Playwright: Noah Haidle. At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St. Tickets: 312-443-3800; www.goodmantheatre.org; $10-$40 . Runs through: Nov. 3
Midway into our play, just before a scene change-mandated intermission, two young men clad in chorus-boy tuxes debate their imminent existential crisis from the security of their mother's womb. The twin foeti conduct their argument in repartee recalling Sid Caesar, albeit sporting anachronisms such as deconstructive linguistic jargon and a spontaneous rendition of Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns."
It's not easy to back away from the droll tone established by this interlude, but Noah Haidle certainly tries. Preceding this goofball turn, he introduces us to a pregnant matron ( in housedress and apron ) who talks to her swollen belly. We can hardly blame her, since the rest of the family living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, consists of a senile father who attired in his old army officer's uniform, an alienated husband preparing to flee his disappointing kin and a teenage daughter who never speaks and dines exclusively on litter. In the second act, we jump ahead about seven decades to meet up with the now-elderly surviving twin and the ghosts of his childhood. Events occurring in the intervening years are supplied us by a narrator/lecturer bearing no small resemblance to the stage manager in Our Town.
This kind of play is essayed by every playwright after first reading Thornton Wilder, but Haidle, whose resume encompasses degrees from Princeton and Juilliard, is no longer privy to the indulgence we might grant fresh-from-the-classroom scribblers attempting to propound great truths in faux-hipster guise. His life-goes-on sermon may boast botanical metaphors ( fruit-bearing trees ), obsolete obstetrics ( the myth of prenatal influence ) and stunt-stagecraft ( a suitcase full of ancestral bones, or a self-destructing ceiling ), but these threadbare conveyances only exacerbate the emptiness of his ersatz-nostalgic affectations.
Director Anne Kauffman and her actors are left to distract us with amusing sleight of hand ( sometimes literal, though no consultant is listed in the playbill ). The most successful of these is the casting of Mike Nussbaum in the double roles of the old colonel and, later, his aged grandson. Neither of these characters may have been the story's intended focus, but whether immersed in an arms drill that becomes a soft-shoe or imparting Polonius-styled advice, the 89-year-old Nussbaum commands our attention and sympathy through his sheer presence, despite the encumbrances imposed on him and his fellow players by stereotypal personae from a universe that never was—even in Grand Rapids.
Smokefall
Playwright: Noah Haidle
At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Tickets: 312-443-3800;
www.goodmantheatre.org; $10-$40
Runs through: Nov. 3
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Midway into our play, just before a scene change-mandated intermission, two young men clad in chorus-boy tuxes debate their imminent existential crisis from the security of their mother's womb. The twin foeti conduct their argument in repartee recalling Sid Caesar, albeit sporting anachronisms such as deconstructive linguistic jargon and a spontaneous rendition of Stephen Sondheim's "Send In The Clowns."
It's not easy to back away from the droll tone established by this interlude, but Noah Haidle certainly tries. Preceding this goofball turn, he introduces us to a pregnant matron ( in housedress and apron ) who talks to her swollen belly. We can hardly blame her, since the rest of the family living in Grand Rapids, Michigan, consists of a senile father who attired in his old army officer's uniform, an alienated husband preparing to flee his disappointing kin and a teenage daughter who never speaks and dines exclusively on litter. In the second act, we jump ahead about seven decades to meet up with the now-elderly surviving twin and the ghosts of his childhood. Events occurring in the intervening years are supplied us by a narrator/lecturer bearing no small resemblance to the stage manager in Our Town.
This kind of play is essayed by every playwright after first reading Thornton Wilder, but Haidle, whose resume encompasses degrees from Princeton and Juilliard, is no longer privy to the indulgence we might grant fresh-from-the-classroom scribblers attempting to propound great truths in faux-hipster guise. His life-goes-on sermon may boast botanical metaphors ( fruit-bearing trees ), obsolete obstetrics ( the myth of prenatal influence ) and stunt-stagecraft ( a suitcase full of ancestral bones, or a self-destructing ceiling ), but these threadbare conveyances only exacerbate the emptiness of his ersatz-nostalgic affectations.
Director Anne Kauffman and her actors are left to distract us with amusing sleight of hand ( sometimes literal, though no consultant is listed in the playbill ). The most successful of these is the casting of Mike Nussbaum in the double roles of the old colonel and, later, his aged grandson. Neither of these characters may have been the story's intended focus, but whether immersed in an arms drill that becomes a soft-shoe or imparting Polonius-styled advice, the 89-year-old Nussbaum commands our attention and sympathy through his sheer presence, despite the encumbrances imposed on him and his fellow players by stereotypal personae from a universe that never was—even in Grand Rapids.
