5-9-08
Intriguing Cast Brings Video to Stage
There seem to be two basic schools of thought about theatre and the incorporation of video. On the one hand stand those who feel more technology is the future. Theatre will naturally incorporate video as the tools to film and display it become more affordable. And modern stories are more likely to include video as it becomes an ever-more pervasive part of our world. On the other hand stand those who feel strongly that theatre should stay clear of film. Theatre has its own strengths and a hybrid approach usually hurts more than it helps.
Those who agree with the latter opinion probably won’t enjoy InFusion’s Intrigue With Faye, now receiving its Midwest premiere in the Royal George Gallery Space. This is a story that doesn’t just incorporate video…it’s about video. Kean’s an aspiring documentarian. He lives with his girlfriend Lissa, an aspiring psychologist. Unfortunately, Kean can’t limit himself to one woman and has spent two of their four years together pursuing intrigues, as he calls them, with other women. Racked with guilt, he convinces Lissa to participate in a truth pact, as a way of forcing himself to come clean. Predictably, she leaves. Just as predictably, she comes back. In an attempt to maintain their relationship, Kean persuades Lissa to attempt an experiment. They will both film themselves all the time and then review the footage together. This way he has to be honest with her all the time. In reality, it will force them both to be honest with themselves.
Playwright Kate Robin has an interesting idea. And once you leap over some of the omissions (Lissa never addresses the possibility of venereal disease; they actually manage to film themselves all the time without running into awkward moments, etc.) there’s a relatively intriguing story. In less able hands both Kean and Lissa could become unbearably whiney, but Steve O’Connell and Leah Nuetzel have a real comfort with themselves and each other. Robin has a nice ear for dialogue that leads to the naturally funny quip. And the occasional feeling that you’re watching a sitcom pilot doesn’t detract from the story. Occasionally, things get bogged down in scenes that feel way too much like therapy. But Robin dodges the pat ending for something much less certain and, in my opinion, more satisfying.
Director Mitch Golob has overcome the main challenge of this play: casting. O’Connell has an easy charm and Nuetzel grounds her character’s potentially stereotypical neuroses. You also buy them as a couple, without which Intrigue With Faye would fall apart. Golob interweaves the video well; if anything it’s underused. The show’s leisurely transitions could maybe have benefited from something to watch. In the second act, when the cameras are all focused onto the set as well, you can see actors moving their props about, which lends a sort of meta-theatricality to the affair.
Intrigue with Faye only succeeds as far as its cast overcomes the script’s limitations, but Golob has a fine pair of actors for this technological two-hander. This isn’t a new story, but the incorporation of video at least gives it a new sheen.
Intrigue With Faye, InFusion Theatre Company
Kerry Reid, Tribune—“Mitch Golob’s staging for InFusion Theatre Company relies heavily on Lucas Merino’s clever video design, displayed on a large-screen television and several smaller monitors hung at angles over the stage. Leah Nuetzel and Steve O’Connell work hard to make these characters connect with each other, and they also seem admirably comfortable working in tandem with the video segments, but the repetitive tissue-thin dialogue Robin gives them makes it difficult for us to care. ‘We’re fascinated because we’re narcissists,’ says Kean of their mutual attachment to the project. Sure. But that very narcissism keeps them from being remotely fascinating to an audience in the age of YouTube.”
Justin Hayford, Reader—“Lissa and her boyfriend decide that the best way to resolve their ‘trust issues’ is to videotape themselves 24 hours a day. Playwright Kate Robin piles up the implausabilities and psychobabble as her characters spend two hours dissecting a relationship she never bothers to dramatize. Thank goodness InFusion Theatre director Mitch Golob teases such disarmingly genuine performances from Leah Nuetzel and Steve O’Connell, making the evening improbably enjoyable.”
Valerie Jean Johnson, New City—“Besides the ludicrous premise (are we really to believe that psychotherapist Lissa could so easily gain her patients’ consent to tape their sessions for the betterment of her personal life?!?!?), the production lacks essential chemistry between the two lead actors, making it difficult to understand why in the world they got together in the first place (much less want to stay in their, frankly, sick relationship)—and nearly impossible to care.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“Even if the technical A.V. plausibility of Robin’s premise weren’t a major problem, and even if the let’s-film-everything-about-our-lives advice wouldn’t make even the vainest patient ditch his therapist, Robin has neither control of her voyeurism metaphors nor, amazingly, discernible interest in either of her characters, whom she pens as generically as imaginable. Director Golob, who brought The Last Supper to life last spring, employs two actors who approach the unvarying material with as much variety as possible; without them, Intrigue would be a tough sit indeed.”
Catey Sullivan, Windy City—“You need a sturdy tolerance for navel-gazing, narcissism and psychobabble to get through the ballad of Lissa and Kean. Intrigue would be fresher and sharper at 90 minutes or less—at two hours, it pushes the audience’s capacity for tortured confessions and painful self-revelations to its limit. Yet, as directed by Mitch Golob, Intrigue is, well, mostly intriguing. The video/live-theater combination is risky business. But Golob, working with video designer Lucas Merino, pulls off a seamless combination of the two as the Lissa and Kean film their every move in an attempt to strengthen their foundering relationship.”
