THE VOICE OF CHICAGO'S GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS AND QUEER COMMUNITY SINCE 1985

BY RICK REED

The set design of Red Light Winter has parallels with the play. The design, by Todd Rosenthal, demonstrates artistry and sensitivity, working on both a practical and emotional level. Ultimately, though, the set design, for all its inspiration, fails us because it has the effect of distancing us when we need the opposite in order for this heartfelt and tragic story to work.

Red Light Winter ( by the talented young playwright Adam Rapp, who already has a Pulitzer prize nomination to his credit and seems to be a hot ticket in dramatic and film circles ) is the story of a love triangle that begins in Amsterdam's red light district. Davis ( Gary Wilmes ) is our hale, hearty, and handsome hero ( beautiful on the outside, corrupt to the core on the inside ) who finds Christina ( Lisa Joyce in an amazingly textured performance ) , a Parisian prostitute whom he encounters on his own and then brings back to the cramped hostel-like room he shares with his best friend, Matt ( Christopher Denham ) , a depressed young playwright who, just before Davis's arrival with his 'gift,' was about the kill himself. Christina is enigmatic, charming, and gorgeous. She becomes even more so when she leaves the room briefly to use the bathroom down the hall to effect a transformation: when she returns, she is wearing a long red dress, glittering jewelry and the mien of a torch chanteuse. She sings a song of her own composition for the boys and with this song, Matt's love for her begins. His perception of her is as a sensitive artist who knows what unrequited love and despair are all about.

Flash forward to one year later; we are in the cramped lower East Side of Manhattan abode of Matt, who is working on a play, is depressed, and is, this very evening, contemplating suicide. His blue reveries are interrupted by a knock at the door. You'll never guess who has arrived all the way from Amsterdam. Christina is laden with a heavy heart and serious life problems. She thinks she is arriving at the apartment of Davis, who has given her Matt's address as his own in Amsterdam as a brush off. The whole triangle thing gets a boost here from Rapp, who has made it, as his playwright alter-ego says, lacking a 'hypotenuse.' Matt loves Christina, who doesn't even remember him; Christina loves Davis, who doesn't remember her. Everybody loses, except for the heartless Davis who knows himself: 'I am not a good person.'

What the script shares with the set design is that both are undeniably the work of artists who demonstrate serious potential. The script and the set also share the same failure: that of distancing the audience. Red Light Winter is so tragic that I was stunned at the end, when everything has gone wrong, that I felt nothing … and I'm someone who can cry at the schmaltz of a credit card commercial. The reason is distance and credibility. The set, two parallel boxes ( reminiscent of windows, windows in the red light district perhaps? ) that we peer into, always leave us outside and thus, it's impossible to feel empathy. The script, with an amazing first act, leaves us cold in the second because of its over-the-top tragedy and worse, its lack of proper motivation for Christina. I just couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to believe that this working girl would be so sexually impressed with Davis that she would follow him to the U.S. It feels like the playwright needed a deus ex machina to get her here, so he could complete his play. We lose empathy because Christina isn't believable and lacks the proper motivation to be real.

That's not to say that Red Light Winter isn't worth seeing. It is … mainly for the enormous potential on display. It's the work of several young artists, the playwright most notably, that bears watching.

Life is a Dream

Playwright: Pedro Calderon de la Barca

At: Live Wire, Athenaeum Th. Studio 2

Phone: ( 773 ) 935-6860; $12

Runs through: June 26

By Jonathan Abarbanel

The results are not entirely successful, but one must admire Live Wire for stretching and daring with Life is a Dream, Calderon de la Barca's 1632 verse play. He called it a philosophical comedy, an accurate description since he's far more interested in ideas than in full-blooded characters. Akin to Shakespeare's so-called romances ( Pericles, Cymbeline ) , although not as richly humane, Life is a Dream rarely is produced owing to its tricky blend of talk, action, low comedy and arcane plot.

