4-13-07
The Swan an Actor’s Tour de Force
John Kahara and Kim McKean in Trap Door’s The Swan. (Photo: Beata Pilch) Going to Trap Door, I expect a certain amount of weird. It’s standard fare for them – the strange. There will be something non-linear on stage, some nudity maybe, some expressionist touches in the designs. Whether or not this adds up to an enjoyable evening of theatre is another question. Those results tend to be less predictable. And enjoyment of this sort of material weighs more on the audience than on the presentation. It all comes down to individual taste.
There are some surprises to be found in their current production of The Swan. First of all, the playwright’s American. Trap Door’s oeuvre tends to be occupied primarily by rarely produced, Eastern European scribes. But Elizabeth Egloff hails from the distinctly non-exotic environs of New England. The story itself, however, has plenty of weird.
Dora (Kim McKean) lives out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by the possessions of her various ex-husbands. She’s in a dead-end relationship with a married milk-delivery guy, Kevin (Dana Wall). Everything changes, though, when a swan crashes into her front window. When she brings the swan in to nurse it back to health, it assumes the form of a man (John Kahara) and begins to learn to dress and talk and eventually tries to express his love for Dora.
The tough role here is Kahara’s, who has to convincingly transform from a swan in man form to…well…a swan who’s learned to act more like a man. And he succeeds impressively, providing the single best reason to see this production. His physicality successfully evokes bird at every turn and he’s clearly done his research. Simultaneously, he manages to evoke the pain of a swan who’s trapped in a man’s body.
As Dora and Kevin, McKean and Wall offer perfectly competent performances that don’t perhaps reach the same level as Kahara’s, but then they’re not really asked to go to the same lengths. In some ways they have a much more difficult task, as the script doesn’t offer much help for them, particularly Wall in the thankless and spineless role of Kevin.
The real problem here lies in the script. Egloff has a compelling hook, but that’s not enough to make a compelling play. First there’s a lack of consistency about small things: Is the swan a swan being played by a man or a swan that’s transformed into the shape of a man? It’s not entirely clear, as some characters see him first one way then the other. More fundamentally, what exactly is going on? The swan learns to behave more and more like a man, eventually attempting to and apparently succeeding in seducing Dana. Is this the soul of one of her ex-husbands returned to her? When Kevin does something to the swan – taking it away or perhaps killing it – Dana transforms and apparently flies off. But the why remains elusive.
These questions don’t have to be answered; a certain amount of ambiguity is a good thing in a play. But here, they feel untidy. We never move past the central question: What is this swan guy doing here? Co-directors Kahara and Jen Ellison craft some very nice stuff out of difficult material, but they don’t succeed in focusing a messy and floundering script.
The Swan, Trap Door Productions
Justin Hayford, Reader – “Playwright Elizabeth Egloff seems to have expended so much effort on making her play quirky that she overlooks coherence. When a swan crashes through the window of a rural Nebraska shack, terminally lonely Dora puts it in a basket in her living room – and it turns into a man who learns to play checkers, compliment her legs, and recite poetry. Like Egloff, directors Jen Ellison and John Kahara can’t find any metaphorical or psychological depth in this inert muddle.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “Yet what renders Swan more than an actor’s showcase is the relationship between the titular critter and Dora Hand (McKean)... As the swan awkwardly jerks, pulls and trembles into manhood, and as Dora later helplessly turns swanlike, the lovers touchingly adopt one another’s traits. While these characters could easily fall into the zany pit, they stay just on its edge. And although Swan struggles with its footing at first, slipping between the real and the comic unreal, once it finds its legs, it also, like Dora and her swan, finds its wings, lifting off on a lovely flight.”
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago – “To successfully communicate absurdist theatre, a reality must be created that can be connected to, no matter how surreal. Trap Door Theatre is a master at locating these realities and conveying them with mesmerizing style. But its production of Elizabeth Egloff’s The Swan runs hot and cold… Jen Ellison and John Kahara’s direction lacks the vision and focus needed to bring The Swan together as a fluid proposition. The actors are intensely engaged and often engaging, but the script never takes full shape. The conclusion shifts gears abruptly to a video clip that is less than successful or remarkable.”
Catey Sullivan, Windy City – “This is a messy, discomfiting work that one moment skirts the parameters of the squirm-inducing issue of bestiality, the next soars into absolute absurdity and the next turns kitchen-sink realistic… When Kahara, naked as a jaybird and trembling with avian flits, lands in Dora’s living room, she meets him with a mix of fear, awe and gasping wonder. In short order, the two lonely, beautiful creatures start playing checkers together and bonding over meals of lettuce and sprouts. It’s a weird, potentially alienating situation, but Trap Door makes it work, thanks in large part to an astounding performance by Kahara.”
Blues for an Alabama Sky, Eclipse Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Under Fedoruk’s honest direction, Blues here feels prescient in its study of the clash between liberal bohemians and conservative Southerners and the way broadly moralistic value systems can play out tragically in individual lives. Thanks to such richly earnest young performers as Charlotte Speigner (superb as Delia, a serious-minded progressive) and the silky-voiced Alfred Kemp (as Guy, a dreamy, gay designer), the show draws you into its world in the most enveloping of fashions.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – ”[Playwright Pearl] Cleage is at her best in the 1995 Blues for an Alabama Sky – a tale of romance, ambition, music, sexual politics and the Harlem Renaissance lifestyles of black intellectuals and bohemians about to be crushed by the Depression. This material meshes well with the playwright’s tendency toward melodrama, and her abiding interest in the politics of feminism adds spice. In addition, director Stephen Fedoruk has cast the show to perfection, with a group of mostly young black actors easily matching the skill of the veteran actors on stage at Court.”
