.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “If the adapter-director wants to convey Edward’s infatuation with his guy Gaveston, even at the expense of his rule, as about the cost of love, that’s nowhere evident in her leaden staging, which displays precious little textual comprehension. Trudging and tripping clumsily from one scene to the next, [director Elizabeth Christine] Tanner renders each ponderous scene (whether Mortimer’s plotting or Gaveston’s execution) tonally indistinguishable from every other. Perhaps by ‘love’ the director means having the actors who play Edward and Gaveston take off their shirts and dryly kiss to the musical backup of – what was that, the Out of Africa soundtrack? The actors flail, but their director throws them no interpretive lifesaver.”
Grease – Marriott Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Grease, of course, has a fabulous score that’s rousingly sung by [director Marc] Robin’s cast. The live version includes the addition of the songs from the 1978 movie and the best parts of Robin’s production come when he gets to use his enviable talents at building and layering a musical number… That said, the production, sadly, doesn’t include the kind of eye-popping, tour-de-force dance spectaculars we’ve come to expect from Robin – granted, he has set a high bar for himself over his years at this theatre. And there are times when you start to worry that the TV talent shows that have cemented this musical’s popularity for a new generation are also in danger of destroying it.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “The truth is, you could hand Robin the proverbial telephone directory and he’d somehow manage to make it dance. So put him in the driver’s seat of a show like Grease – with its jealous girls, greaser boys, teen romances, pajama parties, school dances and pelvis-popping sexcapades, all set to an early rock ‘n’ roll sound – and he will (and does) keep things in a state of perpetual motion. If the whole thing ends up feeling more silly than bittersweet, so be it.”
Scotty Zacher, Gay Chicago – “For Marriott Theatre’s slick production, director Marc Robin has chosen to regress back to the original Grease (though he did keep the three new songs intact), bringing together a vocally talented group of young, vivacious actors. Matthew Hyszik deftly pulls off the cool-but-vulnerable role of Danny Zuko. Brandy McClendon, playing Frenchy, is a natural on stage, with superb comedic timing. Other standouts include the energetic Jeremy Cohen playing Sonny and Tammy Mader portraying the spunky Rizzo. Only Megan Nicole Arnoldy, playing Sandy, disappoints. Her Sandy lacks focus, coming across more clueless than sweet and naive.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“Probably his most audacious experiment to date – one of both thrilling Ferris-wheel exhilaration and disappointing Ferris Bueller irresponsibility – Graney’s Mud is only slightly more confounding and ridiculous than a star-rating system used to recommend plays.” – Christopher Piatt reviewing The Hypocrites’ production of Mud in Time Out.