THE TRAGEDY OF HAMLET
Playwright: Shakespeare,
adapted by Peter Brook
At: Chicago Shakespeare Theatre
Tickets: $75
Phone: 312-595-5600
Runs through: June 2
by Jonathan Abarbanel
This Hamlet is an EVENT, the first live Peter Brook production in Chicago in 30 years. Brook, now 76, is an icon who began directing professionally in his teens ( 1943 ) . Before he was 40, he had directed the greatest stars in London and on Broadway, had triumphed in films ( notably The Lord of the Flies ) and was co-artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company on the fast track to knighthood. When he was 45, he left it all, and left England, to found his own theater institute in Paris. His personal search has lead him deep into Asian and African performance styles, with the goal of stripping down theater to its narrative, emotional and mythic essences.
Brook's productions almost always are fresh, revelatory, beautiful, powerful, deeply felt, intelligent, and unexpected; seminal in ways that alter one's thinking about theater and art. For this Hamlet, Brook utilizes only eight actors and has cut the text by about one-third ( "Neither a borrower nor a lender be" is gone, for example ) . Scenes of court pomp are gone, as are most secondary characters such as Bernardo, Fortinbras, Francisco and the second gravedigger. Most lines are given measured readings in conversational tones, demanding that the audience be still and listen hard, focusing on the words. The hushed tones and extended moments of silence often create an air of unfolding mystery or of tense anticipation.
Does it work? Yes, it makes you listen thoughtfully, but there also are times when it simply is difficult to hear. Does it astonish? The simplicity and physical elegance of the production are very beautiful, and the grace of the actors is both solemn and joyful, especially Bruce Myers ( Polonius and the Gravedigger ) and Adrian Lester as Hamlet ( his death scene IS astonishing, as he ever-so-slowly dwindles to the floor ) . But stripping away so much actually removes the work from its context, while the generally low-key delivery restricts the emotional palette. Brook has created a meditation on Hamlet rather than a full-blooded production of Shakespeare's play. This may precisely what he intends, but unlike other monumental Brook productions of my experience, this Hamlet does not reveal the play to me in new or different ways.
The design elements make this Hamlet a lovely Indo-Persian objet d'art. The neutral costumes of white, tans, grays and black with Indian-inspired lines contrast with the papaya orange of the floor cloth and the brightly-colored cushions and rugs which are the only scenic elements, all designed by Chloe Obolensky. Philippe Vialatte has provided all-white lighting that shapes the play by levels of intensity rather than by color. The live music of Toshi Tsuchitori accents the work via Asian percussion and string instruments. The tastefulness and intelligence of it all are impeccable.
HARD TIMES
Written by: Charles Dickens
( directed and adapted by Heidi Stillman )
At: Lookingglass Theatre Company,
Ruth Page Center for the Arts
Tickets: $25-$28.50
Phone: 773-477-8088
Runs through: June 3, 2001
by Rick Reed
In order to make a theatrical piece an unqualified success, so many elements have to come together that one can hardly fault a company for being weak in a few areas, even when they have a hit on their hands. Unqualified...that would mean everything would have to be first rate, from the direction, to the performances, to the set, lighting, sound and costume design...right on down to the person who ushers you to your seat. It just doesn't happen very often that a theater company gets everything right.
Happily, Lookingglass Theatre's latest outing, an adaptation of Dickens' novel, Hard Times, is an unqualified success. There is simply nothing in its spellbinding 2-1/2 hours to criticize. The production is a glorious achievement, a treat for the intellect as well as the heart, as dazzling to the eyes as it is to the ears...in short, this Hard Times is a triumph. Director Heidi Stillman has taken on the daunting task of adapting Dickens' multi-layered and many-faceted story and skillfully transformed it into true theater: breathtaking, thought provoking and possessed of an aesthetic vision that leaves one in awe.
Dickens' story of the Victorian Gradgrind family throws a harsh spotlight on the merciless industrial milieu of the period, and contrasts it with the light and excitement of a traveling circus.
His story demonstrates how imagination and wonder can eventually triumph over a strict adherence to "facts" and hard work to the exclusion of all else. At the center of his story is young Louisa Gradgrind ( played with perfection by Louisa Lamson ) , who is suitably somber, yet enchanted with the circus world she witnesses one day by happenstance. Seeing the magic of jugglers and trapeze artists is a lesson Louisa takes to heart, and, although it takes years, she eventually loses her "earthbound" self and learns to let go...and feel. Lookingglass has brought this contrast and Dickens' thesis out with such candor and grace that one can't help but fall in love with the production.
Dan Ostling's set is a wonder of economy: its metal scaffolding moves gracefully to form a factory, a proper Victorian home, a downscale bedsit, and more. A scrim behind the scaffolding artfully suggests the grimy world of industrial London during that period. Lighting designer Brian Bembridge craftily employs that same scrim to show dreamlike scenes of the circus. And the crowning achievement of the entire design is the sound and music created by the ubiquitous team of Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman, whose alternatingly gorgeous melodies and somber chordwork add not only the appropriate aural cues, but create a sound backdrop for the entire piece that's astonishing.
