Quirky Theater from Around the Country II

 

[This is my second installment of “Quirky Theater,” a selection of reviews from around the U.S. that cover what I feel are intriguing performances from some of the more adventurous troupes in different cities.

[As I explained in the first installment, I’m an associate member of the American Theatre Critics Association and I get its monthly e-mail newsletter, The Update.  One section is called “This Just In,” a list of links to reviews and articles by ATCA members from their base publications.

[I always glance at them, and recently, I kept aside several of the notices that just looked interesting.  I posted several on 25 February, and I’m taking this opportunity to post some more of the reviews to show what’s going on in some of the theaters across this country.  See what you all think.] 

“THE POLITICAL IS PERSONAL”
by Kerry Reid 

[Kerry Reid’s review of a new show by the renowned Second City comedy troupe ran in the Chicago Reader of 15 June 2022.  The Reader is an alternative weekly newspaper noted for its coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater.]

Second City’s new mainstage revue triumphs by centering people over polemics.

Like the rest of the world, Second City has been through its share of upheavals in the past two years. Longtime owner, CEO, and executive producer Andrew Alexander stepped down in June 2020 in the wake of increasing public allegations about institutional racism at the comedy powerhouse. Anthony LeBlanc stepped in as interim executive director, followed by Jon Carr, a veteran of theater and improv comedy in Atlanta, who came on board in December 2020. Then Carr stepped down earlier this year. Meantime, the company itself was bought by a private equity firm, and the instructors at the Second City Training Center in Chicago, Los Angeles, and Toronto have all been fighting for union representation.

And that’s not taking into account everything happening outside Second City’s doors: a pandemic, a failed domestic insurrection, the Russian war on Ukraine, and courts and legislatures across the U.S. seemingly bent on rolling us right back to the 1850s.

What’s remarkable about Second City’s latest mainstage offering, Do the Right Thing, No Worries If Not, is that it ignores almost all of that. And I gotta say, I think that’s a good thing. We know things are terrible. Does anyone really need to pay Second City prices to hear the same commentary we can find dished out for free on late-night television (or in the current January 6 hearings)?

But that’s not to say that the 110th revue, directed by Jen Ellison in her mainstage debut, is lacking in politics. By virtue of the diversity of the cast and the way their intersecting identities are dissected, sent up, and ultimately celebrated, this show tells us that the very act of unapologetically being who you are is a big political statement. And one that is absolutely essential to the survival of the species.

And as the title tells us, adjusting to each other with grace is also a political act. We’re going to fuck up. The big question is if we’re willing to listen and learn—which, as the “yes, and” gurus have been telling us for a minute, is one of the reasons improv can change your life.

[Second City, for those who don't already know, is an improvisational comedy troupe.  “Yes, and” is a fundamental notion of improv theater.  In my post “How to be the Greatest Improviser on Earth” (10 January 2017), described this technique: “. . . first you must mentally accept and agree with what your scene partner says [the “yes”].  It becomes an established element of the world the two or more of you are creating.  From there, you build upon the idea by adding details of your own [the “and”] . . . .”]

In 2018’s Algorithm Nation or the Static Quo, Second City’s 107th revue, the company leaned hard into darkness with scenes involving gunshots and an over-the-top parody of a female Trump supporter. But as Brianna Wellen noted in her Reader review (where she quoted former Second City cast member Tawny Newsome’s observation that women were required to wear dresses onstage as recently as 2012), “when there are so many other progressive and innovative shows happening in the city, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to see where a theater that wanted to keep women in dresses fits in.”

In Do the Right Thing, the cast seemingly wears whatever the hell they want. And they’re unafraid of crafting vignettes that delve right into the heart of identity. 

So for example, we have a brilliant scene set at Dick’s Last Resort, where Claire McFadden’s waitron hands out obscene nicknames at a birthday party for 12-year-olds. But when informed that one of the guests, played by nonbinary actor Kiley Fitzgerald, uses they/them pronouns, McFadden’s character falls apart in a spectacularly cringeworthy display of liberal self-recrimination. When she tries to hand Fitzgerald’s character a name tag reading “HERO,” Fitzgerald tries to explain that they don’t want to be called a hero; they just want to live their life enjoying the same things everyone else gets. Including name tags reading “BIG SLUT.”

In an audience participation call-and-response musical segment, Evan Mills (the sole returning mainstage performer from previous revues, and the co-creator/co-director of Queer Eye: The Musical Parody now running at Second City’s UP Comedy Club [the venue for stand-up comedy]) asks us to raise our hand if we’re from various states, if we’re single, etc. (He also acknowledges the zeitgeist with “Raise your hand if the news is hard to read,” and “Raise your hand if you think the world is ending.”) Finally he whittles the demographics down to “Raise your hand if you’re from Michigan, half Filipino, queer with a gay dad, and left-handed. [Pause.] Yeah, I thought I might lose some of you on that one.”

But in addition to the performers embracing their individuality, there is a theme of duality running through the show as well, shored up by the title’s implication that we’re all a combination of our best impulses and our worst. Literal twins are onstage in a sketch where McFadden as an ob-gyn shrinks herself down, a la the 1966 sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage, and is projected into the uterus of expectant mom Julia Morales, just to make sure the babies are chill and relaxed. (Fitzgerald also plays an ob-gyn in a later sketch—but they’re a dinosaur and their tiny arms just aren’t ideal for manipulating a speculum.)

Sometimes that duality comes out in observational humor on race. Morales and E.J. Cameron are the proprietors of “Blackbuster”—a retro video rental store whose motto is “For every white movie, there’s a Black movie as good or better!” So if you want The Wizard of Oz, you get The Wiz. If you want Edward Scissorhands, you get Barbershop. If you want Forrest Gump, you get . . . Radio (though Cameron has to blow the dust off that one). Morales and Cameron are also standouts in an office sketch where they have to code-switch with their white boss, played by Andy Bolduc with a hearty air of gormless bonhomie. (Product shout-outs to LaCroix—pamplemousse flavor, especially—and Patagonia apparently are the lingua franca for talking to white people.)

Ellison, her cast, and musical director Jeff Bouthiette have built a show that isn’t trying to impress us with faux-edginess. Instead, it’s a thoughtful and often sweet showcase for actors who exhibit a great combination of complementary skills, and who work together with seemingly seamless generosity. A late-night car scene between longtime friends McFadden and Bolduc, where they both finally start coming clean about their mutual attraction while role-playing cockney chauffeur and upper-class Brit boss, is a lovely mini-play. A first-act closing scene pays homage to high school detention, a la The Breakfast Club, but with a surprising and poignant reveal.

