Chicago Week! Very excited that on my first visit to Chicago I was able to see plays at both Steppenwolf and Lookingglass Theatre!
3/23/23: Describe the Night
What: Steppenwolf presents Raijv Joseph's play, a ninety-year span that revolves around the lost notebook of Isaac Babel. An examination of corruption and suppression and the importance of noticing: noticing difference, noticing beauty. Noticing life, and how one chooses to put that noticing into words.
And? I loved it. It's a continually surprising play, subverting expectations of where the story is going or what is next for each character in each time. It's a heartbreaking trading of scene partners, moment to moment, each character in search of meeting someone in the same moment they're in. That sounds more abstract than the play itself is, but it's what I kept thinking about. About how each conversation is an interrogation of sorts, how each interrogation feels too uncomfortably like a simple conversation with fatal consequences. It's a story of spies and psychics, of missed chances and unspoken needs.
Readers of this blog know what a champion I am of unconventional stages, of stepping away from the confines of the proscenium. They also know how frustrated I get when directors don't know how to activate those sorts of spaces. I am delighted (though not surprised) to report that director Austin Pendleton is well at ease on the arena stage at Steppenwolf. It's a small rectangle of squares, a gameboard perhaps, but who is king and who is pawn are not easily guessed. I keep thinking of one moment in particular, when Vova is questioning journalist Mariya. She had her back to me, seated in a chair, but in a moment of realization, she stopped speaking and turned away in grief and understanding. That turn, a 270 degree rotation, allowed every audience member to see that private moment. It wasn't a self-conscious spin, it wasn't wandering the stage (like some misuses of Circle in the Square have done). It was organic, it was honest, it was heartbreaking, and it was the move of someone who knows their stagecraft.
A fantastic ensemble (particularly Sally Murphy as the bewildered yet insightful Yevgenia), a great director, and a stunning play. What more could a Zelda ask from her first play in Chicago?
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| Yasen Peyankov and James Vincent Meredith as Nikolai and Isaac. Photo by Michael Brosilow. |
3/24/23: Improvised Shakespeare:
What: The Chicago-based troupe improvises a ninety-minute Shakespeare play.
And? I love this troupe. I've seen them a few times when they've come to NY, and they're always a delight. While "The Plight of the Tugboat" may have lost the thread of the actual tugboat's plight, it was still a delight of shipwrecks, fanfic cartographers, and magically hurled rocks.
3/25/23: Villette
What: Lookingglass Theatre presents an adaption of Charlotte Brontë's novel about a young Englishwoman, without family or connection, who travels across the Channel to try her hand at teaching English. The novel is somewhat inspired by Brontë's own unrequited love for a fellow teacher in Brussels.
And? I haven't read the novel, but having read its plot summary, this is a pared down but faithful treatment by playwright Sara Gmitter. Beautifully staged by Tracy Walsh against Yu Shibagaki's modular set of sliding panels and clean, warm wood, this is a loving telling with a modern sensibility. Lucy Snowe, intelligent and sharp but constantly trying to shrink herself in a world that won't notice her, must remind both audience and herself that this is not a fairy tale. I loved it. The cast is a uniformly excellent ensemble, led by the grounded and emotive Mi Kang as Lucy Snowe. Helen Joo Lee is also particularly good as the self-contained manipulator Madame Beck.
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| Debo Balogun and Mi Kang as Paul Emmanuel and Lucy Snowe. Photo by Liz Lauren. |
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