Alan Wilder (Ivan), John Mahoney (Richard) and Francis Guinan (Sharky). Photo by Michael Brosilow.

RECOMMENDED

Booze and religion have always made strange bedfellows. In Christianity, you have a founder who goes to a party and changes water into wine, and reportedly not the cheap stuff, either. Even the gospels have Jesus being directly accused of being a glutton and a drunkard by his detractors. And that was in a sunny, warm and dry country. In an Irish winter, where the long, cold dark nights howl and days are gray and short, drinking becomes a national pastime. Add Christmas into the mix, and well, you get the idea.

In Conor McPherson’s “The Seafarer,” five guys are sitting around and drinking on Christmas Eve having the same kind of dull and meaningless conversations that come up when that happens (if this all sounds familiar, much the same scenario—right down to a dilapidated drunk Christmas in Dublin—occurs in McPherson’s “A Dublin Carol,” which Steppenwolf is presenting upstairs concurrently with McPherson’s “The Seafarer”). One of the guys, however, reveals himself as the Devil to one of the characters in a private moment, and lets the guy know that he would be in hell right now if he hadn’t been able to beat the Devil at a card game when they were in jail together years ago. They’ll be playing again tonight, but the results will be different and the two will enter the netherworld through a hole in the wall. Of course, this all seems quite reasonable when you’re drunk, but the problem for an audience that is sober is how literally this all appears to go down, making you think that you’re suddenly spending the holidays with Mel Gibson.

For my taste, McPherson wants to have the sophistication and metaphor of “The Seventh Seal” with the religious sensibility of “The Omen,” but like booze and religion, these make for strange companions. Perhaps when the brain is booze-soaked, people need more radical wake-up calls, and for those of a fundamentalist disposition who like to get drunk, this is your holiday play. For the rest of us, thankfully, there is enough of McPherson’s eloquent writing and a first-class Steppenwolf ensemble who act the shit out of this material—including Steppenwolf founding member John Mahoney back at the company—enough to make this a worthwhile experience, even sober. (Dennis Polkow)

Through February 22, 2009 at Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (773)335-1650; $20-$70.

RECOMMENDED

In the vast pantheon of Christmas theater, “Dublin Carol” is unique first and foremost because it is a play powerful and eloquent enough be performed outside of the holiday season. Yes, every minute takes place on Christmas Eve, but Irish playwright Conor McPhearson’s 2000 booze-soaked retrograde riff on “A Christmas Carol” might well be called “Anatomy of an Alcoholic,” so powerfully does it give its audience a phenomenology of what the ravages of alcoholism do to an individual as well as all those around him or her.

We have all been on the receiving end of the endless boozy broadcasts that veteran Chicago actor turned “CSI” television star William Petersen as John relentlessly and convincingly gives in “Carol.” As he is boring and alienating his 20-year-old assistant Mark (Stephen Louis Grush) to death, he tells Mark about a bartender who had “a good listening quality” and adds, “You have it, too.” Sure. It’s called being held hostage. Booze tends to clog up receivers, i.e., the ability to listen and respond to others and their needs, but often does wonders for broadcasting a wealth of useless information that sounds like wisdom under the influence but like the crap it usually is to those who are sober. And yet, every now and then, some truths cut so deeply that even the effects of the bottle cannot fully numb them.

The “redemptive” moment, if you want to call it that, is an unexpected visit from John’s daughter (Nicole Wiesner) that he hasn’t seen in ten years, coming to courageously ask him to come visit her mother and his estranged wife, who is dying of cancer. After an endless self-absorbed checklist of sins of commission and omission and a powerful confession of squandered attempts to get his life back together along the way, his daughter asks if he had to do things all over again, would he do things differently? In an inverted “It’s A Wonderful Life” response, John tells her that he just wishes it had all just “never happened.” “Do you wish I had never happened?” she voices, to no response. It’s one of those moments that you hope will imitate art when it happens in real life, but most often, doesn’t. His silence speaks volumes that she of course, can interpret as a lack of love for her personally, but the reality is that this is a man that hasn’t been able to love himself nor feel much else in decades, and to make matters worse, admits as much, drunk or sober.

Aside from one of the most eloquent monologues on the manic hell of alcoholism from the inside out (McPhearson has made his struggle public and, curiously, his more recent “on the wagon” plays are less monologue-like and feature more character interaction and narrative than his earlier soliloquy-filled “off the wagon” plays) perhaps the most fascinating aspect of “Dublin Carol” is that it does not reach for the formulaic finale of most Yuletide yarns. Exactly what happens to John, who already has ignored his daughter’s plea not to drink before coming to the hospital, is never fully revealed under Steppenwolf ensemble member Amy Morton’s direction (her first Steppenwolf project back home since her Tony Award-nominated Broadway role in “August: Osage County” although she’s set to open the same role in London this week), though fascinatingly, audience members coming out of the opening were sure that it had. Does he go, or does he sit around continuing to soak himself in denial and self-pity? There are strong staging hints in both directions, to be sure, but we are left in the ambiguity that a world anesthetized by alcohol tends to approximate. (Dennis Polkow)

“Dublin Carol” plays through January 4 at the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, $50-$70. (312)335-1650.

