Theater in Chicago

Nice article in today's NYT on the Chicago theater scene - not that any of this would be news to Chicagoans http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/28/theater/28ishe.html CHICAGO, Feb. 26 — This city is known for its bare-knuckled political brawls, but a spirit of greater fellowship reigns in the cultural sphere. The easy flow of audiences and artists between ChicagoÂ's large, established theaters and the scrappy up-and-comers has been instrumental in maintaining its stature as the countryÂ's most vibrant dramatic capital after New York, allowing now-celebrated artists — from David Mamet to John Malkovich to Mary Zimmerman — to make their way from the fringes to the mainstream. This winter, the cityÂ's two most acclaimed nonprofit theaters, the Goodman and the Steppenwolf, have opened their doors to productions from much smaller outfits, while two of the most talked-about shows in town — a superb musical adaptation of Elmer RiceÂ's 1923 play, Â"The Adding Machine,Â" and Craig WrightÂ's Iraq war-themed Â"LadyÂ" — are attracting audiences away from the Loop, in the inner suburbs of Evanston and Skokie. Sort of like a cool dad who lets the teenagers take over the garage for jam sessions, the Steppenwolf — itself once the belligerent brat of the cityÂ's theater scene — has adopted the new show from the House Theater. After its sellout run at the companyÂ's regular home base, the enchantingly funky Viaduct Theater, the HouseÂ's latest comic-book extravaganza, Â"The Sparrow,Â" will move to the SteppenwolfÂ's informal space (called, as it happens, the Garage) for a five-week run, beginning on March 15. Artistic directors like to preach about the importance of outreach and opening a dialogue with their audiences. The House seems to enfold its patrons in a bear hug every night without making much of a fuss about it. Performances can take on the festive air of pep rallies. At the show I saw, an announcement was made that it would start late because a traffic backup was delaying arrivals. Nobody seemed to mind, since an impromptu performance had already started. Taking a cue from the D.J. spinning Kanye West, a boisterous bunch of teenagers started trading moves on the central playing space. They were soon joined by stray cast members and female ushers in skinny jeans and shaggy haircuts. Even an older patron returning from the bar with a beer was inspired to bust a minor move as he crossed to his seat. It seems as if everybody in Chicago goes to the House: families with young kids, those rowdy packs of high schoolers, college-age couples double-dating. The draw is the companyÂ's cheerful affinity for mixing playful, bare-bones theatrics with page-turning storytelling. Whether your point of reference is a long-ago radio serial or the new hit television show Â"Heroes,Â" youÂ'll recognize the pop sensibility at work. Â"The SparrowÂ" does not invite admiration for the nuance of its script, by Chris Mathews and Jake Minton. A rambling cross between Â"CarrieÂ" and a Marvel comic, it galumphs along amiably, tossing up new plot twists with little regard for tonal consistency or even superhero logic. (If the Sparrow, a mousy girl with strange powers played by Carolyn Defrin, can actually fly, why doesnÂ't she just take wing and hit the skies when things get hot?) In one of the loopier highlights, the Sparrow causes a bunch of soon-to-be-dissected baby pigs in biology class to spring to life and sing backup for the teacherÂ's Sinatra impersonation. But Â"The SparrowÂ" also broods on the double-edged nature of superpowers, in the same spirit as the more angst-ridden recent big-screen revisions of the Batman and Superman stories. The actors are more exuberant than accomplished, but what would be a drawback in other circumstances oddly becomes a source of endearment here. These youngsters exude a sense of being superdedicated amateurs who disdain the kind of actorly self-importance that might put up walls between artists and audience. Should a possessed fan jump up and join the show, I suspect there would be little discernible loss of effectiveness. As Â"The SparrowÂ" prepared to move across town, the Congo Square Theater production of August WilsonÂ's Â"Joe TurnerÂ's Come and GoneÂ" was concluding its run at the Goodman Theater as a companion piece to the main stage presentation of Â"Radio Golf,Â" the last in Mr. WilsonÂ's landmark cycle of plays exploring the African-American experience in the 20th century. Directed by Derrick Sanders, Congo SquareÂ's founding artistic director (who is also directing the current Signature Theater staging of Mr. WilsonÂ's Â"King Hedley IIÂ" in New York), the production was infused with a steady warmth, humanity and easy humor that softened the playÂ's anguished depths and mythic dimensions. Bynum Walker, the spiritual adviser who has made it his mission to help his brothers find their Â"song,Â" was movingly played by Allen Gilmore as an everyday fellow whose mystic beliefs were simply common sense raised to the level of the uncanny by a profound intuition for human suffering. BynumÂ's quest