Albert Williams, Reader – “In Pearl Cleage’s drama, a showgirl in Depression-era Harlem agrees to marry a man whose fundamentalist Christian values put him on a collision course with her circle, which includes a gay costume designer and a birth-control advocate. Steven Fedoruk’s staging for Eclipse Theatre Company gathers considerable emotional force thanks to intense, honest performances.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out – “Dumping exposition in the first act while leaving conflict to the second, Pearl Cleage outlines four black friends in Prohibition-era Harlem; the 90-minute first half is a sleepy affair. But when Blues awakes, pitting the liberal Northerners against a conservative Alabaman, Cleage’s fuzzy portrait snaps into sharper focus. Director Steven Fedoruk relies overly on the formulaic writing to set the tones; more finely detailed characterization would rouse us earlier. These actors are quite capable of such rousing.”
Memphis Soul (The Music of Stax Records), Black Ensemble Theater
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Black Ensemble knows how to throw a seasonal party. But even by the exuberant standards of this joyous theater, Memphis Soul – The Story of Stax Records is an uncommonly good time. As with most shows at this theater, the key here is musical director Jimmy Tillman and his powerhouse band. So many horns are shoehorned at the rear of the house, there’s barely room to slide a trombone. Nonetheless, Tillman and his crew forge a killer, all-live re-creation of the funky sound of no less than Shaft, that lyrically complex tale of a complicated man, understood only by his woman.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times – “It is worth the price of admission to the Black Ensemble Theater’s new surefire megahit, Memphis Soul (The Story of Stax Records), just to see Rick Stone play Rufus Thomas, the rhythm-and-blues and soul master who recorded on the Memphis, Tenn.-based Stax label throughout the 1960s and early ‘70s.”
Jamie Sotonoff, Daily Herald – “The show is more a concert than a theatrical performance. Its thin story – about a family-owned bar across the street from Stax, and the label’s 20th anniversary concert – serves only as a means to introduce the different songs. The script races through 15 years of history via ‘casual conversations.’ Not easy. Wisely, those scenes are kept short, leaving the music to dominate. The singing and high-energy dancing are excellent and contagiously enthusiastic (even the stage crew dances between sets, generating applause). But what sets this performance apart from others is the live band.”
Laura Molzahn, Reader – “In this party-time look at the heyday of Stax Records, the music is a foot-stompin’ mix of soul classics and lesser-known numbers. The slender narrative, by David Barr III, is structured around fictional 1980 events: a 20-year Stax reunion concert and the imminent sale of a bar, Pop’s Place. Jimmy Tillman’s brass-heavy eight-piece band keeps the energy high, and under Jackie Taylor’s direction the performers are funny and accomplished. Five dancers perform Rueben Echoles’s savvy choreography.”
Dennis Polkow, New City – “Most of the label’s top artists and hits are recreated with considerable authenticity as part of a fictitious 1980 20th-anniversary concert, although Otis Redding, killed in a 1967 Wisconsin plane crash, is represented via ‘Black Moses’ Isaac Hayes (former House of Blues featured singer Dwayne Lonzo), who not only penned many of the label’s hits for others, but who scored a coup for the label with an Academy Award for his theme from Shaft, which climaxes the show complete with full choreography. Such contagiously energetic moments as this and Sam & Dave’s ‘Soul Man’ more than compensate for lower moments in the Stax legacy that are represented.”
The Sea Gull, Raven Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune – “Raven Theatre plies its theatrical trade in a handsomely converted grocery store in Edgewater. And even when this community-minded troupe is doing Chekhov, it still seems to fit into the rhythm of the neighborhood. Under director Michael Menendian, The Sea Gull comes off as a spry, spunky, amusing little diversion full of the kinds of pugnacious young characters who populate the North Side, railing at the CTA.”
Mary Houlihan, Sun-Times – “Using Jean-Claude van Itallie’s accessible translation, Raven Theatre’s Michael Menendian attempts to revitalize Chekhov’s timeless drama. Despite some insightful performances, the result is not entirely satisfying. One never truly feels the emotional pull of the criss-crossed love triangles that inhabit this world of bourgeois bohemians so dear to Chekhov’s heart.”
Larry Bommer, Reader – “Michael Menendian’s staging of Jean-Claude van Itallie’s adaptation of Chekhov’s play, about two generations of artists misunderstanding one another, is determinedly tragicomic, honoring equally the playwright’s accurate diagnoses of human frailty and his grasp of humorously wrongheaded good intentions. A true Chekhovian ensemble, the dreamers and dupers here deserve one another.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City – “I’ve always maintained that a production of Chekhov that didn’t leave me laughing and crying in equal measures had seriously missed the mark. But Raven Theatre’s very funny revival, direction by Michael Menendian and straightforward translation by renowned playwriting teacher Jean-Claude van Itallie, has temporarily changed my mind… A fine and funny Chekhov, Raven’s revival would also be perfect for those who have never seen the author’s work on stage and who might mistakenly think of him as the dramatic equivalent of valium.”
Scotty Zacher, Gay Chicago – “Are these actors up to the task of this difficult play? For the most part, no. Nina, whose life falls apart by the end of the play, does not have the acting chops (yet?) to find the depths of her character, offering her final troubled lines as if she were drunk rather than overcome with total physical and mental exhaustion. Many of the characters come across as whiny. Director Michael Menendian has caused some confusion in trying to decide whether characters are presenting their lines as asides or rather talking directly to the audience.”
Quote of the Fortnight
”Sometimes talent and determination just aren’t enough.” – Hedy Weiss reviewing Bingo at the Apollo in the Sun-Times.