The Garden of Delights
By: Fernando Arrabal, translated by Helen Gary Bishop and Tom Bishop
Trapdoor Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland
Phone: 773 384-0494; $17-$20
Runs Through Nov. 28
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
The Garden of Eden ends on an odd note at the newly renovated Trapdoor Theatre. In her post-show speech, director and actress Beata Pilch asks audiences to invite not only their friends to see the show, but their enemies as well.
It's certainly fitting, since most audiences will probably vehemently loath everything about Trapdoor's ambitious take on Fernando Arrabal's schizophrenic psychobabble of a play. There are fleeting moments in The Garden of Delights that are filled with great artistic depth and insight, but they are not enough to lessen the feeling that you've completely wasted two hours of your life (without intermission, no less)!
Arrabal, a survivor of the Spanish Civil War and self-imposed exile in Paris, clearly is a man with many issues. His well-known distrust of the Catholic Church and its indoctrinated shame is one major target in The Garden of Delights. So is today's obsessive cult of celebrity worship. But Arrabal leaves very little to hope or faith to believe in, especially when he turns several friends against each other near the end of the play.
Here we see a reclusive famous actress named Lais (think Norma Desmond before her chimpanzee dies) who answers fans questions on a TV show via a floating telephone. She also tends to a flock of fawning musical sheep and a sub-human ape who gets punished when he gets overexcited. Intermixed through this, Lais rummages through painful childhood memories as a Catholic orphan while confronting her likely lesbian schoolgirl friend and the otherworldly source of inspiration who later turns into a sadomasochistic tormentor.
It's an unconventional plot, and Trapdoor's artists meet several of the play's odd-ball demands head on. One arresting creation is the preening and musically adept sextet flock of sheep who sing and play violin, flute, piccolo, and cello (a great team effort by Carissa Diest, Cheryl Golemo, Kim McKean, Sarah McMaster, Bethany Perkins and Holly Thomas). Decked out in blonde wigs and lovely white frocks by costume designer Melanie Fehlberg, the sheep bleat and bellow traditional tunes like 'Mary Had a Little Lamb' and Sean Griffin's original music as they mindlessly worship their temperamental shepherdess.
It's also quite a lot of fun to see Lais' early interactions with Teloc playfully drawn out with a hint of sexual tension between actress Virginia Worley and Wesley Walker. Climbing and contorting themselves throughout Ewelina Dobiesz's jungle gym set of ladders and Hieronymous Bosch-inspired backgrounds, Worley and Walker shoot off all-too-few interactive sparks in this weird play that seems to baffle not only its audience, but its players as well.
Perhaps one problem is Pilch's double duty as director and acting the roles of Miharca and the oppressive nun. It feels like an outside observer would have had a clearer eye with such alienating material. Pilch lets some scenes speed by when they could use more dramatic introspection (like when Lais' believes she is dying from a sinful transgression when it's actually her first menstruation) while others drag on without rhyme or reason --what exactly is happening when the sheep lose their wigs whilst being reanimated?-.
On top of all this there is a multimedia component to the production that works one moment--especially when capturing Carolyn Shoemaker's star-worshipping fans via a live close-circuit TV--and baffles the next (Carrie Holt de Lama's projected video clips that are more head-scratching than illuminating). Lighting designer Richard Norwood helps us jump from scene to scene, even his work feels two steps behind Arrabal's flailing and seizure dream of a play.
The Garden of Delights is not only the first production in the reopened Trapdoor, but part of the French Consulate's city-wide Playing French Festival meant to encourage audiences to brave the works of contemporary French playwrights. Alas, Arrabal's confrontational and jumbled text is not one that will repair damaged relations between the U.S. and France.
Something is definitely lost in translation when people are polarized between viewing The Garden of Delights as an intriguing artwork or a pretentious piece of claptrap. If only Trapdoor could have found a better middle ground between the two.
Spoon River Anthology
Playwright: Edgar Lee Masters
At: No Exit Cafe, 6970 N. Glenwood
Phone: 773 743-3355; $15
Runs through: Nov. 14
BY RICK REED
Who would have thought a musical about a bunch of dead people could be so uplifting? For one, Edgar Lee Masters, whose Spoon River Anthology, a volume of free verse published in 1915, gathered the thoughts, hopes, aspirations, dreams, failures, and successes of about 200 citizens of Spoon River, Illinois.
What made Masters book distinctive was the fact that all of these people spoke from a cemetery about their lives in central Illinois --Masters lived in Petersburg, near Peoria; his book was controversial when it was published because some said Spoon River bore too close a resemblance to the author's hometown; indeed its cemetery holds the graves of Ann Rutledge, Mitch Miller, Hannah Armstrong, and Bowling and Nancy Green. Masters saw dead people long before M. Night Shyamalan, and he saw them with a much more imaginative and kinder eye.
