Theater
Below: Review 2 / Review 3 / Review 4
Antigone
Playwright: Sophocles,
adapted by Alison C. Vesely
At: First Folio Shakespeare Festival at the Mayslake Forest Preserve in Oak Brook
Phone: (630) 986-8067; $20
Runs through: July 20
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
From Inside Out at About Face.
Greek theatre was originally performed in daylight before spectators seated on hillsides. So what could be more natural for the First Folio Shakespeare Festival, blessed with a pastoral setting on the Peabody Estate at Mayslake Forest Preserve, than to expand its canon in this fourth season of its existence with a play both classical AND classic?
Sophocles' plot is straightforward enough: a civil war between brothers has ended with the opponents slaying each other in the field, leaving to their uncle Creon the task of governing an unstable country. In an effort to please supporters of both factions, he declares that one of the fallen men will enjoy a hero's funeral while the other will lie unburied. What Creon does not anticipate is that his niece, Antigone, will insist on proper rites for her abandoned sibling, refusing to be deterred in her mission even by the threat of execution. Thus is illustrated the timeless argument of duty to state versus duty to a higher law.
Unfortunately, director Alison C. Vesely sees Antigone's dilemma as that of "a woman who has to choose between her heart and her soul," a decision that substantially reduces the play's universe despite blocking that has characters addressing their arguments to the citizens of Thebes (that's us, by the way). Further contributing to the ill-conceived intimacy is the company of uniformly treble-voiced young actors insufficiently trained at invoking the weightiness demanded of Fatalistic myth and, more technically, at sustaining the vocal power necessary to fill a playing space the size of....well, all outdoors.
For the role of Creon, Richard Marlatt scowls and rants until his voice breaks (belying the illusion of maturity so fervently attempted), while Melissa Carlson Joseph pouts in girlish defiance. Joe Lehman's Haemon and Kevin McKillip's Head Guard project an adolescent earnestness, Denise Blank's chorus leader smiles and chirps like a sparrow on steroids, and Aaron Hunt....the only bona fide character actor in the cast....adopts a distracting singsong delivery for his portrayal of Teiresias. Ironically, it is during the dumb-show scenes which accompany the text's long expository passages that the ensemble succeeds in generating genuine pathos, their silence conveying eloquently what plethoras of passion only serve to render awkwardly academic.
2
Indian Ink
Playwright: Tom Stoppard
At: Apple Tree Theatre,
595 Elm Place in Highland Park
Phone: (847) 432-4335; $30-35
Runs through: July 25
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
In her youth, she reveled in a poet's outrageousness, proudly proclaiming her freedom from Establishment repression, but what's important to this plot is that Flora Crewe is an ENGLISH woman, a WHITE woman, and this is INDIA, and Nirad Das, the handsome young artist who pleads to paint her portrait, is a NATIVE. Furthermore, this is the 1930s, with England's occupation soon to give way, reluctantly and violently, to India's independence. Oh, and did I mention that Crewe is afflicted with pulmonary congestion?
But this is a Tom Stoppard play, and so the real story is not simply that of star-crossed lovers in exotic climes, but the interpretations imposed on their speculative Romance a half-century later by scholars, relatives and witnesses of uncertain memory, all of whom have their own agendas. None of this will come as a surprise to playgoers who have seen Arcadia, Stoppard's similar-themed play premiering two years earlier. But if Indian Ink exhibits more docudramatic potential, the distortions imposed by modern spin-doctors on a nebulous past cannot compare with the attractions of interracial sex and Brit-bashing for Yankee audiences geographically and politically removed from any culpability in the Middle Eastern politics of that time.
As the goddess adored by every man in sight (an icon frequently invoked in Stoppard plays....cf. Hapgood and Artist Descending A Staircase), Susie McMonagle wears her charm with the poised assurance appropriate to a liberated heroine in the D.H. Lawrence mode. Under the intelligent direction of Mark E. Lococo, Anish Jethmalani displays a touching innocence as the unassuming Nirad Das, as do Kamal Hans as a gemutlich warlord....oops! Rajah....and Jeff Parker as an awestruck civil servant. Delving the myths engendered by these personalities are Paul Slade Smith's clueless WASP professor, Parvesh Cheena's suave Indic hosts, and Mark Nathan's thoroughly westernized aesthete searching for the truth about his grandfather.
But the last word goes to Peggy Roeder's elderly survivor, whose crustily conservative commentary on her sister's adventures is so seductive....even when frankly xenophobic....that we naturally assume it to be "right." But as she herself warns, "Biography is [no] excuse for getting people wrong." Something to ponder as we contemplate our own historians' motives.