Dead Man’s Cell Phone, Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune—“Jessica Thebus’ Steppenwolf production has the advantage of [Polly] Noonan, who is to [playwright Sarah] Ruhl something akin to what Amy Morton is to Tracy Letts. The actress acts for the writer and the writer writes for the actress. For good or ill, they are wholly in sync. It is not a perfect production—Ruhl’s shows work best when realistic precision gives way to seismic change. This staging lacks veracity in places… And whatever physical metaphors are in play aren’t fully formed. Still, Noonan’s weird journey through fantasy and love (she has a fling with the corpse’s live brother, played by the savvy Coburn Goss) is strangely evocative of the human condition.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“The blackly comic situation Ruhl has conjured to bring all these notions into play is more than a little eccentric and altogether fanciful, and director Jessica Thebus has balanced the plaintive, the edgy and the full-out loony aspects of it all with a deft hand… Ruhl can veer towards the overly precious at times. But more often than not the sheer uncensored, Magritte-like zaniness of her imagination (wonderfully enhanced here by Scott Bradley’s set and Linda Roethke’s costumes) spices up the essential tenderness of her vision. Ironically, she has devised her very own version of cyberspace.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Polly Noonan plays Jean, who happens to be sitting in a restaurant when a businessman at the next table dies. His cell phone rings, she takes the call herself, and ends up hopelessly enmeshed with the dead man’s family. The essential subjects here are love and death. The speech that conveys Sarah Ruhl’s emerging optimism about both constitutes the weakest, least believable passage in the play. Which is too bad because practically everything preceding the speech adds up to a delightful, clear-eyed entertainment. The trick, then, is not to let this final passage negate the play’s pleasures.”
Kris Vire, Time Out—“This is the Sarah Ruhl work that has finally made us ask, What will it take for the American theater to realize the playwright has no clothes? To be fair, Cell Phone is not as infuriating as, say, Ruhl’s Passion Play was at the Goodman last fall. But neither is Cell Phone trying so hard to have something to say. This play, in fact, doesn’t seem to be trying very hard to do anything at all. It feels like a toss-off, a writing exercise Ruhl might have worked on between real plays.”
Venus Zarris, Gay Chicago—“Dead Man’s Cell Phone plays like a light version of Ruhl’s previous plays. It is peppered with her signature terse dialogue, compelling monologues, explosively absurd humor and thought provoking insight, but the story is more contrived, the characters are less developed and therefore the play is less of a complete dramatic journey than she has come to be renowned for. Director Jessica Thebus compiles an outstanding cast to extract every morsel of brilliance from the script and an excellent design team to create a simple and elegant manifestation of its physical reality.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“Former Chicagoan Sarah Ruhl is nothing if not theatrically ambitious. Her latest play, Dead Man’s Cell Phone, is smaller, far less sociopolitical and more focused on individual stories. It engages cosmic subject matter, including life, death and the afterlife, but it’s schematic in structure and character, like one of the better sitcoms. Dead Man’s Cell Phone is pithy, really funny, well-performed and well-directed (by Jessica Thebus, who rarely does wrong). It’s a good night out, but not one that can withstand close scrutiny. Similar to plays such as Art and Proof, it’s sure to be a widely-produced at regional houses nationwide.”
Macbeth, Greasy Joan and Company
Kerry Reid, Tribune—“Julieanne Ehre delivers a bloody good take on Shakespeare’s fastest tragedy for Greasy Joan and Company. Kevin Depinet’s sterile surgical-theater setting makes an appropriately chilly environment for this tale of the pitiless consequences of unchecked ambition. It’s not a flawless Macbeth by any means. But there are some inspired choices here… Kevin Cox‘s magnificent performance as Macduff brought tears to my eyes during his ‘all my pretty ones’ lament for his slaughtered family. This is Shakespeare that has both style and substance on its side.”
Albert Williams, Reader—“Shakespeare’s tragedy, about a Scottish warlord and his wife destroyed by murderous ambition, is distinguished by striking design and vigorous action in Greasy Joan & Company’s modern-dress rendition. Director Julieanne Ehre fully embraces the play’s supernatural aspect. The 13-member ensemble isn’t always up to Shakespeare’s language, but Dana Wall’s Macbeth and Kevin Cox’s Macduff convey the power and pathos of Shakespeare’s poetry during their furious climactic battle.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“Director Julieanne Ehre’s setting for the production—a stark and clinical asylum that could be seen as a physical metaphor for the ‘Macbeth as insane’ school of thought—doesn’t help and works against everything (Dana) Wall seems to be transmitting. But at least he’s transmitting something intelligible, being one of the few actors in the company who doesn’t mangle the rhythms of his verse and is able to achieve some musicality… Most of the remaining cast delivered poorly spoken and sloppy verse. All in all, a valiant stab of a production but one that fails to leave any noticeable mark.”
Megan Powell, Time Out—“A solid but unexceptional framework—a battle-worn and vaguely futuristic world—deploys Macbeth’s increasingly crazed guilt, his Lady’s own ‘vaulting ambition,’ their gory rise to the throne and an ever-growing pile of bodies in suits and ties, skirts and indistinct military garb, all against a blank slate of a set. Ehre’s concept takes the play’s curves somewhat perfunctorily, while, to its sometime detriment, maintaining full speed ahead. But it’s just as well the show’s not over-conceptualized; instead, Ehre has packed it with capable, watchable and youngish cast members who take full advantage of the play’s textured supporting characters.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“The craftsmanship reflected in these performances do much to redeem the hazards associated with low-budget Shakespeare—chiefly, the necessary multiple-casting that often blurs the identities of the uniformly-youthful onstage personnel—as well as the conceptual gimmicks that young artists find so irresistible: Banquo’s ghost done up in zombie makeup, for example, or Hecate’s frequently excised cameo retained for no discernible reason beyond an opportunity for a male actor to do a drag turn. Innovations faring somewhat better are Kevin Asselin’s thrilling final duel, with the combatants employing Filipino ‘flow-fighting’ technique, and Andrew Hansen’s score of ghostly whispers and slamming gates.”