RECOMMENDED

Magnificent. I’m still not quite sure why it’s billed for “young adults”— this is one of the subtlest and smartest productions of Tennessee Williams I’ve seen, directed by ensemble member Yasen Peyankov with gorgeous restraint technically and utter mastery by the superb actors, who nail every single performance as heartbreaking and uproarious simultaneously. The balance of power in the family’s relationships and the pathetic longings of each character are carried off just right, and with all the terrible force we can stand. James T. Alfred as Tom, the protagonist son and narrator of the play, eventually emerges as its anti-hero, delivering monologues and explanation with exquisite vulnerability but also the kind of clarity that every “adult” production could use. An African-American cast adds an extra element of intelligent provocation, especially when the characters challenge each other about “the difference between us and them” and the histrionic matriarch (in a truly astounding performance by Shanesia Davis) waxes nostalgic about a past life of servants and ease. (Monica Westin)

At Steppenwolf Downstairs Theatre, 1650 N Halsted, (312)335-1650 Through November 9.

A visually stunning exploration of archetypal journeys. “Kafka on the Shore” follows an old man, damaged as a child in a mysterious accident, who searches blindly but faithfully for a cat and a mysterious stone; and a teenage runaway trying simultaneously to both determine and escape from his place in the world. The show incorporates elements of murder mystery, psychoanalytic theory and magical realism in its explicit mission to explore the boundary between the real world and the unconscious. Ultimately, both the greatest strength and weakness of the story is that none of the riddles are ever solved, and audiences will either be frustrated at all the strands that are left unraveled or else delighted at the open-ended conclusion. Instead, the play, beautifully adapted by Frank Galati from the novel by Haruki Murakami, acts as a kind of kaleidoscope of images and characters who morph, combine, and fall into patters of perfect dream logic. Juxtapositions of pop culture and bizarre sexual motifs provide comic relief and lightness when “Kafka” threatens to drown in its own weight. (Monica Westin)

At Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650, September 18 through November 16. Click here for a special 2-for-1 offer for Newcity readers.

Click here to read a feature about this production.

By Valerie Jean Johnson

The work of famed Japanese writer Haruki Murakami has been captivating readers around the globe for decades. Translated into dozens of languages, Murakami’s stories are a delicious blend of dream and reality, the tangible and the ethereal, populated with characters both fantastically bizarre and starkly human. Director Frank Galati, whose stage adaptation of Murakami’s “Kafka on the Shore” opens at Steppenwolf Theatre this week, describes the writer’s world as “a very strange, liminal place somewhere between illusion and reality; highly theatrical, characters larger than life; issues that are historical and geopolitical and psychological…[and] tremendously funny. He has a fabulous sense of humor, a real zest for life, a tremendous interest in the uncanny, the grotesque. And he is a very serious thinker, too, about matters of life and death, mortality, memory, sexuality, dreams. I just love him.”

For Galati—who won a 1990 Tony Award for his adaptation of “The Grapes of Wrath” (which has subsequently been translated into dozens of languages and performed by theater companies around the globe)—bringing literature to the stage has been a lifelong pursuit. And Murakami seems to have a particular hold on the renowned actor, director and writer: “I find [his] world somewhat irresistible,” says Galati. Indeed, Kafka is his second round with the author’s work—his 2006 production “after the quake,” based on Murakami’s short-story collection inspired by the 1995 Tokyo gas attacks, premiered at Steppenwolf to great acclaim, and enjoyed highly successful runs at several regional theaters including Berkeley Repertory.

In contrast to the concise narrative of Murakami’s short stories that make up “quake,” “Kafka” is a 600-page epic tale of  “a young boy’s fateful journey that crosses the boundaries between imagination and reality” that would require a days-long performance to tell in full. This is where the work of the adapter becomes akin to that of the sculptor, the miner: “[This book] has many comedies hidden inside it, and the process is a matter of digging them out and putting them together. Finding the play inside of the novel—its an adventure,” says Galati. “It’s full of fun—strange twists and turns, coincidences, reveals, discoveries and switcharoos. Its an adventure and a coming-of-age novel. Much like [Mann’s] ‘Magic Mountain,’ or ‘Catcher in the Rye’—which Murakami translated into Japanese just before beginning work on ‘Kafka,’ it’s reminiscent of ‘Huckleberry Finn’ and ‘Tom Sawyer’ and ‘Candide.’ And it’s an Oedipal narrative [as well]. All of these are aspects of the large, panoramic epic that Murakami is creating. And one we can recognize ourselves in, as well.”

