Displaying items by tag: K Todd Freeman

“Downstate” is a bit of a dog whistle for Chicagoland, suggesting a cultural distinction between urbanites in the north, and the vast agrarian expanses to the south – downstate - where trash goes, sewage flows, and where the state government builds prisons.

The word becomes generalized in Downstate, a new play by Pulitzer Prize winner Bruce Norris, which looks at the fraught issue of finding housing for convicted pedophiles after they serve time for their crimes. During parole, these men are returned to the” community,” but not to their home.

Instead they live in halfway houses operated by non-profits, sited in carefully proscribed areas that must be so-many hundreds of feet away from schools and other areas children may gather. The inhabitants are not allowed to go online, or possess a smartphone, keep alcohol, use Facebook, or move about freely.

Norris takes the less politically correct position of empathy in showing the suffering imposed on these pariahs, who in the world of #MeToo are unlikely to get a second thought. They are subject to regular inquisitions by parole officers, and a concatenation of rules and restrictions means there are few locations for them to live in such transitional halfway houses. So, they are shipped Downstate.

“I started doing a lot of reading about the things paroled sex offenders increasingly face– registries, residency restrictions, neighborhood watches, self-appointed vigilante groups,” says Norris. “These are post-incarceration punishments, that don’t exist for any other category of criminal.”

That in a nutshell is what Downstate is about: four men holed up in a house run by a Lutheran social service agency. They can go to work and come home, and that’s about it – even the local IGA grocery store is only 2,450 feet from the elementary school. They are indeed strange bedfellows, and Norris gives us the nuance of the caliber of their individual violations:

• the piano teacher Fred (Steppenwolf stalwart Francis Guinan) who had sex with two adolescent male students. Guinan, in an understated performance, shows the range that can be expressed within a very constrained character.

• Gio (Glenn Davis in an amazing, hyperbolic performance) a frenetic man on the make with a plan in his hand, whose crime was considered Category 1 (lower level) statutory rape of a young woman below age.

• Felix (Eddie Torres) who was convicted of incest with his daughter. Torres conveys the abject suffering and torment as he loses access to his family.

• A Broadway choreographer and accomplished promoter and musical artist, Dee, who fell in love with a 14-year-old boy in a road show of Peter Pan.

As Dee, K. Todd Freeman gives what will certainly become a definitive expression to the role. He is the settled voice of reason and a nurturant center of gravity within this ad hoc family of men, shopping for them and helping to make a home for them. As audience, we listen to Dee: he dishes and gives back as good as he gets – and he becomes our guide and the closest thing to a voice of reason.

Norris may be toying with us, then, by making Dee a very sympathetic character, while at the same time making him an unrepentant advocate for man-boy love – the movement that sees adult male love of minor boys as a victimless crime, and which advocates for release of those convicted of it. 

“There’s not many cases of death by blowjob!” Dee asserts. Gio, for one, abhors Dee both for his gayness and for his pederasty, with some violent outbursts in the house as a result.

Norris focuses this tension with the introduction of Andy (Tim Hopper), a Northshore suburbanite who with his wife Em (Matilda Ziegler) comes to visit Fred to seek redress, to “process” the issue and obtain formal emotional closure by getting him to sign an explicit statement acknowledging his wrongs. Norris contrasts Andy’s suffering with the experience of Dee, who comes to the defense of Fred, while revealing that he, too, was abused as a child – and claims to be none the worse for it. Fred and Em bring all the conventional middle class psychological expression to their claims - but framed within the context of Downstate, it begins to sound more like "white people's problems." 

Norris seems fearless in treading into such troublemaker territory. His Pulitzer winning Clybourn Park visited historic efforts in 1959 to block African Americans from moving into a white Chicago neighborhood, then returned 50 years later to watch a reversal of prejudice as whites tried to gentrify the same now-black area. Downstate will test its audience even further, since pedophiles are largely today's lepers.

