The reports of entertainment's annihilation were premature, as such pronouncements have always been. You'd have thought we'd never seen a war before...stop lying about your ages, you baby-boomers!...to hear the latter-day Cromwells call for the playhouses to be closed. C'mon! With no theaters, where would we hold the bond rallies?
The fact is that the entertainment industry has always thrived in wartime. Who will be the first in 2002 to revive Home Of The Brave, Mister Roberts, No Time For Sergeants, or What Price Glory?.
But though little is perfect in our world at this time, least of all the carefully planned campaigns that make for memorable theatre, 2001 gave us a few moments coming a little closer to that ideal:
House & Garden...Goodman Theatre. How better to inaugurate the new two-stage playhouse than Alan Ayckbourn's Olympic-level variation on the Noises Off gimmick? Robert Falls' direction and an athletic cast kept the relay-race between the Albert and the Owun clean and coherent
Chagrin Falls...Stage Left. An American town whose economy is supported by a federal prison and a meat-processing plant has all the gothic potential of a slasher movie. But people are still only people, and before it's all over, author Mia McCullough makes us care very much about these people.
Bug...A Red Orchid Theatre. Tracy Letts completes about one play per decade...but the wait for this one was worth it. So was the hand-picked cast and world-class technical team, guided by Dexter Bullard in Red Orchid's bunker-like confines.
The Life And Times of Tulsa Lovechild...CollaborAction Theatre. A successful Road Story must deliver romance, adventure, wisdom, spiritual renewal and fresh aspirations for the humblest of its pilgrims. Greg Owens' play provided all of these with an abundance of warmth besides.
Jane Eyre...Lifeline Theatre. Christina Calvit and Dorothy Milne had the romantic sensibility in '91, but 10 years has honed their skills at page-to-stage adaptation. A superbly integrated technical concept and intelligent performances rendered this revival a triumph.
Being Beautiful...Chicago Theatre Company. The Great Depression wasn't all Joad family values...McKinley Johnson and Stephanie Newsom's musical honors the cross-dressers who worked Chicago's transvestite clubs to support themselves and their families.
The Return Of The King...Lifeline Theatre. It was thought too big to put on the stage, but Lifeline did it, and on a stage barely large enough for a hobbit's tea party, thanks to the visual imagination of director Ned Mochel.
The Pagans...Famous Door Theatre Company. As staged by the always-capable Famous Door ensemble, Ann Noble Massey's second play dispelled any fears of one-hit-wonderdom for the author of the long-running, multiple award-winning And Neither Have I Wings To Fly.
A Cozy Evening With [ George ] Bernard Shaw...Pendulum Productions. Few people can verify the accuracy of the impersonation nowadays. But there's no faulting Charles J. Likar's scholarship ( five years of research on both sides of the Atlantic ) or the infectious charm of this chatty one-man show.
Hapgood...Remy Bumppo Theatre Company. So what if we never figure who's betrayed whom? Under James Bohnen's deft direction, a virtuoso cast ( with Annabel Armour in the Sean Connery role ) made Tom Stoppard's slick and sexy romp with aging espionagers an engaging spy-spoof. Nowhere else will you find ensemble work recognized, which is why Chicago's attention to this concept continues to distinguish it nationwide. Recognition is due the casts of Absolution ( Steppenwolf ) , Jonathan Wild ( Victory Gardens ) , Death And The Maiden ( Red Wolf ) , We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! ( Piccolo Theatre ) , Serendipity ( Half-Cocked Productions ) , and the "Cathedral" segment of American Voices ( Piven Theatre )
Closely related to ensemble playing is tag-team work, outstanding examples of which were : Laura Macknin and Krishna Sallman in La Vagabonde ( City Lit ) , David Darlow and Joe Van Slyke in No Man's Land ( Remy Bumppo ) , the trio of Nathan Davis, Gary Houston and Joe Dempsey in 2 1/2 Jews ( Apple Tree ) and that of Brian Posen, George Seegebrecht and Doug MacKechnie in Artist Descending A Staircase ( Broutil & Frothingham ) , with the senior achievement award going to Mark Richard and Page Hearn for City Lit's decade-long Bertie and Jeeves canon.
