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A perceptive, controlled and often tongue-in-cheek homage to murder-mystery great Mary Roberts Rinehart (who made “the butler did it” a household phrase), Cameron Feagin’s adaptation is directed ably by Terry McCabe. The production is anchored by Mary Poole’s watertight performance as Agnes, a droll would-be detective in great-aunt’s clothing who spends the summer in a creepy mansion belonging to a mysterious old aristocrat. The adaptation relies heavily on exposition, with numerous monologues performed in front of a curtain that opens and closes to cut from narrative to short action scenes, and because of the sheer time spent telling instead of showing, the show drags somewhat during the second act, which is comprised mostly of anticlimactic explanation with forays into unconvincing melodrama. But it still creates intelligent suspense and real fear remarkably well, with equally smart comic relief in the form of Agnes’ gloriously irrational Irish maid Maggie (Cameron Feagin); the show is self-conscious of its participation in both the murder mystery category as well as the contrived social conventions that genre seems to require. (Monica Westin)

At 1020 W Bryn Mawr, (773)293-3682. Through December 14.

Adam Webster, founding artistic director of the side project theater, returns to his original mission of making the intimate space of his theater a second home to area artists in what he calls an “open door policy” for artists to direct/write/act without creating a traditional ensemble. His ambitious year-long one-act festival in eight parts, “Cut to the Quick” debuts this weekend, with the overall theme of thwarted love, and the way we communicate (or fail to), which will allow Webster to accommodate a huge number of artists he admires as well as trying his hand at crafting disparate pieces into a coherent evening of theater. I spoke with him the weekend before the show opens to hear a little more about this selection and self-described curatorial process.

For a short-play festival, yours seem to be more intent than usual on grouping plays so that each evening creates a single journey, and the different evenings speak to each other. Can you tell me more about that process?

Yeah, curating is a helpful way for me to view what my role has been—it’s all about visualizing different varieties of blending between plays. Most of the shows I’ve chosen also don’t have definitive endings, so the audience has to make conclusions themselves.

Do the shows then somewhat dissolve together?

Hopefully there will be an arc to each evening, at least as I see it in my head, and in rehearsals it’s seemed to work that way. We have several different approaches to a certain theme—for example, the latter half of the ten-minute plays evening has five shows in it that have something to do with war—although I would hate to call it a “war component”—that also incorporates the romantic relationship elements that dominate the plays of the first half of the evening… drawing towards a grittier interpersonal darker side of humanity. So out of the relationship half there continues a thread of how relationships are informed by aggression, and it evolves from there, in a connected but different tone.

It sounds like it took a lot of work—or luck—to get these plays to work in an intertextual, narrative way. How did that come about?

As part of the side project’s mission, I accept new plays all the time. I’ve collected something like 200 plays, and the ones I can’t forget about ended up in a pile. It helped having those seven or eight plays to start.When I was ready to start the festival I read those plays and said, you know, these kind of go together in a broad sense, how can we fill in gaps and take the audience on a real journey?

“Cut to the Quick” consists of 19 plays presented in three programs. The programs are: “Splayed Verbiage,” ten-minute-plays about love and war, runs Fri-Sat at 7:30; Sundays at 2pm; “Static/Cling,” three pieces surrounding the language of families, runs Wednesdays at 7:30; Sundays at 5pm. “Splinters & Shrapnel,” four pieces exploring our skewed world and how we skew it, runs Thursdays and Sundays at 7:30. More details at thesideproject.net. (Monica Westin)

RECOMMENDED

I loved this short story when the New Yorker ran it in 2003, in part because it seemed so un-New Yorkerish—supremely modern and anti-literary, told from the point of view of a teenager fully immersed in pop culture. Hip, satiric and heartbreaking, it’s science fiction of the best sort—a link between contemporary touchstones (soda, video games, brand-name clothing; we are what we consume) and legitimate questions about how we think and what matters most.

George Saunders is the author, and he created a hilariously skewed syntax for this stylized world of perpetual focus groups peopled by teenage tastemakers who live together in an office park somewhere, existing only to assess the latest in material goods. These kids feel special because they know no other way to feel. Drugged and pandered to, they are dressed in the coolest threads, their brains filled with images and text from a bazillion commercials. Slowly—and then very quickly—the status quo collapses for a couple named Jon and Carolyn, who envision leaving this place forever.

