Playwright: Zinnie Harris. At: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St. Tickets: 312-335-1650; $20-$82. Runs through Nov. 10
It has been more than 20 years since Tony Award-winner and three-time Academy Award-nominee Joan Allen has performed as an ensemble member at Steppenwolf Theatre. So Allen's return to Steppenwolf in the American premiere of Zinnie Harris' The Wheel is an occasion in itself.
And Allen doesn't disappoint with her layered and commanding performance in director Tina Landau's imaginatively staged and song-punctuated production. On the other hand, the vehicle that Allen and Landau have chosen is likely to divide opinion.
The Wheel begins in 19th-century Spain with Beatriz ( Allen ) helping to prepare for the wedding of her sister, Rosa ( Charon Cross ). But things go awry when a ragtag band of soldiers invade their farm, causing Beatriz to journey to reunite a mysterious girl ( Emma Gordon ) with her recently exiled father ( Scott Stangland ).
What follows is a magical realist time-traveling journey through a catalogue of war zones with Beatriz always struggling to find her basic humanity toward others amid horrific wartime conditions. Harris is heavy-handedly hammering home the fact that peoples' struggles in time of crisis and war are universal and unending, no matter the time or place. But just how and why all this is happening to Beatriz and her various charges is never satisfactorily explained, or fully fleshed out.
Given all the unmistakable references to Brecht plays like Mother Courage and her Children and The Caucasian Chalk Circle in The Wheel, you do start to wonder why Allen and Landau didn't tackle one of those more established works. Perhaps the newness and the staging challenges of The Wheel were a draw, and Allen and Landau do their utmost to keep it spinning, even if its fragmentary nature confounds more than it illuminates.
Landau has a strong multiethnic ensemble ( many of whom also playing multiple music instruments throughout ) to flesh out the character contours of The Wheel. Ensemble members Yasen Peyankov, Ora Jones and Tim Hopper in particular all doing great work respectively as an easily corruptible army sergeant, an avaricious doctor's wife and a wounded soldier clinging to supernatural rumors to survive.
The look of the production is suggestively sketched in both period and modern approaches, suiting the play's shifting nature. Set designer Blythe R.D. Quinlan symbolically extends the theater's balcony boxes on one side onstage to connect the audience through the proscenium ( as if to implicated that we're participants in the horror onstage ). Lighting designer Scott Zielinski and sound designer/music director Kevin O'Donnell also do great atmospheric work.
The Wheel is worth seeing thanks to the staging work of Landau and the star turn of Joan Allen, but without their contributions the play doesn't satisfy. So welcome Allen back and hope that the time between her next Steppenwolf appearances won't be as long.
