Playwright: adapted from Richard Wagner. At: The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter ( free parking ) . Tickets: 312-491-1369; www.buildingstage.com; $40. Runs through: March 14
Richard Wagner spent 28 years writing The Ring Cycle, his quartet of operas running 16 hours-plus in performance. Drawing on Norse and German mythology, Wagner created a fantasy about the passing of magical giants, dwarves and gods from the world in an earth-cleansing action to prepare for the ascendancy of Mankind. Blending metaphysics with romance ( in the literary definition ) , The Ring is one of European culture's greatest achievements. But does it work without an orchestra? Could Wagner's text—written for his profound, sumptuous and exquisite music—stand on its own dramatically? This is the ambitious challenge The Building Stage took on, and the mixed result is interesting rather than wonderful. It will be only a curiosity to those who know Wagner's work well but might serve as an apt introduction to those who don't.
Truth: Only Wagner himself thought he was a great poet. His librettos for his operas are long and portentous—although not without humor—and were written in the German equivalent of "thee," "thou" and "thy" language. His verse, both in German and in modern English translation, relies on alliteration ( "You may laugh and lie, yet I yearn for your love" is typical ) and is short on nuance. Given the episodic nature of its stories, The Ring has many figures that appear in one or two scenes only, which hardly allows for deep dramatic characterization. Opera text is not meant to be detached from its music, because the music is what conveys emotional depth and complexity.
As modernized and edited by The Building Stage, The Ring's four parts run 75 minutes each with a meal break half-way through for a six-hour total. It's a rattling-good story of lust, love, lust, greed, lust, envy, lust, revenge and stab-first-think-later stupidities in which even an ugly villainous dwarf gets laid. Quite properly, The Building Stage presents The Ring as a meta-theatrical event with Rhinemaidens on Spanish cords ( a circus aerial technique ) , various types of puppetry and a small band underscoring the action to percussion and guitar riffs drawn from Wagner's principal musical themes ( Kevin O'Donnell, composer/adapter ) . However, this is the wrong show if you're looking for fine acting from the 11-person ensemble. Any dramatic subtlety ( say, William Bullion's interpretation of Hagen ) is far outweighed by general bombast as primitive as the tales being told. Co-directors Blake Montgomery and Joanie Schultz have chosen—perhaps wisely—to treat the text as a Classics Illustrated comic book.
The Building Stage rendering makes the story clear, although much of it seems adolescent. Only in parts three and four—Siegfried and Gotterdamerung—do things notch up to echo a Shakespearean romance, anchored by Nick Vidal as Siegfried and Darci Nalepa as Brunhilde ( a handsome couple ) , and with Mime ( Bill O'Connor ) —another ugly dwarf—treated as a buffoon. In a highly physical production, the design team ( Lee Keenan, Meghan Raham and Chantal Calato ) also makes important contributions beyond the space limits of this review to discuss.
THEATER REVIEW
The Rant
Playwright: Andrew Cast
At: Mary Arrchie Theatre at
Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan
Phone: 773-871-0442, $18, $29
Runs through: March 28
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
About midway through The Rant, a world-weary reporter uses a pair of real-life rape accusations in a shockingly inarguable demonstration of the way facts can be used to "prove" whatever you want them to prove.
In dialogue referencing a white woman's 2003 rape charges against Kobe Bryant and a Black woman's 2005 rape charges against a group of white Duke University students, playwright Andrew Case depicts a worldview that's tragic and undeniable. Guilty or innocent—it doesn't matter what you believe about Bryant or those Duke boys ( both cases were settled out of court ) : Newsman Alexander Stern ( Earl Pastko, spot-on as the hard-bitten, clear-eyed product of countless graveyard shift police blotters ) can show you're a racist either way. Truth, Case illustrates in his riveting drama, isn't necessarily about justice. It's about proving your point.
Directed by Sharon Evans, The Rant is everything you'd expect from a piece defined by the daily, devastating ambiguities of crime. Mary Arrchie's production is gritty in its uncompromising realism and provocative in its exposure of the the unending, slippery grayness of a criminal justice system we'd all prefer to think of in terms of stark, easily grasped segments of good and bad, black and white.
The story begins as Denise Reeves, a Black woman, arrives at the office of Lila Mahnaz, a light-skinned lawyer who bristles when her minority credentials are questioned. ( "I'm Persian," Lila spits when a Black cop scoffs at her ability to comprehend racism. ) Reeves is demanding justice for the murder of her unarmed son by a white police sergeant. Lila is instantly sympathetic, the case seems cut and dried. But Case lets us know from the onset things are not as simple as they seem.
Lila ( Lindsey Pearlman, ably portraying a cauldron of barely contained resentment and righteous anger ) wants vengeance as much as justice. She believes her motives are pure, but in truth, she's pursuing an agenda she's had since grade school. By getting the white bastard who murdered Reeves' Black son, Lila will even the score against all the playground injustices she suffered at the hands of lazy, fat, stupid, white kids who ( she asserts ) all grew up to be cops.
Case's tightly structured plot thickens as Lila interviews the accused sergeant's Black partner, Charles ( Emanueal Buckley, deftly capturing the hellish internal conflict that comes with a cop's inflexible adherence to the Thin Blue Line and a Black man's anger at the racism of his fellow cops ) . Charles makes it glaringly apparent that the grief-stricken Mrs. Reeves ( Shariba Rivers, a white-hot flame of sorrow and rage ) has withheld crucial information that virtually destroys her credibility as a witness.
The result is a complex, meaningful whodunit, with the implications of the mystery's solution becoming as important as its answer.