Adapting the story for the stage (in a production for Collaboraction), director Seth Bockley adheres to Saunders’ strange-seeming dialogue and high-concept narrative. Saunders is fascinated with the limits of communication and what constitutes an actual experience. When we reference music lyrics and movie moments and advertising images, is it merely another way to express emotions—or a substitute for original, individual thought? Ultimately, words can have only so much meaning—actions seal the deal, especially where love is concerned.

Bockley has made small changes to the original, but the bulk of it remains the same, including the hilarious passage that opens the story, with Jon talking about the sex-ed video that changed everything. “Back in the time of which I am speaking, due to our Coordinators had mandated us, we had all seen that educational video of ‘It’s Yours to Do with What you Like!’ in which teens like ourselfs speak on the healthy benefits of getting off by oneself and doing what one feels like in terms of self-touching, which what we learned from that video was, there is nothing wrong with self-touching, because love is a mystery but the mechanics of love need not be, so go off alone, see what is up, with you and your relation to your own gonads, and the main thing is, just have fun, feeling no shame!”

That kind of thing tends to read better on the page. Spoken aloud it can sound strenuous and arch, and the effort to create an alternate reality sometimes robs the words of their doofy lyricism. It’s the only serious drawback of the adaptation—reading the story is a more satisfying experience, but the play should be taken on its own terms, and there is a lot here to like, especially Lucas Neff’s performance as Jon, the good-looking preppy surfer dude. His eyes are blank because Jon’s inner life is limited; Neff believably inhabits the skin of a human, but the soul of something else—a proto-human. Bockley has the right instincts when it comes to the show’s comedic moments, and Mikhail Fiksel’s sound design (corporate melodic doodles) and Mike Tutaj’s videos (advert flashes that simulate sensory overload) help establish the plasticy aesthetic.

Jon and his fellow assessors are overseen by a staff of middle-manager types, forever clutching coffee mugs like Lumbergh in “Office Space.” Guy Massey plays the supervisor who begins to question their tactics and he is terrific as the only employee who wonders if it’s all worth it. Kelly O’Sullivan is Carolyn, the girl with more backbone than anyone expected, and she brings a grounded intensity to the role. When you catch a glimpse of her through the back doors of the theater—Bockley borrows a trick from Mary Zimmerman, literally bringing the outside in—suddenly the show sheds its intentional artificiality and offers something real and concrete. (Nina Metz)

At the Building Stage, 412 N. Carpenter St., 312-226-9633 or www.collaboraction.org. Thur-Sat 8p, Sun 7p. $15-$25. Through Dec. 20.

Monica Westin

“Jon,” the creepy and beautiful short story by George Saunders about corporate-owned trendsetters living in a bubble of product-testing and commercial-producing, has its world premiere as an adaptation for stage by Collaboraction theater company. I spoke to Saunders—critically acclaimed American short story writer, recent winner of a MacArthur genius grant, and Chicago native—about watching his story take life.

You’ve had a few of your short stories adapted for the stage now, although “Jon” is the first show in Chicago that I know of. You’re also known for being a famous revisionist. Can you tell me about how the adaptation process worked and your experience being part of a collaborating team that adapted the story?

This is the third time I’ve had my work produced, and I love it. Since I don’t do theater regularly, it’s a treat for me. I’m kind of an obsessive story writer, so its nice to have a break and let somebody else in another area lead the way, and all my experiences have been positive. I’ve done some screenwriting and it’s the same thing—I can relax. What’s interesting is, “Pastoralia” was done in New York, and the end production didn’t seem like something I had done. When I work with theater companies adapting my work, I’m involved in just the play script part, which often comes down to just reading drafts. With “Jon” in particular, there are a lot of “voicey” things going on, so if there’s some kind of action that gets written in that needed his voice, I could do that. For example, how do you show onstage a sentence like “over the next six months the relationship went downhill.” To be literally faithful to story you’d have to do pages of explanation, but you can create parallel action to get you there more quickly.

