Some Voices
Critical Evaluation: **** out of ****

Every once and a while a small storefront company taps into the guts and glory that is Chicago theatre. Such an occurrence is Profiles Theatre’s Chicago premiere of "Some Voices" by award-winning British playwright Joe Penhall. Penhall tackles the difficult subject of mental illness with frankness and surprising wit, and the outstanding Profiles troupe gives it a compelling and visceral rendering.

Ray hears voices, has persistent nightmares and imagines that the world is changing colors. He’s spent much of his life in psychiatric hospitals and has just been released into the custody of his brother and only relative Pete. The two brothers haven’t seen one another in years, and as Pete says, "things change when you disappear". A successful gourmet restaurant owner, Ray has been alone since his wife walked out on him and he feels an obligation and responsibility for protecting Ray.

Despite his brother’s pleading, Ray refuses to take his medication, believing that it "addles my brain and affects my judgment". Pete warns that Ray cannot afford to get in trouble or he will be put away again. But trouble seems to follow Ray, and he finds himself on the wrong side of a violent domestic fight between a pregnant woman in distress and her abusive lover. "Don’t ever fuck with another man’s misery," the psychotic Dave warns him. Laura has barely set foot out of her apartment in three months and prefers to collect government assistance, which pays better than an actual job. "You can’t escape forever," Ray tells her. "You get used to it after a while," she says. Ray’s philosophy of life is simple. "I live like I’m going to die tomorrow," he says. "You might do," Laura fears.

The danger here is that Ray could easily be played as a raving loony tune. Fortunately, Darrell W. Cox finds the human core beneath Ray’s paranoid outbursts and imbues the role with a remarkable sweetness and vulnerability. Likewise, the lovely Sara Maddox makes Laura’s co-dependent plight poignant and all too true. Explaining the pattern of abuse she has endured, she ruminates "It’s a miracle the things you start believing". Joe Jahraus’ stable yet concerned Pete is a true blue friend and protector. "We all have feelings," he tells Ray, "but we don’t let them rule our lives". Bill Brennan’s haunted madman Ives and Jim Jarvis’ diabolical bully Dave round out the small but brilliant cast.

Profiles’ triumphant production is further enhanced by Patrick Wilkes’ intensely emotional direction and the brutally realistic fight staging by R&D Choreography. That such powerful drama can be contained in an intimate 50-seater is testament to the go-for-broke acting legend that is the benchmark of Chicago theatre.

Chicago Tribune

Theater review, 'Mad Forest' at Piven Theatre

By Michael Phillips

Romania, 1989 - now that was a revolution, one that took President Bush spokesman Ari Fleischer's "one bullet" problem-solving advice (regarding Iraq's Saddam Hussein) very much to heart. Retroactively, at least. The Romanians, along with the army, brought about the demise and execution of Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, those totalitarian grim reapers with the concrete smiles. In the aftermath, British playwright Caryl Churchill and a group from London's Central School traveled to Bucharest and environs to create a piece on the history being unmade, and made anew.

The result was "Mad Forest," Churchill's widely performed history play. (Previous Chicago productions include a 1991 Stage Left premiere and a 1994 Remains Theatre revival.) The Ceausescus aren't in it. Their influence, however, lurks beneath every scene, every whispered exchange between dissidents, every moment at which a character turns a radio's volume up to screaming levels so that state surveillance cannot overhear what is being said.

While not top-shelf Churchill - and her top shelf is higher than just about any English-language dramatist's - the play holds up well. The Piven Theatre's season-opener, a production directed by Jennifer Green, is a modestly effective revival, a bit low in terms of dramatic stakes yet solidly acted.

Green's 11-person ensemble plays members of two families, the Vladus and the Antonescus, and a host of other Romanians from all political spectrums. "Down with Ceausescu," mutters a man in line waiting for food. Elsewhere, a schoolteacher loyal to the opposition-crushing country she knows and loves is betrayed by her son. Churchill's episodic, fleet-footed, occasionally facile text darts this way and that.

