Business Casualty: An Evening Of One-Act Plays
Playwright: Tai Palmgren, Tom Horan, Adam Simon
At: Sansculottes Theater Company at the Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 507-1898; $10
Runs through: July 16
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
The class assignment—uh, chosen theme—for this evening of short plays, performed under the collective title Business Casualty, was to have been 'the absurdity of modern work', but the three playwrights of Sansculottes—a word meaning 'without pants'—Theater Company look to be flying by the seat of theirs, inexplicably neglecting opportunities for original interpretations to resolutely follow paths well-worn by earlier generations.
Take Tom Horan's Invisible Bob: The setting is a labyrinthine office with its own medical staff, hospice and funeral parlor. Administration directives arbitrarily raise the retirement age ( to the chagrin of a centenarian clerk ) , force their secretaries to deliver blowjobs, and demand one day that all young male employees marry by the end of their shift. Our heroes are all low-level support-staff drones, faceless enough to trade jobs with no one noticing—especially Bob, who grows, literally, discorporate until his only sanctuary is the limbo on Floor Thirteen. Even if Sophie Treadwell's Machinal and Elmer Rice's The Adding Machine hadn't familiarized us with this draconian society in the 1920s, Horan's sprawling, overplotted, cliché-littered text would still take too long to make its point.
Tai Palmgren's The Watchmaker begins with a novel premise—too much exposure to phosphorescent dyes causes the artisans in charge of painting luminous watch-dials to hallucinate—but telegraphs its punches so far in advance that we frequently find ourselves saying the lines along with the characters ( not an auspicious phenomenon for a script making its premiere ) .
Only Adam Simon's ( a ) Dream In An Airport looks to be nearly ready for an audience, thanks to the intelligently-focused performances of Seth Unger and Danielle Syslo as various counselors/comforters to Jason Fleitz' tired executive lost in an odyssey through St. Louis International Airport. Despite starting out in hackneyed territory, Simon gradually dispenses with cutesy sitcom quips to wax downright existential.
Keith Neagle lends a nice deadpan stoicism to Watchmaker's pixilated colorist and Invisible Bob's grumpy house physician—indeed, all the performers impose what professional polish they can on these plays-in-progress. Next time, let's hope the trouserless authors give them the better material that they deserve.
Short Eyes
Playwright: Miguel Pinero
At: Urbantheater Company
Phone: ( 773 ) 347-1203; $20
Runs through: July 24
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Short Eyes is a brutal and unpleasant prison play fueled by raw energy and authenticity, or at least as much authenticity as most of us can handle. This 1974 first play by the late New Yorican author and ex-offender, Miguel Pinero, is Oz some 25 years earlier. The work's structural flaws always have been apparent, but are outweighed by Pinero's instinct for the highly charged moment, his mastery of rhythmic jailhouse patois and his ability to create effective set piece scenes.
Short Eyes occurs in the day room of New York City's House of Detention, where men are held for days, weeks or months awaiting disposition of their cases. Black and Latino inmates share power in uneasy alliance. While not absolutely nihilistic, this blob-like humanity has little purpose beyond survival and seeking the weakest link. Guards are corrupt, power rules it, alliances shift on a dime, and proving yourself a man is all that matters. A young Puerto Rican pretty boy, Julio, called Cupcakes, is a first-time offender and object of sexual desire. Cupcakes' attempts to understand manhood—and protect his butt, literally—form the play's thin moral core. Into this stew, the system drops a white, middle-class child molester ( Short Eyes in prison slang ) who quickly becomes the group punching bag, and the catalyst that unites the play's politics and sexual tension.
The whole is greater than the sum of its parts in this production, in which the energy and verbal music of the ensemble are more important than individual performances. Under director Ron OJ Parson, Short Eyes has pace, punch and plenty of testosterone, even though there are moments that flag. A three-week extension of this show was facilitated by a number of cast replacements and shifts ( not all of which are reflected in the program ) , and the inconsistencies show.
Nonetheless there is continuity and subtlety in most key roles, among them Ricardo Gamboa as Cupcakes, Ivan Vega as the play's conflicted moral center, Juan, and Andrew Kain Miller in the tricky title role. His Act I elegiac monologue—despite being dramatically wrong—almost convinces one that man-child love is desirable. Ronald Conner, who has shifted roles within the cast, provides menace as Cupcakes' principal suitor. Among the rest, veteran Senuwell Smith makes the most of his frequently comic opportunities, including a Jane Fonda fantasy that ends with an explosive special effect gumming up Jeremy Peacock's gritty, bold-floored and blood-stained set.
This Urbantheater Company shows promise with this debut show. It's a good reason to visit the storefront Aguijon Theatre on the Northwest Side ( Laramie at Diversey ) , a venue that generally offers performances in Spanish. But be forewarned: the 60 seats are cramped, and don't go on a hot night.
Critics' Picks
Marlowe, Bailiwick, through July 17. Kit Marlowe was gay and proud when it meant, literally, a death sentence, especially when Virgin Queen Elizabeth fancied him. MSB
The Mikado, Noble Fool Theatre at Pheasant Run, through Sept. 4. Should you schlep to St. Charles to see this Gilbert & Sullivan update set in contemporary Japan? Noble Fool's reputation would suggest yes, and they've been planning this version for two years. JA
My Richard, Red Tape Th. at the Lakeshore, through Aug. 10. Joe Kendall and Jed Alexander's play prosits a director who casts a schizophrenic as Richard III—the hunchback baddie—raising questions of everyone's sanity, including Shakespeare's. MSB
The Second City's Romeo and Juliet Musical: The People vs. Friar Laurence, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, through Aug. 14. In its second year, this rousing and often hilarious Shakespeare parody is just the ticket for a midsummer night's fun. RR
By Jonathan Abarbanel,
Mary Shen Barnidge and Rick Reed
