Kitchen Sink
Playwright: Various
At: Jerk Alert at Playground Theater,
3209 N. Halsted
Phone: ( 773 ) 497-7100; $5
Runs through: Dec. 20
BY RICK REED
With its latest eight-show run, Jerk Alert productions, purveyors of variety theater that contains 'Improv/Sketch/Music/Everything' has nowhere to go but up. The show is supposed to have a little bit of everything thrown in, ergo the Kitchen Sink moniker, but with its debut, executive producer Jason Anfinsen and his motley cast of unknowns renege on the promise. The show is supposed to change every week, so this review is based on the first, and the first might serve as a blueprint for what not to do. Sadly, this 90-minute show contains no sketch comedy, nor any music. Other than three eager-to-please poems thrown in by Monday night's host Scott Woldman ( reasonably clever riffs on breaking up, getting married, and being a bad Jew ) , the show was all improvisation, courtesy of three groups: Caseload, Flying Donald Cruise, and Tourists.
Each group would start by asking the audience for a suggestion, which is standard improv practice. Caseload snagged 'Stone face' as their jumping off point. Strange, though, that they never did anything with it. Why ask for something if you have no intention of using it? Caseload's improv sessions consisted of such timely and cutting-edge topics as checking e-mail too much at work, divorcing one's parents, job promotions, and adult hopscotch, the latter of which made little sense. The others were pretty mundane. I know it's improv, but Caseload needs more preparation to be entertaining.
Flying Donald Cruise was the most talented to this trio of groups, and had the only brilliant piece during the show, which were two British twit midwives chattering away about the dead baby they had just delivered. The delivery was so silly and the subject matter so dark that the piece wound up being genius. The two women playing the midwives deserve a best-in-show ribbon.
Tourists, while possessing some real thespian skills and charm, also did not deliver on the promise of sparkling entertainment and wit. At one point, one of their characters says, 'Maybe we're getting too old for this.' And that statement just about sums up this segment and the entire show, which lacked the maturity to know what makes for solid performing.
Perhaps subsequent weeks will offer a bit more music/sketch/everything ( some future bright spots include GayCo, WNEP Theater, and Annoyance, along with some musical acts and yes, even puppets ) . The cost for the show is only five bucks. But be warned: based on the opening show, you get what you pay for.
The Lepers of Baile Baiste Playwright: Ronan Noone
At: Boxer Rebellion Theatre
Phone: ( 773 ) 465-7325; $15
Runs through: December 4
By Jonathan Abarbanel
The fear-mongering, lies and Christian swagger of George Bush will extend far beyond his presidency in ways we cannot fully predict. The Lepers of Baile Baiste, a contemporary play by young Irish expatriate Ronan Noone ( in the US for 10 years ) , examines the public and private legacy of manipulation through fear, lies and holier-than-thou religiosity.
In a small Irish town a decade ago, a pederast priest tore through adolescent schoolboys before being transferred. Now in their 20s, five victims live with the consequences. Laddeen bullies people with gossip and innuendo. Unsuccessful with women, he ostentatiously buys condoms he never uses. By comparison, Yowsa is an overcompensating womanizer who bristles if anyone challenges his manliness. Clown is the quiet one suspected of having a queer relationship with Simon, an unseen mate who recently attacked his police sergeant father.
Daithi, the fifth classmate, returns after two years in London intending to confront the local priest—a hypocrite with his own secrets—about the long-suppressed sex abuse. But the community doesn't want the institutionalized veil of silence to be lifted. When the Fear of God won't stop Daithi, the priest has the sergeant threaten him. The wounded young men cannot conceive of truth bringing solace, preferring to live with unspoken shame and anger until the never-seen Simon tips the scales. Most scenes occur in a pub, where the pubkeeper and the town drunk complete the all-male cast.
Thematically, the play is powerful stuff reflecting both political and social headlines. Dramatically, it's a challenge. There's passion and verbal snap but the workmanship is young. Noone wrote it as a student, and it shows despite recent revisions. He often relies on soap opera-like confrontations and on Simon's offstage actions, yet the Daithi plot and Simon subplot never influence each other, and intersect only late in Act II. Since the play's story began a decade earlier, it requires massive exposition to bring the audience up-to-speed. Also, it's no help that Baile Baiste is a small town without women or work, which Irish prosperity of the last few years seems to have missed. Noone's village is a 21st Century version of the benighted and impoverished 19th Century Irish hamlet.
Director Michael S. Pieper and players are serious of purpose and thoughtful, but more character complexity and subtlety are in order. They don't always have the Irish blarney and charm needed to make the sullen young men of Baile Baiste likeable. For example, the banter of the early pub scenes should be warm, earthy and humorous, as the darker journey begins soon enough. First among equals in the true ensemble cast are Anthony Cummins as Daithi and Ehren Fournier as Clown, revealing his deeper acting chops only in the denouement.
