Displaying items by tag: Jessie Fisher

Watching one scene acted four or five ways is intrinsically interesting. It’s regularly played to comic effect at Second City. But what about an entire play strung together from a series of such scenes?

This structure, used in Constellations at Steppenwolf Theatre, may put your interest to the test. But it will not lose it.

This celebrated work is by British playwright Nick Payne, whose daring script has a simple storyline – boy and girl meet, court, marry. They face the joys and trials of coupledom: sharing, loving, careers, infidelity, illness.

Many scenes (all of them quite short) are played verbatim, or nearly so, three or more times in rapid succession. The characters shift emphasis, even reverse roles - the victimized party turns victimizer; the adulterer turns adulteress. Other scenes are almost largely rewritten for the multiple versions – delving into a conditional world – one in which this same relationship has played out differently than other scenes have suggested to us.

As Constellations progresses, the effect of so many short scenes is like standing at Oak Street Beach as the waves lap up, each similar, but different. In totality, the effect is mesmerizing.

And those individual scenes are very strong. The excellent performances by Jon Michael Hill as Roland, a beekeeper, and Jessie Fisher as Marianne, a theoretical physicist, give this work its due. (Both play with plausible British accents.)

After the 80 minute performance (no intermission) one can think back and say, “I saw a play tonight, and here’s what happened.” At Wednesday’s performance the audience was clearly engaged, getting the jokes, and tracking the action– as those scenes washed over them again and again.

The unlikely pairing of a beekeeper and a theoretical physicist also assures there will be great contrast in these characters. The beekeeper’s career path, explored through exposition, is quite credible in our renaissance of makers and foodies. He clearly admires the well defined roles of bees (i.e., worker,drone, queen).

But it is the role of Marianne, the theoretical physicist, that may be the key to this drama. Explaining her work to Roland, she posits a world in which all the choices we have made, or didn’t make, and lives we could have led, or did lead – coexist. Perhaps like Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five, these characters are "unstuck in time." This helps explain recurring scenes that diverge from the most likely story line. One example: a wistful exchange when the two, apparently living separate lives, meet up “years later” by sheer chance – a scene (repeated multiple times in various ways) that runs counter to suggestions they lived happily ever after.

The handsome set (Joe Schermoly) carries Constellations' theme well, setting the duo on a seamless, cornerless, groundless landscape of blue, evoking an unbounded cosmos. Above hang webs of LED rope (light design by Heather Gilbert) that crackle and flare like lightning (perhaps a visual cue of String Theory?).

Another provocative aspect of Constellations is conjured by a line delivered repeatedly by Marianne early on, and again near the end: “Mother wasn’t afraid to die; she was afraid of being kept alive.” This play is also about that solemn thought.

Constellations, directed by Jonathan Berry, runs through July 3. In addition to its well regarded author and highly regarded performances in London and New York, the show lets fans see TV star Jon Michael Hill (Detective Marcus Bell in CBS-TV’s Elementary) and Jessie Fisher, who starred on Broadway in Once.

What do Michael Jackson and Abraham Lincoln have in common? Playwright Bixby Elliot explores the parallels between the sixteenth president, the king of pop and the landscape for LGBT youth in his new play “Abraham Lincoln was a Faggot” at About Face Theatre.

Elliot’s play follows two intertwining narratives in an attempt to answer the eternal question: was Abraham Lincoln gay? In the present, there is Cal (Matt Farabee), a high schooler coming to terms with his sexuality while trying to prove Lincoln’s orientation. In the past, there is the supposed story of Lincoln’s homosexual love affairs. In between are Cal’s terrified mother (Jessie Fisher) and uncle (Nathan Hosner) who must traverse the uneasy waters of an older generation’s attitude toward homosexuality.

Director Andrew Volkoff brings together a well-equipped cast for this show. Dana Black’s clowning as narrator, historian and Ellen Degeneres will likely be most remembered. She accents and punctuates nearly every scene and it brings a much needed sense of lightness. Jessie Fisher in a duel role as both Mary Todd Lincoln and Cal’s mother balances  eccentricity and subtlety.

Bixby’s script, even if at times extraneous, has a lot of heart and makes a lot of great points about our media obsessed culture. At first the Michael Jackson musical numbers and background tracks seem strangely out of place, but as the show continues the script points to two lives lived under grueling American scrutiny. The author writes from a much more closeted generation than our current times, but still the struggle to live a life that is true to oneself is the ultimate argument. This essential human necessity transcends race, gender, class and sexuality. The script is well-structured and under Volkoff’s direction, has a real sense of emotional authenticity that could be lost in such an inventive concept.

Through July 5^th. At the Green House Theatre Center. 2257 N Lincoln Ave. 773-404-7336