Playwright: adapted by Tonika Todorova from the plays by Frank Wedekind
At: Silent Theatre in association with the Journeymen at the Theatre Building
Phone: ( 773 ) 327-5252; $20
Runs through: Feb. 26
No writer ever lost money recounting the story of a bad girl—better yet, a GOOD girl—behaving badly, especially when her downward progress is delineated in the brutal candor that became a hallmark of the literary movement dubbed Naturalism. But playwright Frank Wedekind invoked his lurid motifs with a gusto that disgusted even his contemporaries in his two plays—Earth Spirit and Pandora's Box, nowadays performed as one text—delivering up an amoral femme fatale whose sorry tale features murder, suicide, rape, a lesbian protector, fraud, deception, an eleventh-hour escape from the gallows and a final date with none other than Jack the Ripper.
But the adventures of our Sally Bowles prototype is merely the pretext for this multi-referential production from the folks who brought you the likewise intellectually capricious Für Beethoven. If its plot recalls The Blue Angel, its ambiance is that of The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari, Robert Wiene's groundbreaking 1919 silent film. The expressionist palette for its set and costumes is an uncompromising black, white and gray. The actors—made up in stark Edward Gorey-like whiteface—silently mouth their words as projected title cards and omnipresent music conveys what words are deemed necessary to our comprehension.
There's no denying the originality of Tonika Todorova's concept or the virtuosity of its execution. For nearly an hour and half, the multiple-cast Silent Theatre ensemble must move seamlessly through scene after scene of seduction and betrayal, enhanced by comic burlesques and fully-realized dance numbers ( our heroine is a cabaret star, naturally ) —all without a drop of sweat marring their matte-finish complexions. But how far can a concept carry a show now that we have long since ceased to be shocked by, for instance, a remorseless vixen scornfully rubbing her soiled panties in her lover's face, or her maid covertly masturbating on the parlor sofa?
Make no mistake—there is much to admire and enjoy in Lulu, not the least of which is Isaiah Robinson's clever incidental music, performed nightly on stageside piano by the steel-wristed Katie Clasen. But everything commendable about this exercise would be equally commendable if there were, say, 20 minutes less of it.