Chicago Stage Review

By J. Scott Hill

Whenever I meet someone in the armed services, I always thank them. I may disagree with how American soldiers are being deployed and used, but the men and women serving in this all-volunteer military do not write their own orders; the troops have my respect and gratitude.

The Conduct of Life – produced by Tooth and Nail Ensemble and Two Lights Theatre Company — opens with a young lieutenant, Orlando, taking a look forward at his prospects in the military, examining timelines, plotting the course for the life he and his wife will build together. Orlando, however, is no ordinary foot soldier. Orlando specializes in interrogation.

How difficult it is for soldiers to flip that switch in their brains to go from person to killing machine, then flip it back to person. Alarmingly high rates of PTSD, alcoholism, and suicide among our war veterans demonstrate that their sacrifices run much deeper than mere life and limb. Orlando is asked to be much more than just a killing machine. Orlando tortures people for information.

Orlando cannot flip that switch off in his brain.

The question of whether the military made him a monster, or whether he was a monster who found a suitable outlet for his vileness in this particular military career, is largely beside the point. Orlando must be a monster to also be this professional torturer. He compromises his perfect home life by kidnapping a mentally ill homeless woman whom he repeatedly rapes and tortures throughout the play — gradually bringing her into the house and making his heinous activities no secret to his housekeeper and his wife.

Much of the violence, as well as characters’ reactions to the violence, is staged in the Japanese dance style Butoh, characterized here by exaggeration of movement and expression, slow motion, and tableau. Choreographer Jean Kerr does an exceptional job of translating unwatchable acts into grotesque art without losing the power or significance of those atrocities.

Much of the emotional tone of the production is fed by the haunted score provided by Sound Designer Rob Carroll, Music Director Steve Gonabe, and other band members Tom Duncan and Chris Olmstead. The cello-heavy dirgeful melodies cry on our behalf as we look on in disgust.

Director Marti Lyons demonstrates superlative control and restraint in how she has guided the ensemble away from melodrama and cliché. She deftly balances the real and the symbolic to tell a story that any decent person would feel compelled to walk out of otherwise.

The ensemble is terrific. Elizabeth Olson renders a subtle yet powerful performance as Orlando’s wife, Leticia. Leticia is a metaphor for a nation that does not want to know what its military must do, thinks it must do, and does. Leticia is a character in constant flux; Olson fluidly transitions from 1950s-style hausfrau, to schemer, to willfully ignorant wife, to horrified spectator, to victim, and beyond. At one point, her emotionally charged Butoh work pierces the audience with the full force of Orlando’s repulsive horror-show far more devastatingly than any explicit display could have.

Meghan Reardon imbues the terrorized Nena with a verve in her eyes that is unable to escape her mental illness, unable to escape her continual rape and torture and confinement. Nena is a metaphor for those who are brutalized by war, who are sometimes the very ones in whose name the battles are fought; she is occupied, she is devastated, she is desecrated. Reardon plays to Nena’s childlike qualities in such a way that Orlando becomes that much more sinister for choosing her specifically as his prey. Some of the simulated rape that she handles in Butoh seems even more brutal for it, if that is even possible.

Usually, in a story of an evildoing soldier, the soldier faces the same dilemma as the HAL-9000 from 2001: two sets of conflicting orders or protocols that get disturbingly mismatched and misinterpreted. Not so for Orlando. Orlando is a predator and a menace who objectifies people in some of the worst possible ways. Orlando is a synecdoche for a military that shrugs off opposition to torture, that can place the human toll of war as a single point labeled “Casualties” on a chart in an addendum to an addendum to a report. Kevin V. Smith embodies the military might a superpower can rain down upon a small frail nation that has something that the superpower desires. Smith squeezes every possible drop of sympathy out of the audience for this unrepentant, unsympathetic character. Orlando is vile beyond all limit, and somehow Smith gives us the man who is also that monster. Smith strongly plays to the immaturity required in someone who can treat a person like a thing to be used in accordance with the slightest whim — chilling, sickening, a performance you cannot turn away from or shut your eyes to.

The Conduct of Life is a story of nauseatingly intense violence, only made tolerable to watch through the incredible realization of Director Marti Lyons’s vision of Maria Irene Fornes’s eviscerating script. A talented ensemble — led by Elizabeth Olson, Meghan Reardon, and Kevin V. Smith — carry the audience through some deeply scary territory, mediated and intensified by Jean Kerr’s Butoh choreography. This story of one fictional unrepentant sociopathic soldier illuminates all the human costs of military action — on the battlefield, in the interrogation room, at home. In this light, it is a wonder that so many of our men and women in uniform manage to keep their wits about them in the service of our country; they are brave beyond measure.

3 1/2 STARS

(”The Conduct of Life” runs through July 26 at The Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Avenue. 773-296-6024.)

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The Conduct of Life production photos by John Taflan

 

The Conduct Of Life

The Conduct of Life shows us a military family, forced to reconcile the increasingly vicious lifestyle of their patriarch. Tooth and Nail will be incorporating elements of the Japanese dance form Butoh into the performance, which will also feature live music.

