Embedded
By: Tim Robbins
At: Prop Thtr, 3502 N. Elston Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 539-7838; $10-$20
Runs through: Open run
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
'Quick and dirty' is an expression some print journalists use to describe rushing in, getting the story and knocking it out as quickly as possible. 'Quick and dirty' is an apt description of Tim Robbins' 2003 satire on the Bush administration and its rush to fight a war in Iraq.
Robbins is to be commended for hustling out a play that condemns the War in Iraq while honoring the troops fighting it ( especially at a time when it was sacrosanct to criticize President Bush ) . A lot of Robbins' rage in Embedded is directed at the complacent U.S. media and the Bush administration's shifty reasons for going to war.
All of this will no doubt resonate with those on the left of America's political sectarian divide. It's a fat chance that you'll get Red State audiences embracing this play that knows it's already preaching to the choir.
After stints in Los Angeles, New York and London, Embedded is braving an open run at Prop Thtr. The Chicago production is under the high-precision tutelage of director Greg Kolack ( formerly of Circle Theatre ) . It's also great to report that the 11-member cast all give rip-roaring performances inhabiting a wide array of characters from confused soldiers and their wives to grotesque caricatures of Bush cronies like Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.
As a piece of Protest Theater, Embedded does its job very well. But as a piece of dramatic writing, Embedded plays out more as a choppy regurgitation of facts and opinions instead of being a great work of drama.
Oh sure, it's great to laugh at the near Punch and Judy antics of the plotting of the cartoonish Bush administration ( especially with Richard Henzel's truly frightening and spot-on mask designs ) . But Robbins' writing and characters are rendered only in quick, broad sketches instead of depth and profundity.
Embedded is not entirely old news, what with the largely American coalition forces still fighting off deadly insurgent attacks in Iraq. Yet a good portion of Embedded focuses on a captured Jessica Lynch-like soldier character who becomes a media manipulated hero—something that is definitely in the rearview mirror of many Americans by now.
Robbins also has his Bush administration honchos constantly singing the praises of Leo Strauss, the late philosopher who has been embraced by many neo-conservatives. Be sure to read the program notes, otherwise you'll be lost about this figure and why the Bush cronies all get whipped up in an ecstatic frenzy when they mention his name.
So see Embedded and get a quick-relief laugh and tut-tut sniffle at Robbins' astute take on America being drummed into a very questionable war. It's definitely 'quick and dirty,' though you may need to take in more political works from Britain like David Hare's Stuff Happens and Guantanamo: Honor Bound to Defend Freedom to get something more 'thought-out and in-depth.'
The Spitfire Grill
Playwright: book by James Valcq and Fred Alley, music by James Valcq,
lyrics by Fred Alley
At: Provision Theatre Company at the Theatre Building, 1225 W. Belmont
Phone: ( 773 ) 327-5252; $20-$25
Runs through: May 21
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
A recurring theme in Western literature is the healing power of nature: whether the malady be physical, spiritual or social, flight to the country will make all right. So when our heroine, following her release from prison, seeks sanctuary in an economically depressed Wisconsin mining town ( named appropriately, Gilead ) , we don't ask if she will find her heart's desire amid its lush forests. Do bears spit in the woods?
Don't discount the importance of those woods. Even if the plot involves the citizenry of Gilead—the crusty widow who runs the town's sole restaurant, the out-of-work quarry foreman and his self-effacing wife, the restless young sheriff, the war veteran-turned-fugitive and the spinster storekeeper/ postmistress/ gossip—the focus of the celebration in this up-tempo elbow-pumping score by James Valcq and the late Fred Alley ( whose legacy in these parts includes Door County's American Folklore Theatre ) is the pastoral beauty of the region that provides their play's setting. If the soaring final vowels in the song entitled 'The Colors of Paradise' don't spur you to schedule a vacation in the Platteville-Lancaster environs, you should have your ears examined immediately.
The cozy dimensions of the Theatre Building's south room likewise facilitate the romantic nostalgia, closing the distance between performers and audience to expedite the exchange of emotional energy and, in doing so, reducing our yarn's undeniable propensity to be sentimental. Under the deft direction of Tim Gregory, a cast led by Tempe Thomas as the wary ex-con Percy, Iris Lieberman as the gruff Hannah and Susan Moñiz ( whose diminuendo on the poignant 'When Hope Goes' could break your heart ) as the shy Shelby—with special commendation due Mierka Girten, who goes beyond stereotype to lend depth and humor to the shrewish Effy—radiate warmth and sparkle to set us cheering for them and the men they love almost at the first accordion- and fiddle-based chords from music director Valerie Maze's off-stage orchestra. Bring your hankie and don't be afraid to use it.
Hunger And Thirst
By: Eugene Ionesco
At: A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells St.
Phone: ( 312 ) 943-8722; $14-$20
Runs through: June 4
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
It's natural for a new father to be restless, but since our hero's itch is of the full-blown existential variety so beloved by European playwrights, it takes only one visit by his dotty aunt to make Jean flee his Pollyanna wife, his baby daughter and their squalid flat. We next meet him waiting for a lady friend at the doors of a museum where the guards alternately mock and pity him for his steadfast vigil. Finally, our pilgrim stumbles upon an alpine monastery, where the monks offer hospitality by staging him a Boschian morality play of theocratic torture, after which Jean is informed that he must serve an unspecified sentence in this purgatory if he wishes to ever reunite with his family.
