1-30-09
New Leaf's New Play a Touch Too Much
At what point does theatre meet gapers’ block? We all seem to have the desire to slow down and see the tragedy that’s hit the other guy. And Toni Press-Coffman’s Touch starts at that point. Kyle has lost his wife at the young age of 24 to a terrible crime. Touch takes him from the moment of the tragedy through to the arrest of the murderers who killed her until he reaches a modest level of acceptance.
At some point it all becomes a bit overwhelming. Kyle’s main outlet becomes his relationship with a prostitute who vaguely reminds him of his wife. His best friend and sister-in-law try to reach out to him, but the story here is that everyone deals with grief in their own ways and at their own speed.
Jessica Hutchinson’s cast shoulders the load willingly, which is admirable, but makes the story no easier to watch. Dan Granata, in the title role, buries himself in the emotional storm, but still manages to be likeable. Matthew Gottlieb, as Kyle’s best friend Benny, finds a nice variety of levels. Kristina Johnson and Jacqueline Stone have the most difficult tasks with their underwritten roles, particularly Stone as the hopelessly stereotyped prostitute-with-a-heart-of-gold.
Given the improvised performance space, Hutchinson’s production is graced with top notch designs, particularly lighting designer Jared B. Moore, who transforms the space, empty but for set designer Michelle Lilly O’Brien’s pattern of rocks laid out on the floor. The sound design, from Nick Keenan, is a bit overdone in spots, but generally adds nicely to the mood of the piece.
The production’s main flaws stem from the script. The storyline—grief then acceptance—is so familiar that its overall arc offers no surprises. While Press-Coffman adds some unique riffs—a Keats-loving astronomer at the center and a grisly murder with a bit of a mystery therein—it’s not enough to overcome the inherent predictability. The cast is also saddled with a convention of speaking to the audience, frequently in the past tense, which does nothing to create any forward momentum. And the most interesting relationship—between Kyle and his dead wife—never makes it onto stage. The playwright also doesn’t seem to have a strong grasp of the science that roots Kyle’s existence, and finally a rather romanticized prostitute character, despite good work from Stone, just isn’t believable.
Despite the skill of the artists involved, Touch is a tough go. There’s only so long we can spend watching the effect of a terrible tragedy. And once that limit is reached there’s not much left to keep us invested in Touch.
Touch, New Leaf Theatre
Zac Thompson, Reader—“Playwright Toni Press-Coffman sets up some potentially rich contrasts (the immensities of space vs. close physical contact, rationalism vs. the spirit) but her method of storytelling—heavy on past-tense, first-person narration, and light on action—lacks urgency. The result is an intelligent but flaccid drama. Jessica Hutchinson’s production for New Leaf Theatre improves on the script considerably, making excellent use of light and shadow (another of the script’s contrasts) and featuring sensitive, detailed performances from its cast of four.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“Touch’s first act is top-heavy with the kind of “Life is like the Milky Way, and here’s how…” speeches that distract from the story of a widower whose pain leads him into a sympathetic relationship with a prostitute (steely, tender Stone). But Granata handles these humorless passages with dignity and restraint, and proves a solid anchor for this accomplished, quiet quartet of performances. Although Hutchinson’s production can’t quite out-distance Press-Coffman’s myriad monologues, the still moments in which Jared Moore’s lights make a little bit of fog look like impressionistic brush strokes floating off a canvas and into thin air make up the difference.”
Nina Metz, New City—“[P]laywright Press-Coffman has good timing, and she starts to add other characters to the mix: Bennie (Kyle’s frequently hilarious best friend); Serena; and Kathleen. Suddenly, there’s real humor in the script amidst the taint of Zoe’s horrible fate. Bennie, steadfast and true, is one-of-a-kind (played by Matthew Gottlieb). He and Kyle have been friends since they were kids. As they got older, Kyle became more withdrawn while Bennie became “more”—pause—“Italian.” It’s a funny line that Gottlieb sells like a pristine Rolex knockoff. Without Bennie, the play would leave a bitter, maudlin aftertaste.”
Brian Kirst, Free Press—“One leaves New Leaf Theatre’s current production of ‘Touch’ reveling in the majestic contradictions of life. Touch beautifully addresses the everyday mundaneness of work and relationships while dealing, specifically and artfully, with the occasional bone shattering tragedies we must endure and the infrequent miracles that help us overcome them. This is theatre that, for days afterward, makes you tenderly aware of every step you take and also clearly cognoscente of the fact that the faint echo of the footsteps behind you could alter your course forever.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—“Director Jessica Hutchinson works wonders with her cast, who all genuinely inhabit their characters. Don’t be surprised if they move you to tears. Hutchinson and set designer Michelle Lilly O’Brein’s reconfiguration of the theater space proves particularly effective at allowing more expansiveness and resonance to the characters’ emotions. They do that simply by seating the audience on the elevated stage to look down on the actors in the shadowy auditorium.”
Macbeth, Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
Chris Jones, Tribune—“As long as all of this is in service of some interesting ideas, a potent point of view and a desire to forge an accessible link between a contemporary audience and the play’s stew of ideas, then play on McGaines, say I. This is the kind of gutsy show—and it is a very gutsy show—that invites objection in part because it dares to be excessively generous with the fodder to which one might object.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“From the opening moments, when an already mortally wounded soldier is subjected to a wholly sadistic evisceration, to Lady Macbeth’s suicide in a bathtub, a fetus being yanked from a womb, slayed victims suspended like sides of beef and the inescapable hallucinations of butchered victims playing out on a high-def TV screen of the mind, Gaines gives us an uncompromising battlefield… This is, in fact, a production so chock full of images and contemporary references, so packed with ideas and equivalencies (any hint of Patti Blagojevich as a latter-day Lady Macbeth comes with the audience) that you might find yourself reeling at certain points. But you will never be bored.”