Presented by Tooth and Nail Ensemble & Two Lights Theatre Ensemble 

Previews: July 9 - July 10, 2009

Regular Run: July 11 - July 26, 2009

Thursdays Thru Saturdays:   7:30pm

Sundays: 3:00pm

Box Office: 773-296-6024

@ The Viaduct

3111 N. Western Avenue, Chicago

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Bible B-Sides Sinnerman Ensemble at Viaduct Theatre

Click here Bible B-Sides - Sinnerman Ensemble to read a review by Venus Zarris of Bible B-Sides, playing at the Viaduct Theatre through April 25.

SiNNERMAN- Home

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By J. Scott Hill

I’m old. In testament to that, I still say mix-tape, even for mix-CD or playlist. I’d tell myself that, while I am culturally literate enough to own an MP3 player, I’m being retro-chic by using hopelessly out-of-date slang like mix-tape. Recently, I burned a mix-tape of some underground music I enjoy, but found that while I had printed a cover for the right playlist, I somehow made the mix-tape from the wrong playlist. I thought everything was great while I was creating the CD, but as it played I found out otherwise.

The SiNNERMAN Ensemble is a metaphorical bunch.  Their name is taken from a Nina Simone song about facing Judgment Day without anywhere to hide, exposed before God and everyone — a metaphor for the actor’s continual task. The i is lowercase, perhaps because there is neither an i in team, nor in ensemble. Appropriately enough, this adaptation was developed in a year of bi-monthly workshops with the ensemble.

As the show begins, we hear the sound of a cassette deck being stopped, the cassette being flipped to Side-B, and the sound of a needle dropping on a vinyl album (such as one may unwittingly record when taping a song from an LP). In other words, The show you are about to see is a mix-tape.

Straight away, the title Bible B-Sides created two expectations within me — one explicit, one implicit. I expected that the Bible stories told on stage would be ‘b-sides,’ as opposed to ‘greatest hits.’ I also inferred that ‘b-sides’ was a play on the word broadsides, hence aggressive critique of the particular Bible stories included.

The show is divided into ten distinct playlets, the first of which could be called a medley of the Old Testament’s Greatest Hits. Indeed, the whole show is taken only from the Old Testament. Of the other nine stories, three are about King David, and one is the story of Lot’s flight from Sodom and Gomorrah — ten scenes, four hits, one medley of maybe seven other hits, and only five possible b-sides.

The individuals in the SiNNERMAN Ensemble were students together at The School of Steppenwolf. When Bible B-Sides is at its best, the influence of Frank Galati is evident, as this is a piece of straight-up chamber theatre. According to Matt Miller (the show’s director) and Deanna Keefe (the Assistant Director and Dramaturg), they stayed “as close to the text of the Bible as possible,” using a combination of two modern-day translations — the New International Version and The Message. I do not doubt their veracity to the text. Robert Frost said, “Poetry is what gets lost in translation.” One of the pitfalls for the adapters of literature is that critical engagement can sometimes get lost in the translation from the page to the stage.  This adaptation is so respectful of the text that it largely fails to have dialogue with it.

One of the stories is a notable exception: the eighth ‘B-Side’ is told as a conversation between Hosea, his wife Gomer, and God. Every member of the ensemble capably takes on multiple roles in the course of this production, but Jeremy Fisher as God is the most charged performance in the show. Hurt, angry, vengeful, compassionate, and forgiving — Fisher covers a lot of emotional ground in ten minutes or so. He never comes across as the man behind the curtain.

Sue Redman gives the best overall performance in this production, playing a loving daughter, a whore, and a number of others — with originality, grace, and (when appropriate) humor.

Kudos to everyone involved in workshopping this material for the stage. They get my admiration for attempting to put forward difficult subject matter with creative staging. I pray that they continue to take such risks. They deftly reminded the audience that a woman’s bare back is still provocative, that a good soldier can be betrayed by those he is fighting for, that a deliberately torn skirt is enough to chillingly symbolize rape. Many of the creative choices here are excellent.

Overall, however, the creative risks don’t pay off.  Scenes that seemed to be staged as reverential come off as ill paced or just plain slow. Two of the King David stories are more like one story told in two parts, and could easily be combined with a third story (about some of King David’s adult children) in a way that might give the show more of a frame and a cohesion. The intricate stage fighting seems in perpetual slow motion — sucking the excitement and danger out of the battles. The opening montage uses scrims and pantomime, and is well executed, but superfluous.

The cover of this mix-tape of a show says Bible B-Sides.  What this show delivers is a creative, yet largely uncritical collection of well-known Old Testament stories, peppered with a few lesser-known stories.  Good actors all, particularly Sue Redman and Jeremy Fisher, the SiNNERMAN Ensemble may have experienced a great process workshopping this show over the past year, but I don’t think their final product plays the way they intended.

1 ½ STARS

(“Bible B-Sides” runs through April 25 at the Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western Ave. 773-296-6024.)

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Bible B-Sides production photos by Dominica Fisher