You’re obviously most famous for your short stories, which you’ve compared to jokes in that they’re “risky” enterprises that can quickly fall on their faces—in other words, it’s immediately and painfully obvious when they work and when they don’t. What do you make of theatrical enterprises as risks, and the relationship between narrative and play script?

To be honest, theater is still a kind of a mystery to me, but the whole model of storytelling works in a similar way. I have to keep it really simply for myself, but what I think it is: In the first line of the story, the first motion of a play, you instantly generate out of 360 degrees of possibility a single expectation. The success of the next beat is how well you fulfill that expectation, and it always comes down to a matter of modulating future events. For me, whether it’s a play or a story, the key is to keep in the crazy space where you’re with me, and I go just a little faster than you thought I was gonna go, and to sustain that pace, so right away one thing I realized is that I don’t know how to do that in theater. The surface tension has to be kept, to put it a different way, with different tensions as you transfer from word to stage.

“Jon” is often seen as a kind of “poster child” Saunders story-this totally hilarious and biting satire about consumerism, corporate culture, pop culture, branding. I was intrigued that “Jon” was recently chosen by Jeffrey Eugenides for a selection of “love stories.” What do you make of that?

I actually thought that was just right. For me its funny, I don’t really care that much about the consumer-criticism stuff—I’m not a Luddite; I’m of two minds about it. I just see it as a feature of my culture, both sort of horrible and sort of wonderful. But for me it’s honestly really easy to generate that stuff—I could make up commercials for the rest of my life. When I was growing up, I saw literature as something very distinct from my life, and one day I realized, well if I can just do this kind of writing at will, maybe that’s not a bad thing. But it’s not the point, rather just more generative. Under the surface of this language of consumer culture the other, more interesting things are going on. With “Jon,” I found out early something else has to happen to make it a story. “Jon” as well as other love stories in that book [My Mistresses’ Sparrow is Dead] get talked about as critiques of American pop culture, but for me the love stories is what they’re all about.

The moments I remember best in the story are when the main character, Jon/Randy, is trying to describe the girl he loves, but is unable to do so because he lacks the language, the vocabulary. Hearing him try to articulate is so moving because of that sense that he’s stunted by this linguistic determinism.

Exactly, and that’s the paradox. Despite the world he lives in, his emotion is not stunted, although his language is. He feels, but his lens, his speaker is too small, and it doesn’t mean he’s not feeling. That experience, for me, is somehow where we are as a culture. More than ever, forces are conspiring to make us stunted at communication. If you’re bombarded by inarticulateness long enough, after you go a long time without real communication, after time your emotions start to change. That is the frightening thing to me—that the inability to express yourself results ultimately in the inability to feel. I’ve certainly found in my own life that when I’m stunted in my expression, I shrink emotionally. Conversely, when you can express higher concepts, something in your heart expands. I suppose that’s part of what makes me so delighted to help adapt my work for stage. I worry all the time about my ability to communicate with a wide audience, and seeing young actors find emotion in it brings me a huge amount of comfort—that’s relatable, as they say in Hollywood.

“Jon” opens October 30 and runs through December 14. At the Building Stage, 412 North Carpenter, (312)226-9633.

RECOMMENDED

“Animals could never be so artistically cruel as man,” Ivan, one of the brothers K, offers to his religious brother as what will eventually serve as evidence for God’s non-existence—and is something of a hypothesis for Dostoyevsky’s novel. What’s so admirable about this Lookingglass production is that, moment to moment, it rises to the level of artistry needed to sustain an epic-length and predominantly verbal exploration of such cruelty—and its antidote. The story, of course, is a heavy, dark and unflinching look at the terrible things people do to each other, with a patricide-murder-mystery plot providing a trial that damns everyone for being guilty for everyone else. Cleverly, director Heidi Stillman doesn’t try to counteract the verbosity and constant philosophizing, but instead works somewhat subordinate to the text, and in so doing creates a punk-stylized, sexy production with a fluid set that acts like a set of illustrations for the narrative, and keeps up with the play’s fever pitch. The acting sometimes borders on the frenzied or melodramatic for longer than is comfortable—but hey, that’s what Russian literature seems to do best. (Monica Westin)

At Lookingglass Theatre, 821  North Michigan Avenue, (312)337-0665. Through December 7.

