Drinking and Writing
At the opening of the latest Neo-Futurists' outing ( they of Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind fame ) , the trio serving up this hymn to creativity and dysfunction exhort us, in the words of Baudelaire, to "Get drunk! Use your imagination!" Writing and drinking, they tell us, belong together like "eating disorders and ballet." And then they go on to prove it, using the words and anecdotes from the lives of such famous alcohol-fueled literati as Charles Bukowski, Dorothy Parker, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dawn Powell, Raymond Carver, Eugene O'Neill, Jack Kerouac, and others.
Drinking and Writing is very much like sitting around with three of your most literate friends, debating the drawbacks and virtues of imbibing when it comes to the act of creation, especially literary creation. The creators of Drinking and Writing have pulled together some of the most trenchant, telling, informational, and often amusing observations on the power of fire water to ignite the telling of a story. They do so with wit, ease, and fluency, all the while downing beer and scotch. Drinking and Writing is a very non-judgmental lesson in literary history and how it ties to the mystique surrounding writers. As the cast tells us, you wouldn't want your dentist to be a drunk, or your carpenter, or your electrician. But it seems that it's accepted and even somehow glamorous for writers to wallow in alcohol while creating their best works. Wine was Bukowksi's choice as a writing companion, beer stretching the bladder too much for prolonged concentration. Fitzgerald drank himself into a stupor. Dorothy Parker used alcohol to hide from herself. Drinking and Writing shines a merciless light on how these writers, and others, used fermented beverages to enhance their creativity, often eventually contributing to their own decline.
Your three guides to the world of drinking and writing also take you on a tour of just what alcohol is, and what it does. You get a history. You get the stages of intoxication … euphoria, excitement, confusion, stupor, and coma. You learn about hangovers and how they can, in spite of the pain, dry mouth, and fatigue that accompany them, often make for more focused writing.
The good thing about Drinking and Writing is not only that it's performed by an affable cast of three who are so natural one forgets that they're acting, but also that they are pretty fair observers, never passing even a whisper of judgment on the process about which they're speaking.
The Neo-Futurists provide you with an evening of great entertainment, thought provocation, and information for the price of a martini ( which, by the way, you can enjoy while watching the show ) . Drinking and Writing is a best bet for a superb evening out. Hangovers available at no extra charge.
Sunday In The Park With George
The painting is titled "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte." It depicts a number of Parisians enjoying themselves in the park--ladies and gentlemen, laborers, children, pets. What distinguishes it is that its creator, Georges Seurat, executed it in the style that would later be called "pointillism." Instead of mixing his pigments to the desired hue on the palette, this artist applied primary colors to the canvas in minuscule brush-strokes that the viewer's eye would then blend and subsequently perceive in the chromatic proportion he intended.
Naturally, his contemporaries thought he was crazy. Especially his fellow artists, who threatened to boycott exhibits of their own work if his "confetti painting" appeared therewith. Even the woman who loved him and believed in his genius--her devotion sustaining her as she posed tirelessly for him in the sunshine, wearing a dress like an iron lung--eventually traded him in for a more reliable father to her child. But it doesn't stop there in Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine's biodrama: after speculating on Seurat's life and times, these collaborators bring us forward a century to introduce the visionary's great-grandson--himself an artist, likewise experimenting with expression through manipulation of light, and likewise impeded by the ignorance of a skeptical public.
A narrative of this complexity and density cannot afford to waste time on SONGS--those action-halting interludes of repetitive emotional soliloquy that are the backbone of the genre--making Sondheim's score less that of a conventional "musical" than a story recounted in sung dialogue. The cast assembled by Gary Griffin deftly navigates Sondheim's eccentric phrasing and atonal intervals, softening its more abrasive passages with an abundance of warmth, humor and personality. ( They also display commendable physical agility in negotiating Brian Sidney Bembridge's set, probably meant to represent a blank canvas, but resembling nothing so much as a bowling lane. )
"Keep on keeping on" might not be the most original message for modern audiences, but a welcome one nevertheless. Oh, and Seurat's picture now hangs--quite prominently--in Chicago's Art Institute. You might want to stroll down Michigan Avenue and have another look at it after seeing this show.
The Scarecrow
When your performance space is an authentic 1914 Prairie-style mansion, what could be more appropriate than to take advantage of this "found" environment by staging plays of similar vintage therein? This is the principle on which the North Lakeside Players, led by the always-innovative Frank Farrell, now make their debut with The Scarecrow.
Standard academic American Theatre History curricula starts with Eugene O'Neill and then moves right to the Expressionists. But though Percy MacKaye's 1911 adaptation of Nathaniel Hawthorne's gothic romance might have been retro for its time ( as was Hawthorne's short story--written in 1852, but set in Puritan New England--for his ) , the premise of a misguided sculptor/sorcerer/scientist creating a LIVING HUMAN BEING is timeless. The animator in this case is a tradeswoman seeking revenge on the faithless lover who abandoned her, decades earlier. With the aid of the satanic Dickon, a scarecrow is transformed into the aristocratic Lord Ravensbane and dispatched to court the daughter of her abuser, now the town magistrate.