It’s also hard to ignore the physical comedy chops of this cast, especially Mills, whose rubbery physique and mobile facial expressions remind me of a silent-film comedian, and Fitzgerald, who, in addition to their hilarious dinosaur doctor, turns a disquisition on fatphobia triggered by their “breaking” a chair into an increasingly chaotic and hilarious aria of grievances while wriggling all over the stage. 

Speaking of wriggling: In a second-act musical number, McFadden takes on the persona of a French chanteuse, crooning a song about how good life can be. Soon we find out that she’s an earthworm. And she’s cut in half when rain sweeps her onto the sidewalk. But duality again saves the day; Mills’s earthworm finds and recombines with her, and life goes on. If earthworms can patch things up and keep going in the face of a storm, surely we can, too.

[Do the Right Thing, No Worries If Not opened on 8 June 2022 at Second City’s mainstage and is still running (through 19 March).]

*  *  *  *
“OUT OF THIS WORLD FUN”
by Kerry Reid 

[My second selection is also from the Chicago Reader and also from Reid.  The notice of a “goofy” show from Chicago Shakespeare Theater ran on 6 July 2022.]

Chicago Shakes shows us a good way to feel alienated in It Came From Outer Space.

Last year, Chicago Shakespeare offered We Are Out There, a digital sneak peek of Joe Kinosian and Kellen Blair’s goofy musical adaptation of the 1953 Universal Pictures sci-fi film, It Came From Outer Space, which was itself based on an original story by Ray Bradbury. Now it’s finally onstage at Chicago Shakes’s cozy upstairs studio space in a production that’s loaded with groanworthy jokes (including a long setup to a Bradbury shout-out), cheesy effects, and everything else you need for the live theatrical equivalent of a retro night at a drive-in. (Well, no popcorn inside the theater.) 

The story follows John Putnam (Christopher Kale Jones), a wannabe “astronomer-astrologer” who is convinced that aliens have landed near tiny Sand Rock, Arizona (a town whose main attraction is a sand museum). Because John is an annoying know-it-all, no one believes him, except for his schoolteacher girlfriend, Ellen (Jaye Ladymore), who is also the object of affection of the surly and not-so-bright Sheriff Matt (Alex Goodrich). But then the townspeople start acting really weird. 

With a spritely score, clever direction by Laura Braza, cunning sets, lights, costumes, video, and sound design (by Scott Davis, Heather Sparling, Mieka van der Ploeg, Rasean Davonté Johnson, and Nicholas Pope, respectively), and a skosh of social commentary (we fear the “other” before we really try to understand them), it’s an absolute toothsome delight start to finish. The entire ensemble (most of whom play multiple roles) is pitch-perfect, including Jonathan Butler-Duplessis as everything from a verbose telephone lineman to Coral, the barfly/confidante for Ellen who blows the roof off during “I Can’t Figure Out Men”; Sharriese Y. Hamilton as the energetic local muckraker; and Ann Delaney as a daffy old woman and as one of the aliens, who achieves maximum expressiveness with her tentacle appendages.

[It Came From Outer Space ran through 31 August 2022 at Chicago Shakespeare Theater.]

*  *  *  *
“RICKY 3’S HIP-HOP SPIN ON SHAKESPEARE”
by Lou Harry 

[Lou Harry’s review of a hip-hop Richard III ran in the Indianapolis Monthly on 18 July 2022.  The Indianapolis Monthly is a lifestyle magazine published in Indianapolis.]

This month, a local Shakespeare company stages a hip-hop version of Richard III at the Taggart Memorial Amphitheatre—a treatment almost as new as the venue.

Indy Shakespeare Company artistic director Ryan Artzberger admits that fusing Shakespeare with hip-hop is not a completely original idea, pointing to shows such as The Bomb-itty of Errors and the UK’s on-the-nose-named Hip-hop Shakespeare Company. “But all of those are really adaptations,” he says. “I’m interested in the correlation between Shakespeare’s actual text and hip-hop beats.” That interest sparked the development of Ricky 3: A Hip-Hop Shakespeare Richard III, which the ISC will stage July 21-30.

The company has made a home for itself at Riverside Park’s Taggart Memorial Amphitheatre, which recently underwent renovations thanks to a $9.2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment. The amphitheater is part of a larger $120 million Riverside Regional Park Master Plan, which organizers hope will help revitalize the surrounding neighborhood that has seen years of disinvestment. Ricky 3 promises to be one of the higher-profile productions there this summer.

“We’re cutting and trimming,” says the play’s director, Mikael Burke, a Butler grad who made a splash in Chicago before returning to direct at the Indiana Repertory Theatre. “But we’re staying as true to Shakespeare as possible.”

At least in the text. “We’re leaning into an Afro-futurist aesthetic,” he says, “creating a world where hip-hop can be an authentic representation of the culture.”

Ricky 3 is a dramatic change for the company, whose shows have been fairly traditional since it started offering free Shakespeare to crowds in 2008. The idea of colliding modern sounds with classic text has been nudging Artzberger for years. He first experimented with the hip-hopification of the Bard while teaching at the IRT’s conservatory, where he guided students through the sonnets by giving them a beat. “It helped them knock down the wall of perception that it’s an old and dusty thing. Putting a rhythm in your body helps you get out of your head.”

But would that work as a full play? A series of conversations exploring those ideas with Burke and other local artists led to Bale Boy Geechie, a producer at CityDumpRecords who became the show’s composer. “I like to think I’m heading toward expertise in theater, but I’m by no means an expert in hip-hop,” says Burke. “Geechie is exactly that. I knew we’d get to learn from one another.”

With all of Shakespeare to choose from, why pick Richard III, the story of one man’s vicious rise to the top of the royalty food chain? For one thing, the creators saw a connection between King Richard’s talent for wielding words and a rapper’s ability to do the same. But they concede that, rather than being the result of a lot of debate, it just felt right. “‘Now is the winter of our discontent’ just makes more sense when you hear it to a beat,” Artzberger says. 

*  *  *  *
“ESSENTIAL PLAY FEST’S ‘OUTRAGE MACHINE’ HAS GROWN MORE TOPICAL IN WAKE OF COVID”
by Benjamin Carr 

[Benjamin Carr posted his review of the delayed première of a new play on the Atlanta website ArtsATL on 29 July 2022.  ArtsATL was founded to provide comprehensive coverage of the arts in metropolitan Atlanta.]

Playwright Daniel Carter Brown crafted a timely, urgent work with his script The Outrage Machine, which was set for its world premiere with the Essential Theatre Play Festival in 2020. [The Essential Theatre is an Atlanta troupe.] Then, the pandemic delayed his production for two years.

