Playwright: Tanya Saracho adapted from the book by Sandra Cisneros. At: Steppenwolf ( upstairs ) . Phone: 312.335.1650; $15—$20. Runs through: Nov. 8
A demographic survey of the audience attending The House on Mango Street upstairs at the Steppenwolf Theatre is proof enough why the first ever stage adaptation of Sandra Cisneros' award-winning novel belongs in Chicago. Sure, the book takes place in a Chicago Latino neighborhood in the 1960s, but it's Chicagoans diversity that reflects the book's spirit of cultural identity. Most Chicagoans grow up, like the protagonist Esperanza, in a cultural, ethnic or religious context fostered by a physical neighborhood, one that effects how they see the world and their place in it. The House on Mango Street captures that essence and that's why Steppenwolf's Young Adults production will draw audiences of all ages, genders and cultures.
Tanya Saracho's adaptation is not without its flaws as it tries to give narrative shape to the book's multiple-vignette structure, but it manages to communicate the story's core message: growing up and learning to embrace the life we're given as opposed to accusing it of holding us back from what we want to become. Some scenes, namely the ones that translate seamlessly from page to stage, illustrate this better than others.
Saracho manages to recreate the book's most memorable vignettes—the nostalgic moments of youthful discovery—with relative ease. Director Hallie Gordon cues in on those scenes and constructs them ideally, creating that little place in the neighborhood where imagination and innocent belief are the only things that count for truth.
Esperanza ( Sandra Delgado ) and her new friends, Rachel ( Christina Nieves ) and Lucy ( Belinda Cervantes ) , are adults in real life, which is at times challenging, but when they play double-dutch to express the discovery of their hips or grow bug-eyed as they check out the way their legs look in a neighborhood woman's old high heels, suddenly we're all kids again, whether you're Latina or another ethnicity.
Each scene produces discussion points and adds value to creating the world of the story, but the dramatic cohesiveness of the play on the whole leaves something to be desired, undoubtedly the challenge of adapting such a loosely structured novel. We do feel what life is like on Mango Street—there's even music and musical numbers to enhance the flavor of the setting and give the play more vibrancy—and we also understand the value of each scene as it relates to Esperanza and ourselves, but together it all ends up feeling a lot longer than 90 minutes.
As a young adult production, The House on Mango Street serves as an ideal choice for facilitating an introduction into more advanced, conceptual theater. Kids as young as 13 could begin to tackle the play's challenges of understanding the social issues at hand, the imagery in both the staging and the narration and tolerating the non-traditional story structure.
On the other hand, Saracho, Gordon and the other creative minds behind the Steppenwolf for Young Adults program have made sure the production is equally as stimulating for the full-fledged adults—even the most frequent of theatergoers.
In fact, there really isn't a demographic, so to speak, that won't find something admirable in this adaptation of an all-important Chicago novel. The production breathes a style of life that's inherently Chicago, something its audiences will surely to recognize as they travel from the city's many neighborhoods and suburbs to watch and connect with Esperanza's story.