Tony Adler, Reader—“Barbara Gaines’s version of the Scottish play works wonderfully at the linguistic level. You’re unlikely to hear Shakespeare’s lines spoken with more ease—or greater sensitivity to both their plain and implicit meanings—than they are here, by a cast of accomplished pros. But the rest of the production is loaded down with more useless junk than a G.I. Joe deluxe set.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“It’s hard to tell quite where the edge is in Chicago Shakespeare’s latest Macbeth. Barbara Gaines’s modern-dress staging of the enduring power-lust tragedy feels at all times to be within spitting distance of some boundary it might cross, but at nearly every turn it seems to back away from it at the last possible moment. Though thoroughly watchable—Gaines and company put the Scottish play across as a black-lacquered, lurid political thriller—it tends to tease. The story gets an admirably straight reading but also a straitlaced one.”
Dennis Polkow, New City—“All of this could be viewed as violent theater of the absurd for its own sake, but whatever we may chose to make of all of this—and I suspect that many will find it all much too much—Gaines’ gratuitous interpretation can be fully supported by the Bard’s own words…In the end, Gaines’ Macbeth gives us plenty of haunting and disturbing images to take away, to be sure, but none more explicit or timely than bearing in mind that all of the excesses come about as the direct result of the potentially corrupting effect of power.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Visceral and universal as these emotions feel, the production itself is sleekly, sometimes superficially, up to date. Armed with closed-circuit cameras, press jackals cover every Caledonian power play. Kevlar coats replace armor. Thunder and gunfire vie for decibel supremacy. Disco decadence suggests courtly corruption. The royal banquet is a swank cocktail party with a view of midtown Manhattan. A row of riot shields suggest the “Birnam woods” that have come to Dunsinane.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Surrounded by technology that George Lucas might envy, the principal actors are to be commended for refusing to acknowledge their excesses and delivering their speeches as if anybody really cared what they were saying. With the exception of the witches, whose speech is artificially scrambled to the point of unintelligibility, the surprisingly articulate company assembled for this Chicago Shakespeare production acquit themselves with admirable dignity.”
Miss Saigon, Drury Lane Theatre Oakbrook
Chris Jones, Tribune—“In fact, the relative intimacy of the theater, and (director Rachel) Rockwell’s smart decision to stage everybody right down front most of the time, has the very desirable effect of giving the show back to the actors and freeing it from the high-gloss spectacle that was wrongly allowed to define Miss Saigon in London and New York. One sees elements that one has never fully appreciated before…(T)his is a show that, even without that infamous helicopter, lands well. On Thursday night, there were a lot of people around me watching their first Miss Saigon in a theater they’d been attending for years. They were surprised, and they were greatly stirred.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Two of the leads—Joseph Anthony Foronda (sly, raucous and mocking in the crucial role of “The Engineer,” the Eurasian pimp hellbent on getting to the United States), and Melinda Chua Smith (deeply touching as Kim, the Vietnamese girl who falls madly in love with Chris, an American soldier)—have played their roles before and display the special command that comes from long experience. They are superb. So [is] Kevin Vortmann (as Chris), who not only looks like a Marine but also sings and acts with compelling force and sensitivity…A Broadway-level production all-around.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“Welcome news for suburban theatergoers. Drury Lane Oak Brook’s well-sung, wisely staged revival of Miss Saigon suggests that the renaissance that began at the theater last winter with the sizzling Sweet Charity, followed by the glorious Boys from Syracuse and top-drawer Mame, shows no signs of tapering off. Rachel Rockwell’s production of the musical by Les Miserables creators Claude-Michel Sch?nberg (music) and Alain Boublil (lyrics) demonstrates how an accomplished cast and design team can make a great show of a merely good musical.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“Drury Lane’s production, in a lean and fluid staging by director Rachel Rockwell and choreographer Stacey Flaster, also thrills the ears and eyes as there isn’t a weak voice in the cast—the women are particularly strong belters—while musical director Roberta Duchak sustains tension throughout the show’s many shifting tempos. And the production looks gorgeous: designer Kevin Depinet’s structure of slatted bamboo walls sets the right mood and becomes a neutral canvas upon which Jesse Klug’s sumptuous lighting and Mike Tutaj’s smart projections easily create atmosphere (from a fiery sunrise to a boysenberry-colored sunset).”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“Joseph Anthony Foronda (who played the role in the 2000 touring production) embodies smarmy opportunism as the fortune-hunting pimp who fantasizes a Yankee future. As the lovers, Kevin Vortmann and Melinda Chua Smith are ardent but no more impressive apart than together. Whether this story is cynical, sentimental or inevitable depends entirely on the observer. That’s both the show’s greatest strength and its most obvious weakness.”
Scott C. Morgan, Windy City—“Fans of melodramatic sung-through pop operas will find a lot to love in Drury Lane’s Miss Saigon. The performances are genuine and the whole show is uncomfortably timely. Unfortunately, Drury Lane’s outstanding production can’t conceal Miss Saigon’s writing-related shortcomings…Yet, Miss Saigon can be theatrically satisfying and even moving at times if you see past its well-intentioned problems. Drury Lane’s production, under Rachel Rockwell’s astute direction, certainly makes a strong and enjoyable case for Miss Saigon.”
Quote of the Fortnight:
“I think anything nostalgic that is done well will always be a success.”—Olivia Newton-John in an interview in the Sun-Times discussing the reason for the success of the stage version of Xanadu.