Mensa Theatre 2008

BY Venus Zarris

Ryan Walters and Luke Hatton jump in to the Neo-Futurists’ deceptively
cerebral Fake Lake.

Play-acting is as vital to human development as verbal language. Sometimes the simplest, most basic and instinctual approach to acting and theatre can be extraordinarily effective. Therein lies some of the most natural and believable reactive interaction on stage.

But theatre comes in infinite forms, requiring its creators to have infinite capacities for interpreting and then manifesting the realities of storytelling. That is to say, there’s simple theatre and there’s complex theatre.

As the political IQ of our country makes a shift from room temperature to potentially and hopefully brilliant, let’s look at the examples of theatre in 2008 that intellectually elevated the craft.

Unique conceptualizations created paradigm-shifting experiences. Dog and Pony Theatre Company endeavored to take the longest written work of fiction, a 15,000-plus page manuscript, along with the hundreds of illustrations created by the insane mind of recluse artist Henry Darger and adapt it to a theatrical event. They transformed the Theatre on the Lake into a living, breathing fun/haunted house that brought this wild and fantastical world to life. As Told By the Vivian Girls was by far one of Chicago theatre’s most ambitious offerings to date, capturing one of Chicago’s most remarkably odd stories of found art.

The Neo-Futurists Fake Lake recreated a summer get away at Lake Powel by staging this original script in a park district swimming pool. Far from simply a play performed at a novelty location, this deceptively cerebral work, beautifully written by Sharon Greene and cleverly directed by Halena Kays, was poignant, melancholy (“Disaster is the only relief from a life so easy, it feels hard.”) and hysterically funny. (“This made him feel like Robin Hood and James Bond were wrestling in his pants.”)

Trap Door Theatre consistently challenges itself and its audiences by creating purgatorial paradises of the sublime surreal. This requires thought beyond convention and their unified intellect makes impossible worlds come to life. No Darkness Around My Stone was a completely realized macabre and melancholy dreamlike tale of grave robbers dealing with unrequited longing, obsessive desires and love.

Also at Trap Door, composer Alison Chesley created a beautifully haunting and exceptionally evocative ethereal cello requiem for their play Beholder that brilliantly carried audiences through moods of subtle sadness and atmospheres of reflective sorrow.

SITI Company’s Radio Macbeth, performed at Court Theatre, was a theatrical journey taken within the structural framework of Shakespeare’s script. The words themselves and the voices delivering them became the movement of the story, creating a sublime stylized evocative elegance. The vocal dexterity and precision of the cast was spellbinding and Ellen Lauren’s Lady Macbeth was a staggering example of fluid sensual physicality combined with mesmerizing emotional dictation.

Sadieh Rafai’s subtle and broad, physical and intellectual, sarcastic and self-effacing performance in American Theatre Company’s Speech and Debate accomplished humor on so many levels that it was hysterically beguiling.

Jennifer Grace’s performance in The Hypocrites’ Our Town elevated the production to the highest levels of emotional and human honesty. Her depiction took us on a journey from endearing to engaging and finally to heartbreaking.

E. Faye Butler delivered a poignant and lingering performance in Court Theatre’s amazing Caroline, or Change. ‘Angry and struggling’ are just about the hardest emotions to sustain on stage without falling into technical traps of one-dimensional clich?. But Butler’s Caroline was nothing short of the dramatic realization of complexity, tension, sincerity and humanity.

Francis Guinan effortlessly took us to dark and dangerous depths with frighteningly funny wit and delightful charm in Steppenwolf Theatre’s world premiere of Kafka on the Shore.

Elizabeth Laidlaw created an exuberant and euphorically triumphant performance in Writers’ Theatre’s The Maids. If restraint is what makes the artist, she displayed scenes with devastating restraint that created heart-pounding tension. If you prefer broader strokes, there were scenes where she pulled no punches and emotionally bared all. Her emotional vocabulary and range was both staggering and beguiling.

Anna C. Bahow directed SiNNERMAN Ensemble’s Sweet Confinement with impressive restraint, avoiding potential melodrama while infusing the production with subtle builds and believably explosive pressure releases.

Director David Cromer masterfully crafted The Hypocrites’ poignant production of Our Town with amazing honesty that was painful, charming and profound. His performance as The Stage Manager in Our Town was another example of his uncanny instinct for finding the perfect perspective. He captured small town America with compelling warmth, photographic vision and subversive sophistication in this production, as well as in Writers’ Theatre’s Picnic. In American Theatre Company’s Celebrity Row, Cromer switched gears to present a script that was as erudite as a doctoral thesis on crime, punishment and fundamentalism.

Oscar Wilde said, “To expect the unexpected shows a thoroughly modern intellect.” The brilliant aforementioned artists not only expected the unexpected but they created it.

Venus Zarris is the editor and chief Writer for ChicagoStageReview.com. She is also a feature writer and theatre critic for Gay Chicago Magazine. Her writing has been featured on National Public Radio and her photography and writing is on permanent collection at the Library of Congress.

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