SERENADING
LOUIS
Written by: Lanford Wilson
At: Victory Gardens Studio
Tickets: $20-$25
Phone: 773-871-3000
Runs through June 23, 2001
by Rick Reed
Don't come to Serenading Louis expecting a light, musical evening. This is theater at its darkest—and its best. Playwright Lanford Wilson, no stranger to the darkness at the heart of the human soul, has crafted a devastating tour de force with this play, one that's guaranteed to ring true for those of us who are at the end of our youth's aspirations and sailing uncertainly into middle age, and one that's certain to chill you to the bone by the end of the evening. Serenading Louis takes us into the lives of two late-30s, early-40s couples: Alex ( David Cromer ) and Gabby ( Sarah Wellington ) , and Carl ( Danny McCarthy ) and Mary ( Linda Gillum ) and in a series of deftly cut conversations between the four principles, lays bare their emotional and spiritual longings. Wilson mines these four couples' despair at realizing that lives would not be all that they hoped for when they were once optimistic Northwestern University students. Wilson puts us through a gamut of emotions as we listen to their conversations: discussions which give us a glimpse into the darkest part of their souls as they lay open to us their disappointments with love, career, and finding a place in an often heartless world.
It's great that such a powerful play is in the hands of an almost perfect cast, helmed by a director ( Abigail Deser ) who knows how to make all the right choices in bringing their intertwined stories to the fore. David Cromer's Alex, a successful attorney with political aspirations, cries at one point in the drama, "It's like I was never young!" And Cromer wisely never overplays his hand, letting us see exactly the wrong turns he's made in life and how his ambition was a bitter sacrifice for having the kind of life, and marriage, he once hoped for. His wife Gabby, in a heartrending portrayal by Sarah Wellington, is a chatterbox, who, it seems, if she just keeps talking, talking, talking, she can keep her own personal demons at bay. At first glance, Danny McCarthy's Carl would seem to have everything: success, wealth, a beautiful wife and a nearly perfect young daughter. But McCarthy, in his former jock bravado, demonstrates his uncertainty and unhappiness by drinking too much, and holding a barely suppressed rage at bay. When McCarthy lets that rage explode, we have a foreshadowing to the play's shocking conclusion—a conclusion that, albeit sickening, is perfectly logical. Carl's wife Mary, pretty, prejudiced and at her heart, ugly, is cheating on Carl. And even though Linda Gillum plays Mary with cheerfulness and charm, we come to hate her because she stealing away the only thing that's ever mattered to Carl—the love of this family. When he realizes that love is a sham, his carefully insulated world implodes.
Roadworks Theater Company has scored another triumph with this production. The company is probably the most innovative off-Loop groups around and Serenading Louis showcases their awesome talents.
THE SECRET DIARY OF ADRIAN MOLE, AGED 13-3/4
Written by: Sue Townsend
At: Athenaeum Theater Studio
Tickets: $15
Phone: 773-472-1169
Runs through: June 23, 2001
by Rick Reed
Adrian Mole is the kind of teenager we've seen before: plagued by adolescent angst, puzzled by the adult world around him, trying to cope poignantly ( and sometimes humorously ) with often universal milestones such as familial dysfunction, acne, raging hormones, and first love. Adrian Mole, in short, is learning how to be an adult in an uncertain world. This theme can probably be found in Egyptian hieroglyphics; it's so common. Writing about the foibles of adolescence is almost as much a rite of passage as adolescence itself. In order to make this sort of bildings roman type of literature work, one has to find, and maintain, a distinctive voice and a wry outlook. Playwright Sue Townsend makes a noble effort at doing both in this musical version of her popular stories about Adrian Mole, our teenage everyman, who in the course of this production, faces the possible disintegration of his parents' marriage, his first fumblings at love, the wisdom ( or lack thereof ) of his elders, abuse and friendship of his peers, and defining his own space in the world. Townsend gives Adrian a believable voice and makes him sympathetic, using the trick of often making him more sensible than the adults around him.
Unfortunately, Townsend, and this production ( with tepid direction by Cindy Gold ) is never unique enough to rise above mediocrity. Adrian Mole simply isn't all that compelling. He certainly doesn't have the sardonic wit of a Holden Caulfield; the playwright is unable to make him very interesting. His feelings and experiences are universal, to be sure, but we need to have something more to entertain us: a skewed view of the world, or a frame of reference that's compelling enough to engage us. The playwright has supplied us with neither. It doesn't help that Mole is played by Bryan Hart, an affable young man in his professional theater debut, who lacks any kind of "oomph" in his performance. Hart delivers rather flat-line readings and his singing voice is merely at the "can carry a tune" level. The best thing about his performance is his ability to react—his facial expressions reveal a lot, and they're often winning and funny.