RECOMMENDED

Aviator Amelia Earhart’s 1937 disappearance remains an unsolved mystery, still rife for speculation. In “Amelia Earhart Jungle Princess,” The New Colony posits that Earhart was rescued from her island landing pad by the amoral Altamont corporation to become their unwitting shill. Ferocious jungle cats have nothing on boardroom beasts.

The piece’s location switches back and forth from the island to corporate headquarters as staff devolves into the savages they are. Flashbacks muddy the narrative and drag the through-line down a bit, and playwright James Asmus needs to punch up the funny. But the competent cast invests the story with necessary energy: Kevin Stangler is spot-on as the gee-whiz Iowa kid struggling with his feelings for the married Earhart; Michael Peters is suitably villainous as the brass-balled Altamont CEO; and Nicholas Hernon scores as the bumbling Douglas, the lackey with a creamy, moral center. It’s smart, primal fun. (Lisa Buscani)

At The National Pastime Theater, 4139 N. Broadway, (800) 838-3006. Through Nov. 2.

New troupe National Headquarters’ debut production of Angelus Novus is steeped in concept and experimentation, based on a Paul Klee painting and the related writings of German cultural critic Walter Benjamin. While there’s no questioning the piece’s academic pedigree, the show’s narrative basics get lost in lofty aspiration.

The Angel of History (Angeline Gragasin) visits the down-and-out enclave of McKraken, Illinois. Heroine Angie Lou Lee (Gragasin) proposes that the depressed town hold a pageant to honor the angel and generate tourism’s filthy lucre. But the story dissolves as Angie and ambitious Mayor Minot (Brian Moore) fight for control of the pageant, only to have the whole thing falsely wrapped up as someone’s fever dream.

While Noe Cuellar’s sound design and Meredith Ries and Asta Bennie Hostetter’s costumes capture a ragged carnival atmosphere, the competent, energetic ensemble loses the language to the space’s muddy acoustics. Back to basics: Benjamin deserves better. (Lisa Buscani)

At AV-aerie, 2000 W. Fulton, #310, (312)850-9729. Through October 12.

RECOMMENDED

Seeing director Tommy Tune sign an autograph in the Goodman lobby before the world premiere of “Turn of the Century” was a tangible indication of the star wattage, of the stakes involved in what is likely the fall season’s most-anticipated theatrical opening. With the nine-time Tony winner helming the debut of the new musical from “Jersey Boys” creators Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, and featuring movie star Jeff Daniels and Broadway star Rachel York playing the romantic leads, this is a production clearly pointed toward the bright lights of Broadway.

Dixie and Billy are success-deprived musicians who find themselves together on the eve of the new millennium. (Hearing “1999″ performed as a piano “standard” affirms Prince’s decision to retire the song from his repertoire.) They’re soon magically transported back a hundred years to the dawn of the twentieth century, where Billy realizes they can release the hits of the upcoming era as their own creations, and convinces Dixie to play along. Before long, they are the superstars they’ve always dreamed of being, albeit not on terms ever imagined. The conceit allows for a songbook-of-the-century musical mash-up, from Irving Berlin and George Gershwin to Paul Anka and Paul Simon, a process that subtly evokes its own commentary about the relative paucity of contemporary culture, perhaps exemplified in Dixie’s aspiration to be like “Celine Dion!” The result is a crowd-pleasing period musical in the tradition of, say, “Thoroughly Modern Millie” with some thoroughly modern juxtapositions, like a comical take on Helen Reddy’s “I Am Woman” sung by Ziegfeld Girls. Walt Spangler’s set soars with gorgeous simplicity: an oval portal envelopes the stage, with an encircling LED crawl that provides setting details and some humorous commentary; inside its borders a multipurpose backdrop curves like the sky itself, sometimes turning the set into a glorious epic snow globe. In the Goodman’s relatively intimate space, the overall effect is magical; this is the Broadway musical of the imagination, one that the reality of the much larger theaters normally housing big musicals can’t imitate.