The play opens on Friday night, and Brown is excited for audiences to finally see it.

“When the show got canceled because of Covid in 2020, artistic director Peter Hardy told me the intention was to produce the play whenever it was safe to open again, and I didn’t know what that meant,” Brown said. “I assumed it meant that one year they’d do two festivals to make up the missing one or they’d work in a weekend somewhere. I was expecting to get, in some way, less than the Essential Festival. And I didn’t hear anything for a while and thought it was possible I’d been forgotten about.”

When John Mabey’s play A Complicated Hope was announced as the 2022 festival prize winner, Brown received an email, though, proposing that the two shows could run in repertory until August 28 [2022].

The Outrage Machine centers on Rina, played by Hannah Morris, a young woman in an unspecified city who drives for a rideshare company. She gets a new freelance gig crafting catchy, shocking headlines — and only the headlines — for a news website looking to drive up traffic. Her grasp of eye-catching clickbait, eventually, puts Rina and her sister Ellie (Ellie Styron), at the center of a political firestorm while Rina is still driving around rideshare customers.

Brown said the first draft of the script he wrote was in 2015, when he noticed how people were consuming misleading news through social media.

“I sensed a growing awareness of the problem of irresponsible journalism online and maliciously irresponsible journalism,” the playwright said. “It was an idea that wasn’t talked about much, at least where I was reading. And then 2016 happened, and it became what everybody was talking about because it was impacting all of us.”

Reality had started to mirror satire.

“This fringe issue was no longer a fringe issue, so my next draft of this script after the dust settled was a version that didn’t have to introduce the idea that it was an issue,” he said. “I needed to go deep into how it happens and get into the heads of the people who are creating these headlines. And ultimately the story shows how someone with good intentions even ends up doing the same thing.”

The delayed production hasn’t forced much to change in his script, aside from some details, including a reference to the former Washington Redskins — now renamed the Commanders.

Also, one of Brown’s characters is germophobic, yet that detail has to be illustrated differently since the pandemic.

“Carrying hand sanitizer in your purse is no longer a character trait, it’s just something that we all do,” he said.

Another moment resonated differently for him in 2022 than it did when he wrote it.

“One thing that’s really fun is that we’re in the midst of all this fallout and investigation of January 6, and there’s a moment in the script that wasn’t written in response to that but feels like it was,” Brown said.

The production features nine actors portraying 20 characters, many of them rideshare passengers in Rina’s car. Brown drove for Uber several years ago, and he used moments from his own work experience to flesh out the script.

He said that one aspect of the show of which he’s proudest is that most of the characters can be played by any performer. He avoided pronouns and used gender-neutral character names.

“I wrote all the ensemble roles to be played by any gender without having to change the script, so if you see the next production of The Outrage Machine, Blair Weeks may be played by a man or a non-binary person,” said Brown, who has directed and produced at Onion Man, Academy, Onstage Atlanta and Out of Box theaters. “My background as a director and producer informs my writing, in that I can make writing decisions that make my play easier to produce. So if a casting pool at a college has 20 women auditioning and three dudes, the play is still doable. It also opens up opportunities for non-binary performers.”

That open casting approach also changes power dynamics in how certain scenes in the script play. But that doesn’t affect the underlying theme of The Outrage Machine.

“The overall message doesn’t change because this impacts all of us,” he said. “We all have some level of engagement with modern-day news sources and fake news sources and intentionally satirical sources that some people don’t realize are meant to be satirical. Because the message of the play is about American society and humanity at large, the message works no matter what the demographics and gender dynamics onstage are.”

As divided as the country is, Brown said he has created a play that he hopes appeals to both sides of the political spectrum.

“With each draft of this play, as the world changes, I want this play to be enjoyed by conservatives,” he said. “I want them to not feel like they’re being attacked. We all need to work on this. This impacts all of us. Picking examples of things that everybody gets wrong, all over the political spectrum, is important for this piece. It’s very political. I think it’s a moderate play, but the moderate line has moved drastically in past years.”

Brown hopes the work leads the audience to better consider who delivers their news to them. He aimed to critique the echo chamber that social media becomes when consumers only surround themselves with like-minded voices.

“It’s easy to see that the other side has this problem,” he said. “It’s harder to see that we all have this problem. When we read something that confirms what we want to believe, we don’t question it. And so I want the audience to develop that awareness, that it’s worth taking a moment to question who your sources are and who your source’s sources are.”

[Benjamin Carr, a member of the American Theatre Critics Association, is an arts journalist and critic who has contributed to ArtsATL since 2019.  His plays have been produced at The Vineyard Theatre in Manhattan, as part of the Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival, and the Center for Puppetry Arts.  His novel Impacted was published by The Story Plant in 2021.]

*  *  *  *
“PICK! ASR THEATER — BIG FUN IN CHINATOWN: ‘THE EMPIRE STRIPS BACK’”
by Barry Willis 

[The website Aisle Seat Review (Menifee, CA) published Barry Willis’s review of what he called an “audacious” piece of theater from San Francisco on 4 August 2022.  ASR covers theater, opera, ballet, music performance, movies, art, and writing in Northern California as well as the great Inland Northwest region.]

San Francisco has a long strong history of audacious theatricality.

Home-grown dazzlers include The Cockettes, The Tubes, Beach Blanket Babylon, and Teatro ZinZanni. Add to this list two or three annual performances of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” periodic revivals of “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” an occasional over-the-top production of “Cabaret” (SF Playhouse, summer 2019) and hilarious touring shows such as “Head Over Heels” that rocked the Curran in spring 2018.

At Chinatown’s Great Star Theater through October 2 [2022], “The Empire Strips Back” is very much in this tradition. The show originated in 2011 for a three-evening run in Sydney, Australia and became a national hit, touring Down Under for years before it went global.

Billed as “a parody of Star Wars,” the show is more a Star Wars-themed spoof, with dancers assuming the guises of many Star Wars characters and the stage filled with props from the long-running film franchise. The lack of a through-line doesn’t tarnish the production, a music-and-dance revue that in classic burlesque style features a comic emcee who keeps the audience laughing while stagehands scramble behind the curtain, prepping for the next act.

Old-time burlesque featured not only a comic emcee, but jugglers, clowns, and assorted other diversions between the real attractions: scantily clad female dancers, with which the Great Star is abundantly supplied. Jugglers and clowns are notably absent, unless you count a twerking Chewbacca late in the second act.

In a pale blue “Lando Calrissian” cape, Oakland comedian Kevin Newton serves amiably as emcee, with perfectly paced commentary on everything happening onstage and in the audience—a full house on opening night, and a rowdy one too. Who knew that San Francisco still had so many heterosexuals?

