Playwright: Adapted by Frank Farrell from the novel by Joan Rees. At: North Lakeside Players at the North Lakeside Cultural Center, 6219 N. Sheridan. Phone: 773-293-1358; $7-$20. Runs through: Dec. 20
It was a great loss, of course, when John Keatsdestined to be one of England's greatest poets of all timedied in 1821 at the age of 26, but it was scarcely surprising: Before a vaccine for tuberculosis was discovered nearly a century later, the disease was endemic throughout countries whose chill, damp climate promoted the growth and spread of the lung infection then called "consumption," its fatality exacerbated by the prevalent medical practice of blood-letting, purgatives and opium-based laudanum as remedies for whatever ailed you. Keatshimself trained as a surgeon and apothecary, but constrained by filial duty to care for his sickly brothercould see his own demise approaching.
The literary movement now known as Romanticism, occurring concurrently with the "White Plague" ( as it was dubbed ) , elevated its wasting symptoms to proof of heightened sensitivity, with untimely death providing the final stamp of divine esteemall of which should render Keats' unfulfilled courtship of girl-next-door Fanny Brawne all the more melancholy. But since the focus of Joan Rees' Bright Star, adapted for the stage by Frank Farrell, is the latter, its initial tone emerges as more Jane Austen than Dumas fils.
To be sure, Keats' bereft sweetheart can hardly be blamed for recovering from her griefafter six years of mourningand living to a proper old age with a husband tolerant of his wife's celebrity status. Whether this was indicative of her inexorable vitality, shallow temperament, or an inadvertent blessing arising from her fiancé's frequent absences, is up to the individual playgoer, but it makes for a greater proportion of how-will-he-support-a-family discussions than of hankie-wringing bedside farewells.
Long before the current fashion for "promenade staging", Farrellin his capacity as a directorwas orchestrating plays to take advantage of his 1914 vintage performing space in the Gunder mansion ( aka North Lakeside Cultural Center ) . The physical migration of both dramatic action and audience from one room to the other does no harm in itself, but coupled with the re-orientation mandated by actors' double-casting, as well as the suspension of disbelief required to envision the singularly robust Joe Ciresi as a frail disease-racked aesthete, this device tends to render the narrative perplexingly nebulous, despite the earnest and wholly capable skills of an ensemble whose concentration never wavers under our intimate scrutiny.