Playwright: Nichola Behrman, David Kersnar, Abbie Phillips, Heidi Stillman, Andrew White. At: Lookingglass Theatre, Water Tower Water Works. Tickets: 312-337-0665; www.lookingglasstheatre.org; $34-$62. Runs through: July 24
One day before accepting the 2011 Regional Theater Tony Award, Lookingglass Theatre Company opened another in a chain of more than 50 world premieres over 23 years. Beautifully executed and well-acted, The Last Act of Lilka Kadison nonetheless is a small show for the company.
The four-person cast is quite small by Lookingglass standards and does not include any Lookingglass ensemble member or associate (although many are involved off-stage). There's no tumbling, flying, stilts, trap doors or mime as the company's signature physical style is set aside. The story, too, eschews myth, fairytales, the fantastic and classical literature, all of which have been repeated inspirations for the troupe. This one is a highly personal, individual story minus universal truths, epic adventures or metaphysics. It's four actors in naturalistic mode performing within a more-or-less realistic setting and context.
Briefly, 87-year-old Lilith Fisher of Los Angeles, born Lilka Kadison in a Polish Jewish ghetto, faces possibly her final illness and sees her long-dead lover, the engaging Ben Ari Adler, who insists she tell the long-hidden truth: that he fathered her only child as the Nazis invaded Poland, and she miraculously escaped to a new American life. Her son does not know, and Lilith/Lilka indicates her late husband didn't know, which seems an impossibility.
That impossibility—the storytelling gap between her affair with Adler and her being 87—is the weak spot in this vehicle as it splits its narrative power between old Lilith and young, high-spirited Lilka. Despite a deliciously sardonic performance by Marilyn Dodds Frank as old Lilith, the story really wants to go back to Poland and the doomed romance between orthodox good girl Lilka and handsome, assimilated Ben Ari, especially as attractively played by Nora Fiffer and Chance Bone. Perhaps this 85-minute show needs to be a longer two-act play. It doesn't help that Lilith has only her nursing aide to whom to tell the truth, which makes the consequences minimal. A fine performance by Usman Ally cannot make the aide more than the device he is.
To be sure, there's considerable craft to the stagecraft, which tells a story within a story. The antagonist/leading man (Ben Ari) is a professional storyteller and puppeteer and, therefore, makes use of an elaborate toy stage, cut-out puppets and miniature stage effects straight out of the Redmoon Theatre playbook (and designed by Redmoon veteran Tracy Otwell). The toy theater sits within scenic designers Jacqueline and Richard Penrod's shadowbox-like proscenium stage setting, cluttered with the bits and pieces of Lilith's lifetime, and containing echoes of Otwell's toy theater.
A few life realities smack you in the face, especially with regard to aging, but mostly it's charming rather than exciting, wanting dramatic weight.