Thank goodness for Theo Ubique, the small-in-size, but large-in-talent theater company who have gracefully staged Masters' work --original conception by Charles Aidmanoo, using Masters' own free verse poetry and several original songs --music and lyrics by Charles Aidman and Naomi Caryl Hishhorn-- to tell about the compelling lives of those buried in Spoon River's cemetery. Director Fred Anzevino says that Spoon River Anthology has been 'close to his heart' ever since he played several roles in the play when he was in high school. That closeness is on ample display in the loving care with which Anzevino has directed his talented ensemble of six, who inhabit the hearts and minds of dozens of passed-on Spoon River denizens. The small No Exit Café makes a great venue for this intimate production, giving the audience the chance to get swept up in the pathos, humor, and tragedy of these small-town lives.
Anzevino uses the small space effectively, and the cast is supported by fine piano accompaniment from pianist Michael Miller --who also acted as musical director--. There is also fiddle music from Richard Veras who was, unfortunately, absent the night I attended.
Anzevino's ensemble is all equally good, clear of voice, deft in movement, and chameleonic in their abilities to convincingly change from one character to the next in the space of a moment. The ensemble consisted of Yolanda Davis --particularly compelling as a rich matron who has traveled the world but rests finally in her original home--, Austin B. Harvey --fresh faced and always sympathetic--, Lisa Hunter --amazing depth--, Dolcye Johnson --the senior member of the group--, Bill Redding, and Carrie Houchins-Witt.
This is a great show to see on an autumn night when the wind is kicking around piles of multi-colored leaves. That time is now. Don't miss it.
Scrooge
Playwright: Leslie Bricusse
-after Dickens
At: Ford Center/Oriental Theatre
Phone: 312 902-1400; $23-$73
Runs through: Nov. 7
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Bless Uncle Ebenezer, the founder of the feast for two dozen Chicago performers earning Broadway-size paychecks in Scrooge. As they sing in the show, 'Thank you very much!' It's not their fault that Scrooge is irremediably ordinary, nor is it the fault of engaging, hard-working star Richard Chamberlain.
The fault falls on author and composer Leslie Bricusse, who's had an amazingly successful career writing second-rate shows for first-rate stars --Anthony Newley, Harry Secombe, Julie Andrews, Linda Eder--. Scrooge is a stage adaptation of Bricusse's overblown 1970s musical movie. Rather than improving his work, he's transferred it to the stage with every sin intact.
His hubris is that he believes he can improve Charles Dickens' pithy, impeccable original, A Christmas Carol. He cannot. He makes useless small changes and blockheaded large ones. For no reason, Scrooge's nephew Fred --Dickens-- becomes Harry--Bricusse--, while sister Fan --Dickens-- becomes Jenny. Dickens' famous line 'you'll keep Christmas by losing your situation' is rewritten as 'you will be celebrating Christmas among the great unemployed.' Why? Bricusse turns the Ghost of Christmas Past into Jenny's ghost. Huh? What's the purpose of the rousing 'Thank You Very Much' if Scrooge never realizes everyone is happy he's dead? There's no redemption for him in that. The show abounds with similar thoughtless changes.
Bricusse's script overstates every emotion and gives away each plot detail, leaving nothing for audiences to discover. Most of his songs trivialize their subjects, are generic in words and undistinguished in melody. At intermission, the woman sitting next to me said to her companion, 'Every song sounds the same.' Bricusse reduces Scrooge from a flinty fellow of weighty business affairs to a neighborhood juice loan racketeer, a paranoid sociopath and a misogynist --'I Hate Women' he sings.
There are a few good songs, especially those that suggest the 1840s period, 'December the Twenty-Fifth' and 'The Minister's Cat' among them. 'Christmas Children' and Tiny Tim's 'The Beautiful Day'—both far less bombastic than most of Bricusse's songs—also are effective.
The cast maintains integrity beginning with Chamberlain, who acts Scrooge with a strong character through-line. Among ensemble stand-outs are agile George Keating --lead soloist in two big numbers--, David New--doubling as Harry and Young Scrooge, Todd Gross --Bob Cratchit-- and Ben Ratskoff --Tiny Tim--. Alas, there are few opportunities for women.
Director Bob Tomson properly energizes the show, but at two-and-a-half hours it's just too long. The scenic design is dark, stolid and more appropriate for Sweeney Todd --one waits for the magical, colorful scene change that never arrives--. Costumes are attractive but not lavish, musical direction is astute.
If you like Christmas turkey, you'll like Scrooge.
