Playwright: Rinne Groff
At: Uma Productions, Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division
Runs through: May 18
Phone: 773-347-1375; $15-$20
By Jonathan Abarbanel
The highly-anticipated Orange Lemon Egg Canary is an odd work, chiefly because it constantly shifts genres. It sports dialogue and situations that shout 'noir mystery,' but it's also a ghost story and a tale of romantic obsession, all filtered through a magic act with hocus-pocus talk about magic vs. reality and illusion vs. non-illusion. I suppose it's a work of so-called magic realism, but a work of magic realism that's about magic is a bit opaque.
The story concerns a stage magician, Great, who is a careless womanizer. His new girlfriend, Trilby ( a symbolic name with literary antecedents ) , is obsessed with magic, which Great is reluctant to teach her given his history of failed relationships with female assistants. She learns anyway with help from Henrietta, a ghost who was the assistant/lover of Great's magician grandfather. Henrietta ( buxom Anne Adams ) mysteriously died on stage while performing the Hypnotic Balance illusion. A third woman, revenge-driven Egypt, is Great's former assistant and squeeze. As the plot twists, Trilby ( blonde Laura Hooper ) and Egypt ( raven-haired Elaine Robinson ) plan to steal Great's best magic, including the Hypnotic Balance. In the end, Trilby risks her own life in a test of Great's love as stage magic morphs into real magic.
Directed by Mikhael Tara Carver, Orange Lemon Egg Canary ( a reference to a famous sleight-of-hand trick ) has plenty of visual pizzazz and real magician Dennis Watkins as Great. Three magician's assistants accompany the four speaking characters, silently moving props and shadowing many of their physical actions. Stylistically, Carver emphasizes the noir elements through her dialogue direction, provocative choreography and use of jazzy incidental music.
But there are pieces missing for me. Egypt and Henrietta disappear without satisfactory exits—the playwright's problem. The script has humor that isn't played—the director's problem. The shifting styles create misdirection, like magic itself, and maybe that's intentional, although it makes the story slow to unfold and the characters very late to engage audience sympathies, which always is risky. Ultimately love triumphs, which will be enough for many in a work with high entertainment value, but I never felt fully engaged.
Brian Sidney Bembridge's simple and colorful set uses wood borders, painted to look like velvet curtains, to define a small square stage surrounded on three sides by squares of audience. The open, unadorned stage isn't the magician's usual carefully prepared space; it's no smoke and mirrors. Because of this, the show's best magic involves the sleight-of-hand tricks. The central large-scale illusion, the Hypnotic Balance, is less successful as its mechanics are obvious so close up, even when performed seamlessly. ( There were opening-night hitches. ) Theater and magic require the willing suspension of disbelief, but the magic might be helped by more specialized 'magical' lighting.