If we paused for an instant during the course of its presentation to ponder the philosophical intricacies reflected in this later, disturbingly autobiographical work by Eugene Ionesco, we would be irretrievably lost to confusion. Fortunately, Michael Shannon, making his directorial debut with this Red Orchid Theatre production, is no stranger to Ionesco's iconography, having served HIS sentence as an actor in several of that author's cryptic plays. Under his intuitive guidance, the immediate action is rendered so engrossing, the stage picture so vibrant, the tone so emotionally engaging, as to allow us no time to risk surrender to the vertigo of Ionesco's absurdist analogies.
Sustaining that equilibrium for the show's three-hour running time, however, requires stamina and inventiveness. Anchoring the dramatic narrative is Lance Stuart Baker's Jean, who never loses hope as he roams doggedly through nightmare fantasies of stifling denial, populated by clinging consorts, cruel muses and Grünewald-faced clerics ( kudos to lighting designers Heather Graff and Richard Peterson ) . Si Osborne invokes an array of subtle nuances as the sinister Brother Tarabas, contrasting sharply with Molly Reynolds' bold portrayal of the delusional Aunt Adelaide and Mark Vallarta's vivid performance as a prisoner of the Inquisition. Though the second act has its slow spots ( notably, the play-within-a-play ) an unwaveringly focused ensemble forges from Ionesco's pessimistic lament for the human condition an experience as riveting as it is exhilarating.
Book of Days
Playwright: Lanford Wilson
At: Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark
Contact: 773/508-9794, www.raventheatre.com; $25, 20 for students and seniors
Runs through: May 28
BY CATEY SULLIVAN
The bucolic ideal of small-town U.S.A. has always been about as real as a Norman Rockwell painting. From the ruthless hypocrisy of The Scarlet Letter to the annual stoning in Shirley Jackson's The Lottery and beyond, violence and deceit masquerading as homespun, apple-pie virtue have been depicted like the maggoty underside of a beauty queen's corpse.
It's no accident that a reference to Blue Velvet has been worked into Raven Theatre's production of Lanford Wilson's Book of Days. This is, after all, the tale of a clean, prosperous village of upstanding church folk and salt-of-the-earth family values providing a shiny veneer for grotesque, oppressive perversions of truth, justice and the American Way.
Directed by Michael Menendian, Book of Days is a taut, dark and unconventional thriller. There's a mystery, a corpse and more than the whiff of a heinous crime. Even so, this is no slick whodunit. It is instead a vivid story of an undredgeable swamp happily inhabited by people in denial of the suffocating muck.
Central to Book of Days is George Bernard Shaw's play Joan of Arc, a play that—like so many of Shaw's works—presents organized religion as a force of dangerously willful ignorance and 'churning political agendas.' Ruth, the bookkeeper in the local cheese factory run by her husband Len, is cast as Joan. With little subtlety, Wilson limns the parallels between the warrior martyr's crusade and Ruth's own quest for true righteousness.
But the lack of subtlety—from an early scene when Ruth's ex-hippie mother-in-law starts talking about the 'passionless automatons' she teaches as a local Christian college, you know where Wilson's going—doesn't deter from the power of Book of Days.
As Ruth, Cora Vander Broek is intriguingly spirited and passionate, managing wonderfully to overcome the stereotypical feisty-heroine cliché that would ensnare a lesser actor. Just as powerful is Liz Fletcher as Ginger Reed, a gorgeous, wise snapdragon of a woman who is as comfortable in her unmistakably alluring beauty as she is rebuffing the unctuous man-sluts around town.
And speaking of that breed of double-standard bearing smarms: Jonathan Nicholas's depiction of Rev. Billy Groves combines the slick, fresh-faced misogyny of Ralph Reed with the patronizing, corrupting charisma of a Focus on the Family broadcast.
He's the evangelical counterpart of James Bates ( Greg Caldwell, a bit too contorted about the face in his last scenes ) , a rising politician with a sense of entitlement that extends from the halls of government to whatever woman he feels like blessing with his almighty dick on any given day.
Director Menendian also instills a sense of chilling creepiness into Book of Days. When Bates' wife starts speaking in tongues, the moment is one of pure, scalp-crawling horror. And the distant gunshot that echoes throughout ( a masterful, haunting effect by sound designer Nick Keenan ) is the stuff of nightmares.
The Golden Truffle
Playwright: Jim Lasko, John Fournier, Halena Kays, Tom Lynch
At: Redmoon Central, 1463 W. Hubbard
Phone: ( 312 ) 850-8440 x. 111; $35-$45 ( includes chocolates )
Runs through: June 18
By Jonathan Abarbanel
How to explain The Golden Truffle? You sit in banquettes which approximate an old-time swank nightclub. You order fancy drinks ( cash bar ) and watch a musical revue about celebrity awards. But the environment also parodies old-time swank clubs, and the show lampoons celebrities and nightclub revues themselves. And, oh yes, you eat four rich and sumptuous chocolate truffles courtesy of Vosges Haut-Chocolate.