Boiled down, the story offers the triumph of mercy over stupidity. Basilio, King of Poland, imprisoned his infant son, Segismund, and raised him as a minimally tutored captive in order to avoid an astrological prediction of dynastic disaster. Having mistaken vast knowledge for perception, Basilio's attempts to defeat the prediction only insure that it comes to pass. Segismund, unaware he's a prince, is brought to court as if in a dream. He behaves according to his wild upbringing rather than his breeding—dashing Basilio's ideal of the instinctively Noble Savage. Returned to prison in chains and rags, Segismund escapes to lead a civil war. He defeats his father, but—chastened by his experiences—yields to Basilio in a gesture of spiritual grace. Basilio then understands his own errors and his son's wisdom, and elevates the young prince to the throne.

Adam Webster's adaptation minimalizes several subplots, which mostly is just as well since they tend towards moral ambiguity although conforming to the Spanish code of honor ( more about blood lines than morality ) . For example, Segismund ends up marrying a scheming princess while her cousin, a duke, casually and arbitrarily murders the play's low comedy character—a harmless chatterbox—without causing a stir. However, the reduction harms the subplot of Rosaura, the wronged Muscovy noblewoman.

Live Wire's ambitious production yields inconsistent results. Webster's adaptation ( most likely a compilation from existing translations ) leaves much of the play in rhymed verse, which lacks Shakespearian majesty and too often sounds like doggerel in the mouths of the company's less-skilled players. A prose version—there are several—might have been better. Fortunately, director Chris Arnold has made an excellent choice for Segismund in ensemble member Carlos Diaz, who possesses both the vocal ability and the physical presence to make the young prince attractive and compelling. But Segismund is missing in action for large chunks of the play. With subplots shredded and acting inconsistent, the production is far less interesting when he's offstage.

Attempts to create a dreamscape of costume ( designer Suzanne Bracken ) and movement ( Sabrina Lloyd ) are odd but at least partially successful—you know you're not in Kansas anymore. Joshua Weinstein's creative original music veers uncomfortably between traditional and contemporary sounds, and underscores too much: it distracts from Segismund's surrender to his father.

Carnival

Playwright: Bob Merrill ( music/lyrics ) , Michael Stewart ( book )

At: Light Opera Works

Phone: ( 847 ) 869-6300; $27-$75

Runs through: June 12

By Jonathan Abarbanel

You'd have to be as hard-boiled as the war-crippled hero of this show not to leave Carnival with moist eyes. Light Opera Works is in its glory, successfully negotiating Carnival's sticky sentimentality with exquisite musicality, sure direction and superb casting. If you love Broadway's Golden Age, go see Carnival during its too-short run.

The French story adapted for the 1950s film Lili and the Puppets and this 1961 musical comedy, is set in a second-rate traveling circus where an embittered puppeteer, Paul, denies his love for the innocent adolescent Lili yet uses his winsome creations to woo her. A comic side plot pairs the circus' star magician, Marco, with his songstress mistress, Rosalie, even as Marco has designs on Lili.

There's nothing especially gay about the caged heart clothed in bitterness, which yields to fresh and naive purity after first trying to destroy it. Still, Paul, who isolates himself through self-disgust layered on self-pity, will seem familiar to members of our community whose intense loneliness often leads to emotional abuse of themselves and others.

Composer Bob Merrill's exceedingly engaging and tuneful waltzes, marches and tangos are reminiscent of songs a 1920s circus band might play. Who cannot be enchanted by the lilting melodies for the puppets? But Merrill also borrowed operatic techniques—right down to recitative—to provide Carnival with a weightier dramatic musical element, especially for Paul, the conflicted puppeteer.

Under conductor Lawrence Rapchak, every nuance is heard: the ethereal strings behind Paul's 'She's My Love,' the boisterous brass in the marches. Rapchak seems to will every shred of Mozartian tunefulness from singers and players in the show's squeezebox cornucopia of song.