3
Inside Out
At: About Face Theater
Phone: (773) 549-3290; $22-$25
Runs through: July 28
BY RICK REED
One of the best things about Pride Month is the alliance of About Face Theatre Company and Horizons to workshop and produce a work of theater that speaks for gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered and questioning youth. Inside Out is the fourth such collaboration, and it's inspiring, sympathetic, funny, clever, and full of energy.
Every year, I've made the trip to About Face to see what kind of inspired vignettes the cast, ranging in age from their teens to their early 20s, will come up with. Although the quality of each year's productions has varied, each one is endowed with a special kind of truth that speaks to those of use who have been cast in the role of being someone "different." It's inspiring to see these young people get up in front of the public and share their innermost longings, secrets, and revelations (although all of the stories crafted into theater are true, none are tied specifically with any one cast member). This is what pride is all about.
Inside Out continues the tradition of excellence. The theme of this year's show is all about how appearances, or what's on the outside, don't always translate to what's on the inside. The 19-member cast, through song, spoken word, poetry and extended sketches explore issues of gender identity, sexuality, and coming out in various family and cultural situations. One unifying story is that of a young Jamaican boy, whose effeminacy causes him to be cast out of his own family, and ultimately, his discovery that family isn't always defined by blood. The other side of the coin, a young Latina lesbian, discovers that just the opposite is true. While she is of mixed heritage, she finds that, in her family, love and acceptance are key. Along the way, we laugh and are moved by tales of first love, school bullying, and finding out the often-complicated place where one belongs in the world.
If you're looking for a theatrical outlet to reflect your pride, you won't find any show better in Chicago than Inside Out. Never mind that it's performed by a group of people whose oldest members have barely seen their 20th birthday: Inside Out is what good theater should be. It's honest, universal and has enough grit to keep you thinking for hours after you leave the theater.
This production is of note because it's the last theatrical production to be performed in the Jane Addams space, once home to companies such as Steppenwolf and Famous Door. Darin Keesing has designed and lit an inspired set, one that includes mementos from About Face's four and a half year history at the center.
It took months of workshops and the melding together of many voices to make Inside Out a success. If you want to celebrate Pride in a meaningful way, there's no better route to doing that than reliving, perhaps, some of the moments of your own youth, captured so compellingly here.
4
Offspring of
the Cold War
Playwright: Carlos Murillo
At: Walkabout Theater at TimeLine,
615 W. Wellington
Phone: 312-458-0566; $15
Runs through: July 21
by Jonathan Abarbanel
This world premiere fantasy of American history....circa 1870-2000....uses Coney Island as its metaphor. In the late 19th Century, Coney Island partly was populated by millionaires on holiday, and partly by the poor. Coney also was home to Dreamland, a great, populist amusement park. With these contrasts, author Carlos Murillo riffs on the American social body politic through five generations of incest, as half-brothers and half-sisters....separated in each generation....unwittingly sleep with each other.
To tell his convoluted, long (three acts), yet predictable story....by the end of Act I you know the lead boy and girl are related....Murillo utilizes theatrical pastiche borrowing from Schnitzler's La Ronde (one character from each scene has sex with someone in the next), Wilder's The Skin of Our Teeth (history pageant in Atlantic City) and many shows with magic garments. Trying on clothes from an old armoire, the boy and girl become the threads' former owners, and thereby piece together their history.
This artifice seems pointless. The choice of Coney Island and this particular chunk of Americana is arbitrary and never driven by character. Offspring of The Cold War opens with an improbable first meeting between half-siblings Marcus and Miranda, and launches them on their haberdashery time travel before making them interesting. In short, the play is an intellectual exercise driven by theatrics....often clever theatrics, I'll admit....rather than by character. It also blends global Cold War babble with a domestic history tale; a clumsy marriage that diffuses focus.
The show opens with a numbing 45-minute scene that's only part of Act I. Murillo needs to slash mercilessly. He easily might remove 30 minutes of inert talk from Offspring, enabling him to reduce it to two acts and two hours. The three-act division, again, is arbitrary rather than made for dramatic reasons.
Part of the problem is that director Lisa Portes is Murillo's wife. Apparently, she lacked the professional and personal distance to serve as the good editor this play needs. The problem is not with actors John G. Connelly and Nina Sallinen as Marcus and Miranda (although Sallinen tends towards monotone delivery), and old pro Ray Wild energetically barreling through a thankless role as Miranda's grandfather. One never cares about Marcus and Miranda, but Connelly and Sallinen DO get to play an assortment of their own ancestors, and are at their best (and so is Murillo) in a charming Act II courtship scene, circa 1940s.
Portes and designers Joey Wade (set), Jaymi Lee Smith (lighting), Debbie Baer (costumes) and Andre Pluess (sound) provide a sophisticated, quasi-expressionistic physical production, with Tuscan yellow cracked walls and no light sources save one occluded window. Interesting work. Alas, space constraints curtail elaboration.