Displaying items by tag: James Lewis

I reviewed TITUS ANDRONICUS in mid-February, so I was eager to see the sequel!

In TITUS, Shakespeare tells the story from the viewpoint of the regnant major characters: Empress Tamora and her sons Chiron, Demetrius and Bassianus; Lucius and the unlucky Lavinia, progeny of Titus Andronicus himself. GARY occurs immediately after that sensationally gruesome tale and tells the story from behind the green baize doors: two very lowly servants are charged with cleaning up the mess of bloody bodies strewn thither and yon. Let me stress, however, that one need not have seen TITUS previously; GARY works just fine as a stand-alone.

Gary (brilliantly played by William Delforge) is a servant who aspires to the lofty status of Fool and wistfully dresses the part. His BFF (tho she may not agree!) is the maid Janice (Hannah Rhode), less imaginative but patently more astute than Gary. We encounter one old friend from TITUS: the delicious Cameron Austin Brown as Carole, the midwife who delivered Empress Tamora’s baby, which was instantly and inarguably seen to have been fathered by the Moor Aaron (James Lewis). Inexplicably, Carol survives the resulting collieshangle [great word, yeah? Means donnybrook or argy-bargy. Aren’t words fun then?] to reappear in the midst of the (very) bloody task of tidying up the corpses littering the palace.

So, the plot being fairly straightforward, I choose now to focus on the playwright, Taylor Mac, who uses the pronoun ‘judy’, a personalized pronoun for someone whose gender (professionally and personally) is constantly changing. Judy describes GARY as ‘a tragedy determined to become a comedy’ – a definition I can absolutely get next to! Mac’s (absolutely fabulous) bio provides a simple list of judy’s achievements, which include: a MacArthur “genius”, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist, a Tony nominee for Best Play, and the recipient of the International Ibsen Award, the Kennedy Prize, the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, a Drama League Award, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, two Obie’s, and two Bessies. Whew! Judy’s webmaster has a lot of work keeping judy’s website current!

And how lucky are we to live in Chicago, where Redtwist Theatre is mounting a production of this extraordinary phenomenal deviant unorthodox outlandish bizarre freakish mind-boggling peculiar implausible superlative disruptive … well, I (obviously) could go on and on – god how I love word hippo’s thesaurus! What I’m trying to say is I really really liked the show, but it’s unquestionably not for everyone. Don’t take your grandma to see GARY, and please don’t bring the kids! And BTW, don’t worry about the blood splashing – Redtwist will provide a water-repellant poncho upon request.

OK, that’s the playwright, let’s move on. The remainder of the production team is familiar to those of us who frequent Redtwist Theatre.

Director Steve Scott: Steve has been around; he’s a member of the Redtwist ensemble and served as producer at Goodman Theatre for more than thirty years. For three decades Steve taught at Chicago College of Fine Arts at Roosevelt University. He has received six Jeff nominations, an After Dark Award, a special Jeff Award for career achievement, and the League of Chicago Theaters’ Lifetime Achievement Award.  So … Steve knows what he’s about, but with a production so labyrinthine as GARY, he welcomed aid from Assistant Director Korey Joseph and Technical Director Jeff Brain.

Dusty Brown is another familiar name; they served as Dramaturg and Sound Designer for GARY. Fight Choreographer Seth Eggenschwiller was excited to continue prioritizing actor safety alongside hard-hitting theatrical violence. The lighting for GARY was complex and superbly executed by Lighting Designer Piper Kirchhofer.

Props Designer Robin Manganaro loves working with teams and stories that represent BIPOC, neurodivergent, and LGBTQ+ perspectives; definitely the case with GARY at Redtwist.  I imagine (and certainly hope) Costume Designer kClare McKellaston (yet another familiar name!) had real fun with the costumes for GARY – and they came out absolutely fabulous!

Scenic Designer Eric Luchen also did a marvelous job with the scanty space he had to work in at Redtwist; remember the splash warnings! Luchen was most recently awarded the Conda Award for Excellence in Scenic Design for his production of ‘Mary Poppins’ in Newcastle, Australia.

One is at times sitting mere inches from the action – only an excellent and very professional cast could keep from overbalancing and falling into someone’s lap! this contiguity made interaction with the audience well-nigh unavoidable; people were given beads, and during a long oration I was able to slip a mint to Hannah Rhode.   

We come last to stage management. I asked a friend who’s held every backstage position imaginable, “So, what does a Stage Manager actually do, anyway?”  They replied, “Everything.” And indeed, Everything was done by Co-Stage Managers Ashley O'Neill and Maria Reyes, and Production Stage Manager Raine DeDominici.

OK: the stage is set, props arranged, scripts perused; audience members file expectantly in to take the available seats (16? 18?).  What now?

The cast of GARY is small – only three actors, and I’ve already named all three: William Delforge as Gary; Hannah Rhode as Janice; Cameron Austin Brown as the midwife Carol. (a wad of fabric was cast as ‘baby’.)

CAMERON AUSTIN BROWN, I remember fondly as midwife Carol from TITUS. He occupied the role and made us believe: once this accoucheuse [another great word yeah? 3 cheers for word hippo!] laid eyes on the baby, they knew that this dusky little morsel was fated for elimination; one could not, after all, retain this irrefutable evidence of the Empress’ infidelity … and adulterous miscegenation to boot! What on Earth would the neighbors say?

