2-15-08
What Flaws? Fatboy rules!
Steve Pickerin and Jennifer Engstrom in A Red Orchid Theatre's Fatboy
You see a play and your first reaction—your visceral, gut reaction—that’s your opinion. Right there. And everything you say after it is an attempt to justify or explain that reaction. That’s why theatre people get so frustrated with Chris Jones’ support of House. Clearly he’s had that positive visceral reaction to their work. But then you read his reviews and you hear his criticisms and you can’t figure where the positive came from. Sometimes that’s how it goes. I can’t explain why I don’t like Glenn Close. Chris Jones can’t satisfactorily explain why he likes House. Just is
So here’s my visceral reaction to A Red Orchid’s latest production:
Fatboy’s fucking awesome.
Now to justifications.
In a lot of ways, Fatboy is an 80-minute mix of Ubu Roi, Alfred Jarry’s before-his-time absurdist offense, and South Park, with a grown up Cartman taking over the world. Fatboy’s fat. And he doesn’t think very far ahead. He just eats and when something gets in his way, he kills it. Through three acts we follow him and his wife Fudgie as he eats—and she screws—his way to world domination.
Towering (horizontally in particular) across the stage, Steve Pickering nails a performance that’s as big as his fat suit, while still grounding Fatboy in his own reality. Other actors in Guy Van Swearingen’s cast might commit the comedic sin of pushing, with the notable exception of Doug Vickers’ wonderfully underplayed judge, but Pickering’s creation is undoubtedly real, if completely grotesque. Jennifer Engstrom, as Fudgie, doesn’t achieve the same level of truth, although she certainly has her moments. And Van Swearingen, along with Pickering, hits the high points perfectly, particularly the abrupt, but inevitable, transformation of Fatboy into every American president of the last 60-odd years, and the chilling final monologue.
Not that Clancy’s script is perfect by any means. If it was five minutes longer, it would be too long. Some of the theatrical in-jokes feel unnecessary, and he repeats his points a few times more often than is really needed. Even the final monologue—as effective as it is—could easily be trimmed. But the alchemy of Clancy’s world and Pickering’s Fatboy mix together into something that hit me fundamentally as funny and frightening all at once. As we experience the most contested political season in decades, it’s smart to remind ourselves that Fatboy has always won. But I’d say we need to keep fighting that fight. See Fatboy. He’s in all of us.
Fatboy, A Red Orchid Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“Under Guy Van Swearingen’s aptly whacked-out direction, these two fabulous actors are extremely funny. Which is just as well, because their script could use more cohesive nutrition… One could certainly see how this played well in Scotland—where its implicit social commentary on the excesses of American life would have resonance. And to bury political commentary in scatological and sex gags certainly is a distinctive mode of operation. But despite the laughs and some received wisdom, I found Fatboy ultimately tiresome. I suspect you’ll figure out where it is going and arrive there before the nasty fat people.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Director Guy Van Swearingen keeps the whole circus spinning at full throttle, with Doug Vickers, John Luzar and Mark Vallarta adding to the hijinks. But while 20 minutes of this stuff might be a hoot, 100 minutes (including a heartfelt epilogue) is deadening. Fatboy could do with a serious diet.”
Justin Hayford, Reader—“You’re not likely to hear the words motherfucker, cocksucker, or fuckadoodle cockfuck shouted as frequently, or with such disarming resonance, as you will in John Clancy’s deliciously puerile play about gluttonous, power-crazed Fatboy and his suppurating, whorish wife, Fudgie, as they rise from penniless buffoons to planetary despots. The feebleminded, childlike, menacing creations of Steve Pickering and Jennifer Engstrom as Fatboy and Fudgie are thrillingly entertaining and disturbingly human.”
Nina Metz, New City—“Everyone’s entitled to a tantrum now and then—even playwrights; or perhaps especially playwrights—and I certainly dig Clancy’s remarkably profane verbosity; the script reads like a longshoreman’s guide to insults. And it’s not that I disagree with the play’s larger point. But man, does Clancy take his time getting there—and when he finally does, he hammers that sucker like a man paid by the swing. Guy Van Swearingen’s more-is-more direction doesn’t seem to be doing the play any favors, but it is certainly audacious.”