The Piven edition gathers strength as it goes. In the tightly controlled anguish of Laurie Larson, an ensemble standout, we get a lesson in how to do justice to this dramatic reportage. Some of the acting indulges in melodramatics better suited to a bigger theater, but Churchill is tricky that way: Her writing demands big emotions, meted out sparingly.

If "Mad Forest" is new to your playgoing life, the Piven show serves as a respectable introduction.

'Forest' lifts curtain on reign of terror

October 23, 2002

BY HEDY WEISS THEATER CRITIC

Of all the "revolutions" that swept through the countries of Eastern Europe in 1989 and ripped away the Iron Curtain, the one that occurred in Romania was the strangest and most violent.

Even after Nicolai Ceausescu and his wife were swiftly tried before a military tribunal and shot, no one was entirely sure if a revolution had actually taken place. Conspiracy theories mushroomed about why the army seemed to so easily join in the popular uprising. There were violent strikes. Paranoia ran rampant. The Romanians enjoyed nothing like the Czechs' "Velvet Revolution," or the East Germans' shopping spree triggered by the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Yet now, just more than a decade later, Romania is hoping for membership in the European Union, and that chaotic period seems like a dark and distant fairy tale from a country best known as home to Count Dracula.

Within months of the revolution, British director Mark Wing-Davey and playwright Caryl Churchill headed to Romania and began creating a theater piece that not only captured the temper of the times there, but got caught up in events as they were unfolding. And it's that sense of both immediacy and intimacy that still comes through in every scene of Churchill's play "Mad Forest," which is now receiving a smart, touching and expertly crafted production at Evanston's Piven Theatre.

Focusing on the lives of two families in Bucharest, and the tense celebration of two marriages, the play is a rich scrapbook of short, precisely limned, before-during-and-after scenes (some of them enacted in fear-driven silence), as well as nightmarishly surreal dream sequences and documentary-style testimony.

There is, as the title suggests, a madness running though it all, too. Repression forces people to create fictional worlds in which they can live, and when the repression is suddenly lifted, the sense of being unmoored and uprooted creates a different kind of fear and need for cover. Churchill clearly captures their warping fear.

Before anyone even whispers the word "revolution" in the play, Bogdan Vladu (Bernard Beck), an electrician, and his wife, Irina (Laurie Larson), a bus driver, are terrified that they will lose their jobs because their daughter Lucia (Gita Tanner) is marrying an American and has applied for a visa to leave the country. Their other children, Florina (Joanne Underwood), a nurse, and Gabriel (Paul Dunckel), an engineer, take different courses.

Once the revolution seems confirmed, the tables turn for their more comfortable neighbors, the Antonescu family, as Mihai (Sean Cooper), an architect of Ceausescu's grandiose palace, and Flavia (Marcia Reinhard), a stolid socialist teacher, face unemployment. Their son Radu (Steven Schine) an art student and rebel, scorns them for their cowardice and complacency under Ceausescu.

Meanwhile, a fearful priest (David Waggoner) speaks only to an angel (Gary Alexander). An abandoned dog (Sean Cooper) begs for protection from a seemingly standoffish vampire (Waggoner). And Lucia returns from America, dazed by the abundant displays of fruits and vegetables and chocolate, but homesick. When she decides to marry Ianos (T.J. Cimfel), a Hungarian, the ethnic strife that followed on the heels of the fall of communism quickly comes into play. Churchill saw the writing on the wall.

Jennifer Green, one of Chicago's unsung directorial talents, has gathered a large and talented cast and done a splendid job of differentiating the play's many characters. Eric Armstrong's dialect work adds an extra layer of authenticity. John Dalton's simple but eloquent set--ancient stone columns mixed with bare, angled wood beams--suggests a long history of deterioration, and the lighting (by Gregory Bloxham), costumes (Liz Rinaldi) and music and sound design (Scott Ian Lefton) are all first-rate.

A "Mad Forest," to be sure, but a powerfully entangling one, too.

Creativity, imagination spur 'Around the World ...'
By Dan Zeff
COPLEY NEWS SERVICE

CHICAGO — The stage at the Lifeline Theatre is about the size of a back-yard patio. But that's large enough to accommodate the 60 characters and 50 locations in the theater's larky adaptation of Jules Verne's novel Around the World in Eighty Days.