Director Sara Rosen utilizes the numerous playing spaces to their fullest, shepherding her play's audience first to the basement, then into a corner bedroom, and finally concluding in the ground-floor parlor. The action is likewise tailored to the North Lakeside Cultural Center's architectural configurations and period furnishings: private conversations are conducted in alcoves, impromptu concerts flanked by grand pianos, and the impish Dickon given liberty to caper atop tables, under chimneys, and even through windows and onto the roof.
This is no mere stunt-show, however. The actors deftly impose colloquial inflections on the formal language while steering well clear of facile campiness. Nick Brenner moves seamlessly from drollery to tragedy in the role of the doomed Ravensbane, while Tony Stedillie endows Dickon with a suave urbanity belying his Yankee pretensions. Larry Filas' erratic vocalization renders the hypocritical Judge Merton more Bible-belt evangelist than rock-ribbed Calvinist, but Jenn SavaRyan evokes sympathy as well as horror in her portrayal of the embittered sorceress. The North Lakeside Players' next scheduled show is J.M. Barrie's Dear Brutus, and if it remains to be seen whether their concept will prove successful, one may certainly applaud their pioneer spirit.
Ocean Sea
This is not Berlin's Grand Hotel, but the Almayer Inn, a shabby seaside resort capably staffed by a squad of children suspiciously well-versed in nautical lore and wisdom. To this retreat come an assortment of pilgrims seeking spiritual salvation: A mimosa-sensitive adolescent hungry for the world outside her crippling fear. A priest with pantheistic leanings. An adulterous matron awaiting reunion with her lover. The survivor of a long-ago shipwreck seeking revenge for inhumanities suffered during that ordeal. The object of his hunt, now haunted by memories of the atrocities he was forced to execute. An artist and a scientist, both bent on capturing nature.
In the shadow of this terrible and beautiful mystery from whence all life springs, these supplicants meet their ironically appropriate fates. But with nothing less than a mythic DEITY so close at hand, adapters Dawn Arnold and Patrizia Acerra are not content simply to recount a soapy good yarn. For this American premiere event, jointly sponsored by Clock Productions, Moving Dock Theatre Company and The International Theater of Chicago, the intertwining stories in Alessandro Baricco's Oceano Mare ( literally "Ocean Sea" ) are narrated in a multi-disciplinary mélange blending music, dance, mime, synchronized movement and wordless vocalizations to conjure vivid images of excruciating eloquence while never sacrificing their coherence ( a flaw often infecting Mary Zimmerman's experiments in this genre ) .
The intimacy of National Pastime's Old Speakeasy, combined with Kourtney Vahle's score of delicately nostalgic melodies and Maria Fischinger's fin-de-siècle costumes, facilitates the meticulous detail invested by the actors in forging intensely focused performances, generated deep in their source material to emerge in articulate expression scoured clean of classroom cliché. ( Michael Denini and Arthur Simone, in particular, endow their two desparate castaways with kinetic vocabularies never before seen on a Chicago stage. )
Ocean Sea is undeniably an ensemble effort, however, its tone ranging from the gentle humor of Christopher Kuckenbaker's myopic professor to the hyper-romanticism of Tiffany Liveris' passionate invalid. And let's not forget SerahRose Roth, Rachel Brosseau, Devin Kirk, Ginger Leigh and Lorelei Sturm's chorus of sly gamins who seem to know so much--see if you can guess sooner than I did who THEY are.
Embracing the Undertoad
The Bailiwick's Lesbian Theater Initiative was designed to bring more tales of women's lives onto the stages that are more often crowded with "naked boys, singing." This program has brought a beautiful new open performance night to the fore: Dyke Mic, on Friday nights, features local women who have been known to consort with other women performing their writing, music, and art to a devoted group of fans.
Unfortunately, initiatives as broad-based as this one sometimes absorb not-so-great remnants of culture in the effort to program as much as possible. This is the case of Embracing the Undertoad, a play by Robin Rice Lichtig that has some redeeming moments, but still reads like a rough draft.
Lichtig's missive follows Agnes, overworked femme-y waitress as she struggles to both financially and emotionally support her butch-y partner Madeline, who is grumping through her long-awaited second novel. Their lives are supposed to change a lot when Agnes' unpredictable, hippie to absurdity, bisexual-ish younger sister Bella arrives, unannounced.
The usual banter about not loving enough, not living for each beautiful moment, and not communicating your own needs follows. Secrets are unraveled, albeit in a wanna-be daytime drama way. Lichtig's play gives no room to its characters, and rushes through some of the more concrete plot points. Her plot's stabs into magical realism only serve to baffle the audience, because her resolution is too little, too late.
One of the successes of Bailiwick's current lesbo venture is the casting of Jennifer Wilson as a wonderfully gruffy Madeline and the playful Lindsay Dolashol as Bella. In fact, the entire production seems to be made up of well-meaning bystanders caught under the thrust of Lichtig's two-ton truck rolling over. This play was, apparently, the winner of a competition that Bailiwick sponsored. It is incomprehensible that this was the best script written by and produced for the lesbian/bisexual woman community that Bailiwick could muster up.
