Playwright: Oliver Goldsmith
At: Signal Ensemble at the Chopin,
1543 W. Division St.
Phone: ( 773 ) 347-1350; $10-$20
Runs through: April 29
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Let's see: We've got a country mansion with a capacious hall accessed by two doors and decorated by, among other furbelows, an ornately carved screen. This is occupied by a pompous father and his domineering wife, a prankish teenage son and a quartet of lovers—two clever country lasses and two swaggering city boys, one of them is intensely shy around girls not of social status inferior to his own. We also have mistaken identities; a proposed secret elopement; an elusive jewel box; frothy period costumes with wigs and pannier-skirts; a variety of British accents; and a minuscule budget. The challenge, as countless shoestring productions have discovered since Oliver Goldsmith's comedy premiered in 1773, lies in keeping control of the potentially chaotic physical comedy, but not to the extent of turning it into a self-indulgent showcase for oral-interpretation technique.
Signal Ensemble director Ronan Marra, however, has assembled a troupe of players both well-versed in classical oratory and sufficiently athletic as to not stagger under the weight of Laura M. Dana's cleverly-crafted costumes ( ranging from Miss Hardcastle's exquisite peacock fan to the mud clinging to her mother's gown after a dip in the marshes ) . Kudos are also due Melania Lancy, whose scenic design allows plenty of room for cartoon-sized chases, both across the room and around the furniture. The most conspicuous contribution to the evening's pleasure, however, is the ease with which the actors overcome the obstructive acoustics associated with exposed-brick auditorium walls to make the most of Phil Timberlake's dialect instruction.
She Stoops To Conquer—'stoops' as in falconry, not calisthenics—marks the Signal Ensemble's ascent ( literally ) from the Chopin's studio to its mainstage. The cast features a mix of actors already familiar on Chicago's storefront circuit ( notably Vincent L. Lonergan as the blustering Mr. Hardcastle ) and a smattering of newcomers, in addition to company members who could readily find work in more lucrative venues if not for loyalty to their own confreres—a developmental ethos not unlike the one that occurred several decades ago with a then-little collective called Steppenwolf.