Chicago Stage Review

By Venus Zarris

There are no boundaries to the realities that can be created on a stage. They can be familiar realities that mirror recognizable characters and circumstances down to painstaking detail. They can be alien abstractions that depict only faint impressions or hints at something that we might identify. Most often, they are realities that fall somewhere in between the extremes of proverbial and foreign. There is no right or wrong formula. Structure, dialogue, characters, direction, performance, design and story are the frameworks of these realities but they are ultimately irrelevant. There is only theater that successfully connects us to something, be that abstract or tangible, and theater that does not.

Cherrywood: A Modern Comparable is a 90-minute exercise in floundering towards nothing. It is not an exercise that requires little effort, rather it demands much from its creators and even more from its spectators. Its creators struggle to salvage substance from insignificance. Its spectators struggle to suspend their disbelief under the weight of preposterously self-indulgent expectations. It is preposterous to expect the audience to connect with Cherrywood’s ludicrous contrivances. It is preposterous to expect the audience to connect with uninspiring and unbelievable, all be they well acted, characters. It is preposterous to expect the audience to connect with artificial dialogue and nonsensical exposition.

Cherrywood plays like a haphazard piecing together of a privileged, yet wannabe Bohemian, adolescent’s notebook of random thoughts, rants and observations. It opens on three 20-somethings preparing for a party in their dilapidated apartment. One laments over finding the right party music to attract the right type of people while another argues, “Utopia has no anthem.” The third confesses that he sent a preemptive apology to the neighbors disguised as an invitation to the party because he hates face-to-face confrontations, as he is uncomfortable with the holes on someone else’s face lining up with the holes on his face.

Cherrywood wastes little time taxing our ability to care about the characters and believe the actions and motivations. These kids are in their own individual and collective states of emotionally post-apocalyptic aggressive ennui. Even the character that is defined as the arguer of the group can’t seem to sustain more that an occasional outburst of irritation.

Guests start to arrive and the “scene” as well as conversations resemble no party that we’ve ever experienced, be that with 20, 30, or 40-somethings. Not because it is so unusual but rather because it is so uneventful. Why are they there? Why are three people, who don’t seem to be all that into it, having this party to begin with? Why aren’t people leaving in hopes of salvaging their evening? As partygoers, they have that option. Sadly as theatergoers, we don’t.

As the party continues, conversations and monologues are singled out of the mounting crowd. Talk about anxiety over using a toilet at a stranger’s house, talk about the un-flushed shit of strangers in the toilet at the party, talk about bouncing a check to pay for a vet bill and talk about the imagined differences between the look on someone’s face when they cum verses when they shit pepper the party. These are the ponderings and pontifications of profoundly insignificant thinkers.

Mysterious milk is passed around for consumption throughout the party. We learn that it is wolf’s milk and it is said that if you drink it you will change. The word change is used almost as much as it was used in the Obama presidential campaign but there is never any sign of change and the partygoers present more sheep-like than wolf-like. Still we hope. We hope for werewolves that are foreshadowed but never arrive.

Someone is shot in the hand but the police are not called. I’ve been to some wild parties but even at the craziest, if someone was shot the drugs would have been flushed and an ambulance would have been summoned. Instead, everyone is instructed to “Sit Down!” No one has a concrete plan of action other than this sitting idea.

The gun is found in the freezer. It is placed in a box that is taped up and another box is also taped up, with a book in it so no one knows which has the gun. There’s not really an explanation for this. It just seems like a great idea. The idea is so good that everyone leaves the party only to return a few moments later with taped boxes. Where did these boxes come from? It doesn’t matter because followable exposition is luxury that Cherrywood can’t seem to afford.

There is a delightful group dance number and a magic pizza, but to continue explaining the events would be more embarrassing that it was watching them. The conclusion is, there is no conclusion because you can’t conclude what you never started.

Taking risks and trying new ideas are the stuff that some of theater’s most groundbreaking moments are made on. But, just as all of the king’s horses and all of the king’s men couldn’t piece Humpty Dumpty back together, one of Chicago’s most brilliant directors and many of its brightest young actors can’t piece a show out of Cherrywood; which only proves that direction and talent can’t manufacture a play where there is no script.

1/2 STAR

(“Cherrywood: A Modern Comparable” runs through August 8 at Angel Island Theater, 731 W. Sheridan. 773-871-0442)

Mary-Arrchie Theatre Co. - www.maryarrchie.com

* Visit Theatre In Chicago for more information on this show.  Cherrywood: The Modern Comparable- Play Detail- Theatre In Chicago

By Venus Zarris

As I walked up the stairs of the Grand Master’s Art Building, the taped-up photo copies of MISSING children notices gave me flashbacks of a visit to New York very shortly after the fall of the Twin Towers. Everywhere you looked there were MISSING notices of loved ones lost to the tragedy. The suffering lingered in the air like a thick fog, compelling, devastating and urgent. I realized that the loss of precious life that occurred, en masse that day, occurs on singular scales everyday in the lives of the families whose children disappear.

