Playwright: Matt Fotis
Shantz Theatre at American Theatre Company, 1909 W. Byron St.
Phone: ( 773 ) 369-8566; $12-$15
Through Jan. 28
Ever since Minneapolis-based Theatre de la Jeune Lune won the 2005 Regional Theatre Tony Award, Chicago lost its bragging rights as the only city with three Tony Award-winning regional theaters. Yet there can be some minor consolation taken in the fact that the scrappy Shantz Theatre has decided to relocate from Minneapolis to Chicago.
Founded in 2002, Shantz Theatre has won plenty of critical acclaim through its many stints at regional fringe festivals. Now reviving its signature productions of The Van Gogh Exhibit and The Zebra Baby for Chicago, Shantz shows it is a company with lots of promise.
The main attraction is Matt Fotis' The Van Gogh Exhibit, a multi-character La Ronde-like piece laced with biting humor and a lingering sadness. People in Fotis' Chicago-set play are truly Six Degrees of Separation apart as couples tryst ( not always for the best reasons ) and relatives spar ( in instantly recognizable and endearing ways ) . Running through the whole piece is Fotis' disdain into the way we trivialize and aggrandize art as a commodity for status and prestige.
Fotis directs and appears with his fellow actors in The Van Gogh Exhibit, each spot-on with illustrating some of their many characters. No doubt we've all gritted our teeth at the high-maintenance mother who inappropriately brings her noisy child everywhere she goes while doing nothing to discipline him ( Jeanette Nielsen nails this part ) . Or we've all been lectured by overly passionate intellectuals like Sadieh Rifai's perpetual college student Elaine and Fotis' oh-so-flaming gay performance artist Armando. Filling out the ensemble are Scott Danielson and Adal Rifai, both providing vivid and grounded characterizations.
That doesn't mean that the Shantz actors couldn't have done a better job of piecing The Van Gogh Exhibit together. There is a sameness to the appearance of some actors playing multiple characters in adjoining scenes.
Without the actors taking on radically different costume changes or bigger physical shifts, it takes a while for the audience to decipher just who is who and when a new character is introduced. More actors and less doubling-up no doubt would have helped, though one wishes more effort was made by the current company.
Preceding The Van Gogh Exhibit is Fotis' The Zebra Baby, which comes off as a mediocre appetizer. Faced with his wife's sudden revelation that she wants to have a baby, an insecure husband imagines all sorts of odd things that could happen in his future. Fotis fills this trifle with plenty of whimsy and weight, but director Jonathan Thomas and his acting company don't quite get the comic absurdities to pop out naturally ( though Lana Raines-Igou as The Kid Who Likes Sandwiches is pretty endearing ) .
Despite its skeletal production values and decidedly mixed-bag repertory, Shantz's initial Chicago outing is still filled with plenty of promise and insight. Minneapolis' loss has the potential to be a strong Chicago gain.