Then there are the individual actors whose appearances we anticipate, no matter where. Youths like Amanda Pajer ( Tough! ) , Christian Kohn ( Piano ) and Eddie Shin ( M. Butterfly ) . Leading men and women like Peter Greenberg ( Jane Eyre ) , Freeman Coffey ( Hambone ) and Donna Smothers McGough ( Arcadia ) . Character players like Don Bender ( The Pagans, Arcadia ) , Ron Barkholder ( Morocco, La Vagabonde ) , Don Tieri and Morgan McCabe ( Chagrin Falls ) , Ann Whitney ( Fossils ) , and Debra Ann Miller ( Prop Thtr's Rosemary ) . And a special nod to Dan Loftus, the 2001 AARP pin-up, and to the magnificent creepsters created by Gene Cordon ( Rosemary ) , Rob Skrocki ( Tulsa Lovechild, Boom Town ) and the entire cast of Take It Deep.
It's not all in the acting, however. 2001 also gave us impressive scenic design by Mary Griswold for Hambone, and the Penrods for Artist Descending A Staircase. Dazzling costumes by Jeffrey Kelly for Nine ( Circle Theater ) , and a splendor of set and costumes by Stephanie Nelson and Natasha Djukich for Princess Turandot ( European Repertory ) , in addition to Geoffrey Curley, Joel Moritz and Lindsay Jones' tight sight-and-sound co-ordination in The Chairs ( Court ) . And let's not forget the clever makeup design for Monster Dogs ( WNEP ) and Joe Kahn's indispensible movement coaching for Ali ( Congo Square ) .
But the foundation of shows that linger in our minds long after the set is struck and the receipts counted are playwrights such as Stuart Flack ( Jonathan Wild ) , Michael Mark Chemers ( Mommy Abula's Miraculous Traveling Carnival Of Wonders for National Pastime ) , Richard Strand ( Ten Percent of Molly Snyder ) , and Nathan White ( Like Monkeys for TinFish ) ...with special mention of Freyda Thomas' translation of The Gamester at Northlight. Also directors like Chuck Smith ( The Amen Corner ) , John Szostek ( We Won't Pay! ) , Sean Graney ( Arcadia ) , and Ronald Jui ( Oedipus, Who? ) .
What's ahead? With all credit to the companies cited above, playgoers may look for Congo Square, long neglected at the remote Chicago Dramatists, to come into its own. And for House Theatre Of Chicago, whose Death and Harry Houdini was the season's most auspicious debut, to attract its share of attention.
MOST MEMORABLE PLAYS OF 2001
by Rick Reed
These end-of-the-year wrap-ups are always problematic. How does a reviewer decide what categories to use? Is anyone interested? How can my aging brain remember 12 days ago, let alone 12 months ago? And that last question gave me the key to what I should write about here: what shows really stuck out in my memory? Which ones really leaped to mind when I thought about the year in theater: 2001? Here, then, are my picks. Please note that I'm dealing with most memorable, and sometimes we remember things not because they were so delightful, but because they were so traumatic.
In no particular order, these are the plays that occupy the greatest amount of brain cells in my memory:
Most welcome invasion from New York: The Bomb-itty of Errors. Four inspired hip-hop boyz from the Big Apple take Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors and make it their own. The Bard would be proud.
Laugh 'til you pee your pants: Hands down, when Dame Edna came to Chicago to do her one-woman show at the Shubert, it was the funniest show of the year. Non-stop laughs from beginning to end.
Worst waste of remarkable talent: Julie Harris in Fossils. Even the delicately nuanced, brave performance of thespian great Julie Harris couldn't save this piece of contrived and unconvincing dreck.
Most shocking musical disappointment: Muscle. A new musical from James Lapine, tying together the 1980s and bodybuilding. What a concept. What a pedigree. What a bore.