When I reached the first landing of the stairs, a small pile of teddy bears was piled in the corner around a candle – signifying a shrine to a lost child. This image was so powerful that it choked me up before even entering the lobby of the theater space.

That is where the poignant effectiveness of Broken Thread began and ended.

The play appropriately opens with an amber alert, effectively delivered by the talented Elana Elyce and Geraldine Dulex. It then cuts to a plea by a couple for the return of their missing child.

We hear from a reporter, in the only truly important and honest line in the script, that a staggering 91% of children are murdered within the first 24 hours of their abduction.

Then comes the FBI’s questioning of the parents. John Callahan, the father, is a high-powered defense attorney. FBI Agent Mercer, played with refreshing subtlety by Lionel Gentle, badgers him for relevant information. The resistance he is met with by John is our first indicator that this script plans on taxing our suspension of disbelief. Of all people, a layer would know the line of questioning required when a child goes missing and a parent who truly cares for his child would not let his ego get so easily bruised in the pursuit of his precious daughter.

As the story progresses it spirals into more of a puerile domestic melodrama about neglected partners and marital affairs, rather than a story depicting any inkling of what the reality of losing a child might be like.

One ridiculously contrived scene after another depicts a love triangle between husband, wife and best friend that plays like the weakest of soap operas; leaving us wondering, ‘Who is this little girl and does anyone care about her more than they care about themselves?’

Act one ends after an explosive scene between the maudlin adult triptych. They freeze. The lights dim to half strength and a woman walks through the apartment to the front of the stage to deliver a monologue about loss that playwright Wysteria Edwards couldn’t fit in naturally and so instead self-indulgently tossed in to sound profound.

The play often randomly shifts like this, from representational to presentational – in keeping with its lack of commitment to being either a sophomoric domestic drama or an exposé on the impact of missing children in the lives of the loved ones involved.

The script has so many abrupt twists and turns of structural and emotional immaturity that it turns the horrific suffering of families who lose their children into little more than maudlin clichés.

The wife’s lover steals a kiss while the husband is in the other room. She likes the attention at first but fluctuates between the need to win back her husband’s affection and the comfort of her embarrassingly doting suitor. John catches Sam kissing Kelly and explodes in a jealous rage… HELLO PEOPLE! Your daughter has been abducted! Can you ice down your crotches and get your infantile egos under control for a minute to focus on the REAL CRISIS?

Director Nikkieli DeMone delivers this childishly unreal production with a lack of dramatic sensibility that rivals the script. Much of the cast reaches such a frenetic fever so early in the story that there is no room for build. Shallow anger, unbelievable outbursts, and a lot of “acting” is substituted for emotional honesty.

At the heart of Broken Thread should be a missing little girl. Through the love and anguish of her family, the audience should get a clear picture of her presence in their worlds. Instead, no real connection is made to little Sara and so no real connection is made to the point of Broken Thread. We are mercifully spared the devastation of this loss and tragically cheated out of the critically important message.

½ STAR

(“Broken Thread” runs through May 3 at the Grand Master’s Art Building, 2635 W. Grand Ave. 312-239-8783) Urban Theater Company

For vital information about Missing and Abducted Children please visit these wonderful organizations:

National Center for Missing & Exploited Children

BeyondMissing

Klaaskids Foundation for Children

By Venus Zarris

While watching Raven Theatre’s world premiere of Misamerica I got the feeling that I was watching something modeled after the 1966 play Don’t Drink the Water. In it, stereotypically obnoxious American tourists, with an embarrassing sense of entitlement, go on a European vacation. They unexpectedly land in a fictitious country, get off the plane to take pictures, get accused of espionage, take refuge in the American Embassy and ‘WACKYNESS’ ensues.

This was marginally funny in 1966 so imagine how puerile this type of obvious and trite humor is today. Only Misamerica, in an attempt to infuse the stale situation comedy with political depth, sets its juvenile hijinx in a country that is obviously meant to be Iraq. Fusing weak humor and clichéd stereotypes with one of our country’s most devastating quagmires of death and political corruption is, and you will seldom here me use this phrase, in poor taste.

That is not to say that Iraq is off limits for humor or satire. Clever, insightful and humorously absurd deviations of a serious crisis often serve to shine a spotlight on corruption, create a thought provoking dialogue regarding issues and/or provide some comic relief from the severity. But applying cheap humor (pig latin in 2009? Really?) and unbelievably obvious, one-dimensional characters that engage in dated slapstick to a swirling vortex of brutal death and destruction is at least insensitively immature and at worst opportunistic.

