Displaying items by tag: Cruz GonzalezCadel

Caryl Churchill’s ‘Fen’ is a tragic love story laid out against a complicated backdrop. Set in the 1980s, we meet Val (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel), a mother of two, who wants to leave her husband because she has fallen for another man, Frank (Alex Goodrich). She planned for them to take her children and run away to London, but Frank won’t go, so she settles for moving in with him.

But Val’s husband will neither divorce her, nor surrender the children to her. She must return to him to be with them. Equally, Val cannot live without Frank. Betwixt these irreconcilable poles, Val unhappily lives, and the dismal pallor of her internal conflicts settles over the two lovers like a dark cloud.

The playwright strips the passion from this ill-fated romance, giving us a utilitarian core by which to examine the oppressive constraints, grounded in economics, Churchill seems to say, under which women labor with futility to find fulfilling lives.

Val charges through the play seeking some way to come to shed the unhappiness. She meets other women who cope or compensate by several means - religion, drink, cruelty - and none of these ways work for her. So she just suffers, and it is Frank’s unhappy lot to be her partner in it.

The love story is a bit like Lady Chatterly’s Lover, whose aristocratic heroine sacrificed all to live happily ever after with her working-class paramour. Unlike the well-heeled Lady Chatterley, Val’s attempts to find happiness in her love are thwarted by circumstances, and she can find no solace.

The other dimension to ‘Fen’ is the succinct and searing portrait of a very dark world. Val and Frank are among a populace of poorly paid tenant farmers working under oppressive overseers in the Fenland, a fertile reclaimed coastal marshland in the east of England. Locals harbor resentments from generations of feeling exploited by profit-seeking landowners. 

Once a paradise where people lived off the land and fishing, the Fenland is a dismal place where dreams die, or never are born, a place of hopelessness. The play gives us a succinct portrait of the increasingly impersonal nature of the landowners, as local farms and the estates of gentry alike are snapped up by ever-larger global agri-businesses. It is in the exploration of these aspects of the Fenland that Churchill's immense skills as a wordsmith and playwright shine. It is why she is regarded as a pre-eminent English playwright - recalling 'A Number' at Writers Theatre still gives me chills -  and the chance to see a serious presentation of any of Churchill's works is not to be missed. 

Churchill’s script has been given a fully realized production, with a beautifully constructed set (Scenic Design by Collette Pollard) dominated by rows of potato fields, the stage big enough for a full-sized tractor to roll through. Director Vanessa Stalling orchestrates excellent performances from a sprawling roster of 22 characters, played by just six actors, as is the playwright's intent. Yet there is no confusion for the audience as actors reappear, playing as many as five characters, with distinctive costumes ((Izumi Inaba) and dialect (Eva Breneman). One key to understanding the action is to follow the character of Val, the only role played by Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel. Especially noteworthy are the performances of Alex Goodrich - the only male cast member - and Elizabeth Laidlaw.

Depending on your taste in theater, ‘Fen’ may seem bewildering, but it is entertaining nonetheless. While Churchill frames big ideas in the play, she is also a master at dialog, and the characters are colorful personalities engaged in intriguing repartee.'Fen' runs at Chicago’s Court Theatre through March 5.

Really? Another ‘Frankenstein’? The 2018/19 season was the year of ‘Frankenstein’. To celebrate the 200th anniversary of Mary Shelley’s classic gothic thriller, four theatre companies produced wildly different adaptations of the novel. If you find yourself wondering whether these companies knew of each other’s productions, they surely did. The beauty of the Chicago theatre landscape is that there’s a lot of room for good storytelling. Lookingglass Theatre wraps up their season with a bold adaptation from the same team who brought us ‘Moby Dick’ and ‘Lookingglass Alice’.

Conceived and directed by David Catlin, this take on ‘Frankenstein’ is as visually stunning as it is insightful. The in-the-round staging makes this telling feel more active, as the entire performance space is used throughout. Shifting around in your seat feels like a more engaging way to view the show. Not knowing where the monster or the next loud sound will come from, heightens the sense of terror. Catlin’s production is scary. Many of the other productions discounted that this is a horror story originally intended by Mary Shelley to scare guests at a party.

While nearly all the productions tried to weave Mary Shelley’s personal life into the retelling, Catlin’s version cuts right to the heart. In fluid transitions between Shelley’s life and ‘Frankenstein’, we get to see the range of Cordelia Dewdney’s talents as an actress. The show may be titled after the scientist, but this is a play about Mary Shelley. Dewdney’s dialogue as Mary Shelley is heartbreaking when considering her real life. Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel also turns in a strong performance in a variety of characters, all of which she plays comically large with a faux pregnancy belly.

The balance of good casting, inventive storytelling and arresting staging distinguish this production. Catlin has chosen to frame his version almost as children playing dress up while exchanging ghost stories. And since the characters are adults, there’s a simmering sexiness to this production. Sexy and ‘Frankenstein’ are two words rarely seen in the same sentence, but somehow Lookingglass achieves just that, making this a delicious evening at the theatre. Thrills, chills and titillation, the pillars of entertainment.

Even though we are now 201 years out from the original publication of ‘Frankenstein’, don’t sleep on this striking production at Lookingglass. For those with a grey memory of the novel from high school, or only familiar with the Universal-Boris-Karloff film version, Lookingglass serves up an unforgettable night of scary fun.

*Extended through September 1st

In today’s culture of OnDemand and streaming entertainment, one has to wonder how theatre art will adapt. Accomplished playwright Jordan Harrison also currently writes for the hit Netflix series ‘Orange is the New Black.’ Nobody can argue that Mr. Harrison hasn’t mastered the one-hour drama format, but what we can argue is whether or not that form works in theatre. Often when audiences stand and applaud even poor performances, they’re standing to congratulate themselves, to say we did it! We spent money and sat still for two hours! It’s over! Are we cultured now? Despite the convenience of home entertainment, people still go to the theatre to be intellectually stimulated and even challenged, they expect the playwright to uphold his end of the bargain.

At the conclusion of Shattered Globe’s production of Harrison’s play ‘The Grown-Up’, an audience of albeit mostly theatre critics was pretty quiet. This is usually an achievement for a playwright whose work has left its audience stunned. In this case, it was an audience left without an impression, and without enough material to commend themselves for sitting through.

‘The Grown-Up’ tells the story of Actor A, or Kai (Keven Viol) who’s grandfather, Actor B (Ben Werling) gives him a magic door-knob with which he can fast forward to the unpleasant and unfulfilling realities of his adulthood. Safely packaged in a chronological structure, we see the very brief disappointments and adult anxieties that await little Kai.  While these scenes have glimmers of relatability, they’re too short to invest in character and instead come off as series of clichés.  Rather than relying on dialog to explain how these moments of Kai’s life are fraught with meaning, we’re lazily told by various narrators. The script capitalizes on too many trendy devices, but doesn’t validate their necessity.

Shattered Globe has the talent to justify the one-hour run time of this play. Director Krissy Vanderwarker’s aesthetic inserts some personality to this static drama.  Actor D (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel) plays a few of roles, but really becomes a focal point of the play as a secretary trying to keep up in life. Gonzales-Cruz provides most of the laughs and the most intriguing performance.

Plays like ‘The Grown-Up’ are part of a growing trend in American playwriting that protect themselves in metaphysical chow-chow so that if you don’t like it, you just didn’t get it. What counts in a live performance is what the audience takes away, and if there’s not enough script to resonate with a viewer, what’s the point?

@ Shattered Globe Theatre. 1229 W Belmont. 773-975-8150. Through May 23^rd.