The show’s dancers are talented, gorgeous, and aggressive, with moves that encompass every dance genre from the early ‘60s to the hip-hop present. Erin Vander Haar is a standout, a superb performer with a compelling ability to flirt with her audience. The show’s pop music also encompasses the past 60-some years, going as far back as the Spencer Davis Group and into the contemporary era with pieces like “Seven Nation Army.”

Musically, and choreographically, there’s something for everyone in this show, but it’s geared for a young, contemporary crowd—especially those steeped in Star Wars lore, pretty much a definition of everyone born after 1965. Newton generates plenty of laughs with cult-insider humor.

Dance segments are outrageously delightful, such as one that liberally quotes the famous hair-slinging scene in the film “Flashdance,” done here atop Luke Skywalker’s hovercraft. As big as a dump truck, Jabba the Hutt appears onstage with dancers cavorting around and on him. Whether solo, duets, trios, or ensemble, the dance troupe is phenomenal. Stagecraft varies from amateurish to astounding.

Takeaway: “The Empire Strips Back” is as far from serious theater as we can get, and what a welcome departure it is. We have to go back to “Head Over Heels,” more than four years ago, to remember a show where the audience sang along and afterward lingered on the sidewalk out front as if they didn’t want to leave. It’s probably some of the most fun you’ll have in a SF theater all summer long.

[Aisle Seat Review NorCal Executive Editor Barry Willis is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association and president of the San Francisco Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle.]

*  *  *  *
“THEATRE REVIEW: ‘FIREBRINGER: A NEW STONE-AGE MUSICAL’ AT DOMINION STAGE”
by Jeannette Mulherin 

[MD Theatre Guide, a Baltimore-based website, ran Jeannette Mulherin’s notice for “a new Stone-Age musical” on 24 August 2022.  MDTG is an online performing-arts news magazine covering theater, music, and dance in the Maryland; Washington, DC; and Northern Virginia areas.]

‘Firebringer: A New Stone-Age Musical’ is a laugh-out-loud reminder that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Directed by Michael Page with musical direction by Chad Rabago, ‘Firebringer’ is as much a commentary on contemporary life as it is a humorous look at humanity’s first attempts to organize itself. 

When we stumble on these early Homo sapiens, their leader, Jemilla (Jessi Scott), has gained the title “Peacemaker” because she was able to resolve an on-going conflict between tribe members Smelly-Balls (Glenn Williams) and Chorn (Edward “Teddy” Nagel). Following a blessing from the Almighty Duck, Jemilla speaks with the tribe’s former leader, Molag (Melanie McGuin), who admits she invented the group’s belief system to better control them. Jemilla is shocked when Molag tells her that Almighty Duck is not a deity and Tiblyn’s (Sara Alipanah) years of holding up the world with her bare hands has been completely unnecessary.

As the story unfolds, Schwoopsie (Erin Kemp), the inventor of comedy tells her one joke, and Emberley (Melanie Kurstin) befriends an outsider named Grunt (Cameron Powell) who is promptly chased away by the group. Jemilla announces that the duck is not divine, and Tiblyn can drop her arms without the sky falling in and killing them all. Ducker, the Duck’s vicar on earth, (Ryan Washington) is outraged at the loss of his privileged status, and Tiblyn, the loss of her life’s purpose.

Most importantly, Zazzalil (Lindsey Capuno) invents the spear, and Jemilla and the tribe declare the invention worthless, turning on Zazzalil. In a fit of frustration, Zazzalil leaves the cave in the dark of night to prove the spear’s value, accidentally inventing fire at the same time. Zazzalil exploits the tribe’s amazement at this new creation to convince them to banish Jemilla and make her the group’s new leader.

When Act II opens, the tribe is enjoying the benefits of fire but also coming to see the drawbacks, Jemilla is enjoying herself in exile as she is now the leader of a new tribe full of beautiful people, and Duck attempts to reclaim his priestly power by announcing that he can interpret Fire’s wishes. Grunt reappears before being snatched by the bloodthirsty Smilodon, Snarl. Unfortunately for Grunt, the flame has gone out and the tribe is again without fire.

Fire or no fire, the tribe decides to rescue Grunt. They try scaring Snarl with a picture of fire etched on a stone. When this fails, they attempt to stab Snarl with spears and miss, but through a lucky twist, create fire again by rubbing together the stones on their spears. They set Snarl on fire, killing him and saving Grunt. In a final surprise, Chorn announces he is an alien, takes credit for the existence of fire, and shares his knowledge of humanity’s future with the tribe.  

The cast demonstrated an immense amount of vocal talent as well as a gift for comic timing. Notable performances included Emberly and Grunt’s duet, “Just a Taste,”  Zazzalil and Jemilla’s “Together,” and Chorn’s “Chorn.”  High energy ensemble pieces included “Fire,” “The Night Belongs to Us,” and “Ouch, My Butt.”

From the bone in Zazzalil’s hair to Chom’s purple glow-in-the dark sneakers, costume designer Larissa Norris’s creativity and attention to the smallest details played a significant role in the show’s success. Set designer Alex Bryce created an environment true to stone-age fashion that consisted primarily of rock groupings, and puppet maker Maria Littlefield contributed a memorable woolly mammoth as well as a larger-than-life Snarl.   

If you missed “Firebringer,” Dominion Stage’s 73rd season has just begun with a selection of must-see productions!

[Firebringer’s running time was two hours and 35 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.  It ran through 20 August 2022, presented by Dominion Stage at Gunston Theatre Two in Arlington, Virginia.

[A native northern New Yorker, Jeannette Mulherin has a fondness for used books, off-the-beaten-path travel, and of course, live theatre.  She earned a master’s degree from Georgetown University and an undergraduate degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore.  She’s currently pursuing a Ph.D. at George Mason University in the Writing and Rhetoric program.  Mulherin is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association.]

 

Quirky Theater from Around the Country I

 

[I’m part-way through a blog project that I thought would be quick and easy.  It wasn’t.  It’s been several weeks already, and it looks like it’ll take a few more.

[Instead of just finding and posting an article or two on the same or related topics, I decided to assemble a collection of pieces on different subjects.  In this case, I’m using several reviews from around the U.S. that cover what I feel are quirky and intriguing theater from some of the more adventurous troupes in different cities.

[I’m an associate member of the American Theatre Critics Association and I get its monthly e-mail newsletter, The Update.  One section is called “This Just In,” a selection of reviews and articles by ATCA members from their base publications. 

