Belfast Blues
Playwright: Geraldine Hughes
At: The Mercury Theatre, 3745 N. Southport Ave.
Phone: 齅) 325-1700; $28.50-$33.50
Runs through: Nov. 28
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Even in the best of times, a subsidized-housing project—its central heating and indoor plumbing an improvement on the family's previous quarters—is no place to spend a childhood. Especially one located on a no-man's-land (called, with grim humor, the 'Peace Line') where the local baker smuggles bombs in his cake-boxes and an evening of Starsky And Hutch on the telly is accompanied by the rumble of passing military trucks. But this isn't Israel or Afghanistan. This is Belfast during the 1980s, a city under occupation by English troops, and Geraldine Hughes is here to tell us about it.
That she is able to recount these memories at all, let alone stand alone on stage clad in shirt and trousers as drab as a janitor's uniform and a face as clean-scrubbed as a Catholic schoolgirl's, thereat proceeding to impersonate over a score of vivid and distinct characters, is credit to American film director George Schaefer, who saw talent and intelligence in the lass with the 'Belfast blue' eyes and picked her to appear in his 1983 documentary on the children reared among scattered rubble and shattered body-parts.
Given the bitter enmity of the partisans and their influence on young minds, you might expect a survivor's account to display some hint of bias. But 14 years after her escape to America in 1989, Hughes refuses to assign blame. She shares with us fond recollections of her father combing his hair in a Presley-style pompadour, her mother singing Patsy Cline songs, a shopkeeper caroling 'No way, José' (pronounced 'Noo whee whoo-zay'). But then there is chain-smoking neighbor Margaret listening to faraway machine-gun fire and whispering 'That's OUR boys!'
Though Hughes declares her intent to be strictly testimonial, sympathizers on both sides of the Irish Question will find fodder for hankie-wringing in this one-woman show, and amateur politicos, parallels to the Situation in the Middle East. And as for those who toora-loora-loo in happy Hibernian fantasy each Saint Patrick's Day, let us consider the inhumanities inflicted—not on exotic strangers, but upon our own kinsmen, however distant—by feuds born centuries ago that continue to exact their terrible toll.
Rules for Good Manners in Modern Society
Playwright: Jean-Luc Lagarce
At: T.U.T.A. at Prop Theatre,
3504 N. Elston
Phone: 龏) 217-0691; $18
Runs through: Nov. 28
By Jonathan Abarbanel
As part of the on-going Playing French Festival (various locations through Nov. 28), The Utopian Theatre Asylum (TUTA) presents a play by Jean-Luc Lagarce, a gay director and writer who died of AIDS at 38 in 1995. Virtually unknown here, Lagarce was a force majeur in French theater. To the best of my knowledge, Rules for Good Manners in the Modern World is the first Lagarce play staged in Chicago, certainly the first I've seen. Passing judgment can be tricky when one knows nothing of a writer's aesthetic, but that won't keep me from doing it.
Rules for Good Manners appears to be a monolog, in which a woman spends 90 minutes detailing the legal and social minutiae of birth, courtship, marriage and death in proper society. 'From engagement to wedding day, a daily bouquet of flowers is required, white flowers only,' is a typical dictum. If a marriage lasts 25 years, whether happily or unhappily, a celebration is held with the husband and wife 'treated as heroes, because they are.' Each set of rules concludes with 'That's how it's done,' each expectation with the caution, 'and nothing less.'
I say the text appears to be a monolog because director Zeljko Djukic uses three women to deliver it in a highly creative visual interpretation. The setting is vaguely Belle Époque at first, with Jennifer Byers, Dalia Cidzkaite and Kate Martin costumed in floor-length black velvet skirts, tightly fitted white-ivory blouses, lace jabots and antique pearl earrings. Their movements are stately; their speech precise and confident, their braided hair is up. Identified only as the Chorus, the three act as one, a combination of Lady Bracknell and Miss Manners.
But later, they strip down to black satin slips and geometric patterned stockings before donning wedding dresses, they take a cha-cha-cha dance break and hum a 1950's pop song into a microphone. My guess is that none of this is in the stage directions; that it's all from Djukic and his designers who keep things very simple but very elegant.
Rules for Good Manners has no characters, no story and no dramatic conflict. It's a theater piece rather than a play, a presentational work that's just the right length to remain amusing, especially in TUTA's imaginative interpretation. Lagarce's language is intentionally repetitive yet crafted for rhythm and formal tone. In time, the layering of rules and details upon each other becomes satirical. Lagarce is having fun at the expense of stultified social traditions and expectations.
Yet the gay man in Lagarce may yearn for such an orderly and gracious society, where white flowers arrive every day, life is secure and romantic illusions are encouraged. Or is that just the gay man in me?
