The Devil's Disciple
Most of the older baby-boomers can dimly recall the Cold War years...and those who grew up on strategic military bases ( like I did ) , or close to Washington, D.C., or in any spot that the Russians might have targeted for nuclear attack whenever it suited them to launch one, learned early what it was like to live at Ground Zero. But for most Americans, the 2001 bombing of New York's World Trade Center, nowadays euphemistically called only "9/11," contradicted everything they had come to expect of a country basking in freedom from foreign aggression since 1916.
Playwright Brett Neveu's purpose is not to address the nation, or any single group therein. His is not the Big Picture, but a view as small and limited in scope as a wedding-reception snapshot executed with a disposable camera: Ben and DJ have moved into a barely finished townhouse in order to save money for their future retirement. Neighbors Todd and Mary anticipate their own upcoming vacation. On Sept. 8, 2001, they meet to snack on wine and brie, listen to pre-1971 pop music and share memories of their respective youths ( the details slightly blurred over time ) .
By Sept. 15, DJ and Todd are both severely depressed...the former angrily, the latter listlessly. Their spouses argue that life must go on, but no one seems to be able to make it do so. Audience members who didn't know until last year that ours has always been an uncertain world may appreciate the poignancy of the complacent couples' paralysis, and those who knew it all along are more likely to jeer the tardiness of these aging innocents' introduction to the human condition.
There is no disputing, however, the empathy generated by Stage Left director Jessi D. Hill's actors, all of whom valiantly resist the temptation to hide in safely detached irony ( even when required to croon earnest folk-songs in vintage dorm-room fashion ) , instead creating personalities at once highly specific and universally familiar. And let's not forget Robert G. Smith's set, which replicates suburban-development decor with such sterile accuracy that we are almost glad when someone spills wine on the beige carpet and white sofa, reminding us that imminent disorder lurks beneath the most pristine surface.
George Bernard Shaw subtitles The Devil's Disciple "a melodrama," and certainly, there is no denying that its story contains all the elements for a swashbuckling romance: a year after America has declared its independence from England, a New Hampshire village's local rogue, dubbed "the devil's disciple" by his straitlaced neighbors, is mistaken for the town minister by British troops seeking to execute one of the "rebels" as an example to others. To the surprise of everyone, the incorrigable Dick Dudgeon cheerfully vows to die, while the peaceful Pastor Anthony Anderson joins the Yankee guerrilla forces in order to save him.
This plot...indeed, any plot at all...is only a pretext in a Shaw play, however. Sooner or later, we know there will be one or more scenes in which people do little more than swap radical opinions and incisive banter based in the author's impeccable logic and worded so articulately as to forestall all argument. The chief spokesmen in this case are Dudgeon, on the one side, and Major Swindon of King George The Third's Army, on the other. Serving as raisonneur is General Burgoyne ( an actual historical figure, by the way ) and vacillating between is the Rev. Anderson, who discovers his true calling as a leader of the revolution.
Their moment is a long time coming in this Theo Ubique production. Co-directors Fred Anzevino and Beverle Bloch have done an efficient job of adapting Shaw's extravagant text and elaborate scenic concepts to the limits of non-equity theatre, trimming the running time to under two hours. But as of opening night, they had apparently neglected to remind the women in the cast...Jan Sodaro as the puritanical widow Dudgeon, Nejla Wolff as the prim Mrs. Anderson and Tammy Stackpoole as the waifish Essie Dudgeon...that even characters whose speeches appear to convey exclusively emotional responses still carry their share of intellectual weight in the play's polemics. Audiences with the patience to endure a first act of classroom-level attitude-equals-acting, however, are amply rewarded in the second, when Matt Yde's Dudgeon, Mike Driscoll's Anderson, Steve Ratcliff's Swindon and Nigel Patterson's Burgoyne settle down to debate, not Patriotism's panegyrics, but its practicalities.
Never The Sinner
Never The Sinner is John Logan's workman-like adaptation of the case of Nathan Leopold, Jr. and Richard Loeb, two young Hyde Parkers who abducted and killed a 14-year-old boy in 1924. They were wealthy and smart, and told the press they committed the crime in a spirit of experimentation culled from their readings of Nietzsche. Leopold and Loeb were also lovers, a fact not ignored by Logan's play, but widely un-reported by the Chicago press corps. Interviews of their friends, conducted by Chicago police, revealed an intense, almost obsessive relationship between the two. Their devotion to each other seems to have led them to their crimes. Loeb pushed ahead with their "experiments," and Leopold followed along, committed to a life ahead with his only true "partner-in-crime."
John Logan's play was well-researched and much more informative than even some books on the case. Unfortunately, his dramatic subtleties are more on the par with his current milieu: writing and adapting big-budget screenplays such as Mission Impossible II. Dialogue in this play, especially between Leopold and Loeb, trips along with all the grace of an elephant in a pantry. It's a shame, because when the words are taken directly from transcripts, as the criminal defense attorney Clarence Darrow's closing remarks are, their brilliance is lost. Darrow's forceful oratory skills are forced to run along with Logan's clumsy attempts at eloquence. Thankfully, Michael J. Freymann as Loeb and Joseph Kucharski as Leopold know the power of silent, frothy stares and cocky, 45-degree-angled leers. Their work together, when they're not jabbering Logan's words, is chillingly romantic. Direction by Michael Ryczek creates a stir of motion and noise around Leopold and Loeb's silent dances. Carl Occhipinti's Darrow is suitably down-home and deep thinkin'. But, oh my, does John Logan's script run long. This production successfully keeps us engaged for the two hours that Logan steals out of our lives, but one gets the impression that the cast is as relieved as we are when his words are over.
