5-22-09
Raven's Hedda to Rival Great Productions of the Past
Due to the arrival of Arianna and Noelle Heckman on May 4, their father Kevin couldn’t get to a show to review. We’ll give him a pass—this time. He managed to compile the round-up below.
Hedda Gabler, Raven Theatre
Nina Metz, Tribune—“Credit here goes to director Michael Menendian and actress Mackenzie Kyle, who envision Hedda as an eye-grabbing imp and a pot-stirrer extraordinaire with a comedian’s timing for the nasty putdown. This is a very impressive effort from Raven.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“Many famous actresses have played the wonderfully juicy, neuroses-driven title role in Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler—from the legendary Eleanora Duse and Ingrid Bergman to Diana Rigg, Isabelle Huppert, Maggie Smith, Annette Bening and Cate Blanchett. But I would wager that Mackenzie Kyle, who is now starring in director Michael Menendian’s Raven Theatre production of this terrifically twisted play, could hold her own against any of them.”
Leon Hilton, Reader—“Menendian’s directorial eye may be conventional, but it’s anything but staid, and the performances he elicits from his spot-on cast puts many more conceptually adventurous productions to shame. Despite a few moments of hesitancy, there’s strong work all around. Symphony Sanders is particularly adept at finding the right mix of pathos and pique as Thea Elvsted, Hedda’s former schoolmate who becomes Lovberg’s muse and intellectual collaborator, and Ian Novak’s dithering Tesman is just as grating and shrill as the part demands. While fairly restrained in his initial appearances, Ian Paul Custer explodes as Lovberg in the second act.”
John Beer, Time Out—“Raven’s production enjoys the commanding presence of Kyle, witheringly self-assured and gleefully perverse. The various attentions of the play’s men all seem understandable responses to Hedda’s frosty hauteur. Kyle doesn’t entirely sound the character’s formidable depths, however. Henry James described Hedda as “various and sinuous and graceful, complicated and natural,” but in this production, she remains a touch too malignantly bitchy. Part of the difficulty may be that, with the exception of Steinhagen’s magnificently unctuous judge, the supporting characters in this briskly paced production lack Hedda’s vivid presence.”
Lisa Buscani, New City—“Hedda (Mackenzie Kyle) is a brittle beauty who has married beneath her to affable, naîve George (Ian Novak). Bored, she wreaks havoc on her brilliant ex Eilert (Ian Paul Custer) and her former schoolmate Thea (Symphony Sanders). Kyle deftly walks a razor-thin line of control, keeping Hedda’s frustration-fueled bitchiness in check until her second act spin-out; even then she makes the character’s insane personal agenda plausible. Novak tugs at the heartstrings as George, desperate to find the love in a woman can’t love him. Andrei Onegin’s lovely set is beautiful valise one should open with care.”
Mary Shen Barnidge, Windy City—“Menendian has assembled a cast ready to immerse themselves in their archetypes: Mackenzie Kyle tempers Hedda’s sullenly hostile egotism with a sympathetic vulnerability, especially in her scenes with Jon Steinhagen, who adds another weaselish villain to his resumé, playing the lecherous Judge Brack. Ian Novak and Symphony Sanders make the most of their one-dimensional roles as the boyish George Tesman and the nurturing Thea Elvsted, but Ian Paul Custer still needs to reconcile the contradictions motivating the macho-posturing, but secretly guilt-ridden, Eilert Lovborg. And look for Andrei Onegin’s ingenious steamer-trunk scenic design to attract attention at awards time.”
Daredevilry, Annoyance Theatre
Monica Westin, New City—“There’s almost nothing reining in director Timmy Mayse, who includes absurd marionettes on tightropes, a digression into Willy Wonka song and a particularly strange scene of torture involving ring pops; in other words, the show could have been an utter disaster. Instead, it’s a triumph of comedy, like the most brilliant sketch carried through to its insane logical conclusion, where smart work with double casting and repetitions of motif add layers of meaning that lift Daredevilry into the world of “real” theater.”
History Boys, TimeLine Theatre Company
Chris Jones, Tribune—“The History Boys is all about the boys and [director Nick] Bowling has found a vivacious, empathetic, yearning pack—many of whom are barely out of school themselves. Fans of the movie might recall that the original boys were aging by the time the cameras arrived. Bowling delivers authentic youth, with all its messiness, intelligence, optimism and hope. There are any number of discoveries for Chicago’s casting directors: Alex Weisman’s deeply moving Posner; Michael Peters’ gruff, Yorkshire-like Rudge; Joel Gross’ deeply shallow Dakin; Will Allan’s savvy Scripps. This terrific show—a triumphant revision, Chicago-style—deserves to be a huge hit for TimeLine, with the history boys making a deserved transition to the boys of summer.”
Hedy Weiss, Sun-Times—“The play itself is a feast [playwright Alan] Bennett serves up a rare mix of the brainy, the heartfelt, the brutally honest and the playful), and director Nick Bowling’s altogether remarkable production, in many ways better than the excellent Broadway edition, thrives on the intimacy of TimeLine’s space and the actors’ bravura performances. The great wonder of this play is that it truly becomes a grand open classroom while never feeling the slightest bit didactic. It is electric with energy, wit and ideas, and with the ache of life already well-rooted in adolescents.”
Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald—“TimeLine’s production triumphs. Look for it to figure prominently come award season. Masterfully directed by Nick Bowling, with a terrific, all-encompassing set by Brian Sidney Bembridge, it’s a carefully attuned show: personal and heartfelt but not overly sentimental.”
Albert Williams, Reader—“Director Nick Bowling’s imaginative staging bursts with spontaneity—crucial to a text as elegantly phrased as this one—and the whole cast is excellent. Donald Brearley and Andrew Carter are at once droll and achingly sad as Hector and Irwin. Ann Wakefield is wonderfully ironic as their colleague Mrs. Lintott. Terry Hamilton’s perplexed headmaster, Joel Gross’s slick Dakin, Behzad Dabu’s Akthar, and Michael Peters’s Rudge, whose main qualification for college is his skill at rugby, are all exceptional.”
Christopher Piatt, Time Out—“Bowling’s Chicago premiere, a high-water mark for both him and TimeLine, exudes charm from every pore, mainly due to the randy, fresh-faced octet of young male actors. (Alex Weisman as a shuffling misfit and Joel Gross as the gorgeous, give-a-fuck object of his affection make blazing impressions.) Scenic artist Brian Bembridge, too, outdoes himself: A simple lacquered playing space spills into the gutted theater lobby, here converted into messy, postered dorm rooms.”
Dennis Polkow, New City—“Any worries that you might have had about how ready TimeLine—or any smaller theater company, for that matter—might be to take on the area premiere of such a celebrated play with so many potential pratfalls from casting credible kids put in delicate situations to perfecting working-class British accents quickly fade away as you find yourself totally immersed in their world. I don’t know what kind of techniques director Nick Bowling might have employed to have the eight-ensemble cast seem as if they know each other as well as a group of students who have been together in class together for what always seems like an eternity while it is happening, but the way these young men interact is extraordinary.”
Lawrence Bommer, Free Press—“The latest TimeLine triumph, Nick Bowling’s Chicago premiere perfectly mirrors every mood and moment in Bennett’s unsettling group portrait. Here, quite contrarily, the whole is not greater or wiser than its parts. On one side is Andrew Carter as a brash history teacher, doggedly preparing his precocious pupils for a crucial college-entrance exam…His humanistic nemesis is old-school Hector (Donald Brearley in the role of a lifetime), a poetry teacher who wants to touch his students literally as well as pedagogically—and suffers for it.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“Veteran workhorse actor Donald Brearley—in a rare plumb leading role—is pitch-perfect as the dedicated but world-weary Hector, a role that demands great size but also great control and focus. He is supported by a wonderful ensemble, among them Andrew Carter as the emotionally smaller and cagier Irwin. Both are buoyed by the young actors who form the brilliant, multi-hued octopus of students. Diverse in ethnicity, proportions and personality, they respond as a unit to the play’s fast-moving physical and emotional demands, quite wonderfully staged by Nick Bowling on Brian Sidney Bembridge’s fluid and environmental old school scenic design.”
Zero, Oracle Productions
Tony Adler, Reader—“There’s a solid story idea at the bottom of these 135 minutes: a translator at a Guantanamo-esque detention camp is traumatized by the torture that goes on there, bonds with a prisoner whose brutal interrogations he’s witnessed, and battles both his superiors and his own profound ambivalence to get word out to the world. But this Oracle Productions show buries that nugget under useless gimmicks and lousy craft. Part of the problem is the script by Brit writer Chris O’Connell…But the real horror is Ben Fuchsen’s staging, full of subpar or poorly guided actors doing nonsensical things. James Ogden’s set is interesting, but the rest? Torture.”
Fabrizio O. Almeida, New City—“Ultimately, the material is simply a waste of Oracle’s resources and Artistic Director Ben Fuchsen’s intelligence. With Zero, the synthesis between script and Oracle’s strengths and style is never achieved, the technological tricks amounting to little more than window dressing. Perhaps Fuchsen should resist the urge to produce these Orwellian and self-consciously loud dramas that clearly don’t inspire Oracle beyond the realm of contributing close-captioned television monitors, trinkets that glow and ear-piercing blankets of sound.”
Jonathan Abarbanel, Windy City—“(A)long the way, Zero loses itself. The story all but disappears and the play becomes entirely character-driven as Alex confronts his superiors and secretly decides to write a spill-the-beans book. By midpoint there’s no more character to be revealed and the play becomes repetitive. With its closed physical universe ( of chain link fence and concrete walls in James Ogden’s design ) , neutral amorality and spiritual despair, Zero essentially is a work of Absurdism. Despite his obvious writing skills, O’Connell makes a mistake by introducing a dose of psychological realism that shatters the play’s theatrical style and intellectual basis.”
Quote of the Fortnight
“For a portion of the population—surely a majority of subscribers to the Lyric Opera of Chicago—Legally Blonde will feel like a trip through the seventh circle of hell. But I like Legally Blonde quite a lot. Although before you read on, you should know that makes me virtually alone among semi-respectable American theater critics.”—Chris Jones in the Tribune.