3-17-06
Still Life Too Still; Not Enough Life
Pegasus Player's Still Life
Well, that’s probably not a news flash to most anyone who’s been exposed to movies and television over the last 20-plus years. The screwed-up Vietnam vet has become almost a stereotype in contemporary American storytelling. In 1981, when playwright Emily Mann penned this monologue play, an in-depth depiction of the emotional forces at work on veterans and those around them was much less trodden ground. But any company going there today needs to recognize that contemporary audiences have been exposed to these kind of stories already.
In Still Life, Pegasus has chosen a story that not only covers some familiar ground, but it also has its own dramatic traps. The piece arose out of interviews conducted by Mann of a veteran (Mark, played by Juan Francisco Villa), his wife (Cheryl, played by Lisa Stevens) and mistress (Nadine, played by Janet Ulrich Brooks), and, like TimeLine’s Guantanamo, the piece suffers from an overflow of direct address. The characters never speak to each other, only to us. What’s more, also like Guantanamo, the overall point being made (that the effects of war on vets and those close to them linger on long after the war has ended) has effectively landed after 30 minutes or so. Everything thereafter simply reinforces, which isn’t reason enough to have 90 total minutes of material.
Director Alex Levy augments each character’s isolation by having them perform on separate raised circular platforms. They can’t reach each other, so even when one turns and acknowledges the other, it’s across a gulf. As a metaphor, the device works, but it removes any potential connection. There’s no suspense.
Also, none of these characters are particularly likeable. Mark’s redeeming features seem to lie primarily in his art, his relationship with his son and the fact that he’s mostly stopped doing awful things to his wife. Cheryl has so much anger, it’s hard to see any love that exists between her and Mark. Even Nadine’s fascination with Mark seems more clinical and less emotional.
Still Life could only succeed with powerhouse performances. Villa underplays consistently, a choice that works up to a point, but we never see the qualities that draw people to him. He’s just a regular guy, and it’s hard to buy him as a passionate, angry man who mailed the bone of a man he killed home to his parents. As Cheryl, Stevens is all venom. She seems to hate her husband, and her unceasing harangue becomes tiring. Brooks fares best as the other woman, mainly because Nadine is the least stereotypical of the three characters. What little humor comes through, mainly arrives via Brooks’ performance, but none of the performances are really transcendent.
Parallels between Vietnam and Iraq are inevitable, and sometimes even accurate, but producing a Vietnam play does not automatically comment on today’s circumstance. While Jack Magaw’s set and Denise Karczewski’s lights offer a handsome setting and Levy coaxes solid, if not inspired, performances from her cast, Still Life doesn’t bring enough to the table.
Still Life—Pegasus Players
Chris Jones, Tribune—“But Still Life is rough going. In this production, it settles over you like a gray sky on a February day in Chicago. Why? For a start, its prosaic, docudrama style has been superseded and improved upon in recent years. It’s just not all interesting anymore—from a formative perspective, at least. But while the trio of actors have their moments, there are also some casting issues here... The biggest problem, though, is the show’s lack of tension. Its painful truths drone on, monologues coming in waves without dark humor, variety of tone, nor the sense of the dramatic highs and lows that are a feature of every war we ever wage.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“All this is at the core of Still Life, a fugue for three voices that might best be described as grim, grimmer and grimmest. Mann’s play may be an admirable attempt to deal with lives that are anything but ‘still’—that are, in fact, a grenade pin away from detonating. But it is so unrelenting in its bleak world view and so full of shipwrecked lives that long before the 90-minute work is over you may want to bolt from the theater.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“Mann’s documentary-style drama, which premiered in 1980 at Goodman Theatre, gets a timely revival courtesy of Pegasus Players, whose well-articulated (credit Alex Levy for his concise, clear-headed vision), well-acted production shows the story remains as relevant as ever. Like the Neo-Futurist’s current offering, the World War II-centered A Child’s History of Bombing and Steppenwolf Theatre’s Vietnam-inspired Last of the Boys from 2005, the Iraq war underscores Still Life.”
Kerry Reid, Reader—“Emily Mann’s earnest 1980 drama, based on interviews, focuses on the effects of war on a Vietnam vet, his wife, and his lover. Mann’s script is full of uncomfortable details that never coalesce into a cohesive narrative. In Alex Levy’s overly polite staging, the three actors are trapped for most of the play’s 90 minutes in unvarying vocal patterns as they deliver monologues about wartime atrocities, spousal abuse, and alcoholism.”
Josephine Tonight—Theatre Building Chicago
Chris Jones, Tribune—“One hopes someone picks this thing up—maybe in St. Louis, maybe a regional musical house. There’s an honorable performance from Monique Whittington, who has the impossible task of playing both Baker’s mother and a blues singer. Melanie McCullough isn’t fully equipped for the title role, but she gives her all, as do the supporting players. As [playwright Sherman] Yellen well knows, times are hard for straight up, old-fashioned Broadway yarns. But this is a good story and a stirring score. It deserves a full life.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Baker’s initial rise to fame and fortune is at the heart of Josephine Tonight!, the hugely appealing musical created by Sherman Yellen (book and lyrics) and Wally Harper (music). First presented here as a concert reading in August 2002 as part of the Theatre Building’s annual showcase of new musicals, it has shed its original title, Tumpie’s Dance, and now arrives as a fully staged workshop bearing serious Broadway potential... With its pure musical comedy style, and its funny, sexy, exuberant score, Josephine Tonight! has ‘hit’ written all over it.”