Kris Vire, Time Out—“It’s also funny as hell, thanks to a merrily metatheatrical self-consciousness (as when Fatboy complains during his trial that he’s being upstaged (“I am Fatboy, and I am titular!”) and blithe profanity (“My enemies, a cabal of cock-sucking whores, lash out at me even here!”). The game Pickering, sweating his balls off in an enormous fat suit, is terrifically offensive, and we mean that as a compliment, but he’s nearly outshone in repellency by Engstrom’s virtuosic bitch. They’re both great. The fuckers.”
Columbinus, Raven Theatre
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Written by Stephen Karam and PJ Paparelli, directed with slash-and-burn fury by Greg Kolack and performed by one of those immensely gifted young dream-team casts that seems to emerge from the woodwork here on a continual basis, the show achieves what the much-ballyhooed Broadway musical Spring Awakening never even comes close to doing. Profoundly real and genuinely disturbing, it zooms in on contemporary American adolescents in a state of extreme alienation and rage, and imagines a rite of spring so primal, brutal and chillingly modern that you are bound to leave the theater shaken.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“Kolack’s fierce, kinetically staged production features excellent young actors including: Todd Aiello as the brain; Devon Candura as the beauty; Michael Peters as the jock; David Rispoli as the joker; Laura Schwartz as the Christian and Jenny Strubin as the artist. Last but not least is [Jamie] Abelson’s galvanizing turn as the unhinged Harris, who emanates rage from every pore and [Matthew] Klinger’s searing performance as Klebold, consumed by hate. Scrabbling, prowling and stomping across the stage screaming ‘You made me. You made us’ they go from pitiful to frightening to hateful. Bravo.”
Albert Williams, Reader—“Written by Stephen Karam and P.J. Paparelli of the United States Theatre Project, which premiered the work in 2005, the play employs choral speaking, monologues, and music as well as traditional dialogue. Director Greg Kolack’s Chicago premiere makes effective use of multimedia design by Mike Tutaj and boasts riveting performances by Jamie Abelson and Matthew Klingler, who convey Eric and Dylan’s vulnerability as well as the monstrous rage growing within them.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“The best compliment I can pay here is that it’s a sign of a powerful performance that although you know how things will tragically end, you nonetheless dread and feel every minute as the show inches towards its inevitable conclusion. And what’s more remarkable is that this is achieved without Kolack’s strong ensemble or his equally strong staging ever falling into the pitfalls of manipulation or didacticism. By the end, I guarantee you’ll be emotionally spent, and all the more better because of it. Recommend it to anyone but especially a teenager you care about.”
Novid Parsi, Time Out—“As this and other well-meaning docuplays attest, it’s harder to imagine internal lives than it is to document them. Offering the gravity of its subject in lieu of character development, columbinus uses pop songs like ‘Mad World’ to do the emotional work the docuplay itself forfeits. The most effective moment is an actual 911 call a teacher made during the shootings; by comparison, despite Kolack’s decent, committed cast, this ‘real-life’ play feels like it’s pretending. By the end, Dylan and Eric are little more than what the news clips showed us: two fucked-up kids in trench coats. As a result, the shooting scene doesn’t seem revelatory, but voyeuristic.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Kinetically shaped by Greg Kolack, Raven Theatre’s local premiere could not be more in your face and heart… Mike Tutaj’s all-purpose slides and sounds depict chatroom conversations, cliques and stereotypes, instant messages, Web sites where Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris easily learned to make pipe bombs, the video game Doom, the violence-drenched fantasies that should have been red flags, pix of the killers as they prepare for total slaughter, text and audio of a horrific call to 911 and, most hauntingly, photos of the 13 dead who thought they were safe in a school.”
Dolly West’s Kitchen, Timeline Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune—“There are times when Dolly West’s kitchen doesn’t feel large enough to hold so many fraught romances and throbbing passions. And I wouldn’t claim that the TimeLine cast, under the direction of Kimberly Senior, fully drives home every beat of the myriad emotional crises… But this remains a rewarding show produced with integrity in an aptly intimate theater. TimeLine’s production values have increased exponentially in recent months, and Brian Sydney Bembridge’s set beautifully evokes the milieu of a rural enclave, just 14 miles from the newly established Northern Ireland, where troops amass.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Far more than any meal (other than the liquid variety), it is emotional turmoil that is served up in Dolly West’s Kitchen, playwright Frank McGuinness’ simultaneously black Irish and deeply Chekhovian drama, now in director Kimberly Senior’s altogether sterling production at TimeLine Theatre. And it is in this kitchen—the hub of activity in the West family’s comfortable home in County Donegal—that individual character and fate are set on ‘high simmer.’”
