Chicago Stage Review

By J. Scott Hill

I have been writing for Chicago Stage Review for about seven months now. “Theatre Critic” has become my new badge. As I get introduced to friends of friends at various receptions and block parties, I usually say that I am a theatre critic. Like every other twenty-first-century American adult, I am several things all at once: husband, father, mentor for adult adoptees, slave to the almighty dollar, amateur portfolio manager since the pros at my 401K can’t seem to do it, musician, writer, theatre critic. I think of myself as a theatre reviewer rather than a theatre critic, but critic is the term that seems to conjure up the clearest picture for people. Saying theatre reviewer means subjecting someone newly met to a long-winded explanation of what the difference is and why one better describes what I do than the other does. Just describing that description above took too long.

As a theatre critic, people ask me the same thing over and over:

What’s the best show you’ve seen?

Ever? In my life? Sweeney Todd at the Lyric Opera with Bryn Terfel — but that was long before I was a theatre critic.

Since I have been a theatre critic? Either The Caretaker produced by Curious Theatre Branch, or Bohemian Theatre Ensemble’s Playing with Fire (after Frankenstein) — both shows long closed.

I think that, at its heart, the question being asked is functional:

What’s the best show you’ve seen that is still playing, so I can go see it, too?

My knee-jerk response: History Boys at the TimeLine Theatre.

I pored through my past reviews and still concluded that History Boys was the best show running in Chicago.  Still, it had been several months since I first reviewed History Boys, so I felt I needed to revisit the production before I could commit my knee-jerk reaction to print.

When I arrange to attend a show for the purpose of writing about it, I am usually allowed to bring myself “plus one” — like to a wedding or a cocktail party — someone else with whom to celebrate the theatre.  Sometimes, I like to bring a friendly informant — someone I know fairly well whose specialized training and experience can add to my understanding of the subject matter of the show.  Here are some examples:

When I attended The Second City e.t.c.’s production of Rod Blagojevich Superstar! — a timely and topical satire — my “plus one” was another theatre reviewer, or I should say we were each other’s “plus ones.”  This other critic has a background not only as a reviewer, but as an actor, improviser, and comedian — and grew up in Chicagoland carefully scrutinizing the talent that poured out of Second City.

When I attended Infamous Commonwealth’s production of The Grapes of Wrath — Frank Galati’s adaptation of John Steinbeck’s classic novel — my “plus one” was my wife.  My wife reads two or three novels per week, is a librarian, and holds a master’s degree in English.

When I attended Tooth and Nail Ensemble and Two Lights Theatre Company’s production of The Conduct of Life — a play about military life and military interrogation tactics, produced using the Japanese dance style Butoh to stage graphic violence — my “plus one” was an army veteran.  This veteran served a hardship tour in Southeast Asia, is now a nurse, and has recently become something of a political science wonk.

When I attended History Boys the first time, I again went as co-”plus ones” with that same theatre reviewer.  We both raved about the show, particularly the set design, the unique staging, the use of video, the use of found music — in sum, the “theatricality” of the show.

My reviewer friend and I are old theatre hams.  We have always adored and supported live theatre, which is a big chunk of why we review theatre in the first place.  But theatre is not made just for old theatre hams, any more than movies are made just for movie actors and cinematographers and key grips.  Like most movies, most theatre is made for general consumption.

History Boys was a popular favorite in London and New York before the TimeLine Theatre produced the show here in Chicago, where it plays sold-out show after sold-out show. This does not fit the mould of a popular favorite. Grease is a popular favorite that looks back to twenty years before it was written, back to high school — with show-stoppers about mooning and scoring with chicks. History Boys likewise looks back twenty years before it was written, back to high school — with open-ended questions about the nature of sexuality, societal mores, status, social caste, the relationship between authority and responsibility, and whether or not a working knowledge of argumentation and rhetoric kills capital-T Truth.  This is not exactly the he-said-she-said of “Summer Nights.”

I needed a friendly informant whose mind works somewhat like mine, shares some of my sensibilities, and is in my age group (at the time History Boys takes place, I was roughly the same age as the students in the play). Most important, my friendly informant must not be enamored of the theatre — a general consumer of the theatre and no more.

When I attended History Boys the second time — needing a fresh set of eyes not easily seduced by theatricality — my “plus one” was a no-BS mom-on-the-go. This active SAHM has a degree in Marketing from DePaul, holds a certificate in fashion and design, is a Plein Air Painter, has been an ArtSmart teacher, is a certified fitness instructor, and is a mom so creatively budget-conscious that her frugality recently made the cover of the Chicago Sun-Times. The twerp is also my little sister, Beck.

