Playwright: Claudia Allen
At: Bailiwick Repertory, 1229 W. Belmont
Phone: (773) 883-1090; $20-$25
Runs through: June 1
Have you heard the one about the young stud canoodling with a mother and her daughter at the same time? Oh, you HAVE. Well, do you know the one about the philandering husband consumed by jealousy at the news that his wife has a lover? That one, too? How about the one where licentious parents assume their offspring to be ignorant of their adulterous habits, only to discover—but who cares? In the hands of a skilled playwright like Claudia Allen, these reliable plots still emerge fresh and funny as this morning's sunrise.
Hal and Leonora met in the romantic fever of 1969. They married, procreated and only later did Hal realize that he was gay. His wife proved tolerant—Andrei, her hub's main squeeze, is addressed as 'Uncle Andrei' by baby Cassandra—but it's now 2002 and the Leonora, determined to 'know passion' after all these years, has found it in Dutch, a brawny, crew-cut, burger-and-fries, gear-headed, football-watching, permanently horny WOMAN. Furthermore, BOTH the women in Hal's life find this cicisbeo charming, sending the stodgily complacent Victorian Lit professor into the histrionics associated with that genre.
'Your family knows you're gay,' Andrei tells Hal, 'In fact, your whole family IS gay!' What Neil Simon did for heterosexual confusion over changing social customs, Allen does for same-sex relations, proposing an interpretation of 'family values' tailored to individual needs as integral to the ultimate goal of peaceful co-existence, even if it means suspension of the conventional Ties That Bind. Who can argue with that?
Integral to the success of this brand of Boulevard Comedy, straight or gay, is the stamina of its players in sustaining the required looney-tunes ambiance. But director Kelli Strickland gets the best from a cast featuring veteran farceur Aaron Hunt as the perplexed papa, Neo-Futurists alumna Marjorie Fitzsimmons as the capable Leonora, along with newcomers Richard Gongaware as the fluttery Andrei and Caitlin Egleson as the wholesome Cass. At the center of the action, however, is Katherine Klein in the role of the libidinous Dutch, so adorably Hardy-Boys butch that she could plausibly tour the dinner-theatre circuit in this role with half the audiences missing the deception altogether.
The Philanderer
Playwright: George Bernard Shaw
At: ShawChicago at the Cultural Center, 77 E. Randolph St.
Phone: (312) 409-5605; free
Runs through: May 19
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Cinema and video having oriented us to physical action as the predominant means of storytelling, you would think actors ranged behind a row of music stands reading from scripts would be visually boring. Not the ShawChicago ensemble, however. Without ever stirring from their assigned places, its personnel endow George Bernard Shaw's hyperarticulate text with a vibrant and kinetic electricity, using only facial expression, body stance and personal mannerism.
Vivacity is mandatory for this fin-de-siécle satire: clueless Leonard's knack for attracting women through no effort of his own has earned him the label of 'philanderer.' Now he wishes to marry Grace, but former flame Julia refuses to be jilted. Both women are proponents of the New Feminism according to Henrik Ibsen, their scorn of conventional gender roles as intense as their respective fathers' devotion to the Old-Adam-And-Eve. Factor in a pompous doctor smitten with the volatile Julia and a kid sister—likewise emancipated, even to insisting on being addressed by her surname in proper schoolboy fashion—and you have the perfect vehicle for the author's characteristically witty observations.
As is commonplace in this genre, the conflicts are those of attitudes, with none of these social representatives undergoing a change in personality. But under Robert Scogin's perceptive direction, each performer finds wellsprings of timing and nuance to forestall any hint of dramatic stasis. Douglas Brearley, playing Grace's perplexed papa (who just happens to be, of all things, a theatre critic), gets maximum mileage out of the corners of his mouth, Terence Gallagher's eyes at moments seem to function independent of his face, and stage combat designers would do well to note Alyson Green's choreography with Julia's shawl—who says pashminas shouldn't be registered as lethal weapons?
The fundamental question in comedy is not 'Why?', as in tragedy, but 'How?' Or, as Shaw has one of the paterfamilii say, 'I am now going to speak as a Man Of The World—that is, with no moral responsibility whatsoever!' But by the end of the play, we have been inveigled into considering the importance of Friendship over Love, and the paramount importance of Respect over both. Chewy stuff for a giddy romantic romp on a spring day.
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