Hughie
Playwright: Eugene O'Neill
At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St.
Phone: ( 312 ) 443-3800; $20-$34
Runs through: Nov. 21
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
'If every guy along Broadway who kids himself were to drop dead, there wouldn't be nobody left!' maintains Erie Smith, and he's right. If there's one thing required by salesmen, gamblers and all those who travel on a smile and a shoeshine, it's CONFIDENCE, however fabricated. But the source of Smith's confidence—Hughie, the night clerk in a shabby west side hotel—is dead. And his peripatetic customer—whose sobriquet constantly invokes his lowly origins—must now find a new talisman, lest his life become as drab as that of the new doorkeeper he must befriend.
Ibsen speaks of 'life-lies'—the illusions that sustain mortals in a skeptical world. But to successfully lie, the liar needs affirmation from an audience. Was Hughie, Smith's eternally-gullible audience, humoring Smith out of pity? Did the humble concierge thrill at Smith's glamorous fantasies? Or was Smith simply relief from a boring job? Whatever Hughie's motives may have been, with his demise, Smith's luck has soured. And tonight, the latter seeks solace in memories of his favorite 'sucker', his eulogy covertly instructing Hughie's replacement—ironically, also surnamed Hughes—in the rites necessary to restore the status quo.
Our gullibility—or suspension of disbelief, as we call it in theatre—must likewise endure nearly an hour of a con artist recounting tall tales to a shill, a dynamic more often associated with comedy ( e.g. Burns and Schreiber ) . Director Robert Falls and actor Brian Dennehy live up to their reputations as our age's foremost interpreters of Eugene O'Neill, however, pacing Smith's oration to the rhythms of a man actually CONVERSING with himself—as opposed to an actor, who knows exactly what he will say next—while simultaneously gauging his target's responses. As the object of Smith's increasingly desperate plea, Joe Grifasi must contend with playgoers who insist on giggling whenever a taciturn character breaks his silence, rendering his timing a bit ragged on opening night.
A play clocking in at barely 50 minutes—you read that correctly—might seem hardly worth the effort ( or ticket price ) . But in that brief time, O'Neill, Falls and Dennehy deliver enough dramatic tension to manifestly consummate the expectations engendered by Eugene Lee's Stygian set and Richard Woodbury's haunting sound design.
The Fastest Clock In The Universe
Playwright: Philip Ridley
At: A Red Orchid Theatre,
1531 N. Wells St.
Phone: ( 312 ) 943-8722; $14-$20
Runs through: Dec. 5
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
The decor is our first clue: 'Captain' Tock likes birds. His cluttered apartment reflects ornithological obsession, ironic in view of the hazard its penthouse location presents to flying creatures, evidenced by its many cracked windows—oh, and it sits on the roof of a former fur-products factory, speaking of dead animals. Then there's the people who inhabit this avian jungle where winged icons ranging from plush toys to taxidermal relics hold vigil—Tock's rude-boy roommate, Cougar Glass. Their ancient landlady, Cheetah Bee. Preppy Foxtrot Darling and streetwise Sherbet Gravel, guests at Cougar's birthday party.
For the last half-century, any play proposing a birthday party ( especially when the host declares that he will NOT drink tonight ) portends a reversal in plans—a prospect we heartily endorse, since the customary celebration consists of the predatory Cougar inviting an unwitting stranger to be his 'gift'—a malicious game to which the Captain has acquiesced for nearly a decade of 'nineteenth' birthdays. Tonight's sacrifice, however, arrives escorted by a guardian whose fearless bonhomie rallies Tock and Foxtrot to revolt against Cougar's domination.
Playwright Philip Ridley addresses a number of themes—the cult of physical beauty, fear of growing old, the cruelty practiced by bullies in pursuit of their fantasies ( 'We're all cannibals!' sneers Cougar ) and the ease with which those bullied submit to this arrangement. Ridley, a prolific author of children's books, presents his satire in images of Grand Guignol grotesquery—Tock, at one point, recounts a fairy-tale, assisted by a large puppet-vulture ( no, NOT the one from Defiant Theatre ) —that could, in less disciplined hands, quickly spill into uncontrolled mayhem.
Under Dado's characteristically keen direction, the five-person ensemble never falters, but instead retains a firm grip on their literary and kinetic context even during scenes of the most extravagant emotion. Dan Kuhlman's sullen Cougar is a radical departure from his meek Homer Wells last season, as is Larry Neumann, Jr.'s wistful Tock. Katlyn Carlson renders Sherbet a warrior-goddess of mythic proportions, while James McKay projects appropriate innocence as the clueless Foxtrot and Jen Engstrom's desiccated visage as Madame Bee lends the final touch of horror to this alluring and terrifying Red Orchid production.