Under Tune’s direction, the musical is a loving homage to the era it plunders; the costume and choreography is “Top Hat” come to life (without the dancing of Fred Astaire, or much dancing at all, for that matter). The radiant Rachel York, with her big voice and just the right vulnerability, is perfection as Dixie. Jeff Daniels, as Billy, is not. In real life, he’s a Michigan-based movie star who does admirable things for Midwest theater and even croons a bit as a singer-songwriter, but his voice is adequate at best. Of course, his role doesn’t really require the big pipes since he plays the piano man, but it does call for lady-killer charisma and that’s not him. He’s just too affable, in spite of the douche-bags he’s played in the movies at times. But he’s good enough: with the sparkling York at his side and a crackerjack ensemble around him, anyone with a soft spot for the nostalgia of Tin Pan Alley and old Broadway will swoon.

What elevates “Turn of the Century” above mere pleasantly nostalgic musical theater is the sort of Einsteinian cultural paradox it conjures. Before long, a 12-year-old Irving Berlin (played with beyond-his-years verve by Jonah Rawitz in a very demanding role) enters the lives of Billy and Dixie, who’ve been merrily making hay “writing” the songs Berlin’s destined to write. What will Berlin and his fellow songwriting greats do with their lives if all their songs are taken? The musical asks the question but then brushes it aside in order to rush us toward the obligatory happy ending.

It’s a sly comment, nonetheless, positing that our culture is milking its past dry. Are Brickman and Elice offering penance for their own transgressions, their “plundering” the songs of others for profit here and in “Jersey Boys”? Or are they simply asking a big question of our time: if every big hit is either a revival or a repurposing of a movie (hello, “Dirty Dancing” and ‘The Producers”), what kind of future are we leaving for the culture? (Brian Hieggelke)

At Goodman Theatre, 170 North Dearborn, (312)443-3800, through November 2.

A pair of estranged sisters glare at each other across the dusty lawn of their childhood home in Texas, a cagey reunion that plays out in silent looks and blunt conversation. They are two sides of a coin, fraternal twins with a long, jealous history between them. They press each other’s buttons out of habit. And anyway, when someone gets under your skin—even if she is your twin goddamn sister—why fake at playing nice?

Killer scene, but you have to wade through nearly three hours of “Ten Cent Night” to get there. Stuffed with eccentric characters and interlocking stories, Marisa Wegrzyn’s newest play could use a good-old-fashioned edit. Too many random ideas are never fully developed. (Richard Shavzin is the director.)

The play defies easy plot summary—not necessarily a bad thing—but in this specific case, there’s a wandering, aimless quality to the narrative. The aforementioned sisters are the surviving children of a country-music star who recently blew his head off. Dee (Maura Kidwell) is the repressed one, Roby (Anna Carini) the hellion.

There are other things going on, but Carini is the one to watch—she is just out-of-control enough to make it halfway interesting. (A nuanced Morgan McCabe, as an elegantly aging prostitute—don’t ask—is also quite good.) But the play doesn’t ignite until Roby comes face-to-face with Dee. Everything that comes before feels like too much filler. (Nina Metz)

At Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, (312)633-0630 or chicagodramatists.org. Thur-Sat 8p, Sun 3p. $25-$35. Through October 26.

By Monica Westin

Angeline Gragasin is the creator of “Angelus Novus,” a new physical theater piece by National Headquarters investigating American archetypes, consumer culture, and history that’s also a traveling show visiting under-served neighborhoods in Chicago. Its collaborative artists, trained in performance traditions from Commedia dell’Arte to miming, use circus and spectacle, clown and dance, original live and electronic music, and large-object acrobatics to depict power struggle, truth-telling and social activism in an ailing urban community. We discussed the work with  Gragasin just a few days before its debut.

“Angelus Novus” combines such diverse theatrical forms as pageantry and historical reenactments. Could you start by describing it as a performance? What is the relationship between the show, originally inspired by the Klee painting “Angelus Novus,” and its namesake?