Lawrence Bommer, Reader—“This high-spirited, well-intentioned show chronicles the period when Baker was evolving from an East St. Louis panhandler to the toast of Paris. Harper’s mercurial score moves from high-stepping cakewalks and hard-boiled blues to the ‘Africanized’ jazz that seemed to Parisians primitive and pure. Monique Whittington offers powerhouse performances as Josephine’s mother and as her vaudeville benefactress, carrying Steve Scott’s workmanlike staging of this creakily constructed work. But Melanie McCullough’s harsh Josephine seems more predatory Motown dream girl than sophisticated headliner at La Revue Negre. Not tonight, Josephine.”
Louis Weisberg, Free Press—“With two powerful, diva-esque performers selling one of the best new musical scores in recent memory, Theatre Building Chicago has a sure-fire hit on its hands with Josephine Tonight! This is despite the fact that the book, which follows African-American jazz goddess Josephine Baker from ragtime in East St. Louis to riches and fame in Paris, is as thin as its star. The production is presented with such energy and conviction that no one is likely to complain.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“Yellen’s skillful and clever lyrics—they are his strong suit—and the tunes by the late Wally Harper are lilting and pleasant, but the authors have made two curious choices. First, the score is contemporary in familiar Broadway idioms. Harper didn’t write pseudo-period music (or use actual period music) to give the show 1920s context and flavor, which it needs. Next, except for two brief snippets, Yellen and Harper do not recreate Baker’s stage performances, so we never see or feel the originality and charisma that made her a star. We are told about them, but we don’t experience them for ourselves.”
Killers—Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co.
Nina Metz, Tribune—“His work here is skillful, and the production boasts some laudable performances, especially Richard Cotovsky’s stoic, sad-eyed Blackwell. But scrape away the play’s colorful layers of character and noir homage, and you’re left with a random sketch of behaviors that engage neither the head nor the soul. That’s not to say this production is without entertainment value. It is loud and obvious, but like a Tom Waits ballad, the cast and design team (particularly young set designer Grant Sabin) capture an atmospheric seediness and melancholy that are engrossing and wry.”
Zac Thompson, Reader—“Bizarre and gleefully sadistic, John Olive’s deranged noir is what might have resulted if David Lynch and John Webster had ever collaborated on a trashy dark comedy. Set in the 1950s, the play revolves around a writer of pulp fiction living in a run-down boardinghouse filled with desperate, half-mad lowlifes who could have crawled from the pages of his own crime stories. This highly entertaining production, directed by Robert Breuler, revels in the story’s seediness. The actors manage to emit a kind of dissolute charm even as their characters reveal themselves to be every bit as mean and squalid as their surroundings.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Nope, what makes or breaks presentations in this genre is the propensity of its denizens to communicate in grunts, monosyllables, sighs, screams, moans, hisses and an array of inarticulate noises nevertheless steeped in significant subtext that we must comprehend immediately. Fortunately, director Robert Breuler is an old hand at this mode of discourse, having himself played the struggling writer in the seminal 1988 Steppenwolf production. Under his razor-edged guidance, a seasoned ensemble chart the progress of Olive’s lost souls with the sleek and unhurried grace of an alley cat stalking its prey.”
St. Scarlet—American Theater Company
Chris Jones, Tribune—“After a few early stutters, Rick Snyder’s droll and nicely toned ATC production is a shrewd match for the work’s style. The uber-kinetic Gwendolyn Whiteside is way, way over the top as young Ruby Cummins, a weird 21-year-old with a mission, but she sticks with it until it works. She’s consistently funny and, by the end of the night, a genuine pleasure... This isn’t the next great play, nor a life-changing experience. But if you have a taste for the helplessly offbeat—and an affinity for the eccentricities of the Upper Midwest—it’s a funny way to pass 90 minutes. It’s smart. It’s fresh. And it makes you feel like Chicago is positively tropical at this time of year.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Julie Jordan’s St. Scarlet is the kind of compulsively wacky, way-out, wild-at-heart comedy that used to be standard fare for Steppenwolf Theatre during its long adolescence. Though little more than a quirky, hyperactive vehicle designed for full-fledged acting out, the exuberant production that opened Monday night at American Theatre Company—under the deftly high-pitched direction of Steppenwolf veteran Rick Snyder—exerts a certain magnetic pull. It also demonstrates that a London broil of a script can indeed be tenderized by a whole lot of skillful chewing.”
Kerry Reid, Reader—“Quirks, kitsch, tics, and tears combine in Julia Jordan’s comedy, receiving its Midwest premiere under Rick Snyder’s direction. The play revolves around three squabbling Irish-American siblings in rural Minnesota awaiting their mother’s death. Jordan doesn’t so much create characters as indicate dialects, and the plot twists are as visible in the distance as grain elevators on the northern plains. But once the cast remembers to stop shouting past one another there are some enjoyable moments.”
Louis Weisberg, Free Press—“What makes this play so entertaining is the unpredictable nature of that predictable chaos. In the quirky Irish tradition of John Millington Synge, playwright Julia Jordan gives us a character-driven work that finds humor in the dark recesses of the human soul and dares us to laugh. American Theater Company, which specializes in ensemble pieces like this one, does credit to the work with a slick, handsome presentation. The cast is solid, although the women fare somewhat better than the men—probably because the male characters read as if they were written by a woman.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“This theater likes to do risky material—Chekhov, serious small musicals, edgy plays—that many would deem dangerous if you’re located in a strip mall on the North Shore.”—Chris Jones reviewing Apple Tree’s production of The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife in the Tribune.