[I always glance at them, and recently, I kept aside several of the notices that just looked interesting.  I’m taking this opportunity to post some of the reviews to show what’s going on in some of the theaters across this country.  See what you all think.]

“ANDY WARHOL IN IRAN BY BRENT ASKARI:
HIT PREMIERE AT BARRINGTON STAGE COMPANY”
by Charles Giuliano 

[The first selection is from Berkshire Fine Arts (website; North Adams, MA) of 9 June 2022.  BFA covers all aspects of the arts in the Berkshires (western Massachusetts), including the major theater companies.  Charles Giuliano is the site’s editor.]

Andy Warhol in Iran
By Brent Askari
Directed by Skip Greer
With Nima Rakhshanifar and Henry Stram
Scenic designer, Brian Prather; Costumes, Nicole Wee; Lighting, Joyce Liao; Sound, Dan Roach; Wig and makeup, Mary Schilling-Martin. Projections, Yana Biryukova.
Barrington Stage Company
St. Germain Stage
June 2-25, 2022

In Andy Warhol in Iran, a new play by Skip Greer commissioned by Barrington Stage [Pittsfield, Massachusetts], the vocal cadence of Henry Stram as Andy Warhol [1928-87] is off key.

With insouciant, faked self-effacement, stutter-step delivery, smirks at his own riffs and put-ons, Warhol’s pitter patter was distinctive and should rightly have been patented. It was a significant part of how the artist and master huckster marketed and promoted himself.

With the deadpan artist the persona was the sizzle that sold his steak.

Or in Andy parlance “Brought home the bacon.”

Stram joins a long list of those who have portrayed Warhol including David Bowie [Basquiat (1996); Paul Bettany recently played the artist on Broadway in Anthony McCarten’s The Collaboration, 18 December 2022-11 February 2023]. There seems to be endless fascination with an enigma. Arguably, Andy through his museum, estate, and foundation is now more rich, famous and influential than ever.

He grew up poor and sickly in Pittsburgh. The death benefits of his father paid for his art education. Through illness he was prematurely bald and had bad skin. He was in fact quite homely but accessorized with clear plastic glasses, wigs and makeup. That made him easy to impersonate. Warhol employed a double who made speeches and appearances for him when he didn’t want to leave New York.

Andy was clever with wigs and took to wearing silver on top of a black one. That layering made it appear that his roots were showing. My friend Gerard Malanga, who bunked with him on the road, swears that he never saw Andy without a wig. During lunch breaks they walked home from the studio where Andy’s mother, Julia, made lunch. Often that entailed a can of Campbell’s soup, one of his iconic images. He also used Julia’s unique and florid handwriting as part of his graphic design. As devout Catholics they attended mass each Sunday during the 18 years she lived with him in New York.

Warhol had the schtick of being anything you wanted to him to be. When asked a complex question his standard and gobsmacking answer was “Yes.” As to how do you make your work, he responded “I fake it.” He was the master of passive resistance. Facing the media, reporters or critics essentially framed interviews which Andy cleverly affirmed. The media always got what they wanted though the “answers” were typically enigmatic.

Or, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol from A to B and Back Again.

When queried about war, politics or tough questions he would demur that he didn’t know and that the subject was too “abstract.” That was his standard response to anything that stumped him or attempted to make him take a position on a difficult issue.

He attracted an entourage dubbed “The Factory.” They comprised queers, drag queens, druggies, socialites, artists, dropouts, the poet Gerard Malanga, and whoever showed up for a screen test and proved to [be] somewhat interesting. Andy was a magnet for beautiful boys but was in a long-term, committed relationship.

Each night he fed a menagerie of freaks on his running tab at nearby Max’s Kansas City. Wisely, its owner Mickey Ruskin took art from Andy and other artists to settle bills. Upstairs at Max’s, which served steak, lobster and chick peas, was a room where The Velvet Underground, the New York Dolls and other bands performed.

Nobody got paid other than Gerard and Paul Morrisey who directed some films. The entourage fed him ideas, starred in the films, and in that manner earned their fifteen minutes of fame. He loved gossip which he shared each day with Brigid on the phone.

Valerie Solanas, a deranged radical lesbian thought he owed her more. June 4, 1968 she walked into the factory and point blank shot him. The play explains that she was angry that he did not produce her play. In fact, he had not returned or acknowledged a film script that she had submitted.

As he explains to the waiter Farhad (Nima Rakhshanifar) a radical revolutionary holding him captive in a hotel room “She ran a movement Society to Cut Up Men (SCUM) but was its only member.”

With irony his beloved Daily News ran the story inside. He got bumped off the cover by the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. [Robert F. Kennedy was shot by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles shortly after midnight on 5 June 1968.  He died the next day.] He fought for his life and was legally dead for a couple of minutes.

“Fame saved me” he explains. When the doctors realized who was on the table they redoubled their efforts.

After that Andy was never the same. He stopped hanging out with freaks fearing another incident. The movies, which cost a lot and took in little, were suspended. With a midlife and career crisis he reinvented himself. He made a series of silk screen paintings of Mao, Marilyn, Elvis, Liza, Elizabeth Taylor, Mick Jagger and other celebrities.

Hanging out with socialites and billionaires at Studio 54 he came up with a cash cow. Shooting Polaroids, with assistants he transformed them into silk screen portraits in the manner of the iconic Marilyns. While these portraits of the megarich brought home the bacon, lots and lots of bacon, they were generally commercial, uninspired and the aesthetic lowpoint of his storied career. Truth is most captains of industry are not very interesting or inspiring people. Warhol's commercial portraits reveal that. Seeing them gathered at the Whitney Museum was a painfully dreadful experience.

Andy earned some six figures plus for these hack works. Some of his sitters ordered multiples for homes and offices. It was easy money for which he sold his soul.

As Andy puts it in this play “I have a lot of mouths to feed.”

The back stories of the really bad guys he sucked up to for commissions proved to be too “abstract” for him to comprehend. So he was pals with Imelda Marcos [b. 1929; wife of Philippine president/dictator Ferdinand Marcos from 1965 to 1986] and attended a White House reception for the Shah of Iran.

No doubt Andy would have loved the Trumps, particularly Melania, and been a frequent flyer to Mar y Lago [sic]. Basically, Andy was a trend and taste maker devoid of a social conscience. He was the Switzerland of art which is to say frequently cheesy.

Which is how Askari focused on a hotel room in Tehran (an apt set by Brian Prather). That’s a fact although there is no record of a botched attempt to kidnap him. It’s also true that he mostly spent time ordering room service.  It was too hot for tourism. “Can you believe it you can order a half pound of caviar for just nine dollars.”

