Hedwig And The Angry Inch
Playwright: book by John Cameron Mitchell, music and lyrics by Stephen Trask
At: The Broadway Theatre, 3175 North Broadway at Belmont Avenue
Phone: 773-388-3818
Tickets: $35 ( special $20 rate for 11 p.m. show Fridays )
Runs through: open
by Mary Shen Barnidge
During the course of Hedwig And The Angry Inch, we catch ourselves at times flashbacking on Tommy and The Rocky Horror Show, but only because the canon of Rock Musicals is so small that overlap is inevitable. We're not talking greatest-hits revues like Smokey Joe's Café, portrait revues like Love, Janis, or standard-issue tralalas with pumped-up bass and percussion like—-well, everything from Hair to Rent. We're talking the REAL thing—with characters, dialogue, a story to tell, and onstage musicians playing a part in it.
A major part, actually. The framing device for John Cameron Mitchell's narrative is a tour engagement at—whattaya know?—Chicago's Broadway Theatre, by the band called The Angry Inch, whose lead singer is named—you guessed it!—Hedwig! In between songs, this diva-in-training acquaints us with the history of Hansel, an East German "girly-boy" whose search for his Platonic "other half" led to a botched sex-change operation that left him with a "Barbie-doll crotch." Rendered literally sexless, what could this castaway do but take to the glam-rock road?
On the journey, our pilgrim-hero ( ine ) loves and loses fellow rocker Tommy Gnosis ( whose benefit concert at Wrigley Field is clearly audible—suspend your disbelief, OK?—through the Broadway's stage door ) . She also acquires a Jewish husband, the forlorn Yitzhak, who provides her with a dramatic foil, soprano harmonies and, on opening night, emergency costume assistance.
It's a tour de force role demanding the adorableness of Shirley Temple, the vocal range of the Edwin Hawkins Singers and the stamina of Secretariat. Nick Garrison is well up to the challenge, however, whether lobbing double-entendres, mirror-flirting with the audience, or shedding sweat-soaked clothes ( though only 90 minutes long, the show requires Hedwig's active participation at all times ) . Katrina Lenk and a likewise visually and aurally ambisexual squad of tunesmiths supply stalwart support for Stephen Trask's sturdy score which bows to such diverse pop genres as country-honkers ( "Sugar Daddy" ) , heavy metal ( "Angry Inch" ) and romantic ballads ( "The Origin of Love" ) .
But more important than the kickass good time Hedwig delivers is its invocation of the eternal quest for self-identity and completion—an exploration concluding in a resolution to send us home filled with new hope and purpose.
FOSSILS
Written by: Claudia Allen
At: Victory Gardens ( main stage ) ,
2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: $28-$33
Phone: 773-871-3000
Runs through: June 17
by Rick Reed
Watching the formidable Julie Harris on Victory Garden's mainstage, one understands why this woman has such a distinguished career in the theater, including garnering more Tony wins than any other actress. Julie Harris is that rare performer who brings no affectations to her craft and makes her work look deceptively effortless. In the world premiere production of local playwright Claudia Allen's Fossils, Harris plays Carrie, a retired schoolteacher vacationing at a bed and breakfast in northern Michigan. Harris' Carrie is charming, and you immediately fall in love with this woman who does not let age play a part in her choices. Playwright Allen has formed an amusing, endearing character with her creation of Carrie ( even if she did borrow her history from Lillian Hellman ) . Finding a match for the talents of Harris must have been no easy task, but Victory Gardens, and director Sandy Shinner, have succeeded with Ann Whitney, in the role of Abigail, a retired college economics professor, as flinty and steel gray as her hair and a woman for whom self-denial has become a way of life. Whitney probably has the more difficult task in making her character likable, because Abigail is cold, bordering on harsh, yet we warm to her as she reveals a lifetime of sacrifice and secrets that have made her into a strong, yet sad, woman.
