The Musical of Musicals: The Musical! Photo by Johnny Knight____________
REVIEW
Betrayal
Playwright: Harold Pinter
At: The Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted
Runs Through: May 27; $20-$65
Phone: ( 312 ) 335-1650
By: Catey Sullivan
Variations on an eternal theme run with exquisite precision through Harold Pinter's Betrayal. Directed by Rick Snyder, this is a piercing three-voice micro-symphony of rejuvenation spinning into disillusionment, a chamber piece of sex, lies and the sort of brightly burning joy that makes the world seem grayer, sadder and just a bit more futile after it is extinguished. And while the title is singular, the deceptions that propel Betrayal are many.
Betrayal is a backward-spinning triangle where the tumbling points in the relationship are portrayed with exacting nuance and richness by Amy Morton, Tracy Letts and Ian Barford. Each is a force that subtly dazzles at delivering the audible portions of Pinter's clipped, exacting text. And each is equally deft at pulling the audience into the seismic emotional fissures forever cracking and shifting in the silences and pauses between and just beneath the words.
Betrayal runs in reverse, beginning two years after the stale, bickering end of an affair and ending at its giddy, luscious onset. It's a structure that can be contrived and gimmicky, as anyone who has sat through Jason Robert Brown's The Last Five Years can attest. Here, as we flash back and back again through Pinter's spare, scalpel-exact language, it's harrowing. We know how the affair between Emma ( Morton ) and her husband Robert's ( Letts ) best friend Jerry ( Barford ) will end. That knowledge makes the scenes of its development all the more piercing. Dreams flush with the potential for ecstasy and operatic explosions of will wind up as shrugging whimpers, portent and high-stakes drama dulled to inconsequential footnotes in unremarkable lives. Stare at it too long and the devolution takes on a sheen of pure tragedy. If we knew how many electrifying beginnings were destined to ash-cold endings, would we even bother to get up in the morning? That's the philosophical conundrum. The specific issues Betrayal so provocatively deals with center on the shadings of betrayal in a very particular tale of adultery.
Morton's Emma is a cold, hard-edged beauty, not somebody prone to superfluous emotional frilliness or bleeding-heart displays of ardor. That makes her final, wonderstruck moment in Betrayal all the more wrenching. No less thrilling is Barford's drunk-with-truth, blundering and thunderous confession that sets the affair off on its seven-year progression from passion to dust. Letts is endlessly fascinating as a wounded but still fanged and canny psychological predator of a husband and best friend, calculating like a chessmaster in endgame.
The words are stilettos; the infamous Pinter pauses razor blades deceptively cottoned in silence. The end result is a brittle, sharp brilliance.
REVIEW
The Piano Tuner
Playwright: adapted by James E. Grote from the novel by Daniel Mason
At: Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood
Phone: 773-761-4477; $24-$26
Runs through: March 25
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Its literary genre is the Night Journey; its prototype, Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness. Its plot typically involves a 'civilized' man who ventures into primitive territory, undergoing a crisis of faith before re-emerging with resolve altered by his experiences. The title character of Daniel Mason's novel is Edgar Drake, a shy Victorian tradesman summoned by the British government for a mission to Burma, where one of their officers, Surgeon-Major Anthony Carroll, has earlier arranged to have a piano delivered to his medical outpost deep in the jungles of the feudal Shan district. The humid climate having inflicted the expected damage on the delicate instrument, the war office reluctantly agrees to send a civilian specialist into this politically volatile environment.
Our unassuming hero's culture shock follows the usual formula of its prototypes: Beggars recite him poems, servants acquaint him with koanic myths and a beautiful woman enchants him with her enigma. Unlike the brutal Mr. Kurtz, however, exposure to native folkways have rendered the expatriate Dr. Carroll humane beyond the expectations—indeed, the approval—of his colonialist superiors. Drake is impressed, admiration of his legendary host spurring him to previously-unimagined daring. But ours is not the tidy East vs. West/Good vs. Evil cosmos of 19th-century Europe, and doctor-turned-author Mason has some surprises in store for playgoers anticipating the standard tourist package.
A protagonist who spends most of his onstage time alternating between awe and incredulity could easily succumb to torpor, but Lifeline Theatre regular Patrick Blashill never repeats an emotion as his naive observer moves from skeptical curiosity to unquestioning conviction. He is flanked by an ensemble of eight actors who evoke a dazzling array of multi-ethnic personalities ( and objects ) with protean alacrity, thanks in large part to dialect coach Elise Kauzlaric and dramaturg Lavina Jadhwani. This is important, since many of the novel's narrative devices are untranslatable to the stage. But even when the ambiguity gets thick, Jonathan Barry's deft direction and James E. Grote's elegant adaptation keep us firmly oriented within our dramatic universe.
Prejudice is most often defined as the rejection of values foreign to one's society, but those too ready to embrace the exotic also risk disillusionment born of spiritual myopia—a lesson xenophobes and xenophiles alike would do well to heed lest they, like Mason's pilgrims in an increasingly unstable world, find themselves suddenly as inharmonious as a piano in the wilderness.