Maggie: A Girl of the Streets
Adapted by: Adam Webster
(from Stephen Crane's novella)
At: The Side Studio, 1520 W. Jarvis
Phone: 齅) 973-2150; $15
Runs through: Nov. 21
BY RICK REED
If life were fair, poverty wouldn't lead to the soul's ruination. If life were fair, older men couldn't exploit the innocence of young girls. If life were fair, alcohol wouldn't be a toxin that destroys families. If life were fair, the side project would be mounting their amazing production of Stephen Crane's novella, Maggie: A Girl of the Streets with a million=dollar budget and all the workings of a professional theater like Steppenwolf behind it.
But life isn't fair, and the denizens of the impoverished Bowery district of New York City, circa 1890, are trapped in lives where hope is fleeting and it's commonplace to dull those disappointments with alcohol, lash out at perceived injustices with one's fists, and connive and steal at any opportunity, because, well, you deserve it. This is the world Stephen Crane set down his innocent, Maggie, her pugnacious brother, Jimmie, and her alcoholic mother. These three reach for love and a better life and are brutally batted down for having the nerve to want just a little more, to be on a par with the rest of the world. And this is the world side project artistic director Adam Webster adapts into an intense, involving, and uncluttered script. And a world which inspires director Jimmy McDermott to do some of the finest staging I've ever seen, especially taking into consideration the constraints of the side project's tiny budget and even tinier performance space. Maggie: A Girl of the Streets is what happens when creative genius, imagination, dedication, and an unwillingness to settle combine. Forget the miniscule budget and the little narrow storefront. Webster and McDermott, along with a fine ensemble recreate the Bowery and its despair with deft, meaningful strokes and some stylistic touches that economically telegraph emotion and plotline (witness the sad, yet lovely scene of Maggie's suicide and you'll know what I mean).
I would imagine it was the quality of this piece that attracted its enormous and enormously talented cast of 14. There's not a weak link in the bunch with remarkable standout performances by the leads, including Danielle O'Farrell as Maggie, Jamie Matthews as Jimmie, and J. Kingsford Goode as their mother, Mary, who, although she has a role that requires demanding emotional range, is never over the top; her drunkenness and grief are real. Sean Bolger, as the older man who buoys up the young Maggie with the promise of love, and then brutally betrays her, is also on the mark.
Under Jimmy McDermott's direction, Webster's script comes to breathtaking life. His use of music, sound, and movement more than compensate for the cramped confines. The only misstep in the production is one that is easily fixable. The addition of Stephen Crane himself to the story dilutes, rather than adds, to its power. Less would definitely be more in this instance. For example, during the very compelling and touching suicide scene, Crane is in the background, reading a letter. This was akin to having someone nearby yakking into a cell phone while you are trying to read.
But all in all, this is a major achievement that I fully expect to see produced time and time again. And this up-and-coming troupe of young creators is one I expect to see hit theatrical pay dirt time and time again.
Cat Feet
Playwright: Monte Merrick
At: Northlight Theatre at the North Shore Performing Arts Center, 9501 Skokie Blvd. in Skokie
Phone: 龏) 673-6700; $34-$48
Runs through: Nov. 14
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
'The fog comes on little cat feet' says Carl Sandberg's famous poem, an image providing Monte Merrick's play its title, chief scenic motif—the setting is San Francisco's Bay Area—and central metaphor. For Alzheimer's disease also approaches like a fog, making it a timely concern for the segment of the American population now facing their twilight years.
Its victim is Cara Elliott, a renowned poet and indefatigable dynamo whom we meet at the very beginning of her decline. This is manifested in memory lapses so conveniently timed as to arouse suspicions regarding their veracity. Of course, her offspring are not exactly paragons of mental acuity, themselves: younger daughter Molly's therapeutic visit to a 'spiritual retreat' (SO California) forces elder daughter Julia to carry on her duties as editor for a high-powered New York publishing firm from the West Coast family homestead, where the local cop just HAPPENS to be an old high school spark waiting to flame.
The same dramatic conventions demanding that only athletes or dancers be stricken with physically immobilizing illnesses mandate that only brilliant minds may suffer cognitive degeneration. But while Merrick might have taken advantage of his topic to raise complex issues regarding grown children's responsibilities toward their progenitors and the extent to which adults may be expected to suspend their own activities in deference to the needs of geriatric dependents, he opts instead for snappy one-liners framed in a plot with not an unpredictable moment in it. (When Cara recites a Dylan Thomas poem, we know, almost to the syllable, where her recollection will falter, then rally.)
Under BJ Jones' deft direction, a cast of equity regulars make the best of the clichés supplied them by their author. Mary Ann Thebus does her cuddly granny turn as the dominating Cara, Julie Ganey conjures a suitably ingenuous soccer-mom and Rengin Altay, a likewise stereotypically neurotic career-spinster. Keith Kupferer even lends the oafish Sgt. Baldecchi some moments of quiet wisdom. But even as we recognize the application of their characters' dilemma to audiences struggling with similar conflicts, we cannot help but be disappointed at Merrick's offering them no insight or comfort not already explored in greater depth elsewhere.