Don't miss out the next in a long line of successes by one of Chicago's most artful companies. Hard Times has everything: it's the perfect marriage of form and function.
Ajax
Playwright: Sophocles
At: The Hypocrites at the Viaduct,
3111 N. Western Ave.
Phone: ( 312 ) 409-5578
Tickets: $12-$15
Runs through: June 3
by Mary Shen Barnidge
If the tradesmen in A Midsummer Night's Dream had attempted a war play instead of a love story, the results might have resembled this production. From the moment we enter the auditorium, welcomed noisily by a chorus of Greek sailors wearing identical mustaches and ouzo-soaked accents, every care is taken to ensure our comprehension. We even have a guide in the stageside presence of classics scholar Edith Hamilton, who occasionally interrupts the dramatic action to acquaint us with theatrical conventions circa 442 BC and how the author and/or director Sean Graney breaks with such. ( "The ancient Greeks used fake blood...just not as much as we do." )
And there is blood aplenty. After all, Ajax is a combat veteran who goes nuts and kills all the local livestock before impaling himself on his own sword. ( If not for the ASPCA, this would have been a Sylvester Stallone vehicle long ago. ) But there's a social message, too: when our dead hero's brother Teucros wants to bury him, General Menelaus says a head case like Ajax doesn't deserve a decent funeral. Whereupon Teucros offers to take on the whole Trojan army...the stuck-up Agememnon especially...until good-guy Odysseus intervenes, reminding both that the war is over.
The Hypocrites attack their material with an ingenuous enthusiasm usually found only among children to whom the old myths are timely as the latest video game and period accuracy an irrelevant impediment. So we get a messenger...not Hermes, but an ordinary mortal...equipped with wings and aviator's goggles. The leading players wear cothurni like toy boats strapped to their shoes ( the tallest ones elevating pint-sized Jennifer Grace's Agememnon to a suitably lofty height ) . Ajax' young son is represented by a chubby-cheeked doll. And our hero punctuates his farewell speech...oddly long-winded for the usually concise Sophocles...with decidedly unheroic, but very human, second-thought hesitations.
As every Athenian was aware, a text was merely a physical record, and its performance, the actual play. But nowadays, excessive reverence too often leads to academic exercises bereft of the immediacy required to invoke the emotions mandated by the very aesthetic its advocates would preserve. But whatever faults purists may find with the Hypocrites' gleefully juvenile approach to the Classics, a lack of immediacy is certainly not one of them.
THE SEAGULL
Playwright: Anton Chekhov, new version by Tom Stoppard
At: Time Line Theater
Tickets: $15; Phone: 312-409-8463
Runs through: June 3
by Gregg Shapiro
As a Chekhov virgin ( yes, I admit it ) , I was intrigued at the prospect of seeing Tom Stoppard's new version of The Seagull. After all, Stoppard has a gift for writing about love and The Seagull is a play with a lot of love in it.
The arrival of actress Arkadina ( Donna Smother McGough ) , her new love, novelist Trigorin ( Christopher Thometz ) and her brother Sorin ( Leonard Kraft ) to Sorin's Russian estate ( 50 miles south of Moscow ) creates a bit of havoc in the small country town. Arkadina's struggling playwright son Konstantin ( P.J. Powers ) is a playwright who doesn't believe in the theater. He is in love with Nina ( Juliet Hart ) , a very young actress from a tragic background, who is drawn to the stage "like a seagull drawn to the lake."
During a performance of Konstantin's play for the out-of-towners, and some townspeople, including schoolteacher Medvedenko ( James Daniels ) , his love Masha ( Michele DiMaso ) ...who is in love with Konstantin, Masha's parents Shamraev ( Jerry Razowsky ) and Polina ( Lynne Hall ) ...the caretakers of Sorin's estate, Dorn ( Bill McGough ) the doctor, Arkadina causes the performance to come to an abrupt end and the real melodrama begin. The Seagull explores unrequited love, mother-son relationships, the role of the artist in society, and more unrequited love.
With a few notable exceptions, this cast inhabited their characters as if they were a personally tailored suit if clothes. As Arkadina, in her brightly colored gowns ( with a nod to costume designer Joanne Witzkowski ) , Ms. McGough was the embodiment of the mother who eats her young, but looks beautiful while doing it. Mr. Powers made us feel pity for Kostantin's lost soul and Ms. Hart's Nina was as ethereal as Ms. DiMaso's Masha was permanently grounded. Kevin Hagan's functional scenic design allowed the stage on the stage to be transformed into a room, but not without sacrificing sight lines.