to uncover and heal the secret wound in each manÂ's or womanÂ's heart became the compelling narrative spine of the production. The desperate search for his wife by Herald Loomis, played with thunderous brow by the imposing Javon Johnson, took its place as just one of a web of dramas of dispossession and communion in the play. Sharply comic turns by Aaron Todd Douglas, as the pragmatic boarding house proprietor, and Daniel Bryant, as the amorous young guitar player Jeremy, emphasized the potency of Mr. WilsonÂ's humor, his insistence that laughter is as powerful a force as love in turning the endurance of pain into a source of spiritual strength. While he has yet to break through with a major play in New York, Mr. Wright, whose new play, Â"Lady,Â" had its world premiere at the Northlight Theater in Skokie, has established himself as a productive writer for both the theater and television. He has written for the HBO series Â"Six Feet UnderÂ" and Â"Lost,Â" and is now a co-executive producer on the ABC series Â"Brothers and Sisters.Â" At the same time, he has continued to produce plays with impressive regularity. Â"LadyÂ" will be followed by another at the Humana Festival of New American Plays next month. Set in a field on the outskirts of an Illinois town, Â"LadyÂ" takes the political temperature of the American male several years into the Iraq war. Three old hunting buddies have gathered for their annual bonding weekend, each a neatly defined type meant to stand in for a slice of the masculine demographic. As might be expected from a man whose computer must rarely get any time in sleep mode, Mr. Wright displays a facility in the tough mechanics of dialogue-writing. The voices in the play — of an outraged Bush hater, a congressman fervently waving the flag for the forceful spread of American values and a slacker type who would rather go to the movies — ring sharp and true. Â"LadyÂ" is perceptive as a portrait of the testy dynamics of midlife male friendship. But in locating the roots of the tension among these three in the polarizing atmosphere of contemporary American politics, Mr. Wright is shooting blanks at an obvious target. His characters disappear behind the Things They Stand For, and the play becomes blunt and schematic. (By contrast, another new three-character play here referring to the war, Brett NeveuÂ's Â"Harmless,Â" is almost too oblique in tackling the resonant issue of how the emotional trauma of the war may spread like an unseen virus as damaged veterans return; it is all manner and little meat.) Next door to Skokie, in Evanston, the Next Theater has an unexpected — and unlikely — hit on its hands with its haunting chamber musical adapted from Â"The Adding MachineÂ" by Joshua Schmidt, a promising new comer who composed the music and wrote the libretto with Jason Loewith, the companyÂ's artistic director. A sturdy artifact from the brief heyday of Expressionism in the American theater, Mr. RiceÂ's play depicts the grim life and hardly happier afterlife of a dull-witted everyman, Mr. Zero, who kills the boss in a rage when heÂ's summarily dismissed after 25 years of mind-grinding labor. Unpromising material for a musical? No doubt, but so was that Continental slice of Expressionism, Â"Spring Awakening,Â" and look what happened when it was set to song. Mr. SchmidtÂ's sophisticated music finds a persuasive sound for each of the playÂ's wide tonal variations. It opens with a crabbed whine of an aria for Mr. ZeroÂ's wife, sung to his hostile back as they lie in bed. The numbing tedium of Mr. ZeroÂ's workday is expressed in an intricately layered rhythmic chorus of numbers upon numbers. Miss Devore, the coworker who follows Mr. Zero to the Elysian Fields to confess her lifelong crush, sings a wonderful morsel of period-style pop that just needs a few crackles to sound as if it were recently dug up on an old recording. All this with just two pianos and percussion! And while the show has just three characters to speak of, the roles are sung and acted with first-rate musicianship and sharp psychological detail by Joel Hatch (Mr. Zero), Cyrilla Baer (Mrs. Zero) and Amy Warren (Miss Devore), each indelibly etching the contours of these misbegotten souls in plaintive song. The stylish production, directed by David Cromer, honors the dark, acrid flavor of Mr. SchmidtÂ's score and the playÂ's grimly comic vision of life on the lower rungs of American society. Mr. ZeroÂ's squalid life seems to be playing itself out at the bottom of a dank well, penetrated only by a few stray beams of sour yellow light. A candidate for a brisk march to Broadway this adventurous musical certainly isnÂ't — it lacks the emotional rewards of Â"Spring Awakening,Â" for starters — but its uncompromising artistry and imaginative scope suggest that Mr. Schmidt is a composer to watch. And Mr. Cromer, whose credits include the Steppenwolf-born Â"OrsonÂ's Shadow,Â" later seen in New York, is unquestionably a talent of significance too. Either one could prove to be the next important artist to emerge from the little streams that feed the fertile theatrical landscape here.>