The 1872 Verne story follows the adventures of Englishman Phileas Fogg and his French valet Passepartout as they attempt to travel around the world in 80 days to win a wager with members of Fogg's London club.

The two cross Europe, Asia and North America as well as the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and miscellaneous smaller waterways. They employ steamboats, railroad trains, a sail sledge and an elephant on their journey, battling delays and life-threatening attacks from Hindu priests in India and warring Indians in North America.

To add spice to Fogg's wager, Verne injected a detective named Fix who harasses the Englishman throughout his travels, convinced Fogg is a fleeing bank robber. At the end of the story, Fogg returns to his London starting point, wins his wager, and even acquires a Hindu widow along the way for his bride.

The story seems perfect for a motion picture (it won several 1956 Academy Awards) but impossible to present in a live setting. However, the Lifeline has earned a secure niche in this area with its theatrically creative literary adaptations. Through John Hildreth's deft script, Dorothy Milne's imaginative directing and an inexhaustible cast of nine, the Lifeline emerges triumphant with one of the fun shows of the season.

The play employs large chunks of narrative spoken by the various characters to keep the audience abreast of Fogg's journey and how he stands against the ticking 80-day clock. Yet the show never gets word-heavy because the action is as continuous and lively as the language.

Using a two-story set as well as the center aisle, the production provides a sense of continuous movement and robust physical action. Most of the visual sense of place comes from the Victorian costumes for the European and American characters and exotic apparel for the Asians.

The upper level of the set is converted to a sea vessel with the addition of a large steering wheel. There are a couple of delightful special effects, one re-creating an elephant ride in India and another a miniature herd of buffalo in the American West.

The play is basically a comedy, yet it grabs a surprisingly tense hold on the audience as Fogg fights the calendar to win his wager, in spite of Detective Fix and all kinds of unexpected and outrageous delays and impediments. The Lifeline viewers laughed throughout the opening-night performance but there was a burst of spontaneous applause when Fogg finally won his bet with seconds to spare.

The action erupts in frequent uproar, but the heart of the show is Peter Greenberg's performance as the imperturbable Phileas Fogg, unflappably conquering one crisis after another. He is complemented by David Kauzlaric's hyper yet resourceful Passepartout, though the actor could ease up on the French accent a bit and reduce the speed of his vocal delivery.

Reid Ostrowski is a fine Detective Fix, single minded in his pursuit of Fogg and almost the nemesis who pulls the man down to defeat. Enough cannot be said about the supporting actors who play a multitude of individual characters, crowd scenes and newspaper hawkers to give the production its high-velocity energy. They are Parvesh Cheena, James Grote, Gordon Chow, Ed Pierce, Gregg Reynolds and Jillian Pollock-Reeves. They must be very tired after each performance, but they labor in a wonderfully entertaining cause.

A cluster of designers deserves high marks for their visual and aural contributions. They are Alan Donahue (scenery), Elizabeth Shaffer (costumes), Kevin Gawley (lighting), Victoria Delorio (sound), Ann Boyd (movement) and R & D Choreography (violence design).

Around the World in Eighty Days runs through Dec. 1 at the Lifeline Theatre, 6912 North Glenwood, Chicago. Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 5:30 p.m. Tickets are $20. Call (773) 761-4477.

The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.

10/05/02

ACTION THEATRE II: "PINNED" AND "DIAMONDBACK CRYPT"
R&D Choreography's Fight Shop Stage Combat Studio, at Lifeline Theatre.

Straightforward stunt fighting mostly requires physical agility while stage combat involves not only athleticism but acting. Richard Gilbert and David Gregory, founders of the Fight Shop school of "illusory violence," made the surprising discovery last year that there was an audience for their student exhibitions, and thus Action Theatre was born.