Fossils brings these two opposing forces together for a summertime idyll along the shores of Lake Michigan, where the two, unknown to each other until their solitary vacations throw them together, begin the process of fusing histories, outlooks and memories. Credit director Shinner with keeping the performances understated and believable and overseeing the creation of a little world that's so real one can almost smell the water of Lake Michigan and hear its pounding surf. Jeff Bauer's scenic design is detailed ( right down to the faded games and jigsaw puzzles left for guests on the weathered porch where all the action takes place ) ; Andre Pluess and Ben Sussman's sound design is subtle, but heightens the mood with the quiet sounds of summer; and Todd Hensley's lighting design is superb: waxing and waning from early morning to twilight to evening and back again.
Fossils, as a production, has so many good things going for it that it's even more of a shame that its script is such dreck. In spite of Claudia Allen's winning abilities at creating sympathetic characters, natural dialogue, and engaging, she has crafted a story which is not only hit-you-over-head obvious and predictable, but which is also plagued by major credibility problems. It seems as though Allen doesn't trust her audience enough to let us draw our own conclusions; she feels compelled to spell each emotional response out. Worse, the play's resolution is so unbelievable that it ruined the entire production. I don't want to spoil the play's conclusion, but Allen expects us to swallow that one of the character's decades-long prejudices and self-denial could be washed away in a matter of minutes. She also expects us to believe that Julie Harris's character, so vibrant, iconoclastic, and full of passion, would opt to mourn a lost love for thirty years. It would have been so much better if Allen had taken a subtler route to resolving how these two women come together, if perhaps she had shown us just a hint of a beginning of certain walls crumbling down, rather than knocking those walls down with a wrecking ball.
It's a real testimony to Harris and Whitney's thespian skills that Fossils remains an entertaining evening in spite of the complete lack of reality with which the playwright has saddled its conclusion.
Kaspar
Playwright: Peter Handke
At: TinFish Theatre, 4247 N. Lincoln
Phone: ( 773 ) 549-1888
Tickets: $17.50
Runs through: June 29
by Mary Shen Barnidge
The identity of the actual Kaspar Hauser remains a mystery to this day. What is known is that, in 1828, a teenage boy was discovered in the town square in Nürnberg—an urban feral-child barely able to walk, with no words but his name and the sentence, "I want to be a rider like my father." After learning to speak, he revealed that he had been reared in a small cell, kept in darkness and fed on bread and water, until his captors turned him loose with his minuscule vocabulary. German political factions attempted to represent him as a lost son to the Grand Duke of Baden—a claim that was never proven, but which may have led to his murder in 1833.
A sweet, romantic tragedy could have been forged from this story, but Peter Handke has a different agenda for this much-exploited waif. Kaspar opens with the title character staggering over the stage on legs unaccustomed to ambulatory movement and reciting his lonely refrain, paraphrased by Handke as "I want to be a person like somebody else was once." We witness—by my count—28 repetitions of this drill before a trio of android-like instructors arrive to play linguistic games on pretext of developing his verbal skills.
Following an exhaustive session of wordscramble exercises—in which sentences are dissected and rearranged in steadily decreasing fragments, all scored for four-part vocal harmony—they are joined by a quintet of silent clowns costumed in imitation of the information-glutted student. While Kaspar proudly proclaims his successful adjustment, these whimsical zanni proceed to contribute aural and visual distraction until all collapse in existential laughter.
Handke takes about an hour longer than necessary to make his point—that Conformity Ain't All It's Cracked Up To Be and that language may be used to confuse, manipulate and—gasp!—corrupt. Under Marc Collins' direction, the TinFish cast struggle valiantly to keep the action immediate and engaging.
But even if Handke's observations were any more timely in 2001 than in 1968, his illustrative methods would render them blurred and ultimately soporific. Confronted simultaneously with information imparted through intellectual ( language ) and sensory ( sight, sound, etc. ) means, the latter will always dominate the former. With all his analytical insights into the nature of communication, how could Handke have overlooked this essential principle?