Unlike other Redmoon shows, this one uses no masks and few puppets, and yet it's every bit as exaggerated as previous Redmoon creations; a funhouse distortion of things and behavior, although not so extreme as to be threatening. The plot is simple—even silly—and is a shaggy-dog story to boot, yet the execution is complex and sophisticated, based on physical creativity—props, costumes, devices, scenic design—that's nothing short of dazzling with just a soupcon of intentional cheesiness; call it the Rube Goldberg homage.
In short, think of The Golden Truffle as a live-action cartoon—a more fantastic but less frenzied Beach Blanket Babylon. A huge venture with cast, musicians, servers and staff, The Golden Truffle is performance and environment all in one, and might run forever in its own establishment rather than an old warehouse.
The slim story concerns a sex-symbol actor, a ventriloquist, an old-fashioned stand-up comic, a child star and a smoky chanteuse competing for the ultimate showbiz award, an exquisite confection that's as close to ambrosia and nectar as mortals ever will come. The five celebrities interact with the MC, the pastry chef, his daughter, the wait staff and a custodian as the audience is passively incorporated into the show within the expansive embrace of Redmoon ingenuity.
The performers are uniformly excellent. Chanteuse Julie De Grandpre is my favorite in her sequined Black Widow-cum-Byzantine gown ( costumes by Joel Klaff and John Diekmann ) , but not because she's better than apoplectic chef Rick Kubes or pseudo-ventriloquist Halena Kays ( author of her own brilliant routine ) or any of the others. And John Fournier's atmospheric pastiche of songs and orchestrations borrows a polka here, a Louis Prima/Benny Goodman vamp there and a Kurt Weill riff elsewhere.
The total effect is disarming, a fantasy with dessert. Not really adult, it celebrates the creative child in all of us. Redmoon artistic director Jim Lasko says The Golden Truffle pays homage to musicals, 'a form that celebrated itself ... I could feel how much fun ( a musical ) was having with itself. How delighted its creators were with the act of creation.'
There's only one thing wrong with The Golden Truffle; it's too long at nearly two-and-a-half hours with intermission. Redmoon should take a cue from a real nightclub revue, and bring it in at about 100 minutes straight through.
The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee
Playwrights: William Finn ( music/lyrics ) , Rachel Sheinkin ( book )
At: Drury Lane Water Tower Place
Phone: ( 312 ) 642-2000; $59.50-$69.50
Runs through: Open run
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Do you like to laugh at the humiliations and catastrophes of adolescent children? Yeah, me too—which is why I really like The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. This quirky, good-natured musical follows six teenage ( or nearly so ) competitors at a regional spelling bee, each one an oddly brilliant misfit and most of them hormonal. For example, there's heavyweight William Barfee ( that's 'Bar-FAY' ) who, along with Olive Ostrovsky, learns a life lesson. There's Boy Scout Chip Berkowitz, and Logainne Schwartzandgrubenierre, who lives with two daddies. The kids are joined by four audience volunteers ( who are vetted before the show ) who also compete in the bee.
You won't walk out humming the tunes except, maybe, the oft-repeated 'Goodbye' chant when a competitor misspells a word, or the tagline of Barfee's five-digit ditty to his spelling technique, 'Magic Foot,' with its odd chromatic slide. But you'll certainly remember Berkowitz's selection about his erection. And that's the point: William Finn's music and lyrics are charming, well-crafted tunes that get the job done, whether the job is character exposition or moving the plot along. Meantime, Rachel Sheinkin's non sequitur jokes will tickle your funny bone and have you guffawing.
You'll embrace the generally youthful cast, too. Most of them are unknowns ( with several on leave from college ) , such as Barfee's Eric Roediger, an Ohio find making his professional debut. Followers of Chicago Gay Men's Chorus already may know Bill Larkin ( co-author of the chorus's The Ten Commandments musical ) , who plays a dryly comedic Grown Up in Charge. Spelling Bee avoids the frequent, annoying traps of adults playing kids because director James Lapine is too smart to be cutesy. Ditto the authors, who never write down to adolescence. They invest in their characters, even within the context of a 100-minute musical comedy with the emphasis on comedy. There's art, or at least a great deal of craft, to creating a good time and you'll see it here.
Another review of Spelling Bee ( in The Reader ) was so carping and pinch-nosed I must assume the critic either was ill or doesn't know how to have fun. It's unfathomable that she didn't enjoy something about this show, which offers itself without pretensions. The very worst one can say is that Spelling Bee is funny and forgettable—an enjoyable night out. The best one can say is that you'll laugh out loud, delight in a cast of strong newcomers, enjoy the clever concept that seamlessly integrates the audience, and have fun at the expense of adolescent geeks in a spirit of warm-hearted schadenfreude.
Kudos to musical director Gregory M. Brown and his five-piece band, as well as to designer Beowulf Boritt's amusing school gymnasium set, adapted from his Broadway original. Tip for audience volunteers: kumiss and cow.