Misamerica opens on a golf course with two advertising executives courting a potential client in hopes of landing a big account.  Richard is an unbearable blowhard. Gina is clever and confident, yet tolerates Richard’s frequent sexist remarks and slaps on the ass. She lands the big account and employs her hypochondriac friend Walter to design the ad campaign.

While on a conference call, their eager-to-please liaison Khalilah is obviously under gunfire but the self-absorbed Americans are in complete denial about the dangers and instability of their new target location. They take a market research trip to the Middle Eastern country where misunderstanding, miscommunication and misguided priorities create explosively ludicrous scenarios that insult the intelligence of the audience.

Playwright Tom Patrick creates unlikable characters and places them in unbelievable situations. Given the grave severity of the situation that the subject matter parodies, the sophomoric script plays like flood-water-pants jokes in the French Quarter of New Orleans just after the levies broke.

The dedicated cast is not without talent but their efforts are wasted on the ridiculously contrived material and the audience’s time is wasted as well.

½ STAR

(“Misamerica” runs through March 28 at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark Street. 773-338-2177.) Raven Theatre

Misamerica Production photos by Dean La Prairie.

By Venus Zarris

You will hear this over and over from me because it bears repeating. I LOVE Halloween and I LOVE when a theater company chooses a spooky show for the fall season. I believe that that is about the only positive spin that I can give to The Building Stage’s adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic masterpiece of horror, Dracula.

This gifted company has become known and respected for vivid, challenging, imaginative and rewarding reconceptualizations but this time out, the only thing it has in common with the vampyric classic is, it sucks. That is to say, it sucks the life out of you.

The collaborative creative team, of Director Blake Montgomery and cast, decided to present this story in a mostly silent film styling, set to the perfectly gothic music of Dmitri Shostakovich. Unlike successful silent plays, (and it can be done with incredible impact such as with Trap Door Theatre’s brilliant Request Program) the ‘effect’ implemented in Dracula adds only awkwardness and annoyance to the adaptation. It also forces the hand of the performers to act with broader strokes, creating a corny and dated effect.

The wordless mouthing of lines, with occasional overhead subtitles, becomes quickly irritating. It is surprisingly longwinded without dialogue. Although occasionally this style elicits intentional humor, the fleeting relief of the occasional giggle only serves to illustrate just how undecided this production’s motives are.

Make up your mind.

The humor would be fine if the show was being played for balls out ‘silent film’ camp. But there is no consistency to the production’s vision.

It is not frightening or eerie. It is not funny, except for the occasional laugh that we indulge in because we are so bored that we starve for something to connect with. And it is not dramatic.

The silence, coupled with the lack of consistent presentational theme, resembles the oftentimes-maudlin and overacted stage movement in opera. You can give opera a pass for this because the music and singing are the main focus. But this Dracula has no focus, thereby creating the most sloppy and chaotic offering from The Building stage to date.

Actors, wearing long black capes, change settings by opening and closing a translucent gauze curtain. They cover their faces with the capes thereby creating the same effect seen in the later part of the film Plan 9 From Outer Space, in the scenes shot AFTER Bela Lugosi died and an actor covering his face with a cape took over his role.

The only thing more excruciating than the silence is when it is broken at the end. After a ridiculous ‘Keystone Cops’ flavored chase through Transylvania, resulting in the death of most of the stories protagonists, we discover that the entire vampire threat is actually an elaborate hoax by an insane Professor Van Helsing. This ‘cliché with a twist’ begs the question, WTF?

I really can’t remember the last time a plot change was this infuriating or insulted intelligence this much! Imagine sitting through close to two hours of excruciating non-verbal exaggeration, only to have the silence broken with a lame dramatic concoction. It goes from silent film to attempting the insanely violent film genre of movies like Hostel. (For those fans of violent cinematic pornography, this last ‘Hostel-like’ scene never has a chance to get gruesome.)

Not completely without merit, the wood block painted panels depicting locations and objects in the story are beautifully executed and harkens to the previous creative excellence of this company. The talented cast if fully engaged, if not engaging. This play’s only truly exciting aspect is the Chicago acting debut of Meghan Reardon, as Nina. She has a presence and approach that transcends the failed adaptation and is a new arrival to be on the lookout for.

It has been a long time since I have seen this many people leave a show at intermission. I overheard one audience member on the way out saying, “WTF? One of my favorite shows and they just ruined it!” The storytelling style of this Dracula could use a resurrection because sadly, as it stands it is an internment.

½ STAR

(”Dracula” runs through October 18 at The Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter. 312-491-1369.)

FOR SOMETHING TRULY DRACTASTIC!

Check out the delightfully gothic intro animation on the official Bela Lugosi website!

http://www.belalugosi.com/lugosiintro.html