Morocco
Playwright: Allan Havis
At: Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
Phone: ( 773 ) 384-0494
Tickets: $15
Runs through: June 2
by Mary Shen Barnidge
"You have been watching too many movies!" the officer we know only as "The Colonel" snaps at Charles Kempler. He's right. We've watched the same movies. We know that a man may be courteous, cultured, soft-spoken...and still be a villain. And that a hero may be impatient, ill-mannered and steadfast in his beliefs to the point of bigotry. Indeed, the latter's very intolerance proclaims him immune to intimidation through strength or sophistry.
And besides, this is the ( ominous music ) Middle East. The Colonel is Islamic, an Arab, the chief of police in Fez, and Kempler is a tourist, an architect, an American citizen...he's even Jewish! So when we hear that Kempler's wife has been jailed for drunkenness, disorderly conduct, and soliciting soldiers, we are as certain as he that the charges are false and we applaud his protests. But as his indignation escalates, we start to wonder if he is not being a bit...well, unreasonable. He rants, he bellows, he threatens. He vilifies the Colonel and all his countrymen ( "Your stench permeates your armies!" ) . When the irate husband's own physician reports that Mrs. Kempler has venereal disease, he accuses the prison doctors of infecting her. Our suspicions grow when he later displays this same attitude toward his undeniably attractive consort, who reveals that her ordeal fell far short of the nightmare he had envisioned.
Is Kempler one of those husbands who imagines every man a rival for his wife's affections? Does his spouse deliberately invite peril so that he may reaffirm her virtue by rescuing her? Is the source of his uneasiness her Ottoman ancestors, her emancipated demeanor, or her high-powered job in International Banking? Do their overseas travels remind Kempler of his own alienation from the gentile society to which he aspires? Or is his self-esteem so diminished that he can only assure himself of his good intentions by projecting bad ones on everyone else?
The author is not telling, nor is director Jeff Ginsberg. The actors in this Trap Door Production...Bill Bannon as the blustering Kempler, Rom Barkhordar as the imperturbable Colonel, and Susy Ibrahim as the mysterious Mme. Kempler...likewise play close to the vest, forcing us to question our own pre-conceived notions of who these people are and what they represent.
The experience might be unsettling to playgoers complacent in their naive righteousness, but necessary if we are to avoid falling prey to the very xenophobia we would condemn in others.
PRIDE'S CROSSING
Playwright: Tina Howe
At: The Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont Tickets: $23-$28
Phone: 773-327-5252
Runs through: May 20
by Rick Reed
She's childish, demanding, and curmudgeonly. She's Mabel Tidings Bigelow, who at the age of 21, shattered all world records for swimming the English Channel. This penultimate achievement underscored a life through which run veins of humor, loss, love, acceptance, regret, and self-denial. In Famous Door's staging, under the adept direction of Gary Griffin, Bigelow's life story, remembered from the vantage point of a 90-year-old Mabel one Fourth of July weekend, becomes a dramatic meditation on the sacrifices one makes ( especially women ) in the pursuit of love, happiness, and personal fulfillment. Pride's Crossing's playwright Tina Howe makes her story universal...although it has at its center an amazing athletic achievement, its heart speaks to all of us. This is a story about the strange turns all of our lives take and how the choices we make shape us, and how those choices aren't often what we thought they might be.
Famous Door has staged this lyrical and moving account with grace, humor and perfect pacing. John Stark's gorgeous scenic design of large, off-kilter picture frames, with an impressionist ocean wave backdrop underscores Mabel's life eloquently. The play takes us through Mabel's story, presenting us with perfectly realized scenes from Mabel's childhood ( where we get a glimpse of her origins and the environment that spawned her achievements as well as her mistakes ) , her young adulthood ( where her interest in proving herself as an athlete competed mightily with her desires as a woman ) , middle age ( when the choices she made and her former glory ripen past their prime and present us with a bitter harvest ) and finally, we see Mabel as an old woman, fighting to keep her dignity as infirmity of mind and body drag her down. It's a moving portrait, one which the talented ensemble at Famous Door and director Griffin have writ lovingly, with a finely tuned ear to detail and truth.
In a biographical portrait piece such as this one, so much weight rests upon the shoulders of the lead. Fortunately for us, Hanna Dworkin, as Mabel, is a joy to behold, evoking our sympathy, empathy, and wonder in equal measures. Dworkin's performance, shifting seamlessly from childhood to teen, to middle age and elderly, is nothing short of amazing, a true testimony to not only the craft of acting, but to the art. Dworkin completely loses herself in the character and in doing so, creates an indelible impression, one that is so real that we never doubt her age, or her character, for a moment. Dworkin is orbited by a talented ( and gender-bending ) ensemble, who inhabit many different characters throughout Mabel's life, painting each with clearly defined, simple, and always believable strokes. Particularly good were Bruch Reed, as Mabel's gay brother, Frazier ( and her thwarted Jewish love, David Bloom ) and young Andrea Washburn, who, as Mabel's daughter and great granddaughter, displays a gift for character far beyond her years. We'll be hearing a lot more from Miss Washburn.
Pride's Crossing closes soon. Don't miss it.