Playwright: Mark Guarino At: House Theatre of Chicago at the Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division. Phone: 773/251-2195; $25 - $29. Runs through: Dec. 20
Money can't buy happiness. Selling out in exchange for stardom is bad. If these cliches, er, maxims come as revelations, then All the Fame of Lofty Deeds will hold you mesmerized with its revelatory exposition. If, however, they strike you as fortune-cookie banalities, you might want to skip the House Theatre's latest Nathan Allen vehicle, er, world premiere of playwright Mark Guarino's familiar-as-a-corny-country-song musical. In all, director/choreographer Tommy Rapley's cast fails to eke out any emotional truth out of the platitudes on parade.
Characters crossing the stage in picture frames, Allen as boy-man struggling with adulthood. A strong element of the supernatural—check, check and check. The House has been here before. Where it hasn't been is into the strange, rich and wondrous music of Jon Langford. That thrilling cascade of sound is one worthwhile aspect of Lofty Deeds. If only the show were a concert. Strip it of its negligible, quasi-coherent plot and paper-thin cartoon characters, and you've got something fantastic.
The band—multi-instrumentalist Matt Bivins , Adam Przbyla ( pedal steel ) , Matt Martin ( bass ) and Evan Bivins ( drums ) —delivers Langford's lush, infectious rockabilly with masterful showmanship and gloriously layered sound. From roaring, anthemic foot-stompers to high, lonesome ballads, the musicians are a gift that keeps on giving. Adding to this deeply moving soundscape: Corri Feuerstein, whose gorgeous, whiskey-over-gravel alto creates the most compelling moments in the production. Alas, when Feuerstein isn't singing, she's playing a talking tumbleweed prone to spouting out mumbo-jumbo that sounds like outtakes from the old TV series "Kung Fu." And like the band, she's trapped within a plot that's little more than a string of tired truisms pasted around musical numbers.
For the first laborious 10 minutes or so, that plot seems MIA. Lofty ( Allen, in a performance that calls to mind Guitar Hero ) gulps from a Jack Daniels bottle and staggers around while muttering something about an assisted living facility back behind the Wendy's and next to a gun shop. The Tumbleweed appears to join in the conversation, which rambles onward with dubious intelligibility until—blessedly—the band kicks in with the title tune.
The piece's eye-rolling unoriginality is put into stark relief in the final moments of the first act. Having acquired fame and fortune, singing cowboy superstar Lofty Deeds ( Allen ) is alone on the stage, literally screaming "It's not enough" while strumming his guitar hard enough to show that he's an artist of deep internal angst. It's a scene as overwrought as it is obvious. All the fancy trappings of success can't soothe the pain of missing one's loved ones. Gosh, who knew?
Between the nails-on-a-blackboard talking horse, the aforementioned pseudo-Buddhist tumbleweed and those dancing picture frames, Lofty Deeds might well leave you feeling like you're stuck babysitting a bratty child tripping on peyote. Langford deserves so much better.