Set in 1976, the play imagines events when the artist was invited to Iran by Fereydoun Hoveyda, Iran’s ambassador to the United Nations, to create a portrait of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s wife. Warhol met the Empress Farah Pahlavi, whom he took Polaroids of during his visit. He was accompanied by his manager Fred Hughes and Bob Colacello, Warhol’s biographer and then editor of Warhol’s Interview Magazine.

Things go south for 80 minutes when the waiter arrives with the caviar. With a knock on the door Andy asks to just leave it outside. Farhad insists on coming in. “You have to sign for it. That’s hotel policy.”

Once in he pulls a gun and demands cooperation. The plan is to kidnap him as a device to get world attention for the cause of ousting the Shah. A car is coming, as Farhad constantly looks out the window. It never does.

Initially, they have nothing in common. Farhad refuses to answer questions while Andy mugs to what he hopes are listening devices.

Andy offers money or a part in a movie. “I can make you famous” he argues. Farhad, a committed revolutionary, isn’t interested in fame or fortune. Andy is flummoxed, “Everyone wants to be famous.”

There is reversal as they find commonality. They even compare their scars. Farhad had been tortured by the Shah’s savage Savak [Iranian secret police during the reign of the Shah] which killed his father as well as countless dissidents. As Andy comes to identify with his captor he muses that he might be a victim of Stockholm syndrome.

As a device the two characters from time-to -time step out of the play to narrate projections (Yana Biryukova) which provide backstories. That of Farhad was particularly riveting as it provided a capsule of how the Shah with the CIA and MI5 [actually, MI6; British intelligence service] ousted the rightful democratic president who died in prison. [Mohammad Mosaddegh (1882-1967), prime minister of Iran (1951-53) until ousted by the Shah with the help of the CIA and MI6.] For that support, he forked over 60% of Iran’s natural resources and petroleum forming what became British Petroleum. The major oil companies shared the wealth of Iran.

It was good to have that brief flashback and unvarnished exposure of America’s role in global imperialism.

Overall we loved this new play. The actors were compelling in their roles and the direction of Skip Greer navigated them nicely. There were twists and turns that kept us engaged. Stram was a very good if not great Warhol. He was actually too pretty with none of Andy’s awkward enigma. This was a play after all and not a documentary. To portray an authentic Andy would have added another half hour at least.

This production kept it tight and sweet. The play is the first hit of the summer season. Jump fast for tickets to a fun and entertaining evening in fabulous downtown Pittsfield. After being shut down for two and a half years Julianne Boyd was thrilled to welcome back audiences. We laughed all the way home.

*  *  *  *
“SAN FRANCISCO MIME TROUPE RETURNS TO DOLORES PARK 
WITH ‘BACK TO THE WAY THINGS WERE’”
by Jean Schiffman 

[Jean Schiffman’s review of SFMT’s annual event ran in the San Francisco Examiner on 23 June 2022.]

“Today I have to write a culminating scene,” says busy San Francisco actor/director/playwright Michael Gene Sullivan, who’s been San Francisco Mime Troupe head writer for the past 22 years. “A lot of things have to come together.”

He is on the phone several weeks before the much anticipated July Fourth grand opening of the Mime Troupe’s latest political musical comedy, “Back to the Way Things Were.” The troupe premieres a new, original free show every year on the Fourth at Dolores Park, but this year it’s especially eagerly anticipated by troupe artists and audiences because it follows the two-year pandemic shutdown.

Sullivan says that recently he’s been sitting in his car, feverishly writing scenes for his one-hour show, between matinee and evening shows of “Ragtime,” in which he’s performing at TheatreWorks Silicon Valley.

Co-written with Marie Cartier, “Back to the Way . . .” (tagline: “Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be”) is an extended version of the final radio play that the S.F. Mime Troupe aired during the dog days of the pandemic. As Sullivan explains, he and composer/lyricist/music director Daniel Savio knew “the good old days weren’t that great” and aimed to explore that concept. Police brutality, “the war on immigrants,” climate change, civil rights . . . Sullivan ticks off a list.

For the radio play, he created a prototype working-class family: Alice and Ralph (yes, he was thinking of “The Honeymooners” [iconic TV sitcom (1955-56) created by and starring comedian Jackie Gleason]) and their nihilistic college-age daughter, Zoe, who’s about the same age as Zachary, the son of Sullivan and his wife, Velina Brown. Brown and Sullivan played the couple in the radio version; now Mime Troupe regular Lizzie Calogero plays Alice, and Brown directs.

“Those of us significantly older than Zoe remember the days of activism, the days of hope,” says Sullivan. “But Zoe’s generation has never been able to get on an airplane without taking off their shoes because someone might murder them. The U.S. has been at war most of their lives. They’ve grown up with YouTube showing Black people being abused by cops. We say, ‘You’re the future’ (and they think), ‘You’re gonna put it all on us?’”

He relished the opportunity to explore the dystopia Zoe sees around her while at the same time showing what her parents see: the absence of “that constant dread that characterized the Trump/COVID years.”

“All I had to do was make it funny,” he sighs.

Because the San Francisco Mime Troupe is a collective, the group meets to discuss each new annual show — its theme, the issues that need to be covered — and it’s the head writer’s job to fold the ideas into the show, with live original music (this year, Savio plays keyboard with Will Durkee joining us on guitar and Jason Young on drums) and a set that can be put up and broken down as the troupe tours to parks throughout the state during the summer.

“I’m taking into consideration all the issues that (the collective members) bring up,” Sullivan explains. “The election, the Supreme Court, people’s sense of false news. I worked on the unhoused, housing costs, bureaucracy. Zoe has an internship at a homeless shelter and she has to work through all this red tape, which is farcically difficult.”

He says most of his preparation to write each year’s “dramatic comedic critique of modern American culture and economics,” as he describes it, is to read daily news articles from all over the world. “For theater to be viable, it has to be a town square where audience questions are addressed. Whatever is up for them in the zeitgeist, theater is a place to come to, lively and see those issues aired and addressed in a way that’s human. Not necessarily answered, though. A good play will have at least two sides to every argument, and those positions have to be well stated with real human beings in front of you, a sense of danger.”

In crafting a play, Sullivan follows the structure he teaches his playwriting students: a three-act play and within each scene, a setup, a conflict and a resolution. “It’s very mathematical, and also very Aristotelian,” he says. (Aristotle famously proposed three rules for drama: unity of action, time and place.)

Sullivan’s plays have been seen worldwide; most recently, his “The Great Khan” was staged at San Francisco Playhouse, and his adaptation of George Orwell’s “1984” has been running in rep at a theater in Kyiv for several years. (It just reopened; Sullivan declined any further royalties from the company.)