But it wouldn't be enough without performers up to the task, and Light Opera Works hits the bull's-eye, in substantial part through stage director Michael Ehrman's astute casting and guidance. Tall, dark, slender Rod Thomas both looks and sings Paul to perfection with a ringing high baritone and dramatic presence. Rekha Rangarajan is a find as Lili, a fresh face with wide-eyed appeal and a commanding, ever-so-slightly husky mezzo. As Paul's kindly assistant, Jacquot, Gary Alexander is a versatile singer and dancer. Michael Gerhart's oily Marco also sings and dances with aplomb, while familiar trouper Susie McMonagle can handle Rosalie in her sleep.

Ehrman and scenic designer Michael Lasswell wisely reduce clutter on the limited Cahn Auditorium stage. Eschewing large set pieces, they suggest the circus world with a few colorful wagons and trunks, a few banners and ropes and strings of colored lights ( lighting by Andrew H. Meyers ) . This gives choreographer Stacey Flaster maximum room to move the ensemble through lively and effective, albeit relatively simple, dance moves. The ensemble includes former Gay Chicago columnist Angel Abcede, seemingly ageless.

An Unobstructed View

Playwright: Alex Kotlowitz and Amy Dorn

Pegasus Players at Truman College O'Rourke Center, 1145 W. Wilson Ave.

Phone: ( 773 ) 878-9761; $17-$25

Through June 26

BY SCOTT C. MORGAN

Just like CD releases of old vinyl records, Pegasus Players' world premiere play An Unobstructed View should come with the disclaimer: 'Contains previously released material.' This is not a bad thing, but only for the uninitiated.

In translating his work for Chicago Public Radio series like Chicago Matters and This American Life to the stage, author Alex Kotlowitz and his collaborator Amy Dorn have given these extraordinary and moving interviews another lease on life. Instead of flitting by on the radio airwaves of 91.3 WBEZ-FM, these Chicagoan tales of strength, survival and heartbreak are now to be relished on the living and breathing stage.

Yet I couldn't help sometimes agreeing with the woman behind me who kept on chiming in with: 'I've heard this story before' and 'This was better on the radio.'

As talented as the acting ensemble is for An Unobstructed View, something vital is lost when you hear an actor's rendition of an event compared to the person who actually lived and suffered through it. Chicago Public Radio fans who regularly follow Kotlowitz's work will be glad to have their memories jogged to many of these amazing tales, but ultimately disappointed when they don't always measure up to the originals.

Kotlowitz and Dorn also exasperate these loyal fans by cutting up and rearranging fragments of each person's stories on stage. It's almost as if a sugar-addled teenager with a short attention span is controlling everything with an itchy trigger finger on the remote control.

These quick story cuts and jumps are practically sacrilegious to National Public Radio listeners weaned on long-form storytelling. This choppy technique also gives some stories the short shrift, lessening their impact and making some people come off as glib and shallow.

But these quibbles are only for die-hard fans. Those unfamiliar with Chicago Public Radio and NPR will be immediately pulled in and entranced with what they see and hear in An Unobstructed View. Who could resist these tales ranging from a priest and nun falling in love to a former Chicago Board of Trade worker reduced to holding up banks?

Directors Jeff Ginsberg and Susan Padveen keep things moving briskly along, aided immensely by Christopher Kriz's ultra-specific sound design and the urban unit set with projections by Richard and Jacqueline Penrod.

The truly affable Alfred H. Wilson anchors the show as the philosophical muralist who does most of his work in the Cabrini Green and Robert Taylor projects. Some amazing multiple character work is done by Sandra Watson, doubling as a hooker and a woman whose love for her man is at its best while he's in prison.

Performances like these practically make you forget that what you're seeing is essentially repackaged goods. Once again, that is in no way a bad thing because the stories in An Unobstructed View are so rich and powerful. Now if we could only get Kotlowitz's original interviews released on CD.