This second installment in the series is anchored by "Diamondback Crypt," a spoof of low-budget horror movies involving a frontier town attacked by vampires and a slayer lifted from Sam Shepard's Angel City. The gunplay, swordplay, fisticuffs, and blood F/X are easily up to R&D Choreography's high standard, as is the acting. But the script--heavy on passion, light on plot--is unfortunately typical of ensemble-generated fight scenarios. More intellectually satisfying is John Meissner's "Pinned," in which three pro wrestlers and their coldhearted manager (played by the brawny Mary Anne Bowman) debate their discipline's artistic merits. Finally a pep talk drawn from Shakespeare's Henry V restores morale. The evening's highlight, however, is an entr'acte "commercial" for the show's supposed sponsor, the Stars Our Destination bookstore: going blade-to-blade with broadswords are Gregory as a book-signing author and Gilbert as an airheaded sci-fi fan. In this 90-minute program of forgivably flawed fun, it's the teachers who show us how things oughta be done. --Mary Shen Barnidge, Chicago Reader, 05.23.02

'Action Theatre II': where drama meets combat
By Max A. Herman

If you're in the mood for both entertaining story-lines and wild fight scenes, "Action Theatre II" delivers a successful merging of the two.

"Action Theatre II: Pinned and Diamondback Crypt" runs Fridays through June 7 at the Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N. Glenwood, Chicago. The first act, "Pinned," deals with three professional wrestlers backstage, one of whom can no longer stand the idiocy of his career. This wrestler, Tony "TNT" Roberts (Raphael Massie), wants to perform on the stages of Manhattan while Jack "Grizzly" Adams (Edward Krystosek) tries to convince him that he's already an actor every time he enters the ring.

Meanwhile, their manager Jacqueline Hart (Mary Anne Bowman) hollers at "TNT" for even considering leaving and then lashes out at Pablo Torrez (Alan S. Morgan), a acrobatic Mexican wrestler, for no reason other than his ethnicity.

Written by John Meissner, "Pinned" does provide a refreshing look of what it's potentially like behind the scenes of pro wrestling - the frustration, the deceit, the inequality, everything. How it questions these elements is probably the act's strongest asset.

This is especially true when Pablo breaks his silence and snaps in Spanish on everyone. The one weak link to "Pinned" was the delivery of the dialogue which was often a bit too dramatic - even for wrestlers.

The second act, "Diamondback Crypt," on the other hand, was both solid and entertaining in every aspect.

Set in the post-Civil War West, this is a tale of a mysterious vampire hunter by the name of Dr. Jeremiah Hawker (Alan S. Morgan again) who comes to Diamondback on a mission.

There are a few vampires disguised as whores in town, causing a whole lot of ruckus. When Hawker appears in his black hat and cape to rid Diamondback of its wickedness, sheriff Taylor (Brad Wadle) demands answers.

All of the above carried the dialogue a lot stronger this time around. Also, the eerie fog, apt props and intense fight sequences added to the cinematic quality of "Diamondback Crypt." Overall, it's a wild ride that offered many suprises that I'll leave you to discover.

"Action Theatre II: Pinned and Diamondback Crypt" runs Fridays at 8 p.m. through June 7 at the Lifeline Theatre, 6912 N., Glenwood, Chicago.

Romeo & Juliet
Bowen Park Theater Company

Nobody does ugly violence better than Richard Gilbert and David Gregory, who together comprise the firm of R&D Choreography. Director Maggie Speer, likewise no stranger to face-in-the-gravel combat, has set this rendition of the well-worn Shakespeare classic in a suburban Verona populated with bored teenagers so steeped in martial fantasy that even the casual horseplay between friends exudes an intense physicality undiminished by the presence of fight-trained grrls [sic] among the Capulet and Montague gangs. By the time Mercutio and Tybalt square off with tonfa and tiger-claw knucks, we are sufficiently sensitized to the nuances of martial contact sport to recognize the moment where what began as a skirmish-to-first-blood escalates to a duel-to-the-death, with a gun suddenly making its appearance--though even then, it is clear that the actual killing is an accident engendered by adolescent fury and subsequent loss of control. The distinction between emotion-fueled brandishing of weapons and coldly-focused employment of same is likewise clearly defined in the scenes that follow. That Gilbert and Gregory are able to accomplish this subtlety with as uneven a mix of fight skills as are inevitable in a non-equity exurban show are testimony to their rapidly growing reputation as the most sought-after "violence designers" in this region. --Mary Shen Barnidge, Moulinet