Beck and I did not grow up together at all. That is a story for another place and time. Suffice it to say that we are very alike and also very different — like any other siblings. She has the artistic temperament to “get it” about theatre, but she doesn’t. She will catch a musical locally or when she is in New York. She goes to see Second City from time to time. Still, the live presence of the actors that invigorates most theatregoers distracts her. A movie can seem more real to her because it seems more like surveillance — like the events could have been real events captured on film out in the real world.  In live theatre, one sees actors fumble for their marks in the dark, or get up after the curtain falls on their death scene. For her, the immediacy of the performances does not cancel out the more prevalent artifice. She does not see theatre as frivolous or anything so negative; it just is not one of her passions. Theatre is not Beck’s jam.

SCOTT: What did you think of History Boys overall?

BECK:  I liked it.  I am glad I went. Thumbs up.

SCOTT: What was your favorite aspect of the production?

BECK:  The set.  I liked the set layout, with the realistic dorm rooms on one end.  I liked that the actors were sitting in their dorm rooms while we were congregating in the lobby and getting situated in our seats.  The set…and when I went to the bathroom.

[During the show, Beck unfortunately had to make a mad dash for the restroom.  Because of where we were seated and how the TimeLine Theatre is currently configured, she had to cross onstage to get to the restroom, and cross onstage again to get back to her seat.]

SCOTT: What happened when you went to the bathroom?

BECK:  I made it to the bathroom without really causing a scene. I was quick about it and I was apologizing to the ushers and all the people in the lobby.  Some of the actors were waiting out there for their next entrance and I was apologizing to them, too.  They were very nice.  The star helped me.

SCOTT:  The star?  Who helped you do what…get back to your seat?

BECK: Yes.  The star, the teacher, Hector [Donald Brearley].  I felt so bad having to duck out in the middle of the show.  I was apologizing profusely and he told me not to worry, that they would get me back to my seat.  He said he would run defense for me…and he did.  So nice.

SCOTT: Did you have a favorite scene in History Boys?

BECK:  Remember, in class when the students are yukking it up with the teacher Hector?  All the boys seemed really natural, as if it were really happening in real time.  I realize that it must all be meticulously scripted out, but it seemed natural without being too deliberate.

SCOTT: Who was your favorite history boy?

BECK:  The cute one, Dakin [Joel Gross].  He looked just like this guy I knew in high school — Tom Chapman.  Dakin looked like Tom Chapman, but the actor’s headshot in the program did not.  Weird.  I had the biggest crush on Tom Chapman but I never did anything about it and he never did anything about it. I don’t even think he knew.

SCOTT:  Dakin reminded me of a guy at my high school, too. John Carmen.  All the girls thought he was dreamy, and voted him Prettiest Eyes.  Maybe every high school back in the 1980s had a cutie boy who looked like Dakin.  If so, that was a brilliant piece of casting.

BECK:  He struck a chord with me.

SCOTT: Who was your least favorite character?

BECK:  I did not like the character of the young teacher, Irwin [Andrew Carter].  It was like Irwin was supposed to be the voice of reason, but he wasn’t.

SCOTT: If you had to give History Boys a star rating, up to four stars, what would you give it?

BECK:  I would give it four stars based on the set and the actors’ performances, but the story left me out at times.

SCOTT: In what ways did you feel excluded?

BECK:  There was only one woman in the cast.  All of these high school boys were raging balls of hormones and had no girlfriends, except for Dakin who had a girlfriend whom we never got to see. In BBC comedies, they make all these gay jokes about boys at Eton, and then History Boys plays right into that stereotype — as if just being British and going to boarding school turned a boy gay.

SCOTT: So you wanted there to be less gay?

BECK:  With such a large and diverse ensemble, I wanted to have someone to identify with.  As a straight woman, there wasn’t much for me to see myself in.

SCOTT: What sort of star rating do you give History Boys, feeling left out?

BECK:  My initial reaction is two and a half stars, but that seems low considering the amazing set and the great performances.

SCOTT: Really?  Being excluded detracts that much for you?

BECK:  It’s on the cusp for me.  What if I want to encourage people to see History Boys?

SCOTT: I assume that a higher rating would encourage more people to see it.

BECK:  If I give it three stars, will the guy who played Dakin take me out on a date?

SCOTT: He might…

BECK:  And, will he let me call him Tom all night?  I still can’t believe Tom Chapman never asked me out in high school.

SCOTT:  Okay then, three stars from the woman who doesn’t much care for theatre.

As for this old theatre ham, I stand by my four star review of History Boys. This time around, there were two cast changes from the first performance I saw of History Boys, but the show was just as astonishing.

(“History Boys” now extended through October 18 at the TimeLine Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, (773) 281-8463.)

*Click here for two 4 STAR ChicagoStageReviews of Timeline Theatre’s HISTORY BOYS:

The History Boys - Chicago Stage Review (reviewed by J. Scott Hill)

THE HISTORY BOYS review link… - Chicago Stage Review (reviewed by Venus Zarris)

TimeLine Theatre Company :: Plays Inspired by History :: Award-winning Chicago theater

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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