REVIEW
Iron
Playwright: Rona Munro
At: Apple Tree Theatre, Highland Park
Phone: 847-432-4335; $35-$45
Runs through: March 4
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Go see Iron and you'll see two women acting their hearts out in a drama that puts them through the many paces and faces of a mother-daughter relationship. It's a splendid showcase of laughter, tears and tension for Kirsten Fitzgerald ( Fay ) and Lindsay Gould ( Josie ) , as directed by Kurt Johns. I wish I liked the play as much as I liked their performances—but something is missing for me.
Iron embraces large themes such as parenthood and mutual parent-child responsibilities, but it never becomes universal. The situation of this particular mother and daughter is so unique and problematic that author Rona Munro is unable to connect them to the larger social structure. The narrow focus of Iron makes it small: a drama without literary or philosophical size and weight despite its obvious compassion. Its limits are ones of craft, not of heart.
Iron is set in contemporary Scotland ( although there's nothing distinctively Scottish about the work ) , where working-class Fay was married at 18, gave birth at 20 and killed her hard-drinking husband at 30. Now she's 45 and has been in prison for 15 years, having had no contact with her daughter, Josie. At 25, Josie is a successful, divorced career woman who returns to Scotland and seeks out Fay. They begin to see each other at weekly prison visits after overcoming initial tension, shyness and suspicions.
Fay quickly begins to live a vicarious life through prim and proper Josie, pressing her to party hearty as Fay did when she was young. Josie, for her part, has erased memories of her childhood and father and wants Fay to reconstruct them for her. Fay does so in a skilful and caring way, but continues to wallow in guilt and indulge in destructive behavior. Fay refuses to participate in her own defense when the possibility rises of appealing her case. In a twisted version of The Gift of the Magi, Fay wants to live through Josie while Josie prepares to sacrifice her career in pursuit of Fay's freedom. The mother-daughter relationship is weakly mirrored through male and female guards who supervise the Fay-Josie visits and somewhat reflect their temperaments. Steve Misetic and Anita Deely breathe life into the roles—especially Deely as the more manipulative guard—but they don't have big opportunities.
Iron—the title refers to prison bars—ends with the mutual understanding that the visits no longer are productive. However, Josie makes sure Fay will have legal counsel and pocket money, while Fay's earthy nature persuades Josie to let down her hair, literally, and take a bite of life. It's too neat and not much happens. One would like a bigger play for the sake of four good actors.
REVIEW
The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!
Playwright: Joanne Bogart, lyricist; Erik Rockwell, composer
At: Noble Fool Theatricals at Pheasant Run Resort & Spa, 4051 E. Main, St. Charles
Phone: 630-584-6342; $27-$56
Through April 21
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
The drive out to Pheasant Run Resort & Spa from Chicago is a long one, but any musical theater queen worth his ( or her ) salt should make that journey immediately. The reason: Noble Fool Theatricals' fabulously funny take on the perfect musical comedy spoof called The Musical of Musicals: The Musical!
This is a show and production where the title exclamation point is definitely warranted. The Musical of Musicals lovingly skewers five different musical theater composers and lyricists with spot-on accuracy.
And boy, what sharp pens composer Erik Rockwell and lyricist Joanne Bogart wield. With their own five mini-musicals, Rockwell and Bogart overemphasize the stylistic excesses of great 20th-century musical theater artists. What makes these mini-musicals all the more ingenious is that they apply the exact same characters and plot scenario of a woman who needs help to pay her rent.
Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II ( Oklahoma! and Carousel ) get kicked in the pants with Corn!, featuring the overly symbolic dream dance sequence and the soaring inspirational hymn used to encourage the heroine to fjord every stream ( or something like that ) .
The complex neurosis of Stephen Sondheim's very diverse shows ( Sweeney Todd, Company ) get distilled in A Little Complex, where the hero is a murder/artist/landlord who can't properly express himself or relate. Then there's the big bombastic Broadway sound and Big Lady stars of Jerry Herman shows ( Hello, Dolly!, Mame ) . As expected, there are loads of fabulous costume changes for the leading lady and songs telling you how great the world is.
The over-ambitious sung-through characters and relentless song reprises of Andrew Lloyd Webber shows ( Evita, The Phantom of the Opera ) make up Aspects of Junita, while the decadence and sleek sexual corruption of John Kander and Fred Ebb shows ( Cabaret, Chicago ) are played up with great mock Bob Fosse choreography in Speakeasy.
All this brilliant spoofing wouldn't be funny unless the performers and production were up to task. I'm pleased to say that the folks of Noble Fool Theatricals have outdone themselves. Director Bill Jenkins has gathered a cast and crew that clearly know what they're spoofing, and they do it with a lavishness that wasn't seen in the physical productions of The Musical of Musicals in London or off-Broadway.
The starring quartet of Leah Morrow, Tom Taylorson, Mick Houlahan and Catherine Lord are all expert shape-shifter performers and practitioners of the material. But more importantly, they land practically all the jokes with plenty of physical humor.
So don't let the long drive out to St. Charles intimidate you from experiencing The Musical of Musicals. Even if you're not familiar with all the shows and composers being spoofed ( and would you really be if you weren't reading this newspaper? ) , The Musical of Musicals will still make you laugh almost non-stop.
