Genn Jackson, Adelia S. Givens and Rhonda Bynum ( left to right ) in Stoops. Photo courtesy of eta/Creative Arts Foundation___________
Playwright: Crystal V. Rhodes
At: eta/Creative Arts Foundation, 7558 S. South Chicago
Phone: 773-752-3955; $25
Runs through: Aug. 26
By Jonathan Abarbanel
eta/Creative Arts Foundation has staged Stoops four times since 1991, obviously finding the play a great audience-pleaser. Indeed, it has considerable appeal and lots of energy as it tracks ( over the years 1960-85 ) the friendship of three girls in the 'hood whose adjoining inner-city row houses provide the front stoops on which the action takes place. But author Crystal V. Rhodes' play is more charming than it is either deep or skillful. For instance, in the first scene the girls are 10 years old. No matter how well-written, it's always a big stretch and a bit precious to watch adult actors portraying children unless that's the entire conceit of the work, which is not the case in Stoops.
Stoops covers 25 years that were critical to African Americans, yet the play never mentions a Kennedy or King; or the Voting Rights Act of 1965; or urban riots—and makes just a passing reference to Vietnam. Rhodes determined to make it a play about people, personalities and friendship rather than issues or history, and she's succeeded admirably. The historic frame of reference, or absence thereof, may be odd to the objective observer such as me, but it also makes the story universal. It's not so much about three Black girlfriends as about three girlfriends, and not so much about three girlfriends as about three friends. There is a typical mix of personality types—One is a big-mouthed wild child; another is the bright but shy child; and the third provides balance between the first two.
As the three friends, Adelia S. Givens ( Corky the brash ) , Rhonda Bynum ( Kelly the bright ) and Genn Jackson ( Deara the balance ) are more than engaging and remain fired-up throughout the show. Sometimes, however, they make up with energy and volume what might be more effective if played with less volume and more realistic, at-home detail. Intensity doesn't have to be loud, and very often is better if it's not. My advice to them and director Kamesha Jackson, if they were to ask, would be to relax into the roles and take a little more time to play the more powerful moments. They are supported by Keir Thirus in an ingratiating performance as the neighborhood boy, Rabbit, who flirts with all three girls and returns as a firmly-rooted adult.
Jackson and her design team nail the passing of the years with clever and dead-on use of costume and wigs, and with transition music drawn from the passing hit parade. It's great to hear, once again, the originals of such songs as Dedicated to the One I Love and a few Motown classics.
REVIEW
Cowboy Mouth and
4-H Club
Playwright: Sam Shepard
At: Mary Arrchie Theatre Company at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan
Phone: 773-871-0442; $18-$22
Runs through: Aug. 5
By Catey Sullivan
With two Sam Shepard one-acts, Mary Arrchie Theatre Company revisits its past for an evening of brutal immediacy. With their 1986 production of Cowboy Mouth and 4-H Club, Mary Arrchie's signature style of intense physicality and vocal ferocity was unleashed with five-alarm fury. Age hasn't mellowed the house that Artistic Director Richard Cotovsky built—Cowboy Mouth and 4-H Club 2007 are defiant, savage productions. There's poetry in the madness of Shepard's howling dialogue, poetry that often rides roughshod over lucidity; you may not always understand what's happening in these absurdist dramas, but you will feel their impact as Mary Arrchie delivers body blows that hit on a primal level.
4-H Club, directed by Hans Fleischmann, establishes the raw, desperate tone that defines the evening. In an apartment strewn with garbage ( with set designer Grant Sabin's work being sordidly effective ) , a trio of doomed souls—the wild-haired Joel ( Cotovsky ) , beef-faced Bob ( Howie Johnson ) and twitchy John ( Karl Potthoff ) —wallows in paranoia and apocalyptic dread. There's no discernable plot, only a vivid portrait of broken men railing and wailing as they try to find comfort in a world of hallucinatory alienation. Fleischmann lets the trio rip and roar with abandon. The result is a piece of feral energy and an often paradoxically humorous cacophony of despair.
Cowboy Mouth is a quasi-autobiographical portrait of Shepard's affair with Patti Smith ( who helped write the piece. ) As the lights go up on Slim ( Fleischmann ) and Cavale ( Colleen Moore ) , we see a world not dissimilar to the world of 4-H. Slim and Cavale are sequestered in a room defined by garbage, soiled mattresses and rusting appliances. A rattletrap drum kit looms like a sleeping monster in the corner, alongside an electric guitar and a collection of amplifiers that have the look of a third-rate pawn shop about them.
As Cavale, Moore is a ragged antiheroine. In stabbing bursts of sentences, we learn she has kidnapped Slim because she believes he will succeed where Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan have failed—in becoming Jesus, a savior with an electric guitar. The two paw and scrape at each other through razor-wire thickets of guilt and trauma. Like Slim's guitar playing, Cowboy Mouth is jagged and discordant. Shepard's dialogue will enrage those who try to make linear sense of it—what's important is its sound and its fury; these are words as mechanisms of elemental yowling rather than tidy, rational exposition. This is, after all, a world of nihilistic absurdity, a place where men dressed as lobsters play Russian roulette and dead crows serve as lovers. It's a place Mary Arrchie embraces for all its worth.