Most delicious new musical treat: The Visit. Kander and Ebb. Ann Reinking. Chita Rivera. Terence McNally. How could it miss? It didn't. The Goodman brought Chicago audiences one of the best new musicals of the year...anywhere.
A revival so good it should be called "Easter": Steppenwolf's remounting of one of Mamet's best forays into the dark heart of American greed, Glengary Glenn Ross, was the theatrical triumph of the year.
Peerless drama: Bash: Latterday Plays. Neil LaBute's own "trilogy of terror" was one of About Face's leanest, and best, productions ever.
Amazing Adaptation: When Lookingglass brought Charles Dickens' Hard Times to rousing life, they did so with panache and unrivaled skill.
Classics 101: Richard II, at Chicago Shakespeare Theater, displayed the reason Shakespeare's historical dramas have survived the ages and Chicago Shakespeare Theater's imaginative, innovative production displays how to show reverence for the master while making his work riveting for modern audiences.
Best Little Out of The Way Theatrical Experience. The new Steep Theater Company's production of Howard Korder's Search and Destroy in Chopin Theater's studio was simply amazing, a flawless production comparable to the early work of Steppenwolf.
Stepping Up to the Plate and Hitting a Home Run: Heather Prete stepping in as understudy at the opening of Steppenwolf's production of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. Amazing control and an on-the-money performance made one wonder why this understudy wasn't cast as first choice.
Best argument against artistic license: The Oblivion Theater company's new piece, The Helen Project, at the Cultural Center, embodied the worst elements that sometimes go into theater, pretentiousness and self-indulgence chief among them.
No Weakest Link Here Ensemble: Kate Buckley and Evanston's Next Theater continues to astound. Her direction of the shocking and disturbing The Incident makes one wonder why this talented director isn't being hunted down to direct on Broadway. Thankfully, for Chicago, she's still here.
YEAR IN REVIEW
by Jonathan Abarbanel
Each year, some 200 theaters in the Chicago Metro area give more than 12,000 performances of 900 or more plays, musicals and revues ( according to the League of Chicago Theatres ) . If I saw a show 365 days a year, I'd still miss more than half of everything there is to see. Within those limitations, here are my choices of "the best" of 2001.
The funniest show of the year...perhaps the funniest I've ever seen...was Dame Edna, the Royal Tour at the Shubert. I urged all you "possums" not to miss the Dame and her special brand of audience interplay. If you ever hear that she's coming back to Chicago, then rush, run, push, shove, beg, borrow or steal to secure an audience with Dame Edna.
Other funny business: a clever quartet of writer/actors created and performed The Bomb-itty of Errors, a rap take on Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors, and provided far more than I expected. Their writing was genuinely clever and cheeky, not merely a simplification in rhymed slang. Also, The Producers, a musical adaptation by Mel Brooks of his own cult film. Starring Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, it was an old-fashioned, low comedy filled with Brooksian vulgar jokes No old shoe went unsniffed. And The Gamester, the Northlight Theatre production of an 18th Century French comedy of manners...about gambling, sex and love...rendered into a modern and witty English translation, and produced in elegant period style.
Unsurprisingly, there were an equal number of dramas that stood out, the best being the 25th anniversary production of Glengary Glenn Ross, by David Mamet, still running on the Steppenwolf mainstage. This examination of American business ethics crackles with tension, testosterone and Mamet's profound vulgarity hammered out by an extraordinary ensemble of veteran Chicago character actors, whipped into shape by director Amy Morton.
Equally well-done was the Defiant Theatre's terrifically intense production of Cleansed, a deeply unsettling and horrific metaphor of modern life, set in an Orwellian psychiatric hospital in which no good deed goes unpunished. Ultimately, the utter despair of the author's world view ( she killed herself before she was 30 ) restricted Cleansed to shock value, rather than a satisfying resolution, despite the deep work of an ensemble that embraced the play's dark challenges.
