The Tempest
Playwright: William Shakespeare
At: European Repertory Company at the Viaduct, 3111 N. Western Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 248-0577
Tickets: $18-$22
Runs through: Dec. 2
With its four plots, ornate language and epic spectacle, The Tempest is probably the most cumbersome of Shakespeare's plays to stage. Chicago has seen a number of inevitably uneven interpretations: we recall fondly Krista Lally's precocious Miranda, Aaron Watkins' wry Ariel, Charles J. Likar's wise Gonzalo, and Kevin Theis' and Henry Godinez' overcostumed Calibans. Past incarnations have also featured grandstanding Prosperos, lead-footed fairies, and the 1993 production whose set incorporated bedsheet-sized brass gongs, the deafening clamor from which prompted one critic to suggest that the Body Politic sell Advil at intermission.
European Repertory director Dale Goulding acknowledges his text's propensity to dramatic sprawl by dispensing with a unified paradigm altogether. "There is no concept," he states in the playbill, "We want to explore ... the human condition. Each character is an aspect of the human soul in the Platonic sense." For playgoers accustomed to having their entertainment constructed around a central motif, the results may look as if scenes from several Tempests had been inadvertently thrown onto the same stage. But those willing to abandon the hierarchy of plot and sub-plot will discover a smorgasbord of visual, aural, and kinetic fare from which to choose.
Most visually commanding is Rick Frederick's Ariel, who makes his first appearance dressed in body glitter, cat-eye contact lenses, five-inch high heels and strapless cache-sexe ( but don't miss his Sunset Boulevard ensemble in the second act ) . Next to this splendor, Caliban cannot help but come off a bit dowdy, but Kirk Anderson endows the enslaved monster with a physical freedom prohibited his temporarily earthbound companion.
The wedding masque combines Cecil B. DeMille-styled goddesses with Edward Gorey-faced nymphs. Illya Haase's shipwrecked Alonso and his men are a quasi-mafioso cohort, while Heath Corson and Mike Burke generate a baggy-pants slapstick as Stephano and Trinculo. Finally, there is an angry Prospero, vigorously portrayed by Gary Houston ( whose affection for his daughter, Miranda...likewise passionately declaimed by Heather Prete...stops just short of incest, but who otherwise should be all ready to tackle Lear in a decade or two ) . The cumulative effect may leave traditionalists bewildered, but no one can deny this company's shock potential, even as it moves into its ninth season.
Absolution
Playwright: Robert William Sherwood
At: Steppenwolf Theatre Company at the Merle Reskin Garage, 1624 N. Halsted
Phone: ( 312 ) 335-1650, Tickets: $10
Runs through: Nov. 11
The first suspect we meet is David, a classics professor mired in spiritual inertia, who receives a coded signal...a single playing card delivered to him by an attractive and vaguely familiar young lady...summoning him to a conference with his boyhood companions. They are Gordon, now a high-rolling stockbroker, and Peter, who opted for marriage, fatherhood and a home in the rural midlands. The purpose of this reunion gradually emerges: 15 years earlier, after a drunken party, these school chums gang-shagged a willing damsel, one of them subsequently murdering her as well. They have lived with this guilty knowledge ever since, never asking which of them did the deed. But Peter's recently Born-Again conscience now demands a confession from the culprit they have been shielding in their denial all these years.
So whodunit? Playwright Robert William Sherwood gives us a name eventually, but questions still persist: Why is there no evidence? How and where did they hide the body? Why are their recollections of time and place so nebulous? WAS, in fact, a crime committed, or is this just a collective fraternal fantasy? Or is this David's subjective fantasy, the different aspects of his personality represented by the buddies whose lifestyles break down neatly into Id, Ego and Superego? And how about the messenger girl who hangs on even after her mission is accomplished...was she the teenage Aphrodite his memory refuses to erase, is she the ghost of the dead sex-slave, or his next victim?
Under the guidance of Martha Plimpton ( making her directorial debut ) , the actors deftly navigate Sherwood's slippery psychological dynamic to create a universe sufficiently hyperrealistic to forestall any skepticism regarding the facts it presents. Coby Goss makes an appropriately big-chilled David. Michael Loeffelholz, a suitably tormented Peter. Frank Dominelli, a comfortably Mamet-mouthed greedhead. And Danica Ivancevic contributes a tidy ice-queen turn as the latter's trophy stepford-wife. But it is Jennifer Kern as the...well, odd card in the deck, whose ambiguous role in this three-way First Degree continues to intrigue us long after the play is over.