Displaying items by tag: Botticelli in the Fire

BOTTICELLI in the FIRE is a delight! I’ve got a lot to say about this production, but if you want to cut to the chase:  See BOTTICELLI in the FIRE!   

I’d little idea what to expect, except that queerness would be a major theme, and I’m afraid reading this review won’t prepare you for it either. All I can say is Prepare to be delighted! Or, as lead player Alex Benito Rodriguez (h/h) says, ‘Dripping with delight’.

Alex Benito Rodriguez is a good place to start. He’s Sandro Botticelli; Alex Benito Rodriguez really IS Sandro Botticelli, to a T. Though, oddly, our seatmate confided that they know Rodriguez personally, and offstage he’s quiet and unassuming. Just goes to show what a fine actor Rodriguez is, as those adjectives SO do not describe Sandro Botticelli! 

He opens the show by stumbling down the aisle with a bottle of chianti and assuring us that if he hears a fucking cell phone go off he will fucking kill its owner. He goes on to inform us that five centuries is far too long to be misunderstood; he therefore proposes to tell his story to us. Rodriguez / Sandro is completely delectable, and we’re eager to hear his story.

Kudos to Casting Directors Adelina Feldman-Schultz (sh/h) and Catherine Miller (th/th) – the entire cast meets the high standard set by Rodriguez. Yuchi Chiu (h/h) plays Sandro’s BFF Poggio di Chullu wonderfully as a sort of Cassandra, trying to warn Sandro of the perils outside his doors.  And then there’s young Leonardo da Vinci (John Payne th/th), with their très-70’s polyester bellbottoms, flowery blouse, and dreadlocks to the waist.

O. M. G.

Which is not to downplay the rest of the players! Jenece Upton (sh/h) as Madre Maria is as talented as she’s gorgeous. Andrew Cutler (h/h) is a perfectly smashing Lorenzo De Medici; I love seeing the tats on his knees when he dons shorts (plaid!) to play squash with Sandro. And his wife! Neala Barron (sh/h) as Clarice Orsini has such enormous stage presence she almost overshadows Rodriguez …. Almost.

The friar Giralomo Savanarola’s frenzied sermons are instigating the Venetian people to burn artwork and seditious books … and people. At the top of this category are (naturally) queers. Christopher Meister (h/h) is a strident and menacing Savanarola from the moment he appears with his portable karaoke machine (like those guys down on State Street), bawling imprecations on the sodomites.

BOTTICELLI in the FIRE is set in fifteenth-century Venice: it’s the dawn of the Renaissance, but Venezia is suffering a plague epidemic, with corpses littering the streets. The poor are way poor, and the rich are – well, Medicis – fortressed in their palaces and reveling in their extravagant pleasures. 

Lorenzo de Medici has commissioned his dear friend Sandro Botticelli to paint his wife Clarice. Sandro is happy to comply, but his muse is spurring him to create a highly unconventional portrait: a life-size full-frontal nude of Clarice as Venus, goddess of love and beauty, rising from the waves.

I’m going to throw in a non-sequitur here. In the mythical story, Venus is the daughter of the primordial deity Uranus, son of Mother Earth Gaia. Uranus marries Gaia (the Greek gods pulled stunts a mink breeder wouldn’t allow) and they had eighteen children. Uranus hated his kids and hid them from Gaia, who was so pissed off she gave her youngest son, the Titan Kronos (Father Time to you), a scythe made of indestructible adamantine (don’t ask, I don’t know). With this weapon Kronos castrated his father Uranus and tossed his junk into the sea. Uranus’ seed fertilized the ocean foam, and from that white foam rose Venus, born a fully-grown woman. For some peculiar reason this provenance made her Goddess of Love and Beauty.   

Educational exegesis over; back to Sandro Botticelli painting Clarice. He’s painting her in the nude, so Sandro (having but scant familiarity with female genitalia) needs an up-close view of her privates, and what better way to ponder her pudenda than cunnilingus? Clarice vigorously and repeatedly agrees.

In wanders young Leonardo Da Vinci, creating precisely the distraction Sandro does not need. John Payne (th/th) plays Leo with grace and elegance; one totally understands Sandro’s infatuation, despite its dangers. Poggio, who truly loves Sandro, pleads with him to sever both disastrous relationships, but Sandro is inexorably reckless. His sole objective is pleasure, particularly the sort that can be found inside a man’s pants … preferably Leonardo’s. 

Celebrated playwright Jordan Tannahill (h/h), the ‘enfant terrible of Canadian theatre’, wrote BOTTICELLI in the FIRE in 2016, but the correlations between 1480’s Venice and 2022 Chicago are even more relevant: plagues, bookburnings, anti-LGBTQ rhetoric legislation and assaults, and the renaissance of Chicago theatre after two years of dark houses.

Director Bo Frazier (th/th) describes themself as trans non-binary, queer, and neurodivergent – a theatre maker using imagination to tell traditionally excluded narratives. Frazier says:

As a queer and trans person watching more than 300 anti-LGBTQ+ bills introduced across the country in the last couple years, it has been both exhausting and terrifying to live in America where freedom is only meant for Christian, white, cisgender, able-bodied males.

With Assistant Director Dionne Adsdai (sh/th), Frazier directs BOTTICELLI in the FIRE from this mindset, beseeching us to battle these negative forces by doing all we can to empower queer joy. Their exceptional direction of BOTTICELLI in the FIRE is an excellent start.

The production of BOTTICELLI in the FIRE is masterful (Anastar Alvarez, th/th, Production Manager). The simplicity of the set created by Lauren Nichols (sh/h, Scenic Designer) and Theresa Lammon (Poster Designer) frees us to enjoy the play and players without being distracted by objects (Caitlin McCarthy, sh/h, Props) except, of course, the easel holding an enormous veiled canvas. Costume Designer Hilary Rubio, (sh/h) balances this simplicity by her sumptuous use of sheer, flowing and net fabrics, and anachronistic clothing.

Oi! Did someone say ‘anachronism’? I recently wrote a review where I criticized the anachronisms, but in BOTTICELLI in the FIRE the temporal bloopers are frequent, deliberate, and absolutely necessary. It’s hilarious when Sandro reads a text message from Lorenzo Medici, and music director Andres Fonseca (h/h), with Sound Designer Willow James (h/h), deliver a score that manages to blend rock, hip-hop, and Gregorian chant; I love when the ensemble chants da Vinci’s Vitruvian man’s proportions in plainsong.

And they dance, too! Singing and dancing commensurate with their phenomenal acting – this is unquestionably a multi-talented cast.

Co-Technical Directors Abbie Reed and Peter Wilde work with Stage Manager Oswald Avila (h/h) to regulate the pandemonium that regularly erupts onstage, making it both comprehensible and non-threatening – to us, any road! As for the characters, Intimacy & Violence Coordinator Micah Figuero (h/h) has his work cut out for him, and produces brutal attacks as compelling as the copulation(s!). The lighting, designed by Benjamin Carne (h/h), complemented the action splendidly; he used the spots brilliantly [sic].

What more can I say? The only negative I can dredge up is that (SPOILER ALERT!) I was disappointed there were no nude scenes. But not everyone has my taste for the salacious!

Which reminds me – like Hunter Clause’s WBEZ Rundown, I have One More Thing: I’m drawn specifically to events that feature LGBTQ+ issues; my companion is not, but she was as delighted by BOTTICELLI in the FIRE as me!

Highly Recommended!