Playwright: Bridget Carpenter. At: Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted. Phone: 312-335-1650; $20-$70. Runs through: Aug. 23. Photo by Michael Brosilow
Up, at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is a bit of a bait-and-switch. And that's not because Bridget Carpenter's play shares the same title as a certain hit Disney/Pixar animated feature out in cineplexes this summer and Russ Meyers' 1976 exclamation point-ended sexploitation flick.
Up smartly upends an audience's familiarity and expectations of standard Hollywood storytelling and outcomes. And that's what makes Up's conflict between visionary dreams and day-to-day realities so very rich and compelling.
For Up, Carpenter took her inspiration from the life of Larry Walters, a.k.a. "The Lawn Chair Man." In 1982, Walters constructed his own flying apparatus involving 45 weather balloons and a lawn chair, eventually soaring to an altitude of 16,000 feet over California.
Walters' airborne stunt generated worldwide headlines. Yet Walters was all but forgotten when he committed suicide 11 years later.
Up is doubly about Walter Griffin ( a solid Ian Barford ) , a man famed for a do-it-yourself flight, and his impressionable sophomore-aged son, Mikey ( Jake Cohen doing teenage angst very well ) . And while Carpenter leaves Walter and Mikey's ultimate fates up in the air, we do get to experience the difficulties of a dreamer facing up to real-life banalities and economics after an inspired moment of fame and glory ( and of a young man at the cusp of love and happiness ) .
Walter is frustrated by his inability to make money off of his inventions, as is his wife, Helen ( an endearing Lauren Katz ) , whose postal carrier job is the family's main source of income. Meanwhile, Mikey falls under the spell of an existential pregnant transfer student named Maria ( a squeaky-voiced Rachel Brosnahan ) and her shady Aunt Chris ( a very apt Martha Lavey ) .
Up ultimately becomes a two-pronged tale of ambition and grasped-at fulfillment. Mikey becomes wildly successful doing a questionable sales job for Aunt Chris, and Walter finds a way to appease his wife's job demands. All the while, Walter is inspired ( or goaded ) by the apparition of world-famous French wire walker Philippe Petit ( real-life wire walker Tony Hernandez, who also captures the whimsy of the artist who illegally traversed the tops of the former World Trade Center towers in 1974 ) .
Director Anna Shapiro punches up the drama with great performances from her actors and collaborating with her design team on a stunning physical production that emphasizes both earthbound confinement and lofty expanses of the imagination. Daniel Ostling's set in particular is a great visual metaphor of cramped suburban rooms supporting a stage-width platform for Petit to balance on in the bright blue sky.
Carpenter's Up defies easy Hollywood conventions, which makes it all the more complex and fulfilling. It's a not always a happy ride, but one that is eminently worthy of taking.