Downstate is directed by Pam MacKinnon, and she had her hands full to balance the energy emanating from this remarkable company of performers. A call out to Cecilia Noble as parole officer Ivy - it's almost a thankless role to play the character who has a thankless job, in a play like this. But thank you, Ivy, for very good performance. 

Of particular note, the production is a joint effort by Steppenwolf and the National Theatre of the U.K. It may surprise you to learn the cast is transatlantic. The flawless, broad, working class accent of extreme south suburban Effie (played by Aimee Lou Wood, a Manchester, England native) and the dulcet Kenilworth articulation of Em (played by Londoner Matilda Ziegler) were learned right here on Halsted street, under the tutelage of Gigi Buffington.

Downstate plays through November 18 at Steppenwolf Theatre in Chicago. After that it moves to the National Theatre London in January 2019.

Steppenwolf Theatre’s Airline Highway focuses on those who are mostly forgotten, unseen or unfortunately, even looked down upon by many. In this case the story revolves around a group of outcasts who inhabit The Hummingbird Motel in New Orleans that have come to call themselves “family”. Each comes with their own heartbreaking story or unfortunate set of life circumstances that has led their way to become motel dwellers. Mostly scratching and clawing for another day of food and/or shelter, audience members are face to face with a reality that is mostly hidden, or conciously forgotten, from our daily lives. We inevitably see the caring that is shared amongst each other in such a group and realize that a self-made family of “invisibles”, as they are referred to, have the same hopes, dreams and capacity for love, whether giving or receiving, as anyone else.

As one walks into the theatre they are first met with a highly impressive set that recreates an aging motel with brick façade complete with an office, large vintage stand up sign (perhaps 1950s) and a litter-filled parking lot that one could swear is actual concrete. We see a stairwell, several room doors, an abandoned Honda Civic and a backdrop of an evening sky. As the play progresses we are introduced to one colorful character after another – a laid back office manager, an enthusiastic hippie who considers himself a poet, a vibrant transvestite, an maturing hooker, a stripper who idealizes about having an office job and a handyman who is always trying to make a buck by offer to make repairs around the motel.

It is soon uncovered that the group is planning to throw a party for Miss Ruby, a near death elderly resident who once owned a famous strip club and has also taken her share of wrong turns in life. But this is no ordinary party –it is a funeral – a living funeral. It was Miss Ruby’s request to have a send off while still alive. As the party is being put together, we learn many revealing aspects about the past of each resident. We also see a family bond that rivals most. When Bait Boy returns to attend the party (now considered somewhat successful by the group’s standards), another dimension is added to the group’s dynamic. Adding to his questionable homecoming, Bait Boy, now “Greg”, brings his girlfriend’s sixteen year-old daughter who plans to interview the “subculture” for a high school paper. This is unsettling for some of the Hummingbird residents.

Airline Highway can be funny at times and it is often moving. A slew of wonderful performances by K. Todd Freeman as “Sissy”, Kate Buddeke (“Tanya”), Caroline Neff (“Krista”), Scott Jaeck (“Wayne”) and Gordon Joseph Weiss as the eccentric and loveable “Francis” make this story as believable as it is enjoyable. It is hard not to appreciate every privilege we have experienced in life after seeing this production. Maybe it’s a few bad decisions or perhaps it’s a couple runs of bad luck, but in Airline Highway we see that anyone is susceptible to conditions that can make a life spiral downward. We also see displays of strength, love and courage. There are times we simply envy the closeness of the group and the protectiveness they have for each other.

Flowing at a pace that allows everything to develop with its own organic freshness, Airline highway is a delightful story that brings strong personal ties to the forefront and recognizes the fact that families come in all shapes and sizes, connected by blood or not.

Brilliantly directed by Joe Mantello, Lisa D’Amour’s Airline Highway is playing at Steppenwolf Theatre through February 8^th, 2015. For tickets and/or more information, visit www.steppenwolf.org or call 312-335-1650. 

*Above photo: (left to right) Carloyn Braver and Carloine Neff

*Below photo: The cast of Airline Highway currently being performed at Steppenwolf Theatre (1650 N. Halsted)