Playwright: James Sherman. At: Victory Gardens Theater at the Biograph, 2433 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-871-3000; $20-$48. Runs through: June 20
Customers at Victory Gardens during the first few minutes of James Sherman's latest play may wonder if they haven't stumbled into a latter-day Alan Ayckbourn farce by mistake. The locale depicts three old-fashioned dressing-rooms, each opening onto to a hallway and to one another, all totaling five doors. What we soon learn, however, is that in addition to concealing philandering husbands, nubile paramours, hapless juveniles and the other stock-types expected of such architecture, these tools for access also represent gateways to time travel.
The evening's entertainment at what we are told is Chicago's Merle Reskin auditorium is a one-night-only reading of scenes from the early 20th-century American Yiddish Theatre. Headlining the guest ensemble is Jack Shore, a west-coast television actor summoned home by his mother to portray his grandfather, the once-exalted Jacob Shemerinsky, at her fundraiser. Sharing the bill are Lisa, his disgruntled actress wife, along with Robin, an ambitious young thespian boasting an MFA from Carnegie-Mellon. Upon Jack's donning the costume of his grandsire, however, the action flashes back to another troubled night, 75 years earlier, when Shemerinsky prepared in that same backstage room for his performance at the playhouse then called the Blackstone Theatre. And as Jack is transformed into Jacob, his co-stars likewise assume the roles of analogous personaeLisa becomes the pragmatic Leah, Robin, the untrained Rachel, and so forth.
On the surface, these gimmicks may appear to serve no purpose beyond demonstrating that the apple doesn't fall far from the tree ( unsurprisingly, both men are incorrigible skirt-chasers ) . But in the hands of director Dennis Zacek and his valiant cast, Sherman's goal emerges as nothing less than a hymn to the enduring power of live theater: Jacob may resist the prospect of going to Hollywoodfollowing in the steps of Yiddish Theatre alumnus Paul Muni, né Frederich Weisenfreundas much as Jack fears abandoning the easy duties of one-shot commercial art, but when the moment of decision comes, the former swallows his pride to confront a meager crowd of Federal Theater stalwarts, and the latter, his terror at facing a sold-out 1,325-seat house. The show must go on, you know, and just how far it's willing to go will be appreciated with extra poignancy by playgoers paying attention to the genealogical exposition.