I also wondered why this play was even conceived as a musical. Most of the songs are throwaway, forgotten almost as soon as they're sung. Certainly, none are integral to the flow of the plot. Best of the lot were Adrian's crotchety old man friend Bert ( George Lugg ) singing about the "Bad Old Days," and the delightfully ditzy Doreen Slater ( Jane Baxter Miller ) pouring out her heart to us as "The Other Woman." Keith Kupferer, as Adrian's father, George, and Michael Nowak, as the object of Adrian's mother's affair, Bimbo Lucas, both have flat singing voices that made me wonder how they managed to be cast in a musical. Both men were fine in their roles, but when they had to sing—well, let's just say the wincing wasn't because of the situation about which they were singing.
Everything about The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was lukewarm—from the production values, to the story itself. This piece of theater was seldom able to rise above the level of an average community theater production. A couple of performers were able to shine: the hilarious Marssie Mencotti as two delightful old ladies and Amy J. Carle, as Adrian's mother, Pauline.
Wit
Playwright: Margaret Edson
At: Goodman Theatre
Tickets $29-$45
Runs through: June 16
Phone: 312-443-3800
by Andrew Patner
Wit is a disturbing play, but not for the reasons that you might have heard. The story of a 50-year-old English literature professor who undertakes an extraordinarily painful—and unsuccessful—experimental chemotherapy course when she is diagnosed with late-stage metastatic ovarian cancer, the 1999 Pulitzer Prize-winning work is part treatment, part treatise, that raises many questions about the state of American drama today.
There is no questioning the attraction of the part of Vivian Bearing, Ph.D., essentially a 90-minute solo turn for a great actress, for top-flight artists. Kathleen Chalfant, the brilliant Tony-winner from Angels in America, created the role on the two coasts and Emma Thompson performed it in Mike Nichols's HBO television version. And Chicago's Carmen Roman certainly can play in this league. An actress whom one has watched go from strength to strength in recent seasons as Maria Callas in Master Class and the title role in Medea, she here shows how real acting involves a marriage of the intellectual, the emotional, and the physical. Able seemingly to contract her long and lanky body at will to capture Bearing's physical defeat by her illness, Roman has just the right combination as well of fierce feistiness, biting humor, and a certain academic innocence to make the part her own ( though one hopes that she will trim some of her opening night extremes to obtain even more centered power as the run progresses ) .
The problems arise first with Edson's script, an attempt to engage in an outsmarting of the 17th-century metaphysical poet John Donne ( he of "Death be not proud" and "No man is an island" ) , an outsmarting that Bearing's redoubtable mentor, E.M. Ashford, D. Phil., warns her students early on in the play is futile. Edson, an open lesbian who teaches kindergarten in Atlanta and has studied English at Smith College and Georgetown and worked in AIDS and HIV care, wishes to place Donne's internal struggles with death and potential salvation in both feminine and modern contexts. But she trusts neither her characters nor Donne enough to make this integration complete. The engaging Bearing, who is unmarried and unpartnered, on the one hand seduces the audience ( which she addresses directly ) from the play's first scene, yet has not a single friend, family member, or visitor ( an 11th-hour plot-tidying encounter with the now-maternal Professor Ashford, a fine turn by Susan Osborne-Mott, is probably an hallucination ) throughout her decline.
Edson engages, too, in formulaic caricature of the doctors and nurses around Bearing—the cocky, uncaring, research-focused resident, the cipherous teaching doctor, and, most offensively, the ignorant nurse with a heart of gold ( the superb Courtney Shaughnessy who lifts her character out of her limited part ) . As a former unit clerk in cancer and HIV wards of a major research hospital and as the author of Living with AIDS: Perspectives for Caregivers, Edson surely knows that the heroism of the members of the largely female nursing corps comes from their brains as well as their instincts. The usually admirable and reliable director Steve Scott stumbles as well with a lax pacing and heavy hand that causes scene-changes to drag on and doesn't help fix the holes and mechanical moments in Edson's script. An abruptly cut lighting cue at the play's end also works against Edson's final image.
Lastly there are institutional questions about the Goodman's choice. The mainstage Albert Ivar Goodman theatre continues to be an inhospitable place for play presentation, with more acoustical problems than the remodeled Orchestra Hall. And why is this chamber work being done in such a large space anyway? One can't help but think of how much better Roman's tour de force would have been served, and the legitimate language games in Edson's script might have been helped, if this work could have been performed as Michael Maggio's production of the parallel death and memory play Wings was, in an intimate space such as the soon-to-be-needlessly-destroyed old Goodman Studio on Columbus Drive.
