{Playwright: Michael Elyanow
At: Naked Eye at Theatre Building Chicago, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: (773) 327-5252; $25-$27.50
Runs through: June 22}
To extract the most from The Idiot Box, one should be familiar with Chekhov's The Three Sisters and the work of Luigi Pirandello, certainly a stylistic forebear of this Michael Elyanow world premiere. A precursor of Theatre of the Absurd, Pirandello (1867-1936) frequently employed surreal paradigm shifts and distorted realities.
As his jumping-off point, Elyanow observed that TV sitcoms set in New York City totally ignore real-life events, such as 9/11. What would happen, he pondered, if real life intruded upon the perky, hermetically sealed, heterosexual and all-white world of Friends, and similar urban Yuppie sitcoms? What happens is that the affectional and professional lives of the six principal characters are shattered, and one turns Machiavellian in order to restore the standard sitcom universe of blissful ignorance. The catalytic outside force is an African-American romantic lead, a simple but surprising choice that calls attention to TV's general segregation of sitcoms into Black or white.
The Idiot Box, it should be apparent, is ambitious and serious. It's an onion-like, multi-layered work that draws on a wide range of literary and popular references to wrestle with the concepts of reality projected by mass media. To amuse audiences, it employs the snappy dialogue and absurd exposition of sitcom. However, it's five times longer than the standard half-hour TV comedy. Although never dull or slow as directed by young-but-proven Jeremy B. Cohen (Elyanow's real-life partner), it's too long. Elyanow generates the length attempting to give equal time and weight to each of the six principals, but this fights the play's natural center (love story and jealous reaction) and results in shallow characters. It's fine as long as The Idiot Box satirizes sitcom, but isn't so fine as the play enlarges itself. The characters do not deepen as much as the concept.
The 10 admirable players are youthful but experienced veteran Chicago actors, each of whom projects a quickly defined, quirky personality typical of TV. Blond Brad Eric Johnson and brunet Bradley Balof appear briefly in their underwear (Balof also appears in drag), which should please some WCT readers. The scenic design of Brian Sidney Bembrdige is a perfect, perky, impossible sitcom-style New York duplex, but with a few Pirandellovian surprises. Jaymi Lee Smith's lighting is unsubtle but practical. Rachel Anne Healy's off-the-rack costumes are unremarkably on target.
The intelligence and craft of this production are obvious. Fifteen minutes shorter would improve it, even if it shoves a few characters to the sidelines. Also, the first half of Act I—which is pure sitcom parody—needs to be funnier. It's not yet at the level of the best sitcom writing, and it must be. The producers might experiment with a pre-show warm-up act, just as TV does.