The Philadelphia Story
Playwright: Philip Barry At: Circle Theatre, 5300 W. Madison, Forest Park . Phone: 708-771-0700; $22-$24. Runs through: Sept. 5
Escape from Happiness
Playwright: George F. Walker. At: Infamous Commonwealth Theatre at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark . Phone: 312-458-9780; $15-$20. Runs through Aug. 8
It's likely that anyone who has ever been schooled in feminist principles will be troubled by both The Philadelphia Story and Escape from Happiness, two quirky family comedies currently and respectively staged around Chicago by Circle Theatre and Infamous Commonwealth Theatre.
Philip Barry's Philadelphia Story gets off a little more lightly since its pre-feminist Broadway origins stretch back to 1939. ( The Hollywood film immortalizing performances by Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart followed in 1940. )
As any fan of classic screwball comedies knows, The Philadelphia Story focuses on the wealthy Lord family as its once-divorced daughter, Tracy, must cope with a visiting magazine reporter and photographer on her wedding day as a tit-for-tat way of killing an unpublished magazine expose of the adulterous dalliances of the Lord patriarch.
Now the flighty nature of Tracy isn't really that disturbing, since so many modern-day rom-com films feature heroines who are equally as fickle. What's sure to rub modern audiences the wrong way is the forced scene where Tracy is shamed into forgiving her father's extramarital transgressions. It doesn't help that Tom Viskocil's weak fatherly performance gives almost nothing for Laura McClain's sharp-eyed Tracy to play off of.
But other than this galling moment ( and the fact that Tracy ends up with a known domestic abuser ) , most everything else about this period piece revival sparkles under Jim Schneider's direction. Aside from the elder male roles, the cast is uniformly polished in delivering the necessary screwball style.
Once again, Bob Knuth has come up trumps with his gorgeous drawing room set that screams wealth, while Elizabeth Wislar's period costumes are sumptuous.
A far less glamorous setting is the Dawson family kitchen for Canadian playwright George F. Walker's Escape from Happiness, and it's one that I'm sure many will want to flee from long before its overlong two-and-a-half-hour running time concludes.
Now I can understand why Infamous Commonwealth wanted to produce Escape from Happiness, since it deals with the topical subject of police brutality. It also offers company member Nancy Friedrich another outstanding opportunity to play a squeaky eccentric like in a past production of Betty's Summer Vacation.
But these noble plusses are outweighed by the overall shrillness of the piece and unflattering depictions of women, who are either annoyingly mentally unstable or conspiratorially duplicitous. Even the level-headed lesbian lawyer daughter of Elizabeth ( Jennifer Mathews ) is blind to the literal torture she deploys ( a major character flaw, since her practice targets exposing police brutality ) .
Director Genevieve Thompson and her cast rarely get the right grip on the material, but Walker's screechy and unwieldy script is the major fault. Escape from Happiness is aptly named, but in the most ironic and unfortunate sense.