First of all, “Angelus Novus” is a theater piece—it is a play—in that there is text. The story was commissioned for the piece, with the original inspiration being the Klee painting “Angelus Novus” and Walter Benjamin’s concept of the angel of history. The pageantry and historical reenactments fit the material, and in fact the different theatrical elements came together quite naturally. It’s not an adaptation of the painting, or some kind of attempt to bring a painting to life. Instead we’re trying to create contemporary scenario and archetypes that evoke these images and concepts. To describe the play in a sentence: the angel of history lands in a fictional, corrupt small town in Illinois in 2008. If anything, I would describe “Angelus Novus” as futuristic.

The process for the show was very collaborative between you, the writer, and the input and improvisations of actors, over the course of the year. How did that work?

I knew as early as May of 2007 that I was going to make a piece through a residency I was awarded just out of college, and I didn’t want to make a halfhearted piece—I wanted to use it as an opportunity to make a full production, an independent production. So first of all I had to consider how to finance it—I was thinking, how can I spin the project so that it can allow me to get this grant, for example? Of course finance was only one factor, but the project kept expanding once I realized the more opportunity to create and involve more people. The writer, director, composer and I spent all this time reading things and looking at images, sending YouTube videos back and forth, and in February the scenic and costume designer got involved. A lot of this was remote collaboration, and I think that issues of distance, proximity and internet communication are very much reflected in both the process and production itself—both fragmented but related experiences. The actors were the last to come into play, and when they started all I knew was which archetypes I wanted to work with—I’m very fascinated with tyrannical dictators, for example, and I wanted an angel of history, we knew we wanted a chorus, and it’s just kept evolving.

Will it keep developing through production?

It certainly won’t be a different show every night, but it will be dynamic because it’s so action-based. This is why we can call it physical theater—it’s not just that we’re training physically, although we’re doing that, too, working very very hard… Here’s an example: when we’re working with cues, the music isn’t going off of verbal cue—it’s going off of action. And timing of action could go a little differently every night. The action cues are all interrelated. One person does one action, which cues another action…

Almost like a Rube Goldberg kind of experience—

—and that will change every night. It’s not choreography per se, that’s important to know. Some scenes have no text at all, just movement… The text of the play is very much is heightened but not esoteric—it’s meant to be understood.

The show contains influences from Walter Benjamin to television commercials. Tell me more about high and low culture in this performance.

Something that makes these juxtapositions different is that we’re doing it in a way that is not meant to give insight, it’s not about representation and meaning-making—it’s that we put these elements of say, Paul Bunyan and Sacagawea together, and that action is the kind of commercial action you see everyday, on television or on the internet. The experience of having all of these images, simultaneously, makes it difficult to maintain clarity. I almost would have liked to have gone further, and done more with commercials, internet, new media…

When you started your research for this project, what were you hoping to address? Did you have a driving message, or hypothesis, about the performance?

Yes, and it didn’t have to do so much with the content of the play as the process. I want to address the theater-making process, the performance process. I want to show that it can be done independently, that it can be done with very little money. Most resources for “Angelus Novus” are donations, or borrowed… I wanted to show that it can be original, entirely original. I wrote a really angry essay once—maybe you shouldn’t reference this—about how in Chicago people think that contemporary adaptations of classic plays count as original. I want to tell people: make something from scratch. That’s very important.

You’ve said before that you don’t believe in side projects.

That’s right. Production-wise, everyone who was involved are—I would venture to say—precocious masters of our craft. We’re not dilettantes—we’re not dabbling in forms. We’re highly trained—in clowning, miming, acting, acrobatics, Commedia dell’Arte, and so forth—and we can and will be more trained… But its not like we’re doing Suzuki; I’m not training people in Commedia dell’Arte. We use the training in order to find our own style and our own process and methods. I have too much respect for the forms we’re borrowing from to bastardize them… that sort of thing really offends me. If people understand that everyone off the street can’t just start performing Shakespeare, why isn’t there that respect for other kinds of performances? To make any kind of artistic statement takes a lot of consideration.

“Angelus Novus” opens October 2 at AV-aerie, 2000 West Fulton, #310, (312)850-9729, info@nationalheadquarters.org.