Other dramas that impressed were: Alchymia Theatre's lovely production of an early Gunter Grass play, Flood, a poetic and hopeful drama about the resumption of life following a great war. Scott Fielding deftly directed a well-chosen ensemble in a very small space, making the most of Andei Onegin's ingenious, multi-level scenic design. Also, Orpheus Descending at the Artistic Home, in which the well-trained ensemble cast ( directed by Dan LaMorte ) defied the limits of a tiny storefront theater to deliver intense performances of Tennessee Williams' heavily textured melodrama.
Halfway between comedy and drama stood Rivendell Theatre's Faulkner's Bicycle, a lilting tale about Oxford, Miss., in which a fresh young woman discovers a thing or two about life thanks to her aging and forgetful mother, and the aging writer William Faulkner, who's now the town crank. This genteel and well-acted show was one of the unexpected delights of the season.
As always in Chicago, the year offered many new works. Critics cheered Chagrin Falls at Stage Left, but this critic missed it. Among the new plays I DID see, and which impressed me, were: Drawing War, by Brett Neveu, at Chicago Dramatists; Hambone, by Javon Johnson, at Victory Gardens Theater; and The Action Against Sol Schulman, by Jeffrey Sweet, also at Victory Gardens.
The Neveu play, about Christmas Day for an emotionally lost and alone teenage boy, was an intriguing piece of writing, and introduced a fine, young actor, Justin Cholawa, to the stage. Javon Johnson, better known as an actor than an author, created lively and memorable characters in his African-American-themed Hambone in which the freshness of the dialogue and the believability of the people overshadowed the weakness of the plot. Finally, the Sweet drama was...typically...pithy, tense, leavened with comedy and intellectually challenging as it dealt with societal and familial responsibilities, with guilt and remembrance.
Some shows make my best list because of a single memorable performance, or two, that stand taller than any other qualities...good and/or bad...of a production: the skeletal and slimy Uriah Heep of Jay Whittaker as the villain in David Copperfield at Steppenwolf; the beautifully rendered verbal and physical comedy of Richard Edward Frederick in Princess Turandot at European Repertory Company; the Jane Eyre at Lifeline, starring the forceful Peter Greenburg as Mr. Rochester and Jennifer Tyler Key as Jane; the dynamic and moving work of David Wesley Cooper as the tortured and crumbling hero of Arthur Miller's Broken Glass, produced by the Actors Workshop Theatre; the incredible one-two punch of Joe Forbrich and Stephen Key as two convicts in Coyote on a Fence, at Shattered Globe; the superb Carmen Roman in anything she does, this time the dying academic at the center of Wit, produced by the Goodman Theatre ( and directed notably by Steve Scott ) ; and the superb Greg Vinkler in anything he does, this time the title role in King Lear at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre AND the alcoholic Irish critic in St. Nicholas, produced at Victory Gardens Studio by Gitta Jacobs.
A few shows have it all: imaginative staging, colorful costumes and scenic elements, fine ensemble work and individual portrayals, high entertainment value, full of ideas. Consider: the magical Big Love at Goodman, the modern tale of the war between men and women that combines athletic movement, eclectic music, comedy, murder and a Magritte set to tell an ancient Greek story; and Hard Times, the Charles Dickens social tale that sets the forces of imagination and the energy of the circus against the degradations of the early industrial age and social rigidity, as adapted by Heidi Stillman for Lookingglass Theatre using real circus skills and charming period costumes in support of a fine ensemble; and Shockheaded Peter, the British import that told the scary 1844 allegories of Heinrich Hoffmann ( Little Suck-a-Thumb, Cruel Frederick, etc. ) in a high-style tribute to 19th Century English theater and music hall. The mime-like physical skill of the troupe, their control of voice, the whimsical scenic and lighting elements, the puppets and props, the original music...live by The Tiger Lillies...resulted in a dangerously captivating and dream-like telling of Dr. Hoffmann's dark little tales about wicked children.
To all Chicago's theater artists and craftsmen and women, to all the brave producers and artistic directors: Thank You for another outstanding and diverse year of theater!