But Carol, irrefutable witness that the dark infant proceeded from the Empress’ loins, is fond of this morsel of iniquity. Luckily (for Carol!) the babe is also cherished by Aaron, the Moor whose protracted liaison with the Empress has now borne this damning fruit.

HANNAH RHODE is Janice – by my reckoning the only one of this group who’s got the good sense God gave a little green worm. Gary finds her a bit boring, because Janice is focused on that which is practicable, functional, sensible … just reading that list of words would send Gary into a snooze. Rhodes is wonderful in this role, keeping a straight face in the most comical circumstances, even while giving Gary a perfect “WTF??” look. Yet despite being commonsensible, levelheaded and prudent (all opprobrious qualities to Gary!), Rhode gives her an essential likability. All three of the characters are actually quite appealing, despite their more vulgar and indecorous traits.

Ah, Gary … GaryGaryGary. William Delforge is well and truly brilliant in this role. I just hope he’s taking his vitamins to keep him going as he capers and cavorts, prances and gambols, downplaying Gary’s knavery with exuberant tomfoolery.  And one is forced to admire Gary’s ambitions: he will be a Fool! In fact, Delforge shows us that Gary already is a Fool, in all its positive and negative permutations. I truly loved Delforge’s characterization of Gary.

I usually unabashedly single out a member of the cast as my ‘favorite’, but GARY has me discombobulated [one of my favorite words for decades!] – I truly can’t choose between the three! Hannah Rhode’s Janice was perfection. Cameron Austin Brown’s Carol was sublime (and oh my, Brown is simply adorable!). And I just finished waxing eloquent about Delforge’s Gary.

*sigh* no way to pick

But here's the really good news: GARY: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus will be playing at Redtwist Theatre for another month! Really, truly, GARY will play through June 1 at Redtwist, 1044 W Bryn Mawr. And I VERY HIGHLY RECOMMEND you check it out!

*This review is also featured on https://www.theatreinchicago.com/!

“Network” at Invictus Theatre Co. is one fun, funny, exciting show. In this full-throttle Chicago debut at the WIndy City Playhouse on Irving Park Road, we get a powerhouse rendering of Lee Hall’s script.

Adapted to the stage in 2017 for a London production from the Oscar-winning 1976 screenplay by Paddy Chayefsky, the passage of nearly 50 years since the film version has made the stage version even more powerful.

Chayefsky used his television insider experience skillfully to create a rollickingly funny portrait of the follies of big media business. Hall also laces the script with damning indictments of the intersection of capitalism and big media news reportage that has exchanged integrity for ratings-driven content, debasing news, and forsaking the public trust. This angle makes “Network” even more timely today, the era when TV’s commentating personalities (and online streamers for that matter), untethered from factual information, have been in the ascendance.

We’ve also watched as these personalities crashed and burned, costing the media owners billions of dollars as they flame out amid defamation and libel suits.
In the case of the 1976 “Network,” with its amazing performances by Peter Finch as Howard Beale and Faye Dunaway as his ambitious producer Diana Christensen, the movie played as satire (though said to be based on a true story).

Five decades later with Invictus Theatre’s “Network,” we see a vivid portrayal of life imitating art. With a large cast and many moving parts—directed superbly by Charles Askenaizer—we meet news anchor Howard Beale (James Turano is positively magnetic), a network television anchorman who is fired for his declining ratings. When in one of his last few broadcasts he promises to kill himself on air, no one among the producers and directors notices. But the audience does, and his ratings skyrocket.

 In the control booth at UBS (l-r): John Chambers, James Lewis, Joe Sergio, and Anne Trodden. 

Calculating there is gold to be had, producer Diana Christensen (Anne Trodden is pitch perfect) convinces station exec Frankl Hackett (a deft performance by Joe Sergio) to reverse his edict to fire Beale, and instead give him his own show.

The news slot is then transformed from a me-too recitation of the day's top news, to ranting commentator Beale before a live studio audience on “The Howard Beale Show.” Suddenly sponsors are willing to pay millions and producers let Beale do and say whatever he wants. That is, until a global mega corporation moves to acquire the parent of UBS, and Beale attacks the prospective merger. This triggers even more hilarious outcomes as the big corporate brass intervene directly, bringing down the hammer on Beale in a come to Jesus moment complete with organ music and stained glass windows.

It’s all this and more, in the fast-paced setting of a television studio. What Chayefsky only imagined has now become the reality all around us, where the “talent” (as these on-air stars are known) have power over their corporate bosses - news ethics be damned. It is only when the tab for subjorning falsities for ratings gets high—think voting machine maker Dominion’s $787 million settlement with Fox News, or sex harassment settlements—that management reigns in the likes of Tucker Carlson, Bill O’Reilly, etc.

“Network” is a fantastic production, with convincing lights-camera-action of a television station, and even the audience called into the action. The control booth serves as a droll commentary on the action as we see the producer Christensen, exec Schumacher, producer Harry Hunter (John Chambers) and the Director (James Lewis) delight in Beale’s antics on air. A special shout-out to Lewis, whose mostly wordless role centers on his body language and reactions within the control booth—real acting!

Highly recommended, “Network” runs through September 29 at the WIndy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road in Chicago.