Hellhound on My Trail
Recently, Windy City Times instituted a feature new to the theater section: weekly "critics' picks." These picks throw a spotlight on upcoming or currently running theater of worth around town. Originally for this week, I picked this production. Bad choice. See, the problem is that Denis Johnson's new play Hellhound on My Trail looked very good on paper. The playwright is something of a sensation, in an "indie" sort of way; one of his first efforts was made into a critically acclaimed film starring Billy Crudup, Jesus' Son. Hellhound on My Trail has a good pedigree: the show won the San Francisco Bay Area Drama Critics Award for best original play in 2000. From the Viaduct's Web site, I got word that the play dealt with alcoholism and drug abuse, that it echoed two great voices in contemporary American theater: Sam Shepard and David Mamet. While the play does deal peripherally with the afore-mentioned vices ( and it's not a fault that it doesn't deal more directly with them; I just came prepared to see a different sort of story ) , it's really more about power struggles in corporate America and the disenfranchisement of those who cannot play by the rules of those in corporate power.
Johnson uses three scenes to put forth his hypothesis: the first involving a woman brought up on sexual harassment charges; the second dealing with the woman's heartless, soulless, and ambitious manager and a devilish corporate flunky; and the last with the woman's brother, who has locked himself away in a tawdry motel room for an extended alcoholic binge.
The problem with Hellhound on My Trail is that it gives us no sympathetic characters, nor ones that really even hold our interest. Hellhound on My Trail is peopled with the kind of characters for whom we really have only two options for feeling: pity or contempt. And while some of the actors in the play deliver inspired performances ( notable among them: Steve Walker as the alcoholic brother, Cass ) , we very quickly stop caring about their plights. They exist more as ciphers to get across the playwright's point … and using humanity in this way in any art form, be it fiction or theater, quickly leaves an audience cold. That's not to say that a play can't be filled with reprehensible characters and still be involving. Mamet and Shepard both know how to create horrible people with whom we can become involved. Maybe it's because their distasteful, unlikable characters have some sort of heart. Mamet and Shepard know how to give an audience a basis for caring, even if it's in a way that causes us to recognize the very worst in ourselves. Johnson hasn't yet learned this lesson, at least not as evidenced by this play. Hellhound on My Trail quickly dissolves into almost unbearable tedium, in spite of some genuinely funny and lurid turns of phrase. But make no mistake: Johnson doesn't demonstrate the capacity of a David Mamet for the lyrically profane.
So, my lesson is to be more careful in what I select to suggest as a critic's pick for this paper. Your lesson? Keep away from the Viaduct for this ambitious, but deeply flawed production.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Nicholas DeBeaubien's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a put-on. Nicholas ( "Not Nick, not Nicky" ) doesn't really exist and neither do the actors named in the cast list. Indeed, DeBeaubien's The Hunchback is a put-on of so many things that it can't figure out what it really wants to be. Although presented in the energetic comic strip style characteristic of many Defiant Theatre productions, it's so much of a theater inside joke that audiences will be left less than amused.
The title character is the very model of a maniacal theatrical auteur, attempting to produce, write, direct, design and perform in his own Marxist adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel. Trouble is, his concept continually shifts as he moves the story and action from the original medieval France to the French Revolution, to the University of Notre Dame where Quasimodo is a football star, to Nazi Germany where Quasimodo becomes a deaf, hunchbacked, tranvestite Jew, to a sci-fi adventure in another galaxy. The only constants are the quartet of lead characters...Quasimodo, Esmerelda, Capt. Phoebus and Father Frollo...and DeBeaubien's compulsive vision of the proletariat
The conceit gets old fast, certainly before the Act I curtain. Very loosely written, the show is a collection of gags, bits, schtick, episodes and moments that really don't add up to a hill of beans in this crazy world, although some of those gags, bits, espisodes, etc. are amusing. But with a story line that's circular and repetitive rather than linear, and without meaningful character relationships, DeBeaubien's Hunchback really is sketch comedy stretched far too long and thin.
An old theatrical rule-of-thumb is that a show is in trouble if the trained dog act is the best thing. In this Hunchback, the equivalent is ( real ) actor Will Schutz playing ( fictional ) actor Jackie Coppenole playing Quasimodo playing "Edelweis" on musical bells! Indeed, Schutz is the best thing in the show; a large, hearing-impaired ( really ) man who plays the deaf hunchback with a keen sense of satire, dry delivery and perfect timing. He manages to find subtlty in a coarse show. The other actors...Christopher Johnson as DeBeaubien, Lisa Rothschiller as Esmerelda and BF Helman as Frollo...have energy and skill but lack Schutz's subtlty, and may have fewer opportunities for it.
With its ridicule of self-aggrandizing directors, various schools of acting technique, ill-conceived deconstructions, and Marxist theater Nicholas DeBeaubien's Hunchback may hold the most amusement for actors and other showfolk. It'll be pretty thin gruel for everyone else.