Kerry Reid, Reader—“Kimberly Senior’s Chicago premiere brings together an appealing cast that finds the Chekhovian notes of regret threaded through the rough wit of McGuinness’ dialogue. Kathleen Ruhl shines as matriarch Rima, and though the energy slackens in the second act, the terrific compassion McGuinness has for his characters never flags.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“Kimberly Senior is wise to focus her production on the triptych of love stories without ever allowing the play to fall into mawkish sentimentality. On the contrary, her trademark light directorial touch, uncluttered staging as well as deft handling of male homosexual relationships, makes for a sustained sense of ‘feeling’ throughout. The ensemble is first-rate, with Kat McDonnel in the title role, Kathleen Ruhl as her mother and Cliff Chamberlain as the British officer particularly memorable. If you see only one Irish play this winter you should make it this one.”
Kris Vire, Time Out—“Senior’s cinematic staging is always smart and sometimes breathtaking, and her more-than-capable actors bring wit and pathos to the stage in equal measure. (That Kat McDonnell, Cliff Chamberlain and Danica Ivancevic seem too young for their roles as Dolly, Alec and Esther, respectively, is made up for by their formidable performances.)”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Staging this Chicago premiere of a play that premiered in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre nine years ago, Kimberly Senior is hard pressed to bring clarity to McGuinness’ forced crises and rapid resolutions (and, too often, to make the Irish accents comprehensible)… Hardly as neutral as their homeland, the characters are torn apart by the playwright as much as by each other. Still, these nine TimeLine players, hurling themselves into their characters like bunjee jumpers, are equal to the whiplash plot.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—“If one can overlook the play’s formulaic faults, you’ll get some very polished performances and lovely production values in TimeLine’s bountiful take on Dolly West’s Kitchen. Director Kimberly Senior coaxes technically proficient and emotional performances from the very attractive cast. Only Chamberlain’s lightweight British accent sticks out as inauthentic, while the two actresses cast as the West sisters look a tad too young to reflect their life experiences.”
Missing Man, Live Bait Theater
Kerry Reid, Reader—“’Usually women don’t get on a motorcycle unless a man is involved,’ observes Mary Scruggs near the beginning of her one-woman travelogue about Run for the Wall, an annual pilgrimage by Vietnam-vet bikers to the D.C. war memorial. Her flood of names and details sometimes threatens to overwhelm the narrative, as do occasional flashbacks to her complicated relationship with her father. But Edward Thomas-Herrera’s simple staging and Scruggs’s self-aware yet warm persona make for an involving, witty, often insightful journey with an unexpected emotional payoff.”
Lisa Buscani, New City—“The show drags at times, bogged down by the trip’s logistics; a reference to Scruggs’ depression seems out of place. But those missteps don’t diminish her rich sensory record of a day on the road, or a moving examination of vet memorabilia. Missing Man is a winning effort to remember and honor those we’ve lost.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“But despite Scruggs’s admirable self-effacement and genial stage presence—her we’re-all-in-this-together delivery style is comfort food even when it’s not completely polished—she isn’t able to crisply delineate her characters either as a writer or a performer. Despite painful backstories and tattooworthy nicknames, the men on the tour blur together like, well, a bunch of guys on motorcycles. It’s a relief to see a solo artist who isn’t desperate to convince us that she’s quirky or that her experience is the most important one in the room. But what should be a hard-hitting look at American cast-offs feels instead born to be mild.”
Catey Sullivan, Windy City—“Directed by Edward Thomas-Herrera, Scruggs is a warm, engaging storyteller. But Missing Man is more pleasant than galvanizing, and incongruously weightless for a story rooted in the casualties of war. And while Scruggs’ final epiphany is eminently worthwhile, it is not unlike the pat messages found on those inspirational workplace posters featuring photogenic sunsets or vast swaths of emerald ocean.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“The Hypocrites are to modern theater what Martha Graham was to dance and The Replacements were to rock and roll—truly original.”—Brian Kirst reviewing The Hypocrites production of Miss Julie in the Free Press.