Steppenwolf Theater

Detroit (9/18/2010)

brittany — Sat, 02 Oct 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Chicago, Illinois

Half of the U.S. population lives in suburbs, places where there are no theres there. In the suburb outlying the eponymous city in Lisa D’Amour’s Detroit, all the streets in the Bright Homes subdivision are named after light. If Bill Vaughn’s observation is correct—“Suburbia is where the developer bulldozes out the trees, then names the streets after them”—then this particular development is consistent in its dearth of light, literal and figurative.

The lives that unwind on Sunshine Lane and Feather Boulevard portend the end of pretense and dawn of overwhelming futility, as dreams of ex-urban idylls decay along with the plywood of their construction. Director Austin Pendleton leads the sharp and talented cast—Laurie Metcalf, Kevin Anderson, Kate Arrington and Ian Barford—through a labyrinth of sharp and winding dialogue that leaves its characters stranded.

Ben and Mary are two happy homeowners who graciously welcome their neighbors, Rob and Sharon. Mary’s (Metcalf) twisted energy abounds as she offers the newcomers shelter beneath a vicious umbrella. Wired but not manic, her role is a perfect check to Ben’s persistent affability. He speaks a dialect of bonhomie that Rob (Anderson) will eventually emulate—“Let’s throw these puppies on the grill!”—or perhaps deride. Rob’s girlfriend Sharon establishes the standard of impropriety in the first scene, and in each subsequent scene emotional exposure and physical damage increase as drastically as the characters’ futures plummet.

Kevin Depinet’s set is a monumental replication of two tract home halves, thoughtful and precise: the laid-off bank worker Ben (Barford) builds the website for his nascent financial consulting business on an outdated clunking home pc. The obvious question is never addressed: how do you gain clients as a financial manager when no one has any finances to manage?

The new neighbors, Rob and Sharon (Arrington), have occupations typical of the new economy: warehouse worker and call-center service representative. The individuals, the community, the nation—all are going down in a spiral of low wages and lower expectations. Recovering addicts Rob and Sharon fall off the wagon, at first “just for one day.” In the few days of camaraderie between these old and new suburbanites, the veneer of civilization, is degraded unto destruction, but the viewer is not certain why. Were Ben and Mary primed for annihilation by recent events? Was the community’s stability in comparison to explosive cities always tenuous at best? The two couples sling finely crafted banter culminating in a bacchanal, and then Robert Brueler appears in a final scene in order to provide revelatory details and reminisce about the golden age of Bright Homes, of lights and gardens and children rushing to greet fathers emerging from cars as they returned from work at five o’clock. The closing monologue comes across as a somewhat sentimental ramble at the end of a superbly executed farce.

The play entertains, but audience members might depart with the certainty that the theater was aiming for something more. For some there there.

Photo credit: Michael Brosilow

Detroit runs through November 7.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, October 2nd 2010

A Parallelogram (7/1/2010)

admin — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 18:57:00 +0000

Steppenwolf Theater

Chicago, Illinois

In Euclidean geometry, parallel lines never intersect. In post-Euclidean geometry, all parallel lines under specific conditions—for example, placed on a globe—will converge. In Bruce Norris’ new play, A Parallelogram, parallelogram is the term used to describe a window of sorts in space and time. The protagonist’s future self visits her through such a passage and discloses details of her life and the world to come. The intersecting lives—that of Bee, her boyfriend Jay, and the garden worker J.J.—are sharply critiqued by future Bee (henceforth referred to as “Bee 2”) to comic effect. The relentless quality and sharpness of the playwright’s words counterbalance the poignancy of Bee’s predicament: informed of the future, she rallies her will to intervene, with results that are futile at best.

Marylouise Burke plays Bee 2 and wins the audience over with her depiction of the idealistic young woman transformed into a bespectacled, chain-smoking, oreo-gobbling, sweatsuit clad pile of cynical resignation. The primary benefit of aging, she confidently yet conspiratorially announces, is no longer giving a shit. Younger Bee (Kate Arrington) becomes an increasingly engaging character, moving from annoying to genuinely concerned and of concern as the origin of her conundrum emerges and is further complicated by Bee 2’s interventions. Tom Irwin plays Bee’s boyfriend Jay, a man buffeted by his personal relationships who breaks off the relationship under the weight of Bee’s apparent insanity. J.J.—the sincere and ultimately unassuming lawnboy—is portrayed by Tim Bickel.