Brown, a busy local actor/singer and longtime member of the Mime Troupe collective, and others wanted to make sure there was some reference in the script to the attack on Roe v. Wade, but otherwise, she says, the play sets up tension between people who are looking at before the pandemic with rose-colored glasses and those who know that things were not all that rosy back then.

Although the cast only has five members — Calogero and Norman Gee (who plays the bus driver-turned-Uber-driver Ralph) plus Keiko Shimosato Carreiro, Andre Amarotico and Alicia M.P. Nelson — the characters include several unhoused people, a CEO, an 1880s robber baron, a cop, a butler and others.

This is Brown’s first time to direct a Mime Troupe live park show; she directed some of the company’s radio work recently and has directed elsewhere. Her specialties as a director, she says, are working individually with actors on their emotional arcs and relationships within the play, creating a safe space where actors can experiment and helping them with the songs. Her husband, when directing, specializes in the physical component; the Mime Troupe’s broad, crisp and farcical comedy harks back to the Italian commedia dell’arte style.

As a drama teacher at San Francisco’s Gateway High School, Brown points out that kids now have not only fire drills and earthquake drills but also active shooter drills. Kids have a different perspective than their parents, she observes, who could look back on a time when certain current concerns didn’t exist — or so they might like to think.

“Back to the Way Things Were” explores the then-versus-now paradox. “There’s so much apocalypse imagery out there,” she sighs. “For us as artists, what if we use that same creative ability to picture ... what if we get it right? What if we find a way to not just descend into shooting each other up?”

Sullivan acknowledges all Mime Troupe shows over the past 63 years have something in common: “the critique part,” as he calls it. “That can be tiring for people,” he concedes. “Sometimes they just want to be entertained. It’s not like we’re taking away hope. Some things need to be condemned, some altered. The job is never done. That’s a challenge for the Mime Troupe and a challenge for those committing to try to change the world. Some audience members want to see theater as an escape from trying to change the world.”

The Mime Troupe isn’t likely to give up the changing-the-world job — ever. But they’ll continue to make you laugh all the while.

*  *  *  *
“REVIEW: IN A STORM OF SILLINESS, THEATER WIT’S HURRICANE
DIANE  DEMANDS THAT WE CARE ABOUT CLIMATE CHANGE”
by Nancy S. Bishop

[Nancy Bishop’s review of a 2017 play was published in the Third Coast Review (online magazine; Chicago) of 29 June 2022,  3CR specializes in Chicago-area arts and culture coverage.]

Dionysus/Diane has messages for us. The messages we continue to ignore about the serious dangers that climate change portends for our future—and more importantly, for the futures of our children and grandchildren. Yes, while we seethe with anger about SCOTUS decisions and the January 6 insurrection, playwright Madeline George wants us to get mad about climate change too. She’s right, of course.

Her 2019 [sic; premièred at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, on 14 January-12 February 2017] play Hurricane Diane, directed by Jeremy Wechsler, is now on stage at Theater Wit. George’s premise is that if she presents us with a climate change message wrapped in a flamboyant comedy, we’ll listen. And so it starts. The Greek god Dionysus (or Bacchus, if you prefer the Roman version) descends to earth as a butch lesbian gardener, determined to attract acolytes and form a cult focused on saving the earth. Upon her arrival on stage, Diane (Kelli Simpkins) [is] swathed in white satin, wrapped in a leopard skin, and crowned with leaves and grapes. And she’s here to tell us of the danger we’re in: “It’s eleven fucking forty-five on the cosmic clock!”’

She chides us, directly: “You‘ve been busy, haven’t you? Mining and stripping and slashing and burning and generally despoiling the green earth that gave you life. It’s not like I haven’t been aware of your misdeeds, I’ve been watching you fuck shit up for hundreds of years.”

Diane/Dionysus has chosen a perfect locale for her first recruitment campaign: a cul de sac of four identical homes in Red Bank, New Jersey, a community like others along the east coast recently pummeled by other named hurricanes (we remember Sandy). The four women could be the cast of Bravo’s “The Real Housewives of Monmouth County.”*

*Monmouth County is an important county in New Jersey—for a certain narrow sector of the population. In addition to Red Bank, other key place names are Freehold, Asbury Park, Long Branch, West Long Branch, Belmar, Colts Neck, Manusquan, Rumson, Matawan and Ocean Township [all “Jersey Shore” towns]. West Long Branch is the home of Monmouth University (location of the respected Monmouth Polling Institute and site of several Bruce Springsteen Symposiums that I’ve participated in). If those names mean nothing to you, it’s only because you’re not a Springsteen fan.

Diane begins her campaign by marketing her landscaping services and lesbian lust to each of them, usually getting some resistance—at first. Diane’s preferred natural garden is a fragrant paradise with “a lush green understory, teeming with beneficial insects, worms, beetles . . . native groundcovers: hognut and bee balm, foxglove and awl-fruit, hawkweed and bladderwort and milk vetch.“ No lawns. Diane rips out lawns. 

Carol Fleischer (Carolyn Kruse), a tightly controlled corporate-compliance officer, wants a garden with themes drawn from HGTV magazine. Most of all, she wants a wrought-iron accent bench. “I don’t do furniture,” Diane replies.

Pam Annunziata (Lori Myers) wants her garden to reflect her Italian heritage with “my own Italian garden exactly like in the mural outside Delfini’s, you know the deli on Front Street? . . . . with the hanging vines, the roses, the fountain, the whole nine.” 

Renee Shapiro-Epps (Jazmin Corona) is the first to understand Diane’s landscaping vision; she’s an editor at HGTV Magazine. She enthusiastically buys into Diane’s concept and yearns for a forest permaculture in her back yard.

Beth Wann (Aniesa Hicks) tells Diane she wants a fairy garden “just like it says in the poem” with a leafy bower and “the kinds of flowers that attract fairies. So I can lay my head among the mosses while they sing me to sleep.” Beth’s husband has deserted her and she’s the first to succumb to Diane’s lecherous charms.

Hurricane Diane is totally silly with a broad array of sure-to-please laugh lines. Wechsler gets distinctive characterizations from the five actors, with Simpkins using her comedy chops to good advantage. (I’ve seen her in several serious roles—like Men in Boats, We’re Gonna Be Okay and [The Gulf]—and I can only say, she should play comedy more often.) The 90-minute play moves along briskly, using the single kitchen setting to represent the four identical homes with prop changes and landscapes scrolling by outside the back windows. There’s far more to the scenic design but no spoilers here. The clever set design is by Joe Schermoly with lighting by Piper Kirchhofer and sound design by Joyce Ciesil. Mara Blumenthal and Maddy Low are responsible for the creative costume design.  