High Society
Written by: book by Arthur Kopit, music and lyrics by Cole Porter
At: Theater At The Center, 1040 Ridge Road in Munster, Indiana
Phone: 219-836-3255
Tickets: $25
Runs through: July 1
by Mary Shen Barnidge
When a play is adapted into a musical, a large part of the play is pushed aside to make room for the music. And when a play is adapted into a film, additional dialogue is excised to allow for cinematic effects—locale-shot montages, etc. And when a movie musical is adapted into a stage musical, yet more text is sacrificed to facilitate the live-action logistics—e.g. real-time set and costume changes. The version of High Society currently playing at TATC has undergone ALL of these conversions in its development, so audiences are advised to pay close attention during the show's opening scenes.
Spoiled socialite Tracy Samantha Lord is preparing to marry nouveau riche George Kittredge, when who should turn up unexpectedly but her charming ex-husband Dexter Haven? She reminds the latter that his excessive drinking precipitated their divorce, he admits his error but notes that she could have been more compassionate toward his "human frailty." Fearing that this might be true, the bride-to-be proceeds to get plastered at her Wedding Rehearsal party and take a skinny-dip in the pool, to the horror of her stuffy fiancé. Further complicating matters are two undercover reporters bent on sniffing out dirt for their scandal-rag. But champagne and Vino Veritas put all to rights again, with tolerance and individual merit triumphing over prejudice and snobbery.
Even with a less complicated plot than in this fourth-generation retread of Philip Barry's The Philadelphia Story, Arthur Kopit's book would be eclipsed by the score of Cole Porter songs—some written expressly for the 1959 film ( "True Love," "Did You Evah?" ) and some borrowed from other Porter shows ( "It's all Right With Me " and "I Love Paris" from Can-Can ) . Director Michael Weber does more-than-deserved justice to Porter's clever lyrics and facile melodies, assisted by James Harms' frisky choreography, a technical team conjuring vast expanses of luxury on a stage no bigger than average, and a cast of regional favorites led by Tammy Mader as the ambivalent Miss Lord and Steve Dunne as the mischievous Dexter. They are ably supported by Paul Slade Smith and McKinley Carter as the muckraking snoops, as well as the aforementioned James Harms as dotty-dipso Uncle Willy, Jacey Powers as precocious kid sister Dinah and a chorus of inventive and effervescent servants.
By The Bog
Of Cats
Written by: Marina Carr
At: Irish Repertory Of Chicago at Victory Gardens Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln
Phone: 773-871-3000
Tickets: $22-$42
Runs through: June 24
by Mary Shen Barnidge
In the barren Midland marshes that comprise Ireland's twilight realm where the supernatural still reigns, in a house by the swamp's edge, the rootless Hester Swane has lived eight years with the likewise incorrigible Carthage Kilbride, during which time she has borne him a child. But now he is to marry young Caroline Cassidy, daughter to a rich and respectable citizen. Embittered by her faithless lover's perfidy, Hester vows revenge.
When a play's opening image is that of a gentlemen clad in top hat and tails strolling the bleak and wintry bogs, only to be interrupted by a leather-jacketed, cigar-smoking hoodlum-girl dragging a dead swan behind her ( black swan, of course ) , any hope of passing itself off as a cozy little domestic melodrama is rendered null and void. In the array of personalities to which we are subsequently introduced, the grotesque Catwoman, a blind and unwashed derelict dressed in a coat of many furs, belongs to the world of grand tragedy—she's clairvoyant, doncha know?—as does an eleventh-hour appearance by the ghost of a murdered teenage brother. Meanwhile, the status-conscious dowager Kilbride conjures a score of Beth Henley matrons—"catty", to be sure, but in a far different sense than the play's title probably meant to imply.
This Irish Repertory Of Chicago production does little to resolve the stylistic dissonance between elements reflecting the agony of royal dishonor and those more befitting a squabble over child custody ( with Hester's copious drinking further diminishing the righteousness of her outraged wrath ) . At the final preview performance I attended, Carr's inflated language foundered unintelligibly in the floods of emotive attitude exhibited by Tracy Michelle Arnold's Hester and Mark L. Montgomery's Carthage. Seasoned troupers MaryAnn Thebus, Caitlin Hart, Marilynn Bogetich and David Darlow likewise seemed too absorbed in their mannerisms—most noticeably, the intricacies of a dialect where "grandmother" emerges as "grahnmawdder"—to assist us in comprehending the text's content.
This disregard for expository information ultimately proves the show's undoing. Despite capable direction by Kay Martinovich, anyone not securely armed with the myth of Medea and Jason in the forefront of their consciousness at all times will likely become hopelessly befuddled by a story as yet uncertain of its universe, its tone, or its characters' credibility.