Big ideas are bluntly addressed—Is there free will? Is love real? Does life hold any meaning whatsoever?—but the play’s most engaging moments lie in its precise comic timing and repartee. Norris shares explications of men falling in love with folding chairs, or individuals saved by parrot’s bites, and these specific sights brace the sides of this quadrilateral form. Anna D. Shapiro’s direction deftly renders repeated scenes gripping instead of tedious, and keeps baldly comic elements fresh. Todd Rosenthal designed a splendid set, a standard middle class condominium that spins to show a hospital room and back again. The quandary of the play is presented on its programs: "If someone could tell you in advance exactly what was going to happen in your life, and how everything was going to turn out, and if you knew you couldn’t do anything to change it, would you still want to go on with your life?" If my reiterated existence included another outing to the Steppenwolf to see A Parallelogram, I would.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, July 13th 2010

Endgame (04/13/2010)

admin — Tue, 18 May 2010 23:56:00 +0000

Steppenwolf Theater

Chicago, Illinois

The final stage of chess, the endgame, is a stage of the game in which few pieces are left on the board and pawns increase in significance. Endgames often center on trying to promote a pawn by moving it to the eighth rank. The king, typically sheltered from checkmate, changes into a strong piece that can be brought to the center of the board for attacks. In Samuel Beckett’s Endgame, four characters barely move in a box of a stage, rank is fluid, and no clear victory is assigned.

The Steppenwolf’s production of Beckett’s revered theatrical work is effective in its simplicity, with a set both barren and elegant, an accurate replication of the canonical script, and talented actors. More engaging than the previous staging of Endgame that I have seen—at a theater that shall remain unnamed, seeing that I fell asleep—this production benefits from strong performances, although on occasion these same performances might overshadow the deft minimalism of the text. Some of the lines, particularly early on, seem rushed, or perhaps I just require a more studied pace for thorough digestion.

The measured observations of the last half are a closer match to my understanding of Beckett. William Peterson’s Hamm is very active for a paraplegic: the audience is less likely to keep his imminent end in mind. He is regally seated on artfully makeshift throne, meticulously shifted to the center of the stage through his berating of his manservant, Clov. Hamm’s parents emerge from his and her trash cans to deliver nostalgic fugues. Particular kudos go to Martha Lavey for her poignant portrayal of Nell. Ian Barford plays Clov, and it is consistent with political readings of Beckett that a servant moves things forward. Clov’s moments of subversion contribute significantly to the work’s humor—light moments in a relentlessly bleak world. At one point Clov admonishes his master for having caused a woman to die of darkness. Endgame suggests the same end awaits us all.

Endgame plays at the Steppenwolf through June 6. David Sedaris is appearing for eight performances from June 8-13. Bruce Norris’s A Parallelogram premieres July 1 and runs through Sunday, August 29.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, May 18th 2010

Joe Frank (03/13/2010)

admin — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 16:01:00 +0000

Steppenwolf Theater

Chicago, Illinois

To presume to review Joe Frank is somewhat to akin to being a happy floating paramecium—although I do tend to fancy myself more of a sleek euglena, and in reality might more resemble an amorphous and permeable amoeba—to be such a creature, swimming giddily or cluelessly drifting in a little globule of ooze, and to attempt to gaze up through the tensile surface of the liquid from beneath, through the intervening air, up through the lenses of the microscope in their black enamel encasement, although such microscopes may be but a relic of my youth, and then attempt to gaze into the infinite void of the black, empty iris of the scientist that evaluates you.

The Guardian UK has stated without hyperbole that "Joe Frank is by far the most brilliant comic in America... [He] has created a series of dead-pan radio monologues so sharp and intelligent that during the quiet bits you can almost hear God taking notes." On Saturday, March 13, Frank performed the monologue “An Ordinary Man” at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater. I feel privileged to have been in the audience, to have experienced evidence that the source of all those hours of amazing interwoven words, ironic and passionate, diffident and incisive—all originated from one individual human being. I have listened to the eponymous one-hour broadcasts on the local public radio station for years. This particular piece is typical. The characters range from one true loves to bar room declaimers, hitchhikers performing sociological research, and drenched ex-wives. Amidst such a dense wave of information, wordplay, and fulsome darkness pierced by the absurd, themes can only be described in such broad terms as ‘meaning,’ ‘alienation,’ and ‘life.’

To listen to Joe Frank is to engage in a sublime existential voyeurism, but even that seems too clichéd, too puerile, too superficial, too glib a description, to be an accurate appraisal of the artiste. The word artiste, is, of course, itself, too odiously pretentious a word to be contained in this review, one that the performer himself would wisely excise or assign only to a pathetic, broken, character, a poseur, a person of lost hope who nonetheless persists, a person that we all have been. Perhaps an ordinary man.

Unfortunately, there are no upcoming performances by Joe Frank to recommend, but his recordings can be heard on public radio stations throughout the United States. Scheduled plays at the Steppenwolf this season include The Brother/Sister Plays, Adore, A Parallelogram, and Endgame, all fitting accompaniments to “Just An Ordinary Man” in a season in which the theater examines the contrasts between the public and private self.

Written by: Erika Mikkalo, April 21st 2010