Hurricane Diane has been extended through August 14 [2022] at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7pm and Sunday at 2pm. Tickets are $25-$36 and are on sale now at TheaterWit.org or by calling the Theater Wit box office, 773-975-8150. Run time is 90 minutes, no intermission. Proof of vaccination is required for entry and masks must be worn over nose and mouth while you’re in the building.

*  *  *  *
“‘AND THEN I LAUGHED’”
by Kerry Reid 

[The review by Kerry Reid of this unusual performance ran in the Chicago Reader of 4 August 2022.  The Reader is an alternative weekly newspaper noted for its coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater.]

Theatre Y and Marvin Tate’s Laughing Song is a one-of-a-kind experience.

At one point in Theatre Y’s ambulatory Laughing Song: A Walking Dream, Marvin Tate as George W. Johnson ([1846-1914] the first Black American recording artist) is asked by a reporter at a press conference, “Is your laugh real, or is it fake?” It’s a reasonable question—but by the end of this four-hour show, which weaves together elements of Johnson’s life with Tate’s own experiences growing up in North Lawndale [West Side neighborhood, since 1950s largely African-American in population; poverty-ridden and economically depressed], it also feels utterly beside the point. How do we even know where our laughter comes from? If we stop to examine it, do we kill the fleeting moment of joy? And given everything that happens in the span of our earthly existence, shouldn’t we just be grateful we can laugh at all?

The devised piece, created by Tate and Evan Hill in collaboration with the 12-member cast and directed by Theatre Y artistic director Melissa Lorraine, does indeed unfold, as the subtitle promises, in a sort of dream state. If you’re unfamiliar with the landscape of North Lawndale (as I largely was before seeing the show), it’s a chance to see the neighborhood’s broad boulevards and parks lined with vintage greystone buildings (more than any other neighborhood in Chicago), interspersed with boarded-up storefronts that tell the story of decades-long disinvestment in the west-side community. (This is the third installment in Theatre Y’s ongoing Camino Project—a series of outdoor walking performances inspired by the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in Spain.)

This is where Martin Luther King Jr. stayed to highlight the crisis in housing for Black Chicagoans. This is also where activists set up a 47-day protest in “Freedom Square” in 2016 to call attention to the Chicago Police Department’s infamous Homan Square interrogation facility. And it’s where young Marvin Tate first discovered his calling as an artist. Early on in the show, he recounts (as he did in a profile by Reader contributor Jack Helbig) that his childhood encounter with Gwendolyn Brooks’s poem “We Real Cool” helped him find his voice (one that had been hampered by the fact that he had a stutter). 

But Tate’s biography is more implied than told, except for a haunting segment that unfolds on some abandoned railroad tracks, where we meet his mother, Ophelia (Cat Evans), who always carried an ice pick for protection and waited for her wandering husband to return. Lamarion Hall embodies the absent father, dressed in black tuxedo pants and a white dress shirt and walking far down the tracks while Ophelia trails at a distance, wearing a bright blue dress and lugging a suitcase—a poetic evocation of romantic longing and loss, as well as a subtle reminder of the Northern Migration that brought Tate’s mother to Chicago.

We learn more direct details about Johnson’s story, which is probably because it’s been largely untold. Some of it is still all too familiar, though—particularly the ways in which the record companies ripped him off. Eric K. Roberts plays “Charles Emerson,” a portmanteau name for Charles Marshall and Victor Emerson, who both heard Johnson singing at a ferry terminal and began recording him on wax cylinders. (Johnson’s biggest hit, “The Laughing Song,” gives the piece its title.) Sometimes Johnson would do the same song in the studio 50 times a day, since the early days of phonography didn’t allow for mass reproduction. (No wonder people wondered if the laugh was “real,” or as one commenter puts it, “Can you still keep your laugh when it’s being sold?”)

After cutting loose Tate’s George and his vaudeville band (mass duplication now being possible, and thus negating the need to keep George on payroll), Roberts, riding a three-wheel bike, leads the audience on one side of the street while the cast berates him for his villainy from the other. It’s a cunning way to highlight the socioeconomic split not just between moguls like Emerson and struggling artists (particularly Black performers), but between largely white neighborhoods that receive tons of private and public perks while communities of color are ignored—until it’s time to exploit them through gentrification and development. (This tour of North Lawndale doesn’t include businesses like Lagunitas and Cinespace, though we do go by the old Sears Tower on Homan, once the headquarters of the retail giant.) 

Music and visuals add texture as Johnson’s increasingly sad story unfolds. Both his common-law wives died before him, and he faced murder charges in the death of the second. He was acquitted; a trial scene set in a colonnade gives this part of the story an air of Greek tragedy, with his dead wives standing motionless, shrouded in heavy veils. (The sound of Michael Jackson singing “I’ll Be There” from over the fence at a nearby barbecue added an unplanned piquant touch at the opening.) The ensemble, whom we meet initially as Johnson’s fellow vaudevillians in a “backstage” prologue at a theater (the YMEN Center), play multiple roles and exhibit skills as dancers, clowns, acrobats, and at improvising dialogue with the audience as we stroll along. 

August Garrett as young passionate George feels like the hopeful conscience and connective historical tissue between Johnson and Tate, his helmet and goggles suggesting that being ready to tackle the open road is a good way to get through life. A portable stereo wheeled by an ensemble member accompanies us throughout the journey, often playing songs that reference smiles and laughter (“When You’re Smiling,” “Laughter in the Rain,” “My Funny Valentine”).

I didn’t attend either of the previous Theatre Y Camino shows, so I can’t say how this one fits in with those excursions. But I can’t imagine a more engaging tour guide than Tate, or a more unique experience in Chicago theater right now. It ends up back at the YMEN Center, where we all share a delicious chicken dinner prepared by chef Joseph Cooper. (And it’s all free, though donations are accepted.)

But before dinner, Tate gathers us all together to practice letting out some big laughs. Are they real or fake? Does it matter? The important thing is that Laughing Song asks us to spend time in a sometimes overlooked community, learning about a lost figure in Black cultural history, in the presence of a contemporary Chicago Renaissance man and an ensemble working hard to help us to appreciate everything around us in light and shadow—from sunny open parks to grimy underpasses. It doesn’t get more real than that.

[I’ve saved a few more notices of curious shows like these from recent ATCA newsletters.  I may post another collection soon (since it doesn’t look like I’ll finish my current Rick On Theater project in the next week or so).