It is with just such panoramic vision that Galati approaches adaptation, equally engaging his writer’s mind with his director’s eye to develop the initial script. “Because I’m a stage director and an adapter, going back to my early career, I naturally always combined what I was going to do as a director with the adaptation process. You kind of have to know what the stage is going to do in order to deliver a particular story.”

A key ingredient in Galati’s process of transforming novel to play is collaboration. The ensemble of performers, designers and technicians is integral to the development of the work. “Everyone’s collaboration is essential—we are learning how to tell the story together. Their artistry, their inspiration, is absolutely central. It’s the actors who inhabit and project the world. So nothing is more fun than a bunch of theater folks getting together to dig into a juicy script.” Actress Aiko Nakasone, who plays multiple roles in the production (and who also performed in “after the quake”) revels in the sense of adventure found in  “Kafka,” and in working with Galati, who encourages the collaboration of his ensemble in transforming the novel for the stage. “He is a great mind,” says Nakasone, “but he believes that more minds together can bring fuller production. He is so generous in that way.” Nakasone’s praise for Galati is echoed by Jon Michael Hill (a recent addition to the Steppenwolf ensemble), who plays Kafka’s alter ego, Crow: “Everyone adores Frank. He’s got this childlike appetite and sense of play. He is so enthusiastic; it is hard not to be excited, to want to do your best. To step up to that caliber of work.”

Galati and company are confident that Murakami devotees and novices alike will be able to engage in their unique vision of “Kafka on the Shore.” “Any good story makes its own rules and sticks to them. I don’t think you have to be familiar with the Impressionists School in general to appreciate a single painting. I think the story speaks for itself and has its own agenda that I think the audience can follow and understand, and really enjoy.”

At Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650, September 18 through November 16. Click here for a special 2-for-1 offer for Newcity readers.

Click here to read our review.

You’ve seen storefronts like this, usually located under the El. The interior is speckled with a layer of grim and tepid aspirations, the worn-out furnishings a sad grace note. Every time you pass by, the place looks empty save for a guy or two behind the counter. How do they stay in business, you wonder? Most don’t. That’s the broad overlay in Tracy Letts’ new melancholic comedy (at the Steppenwolf) which he has set in Chicago—the city where this recent Pulitzer-winner has lived most of his adult life, and perhaps more importantly, the city where he became a playwright. Like Brett Neveu’s recent “Gas for Less” (at the Goodman), “Superior Donuts” presents the little guy as endangered species, fighting off the encroachment of chain branding and impersonal transactions. Arthur Przybyszewski (Michael McKean) is the proprietor of said donut shop, an aging hippie so withdrawn from life that he retreats into a haze of pot smoke whenever reality punches through the glass door of his store. McKean’s performance is enigmatic—a resigned sigh that only begins to suggest Arthur’s state of mind. The role is bookended by Franco Wicks (Jon Michael Hill), the young, frenetic African-American Arthur hires as his assistant. Franco is ambitious and restless, but his inner life is just as mysterious—both he and Arthur are characters in search of meaning, and their uneasy co-existence mirrors the ethnic jostling of the neighborhood itself. (Yasen Peyankov has a terrific time as the Russian-born owner of an electronics store where he offers “the personal touch. And Croatian pornography.”) I like the way Letts parses the idea of disinterest-as-racism. The debate is false, but the spirit behind it is true. That dichotomy is everywhere in this production (directed by Tina Landau), where the dialogue rhythms don’t synch up with the real world, even if the sentiments do. You’re very much aware that you’re watching a play, and it’s only when Robert Maffia strolls onstage, playing a bookie in a cashmere coat, that things abruptly snap into place. Suddenly you’re immersed in the drama at hand. Landau’s pacing is deliberate, perhaps to a fault—the production includes a protracted stage fight that is so plainly fake in its execution that it becomes theoretical—but Letts has an ear for idioms that I really admire. “Look at you, all worked up over some female lady,” Franco tells Arthur, and it’s the kind of throw-away line you remember more than anything else. (Nina Metz)

At Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted, (312)335-1650. Thu-Fri 7:30pm/Sat-Sun 3pm & 7:30pm/Tue-Wed 7:30pm. $20-$68. Through August 24.

Pride has come to Chicago once again. It is time to take to the streets and celebrate the diversity that gives our city so many reasons to be excited. About Face Theatre is one of those reasons. This season the dynamic institution dedicated to the exploration of sexuality and gender issues will have new artistic leadership. Award-winning producer, director and playwright Bonnie Metzgar has taken the helm as artistic director and is excited to continue the company’s dynamic programming. Although Metzgar won’t make it to the parade this year—she is currently traveling Africa with her partner—she did take a few minutes to share a little bit about how she got here and what she is looking forward to as she makes Chicago her home.

How did you get to Chicago and About Face?

I spent the last year traveling around the U.S. for the 365 Festival with Suzan-Lori Parks. We partnered with 600 theaters; fifty-two of them were here in Chicago. Congo Square, Next, Steppenwolf, Goodman, Writers, Hypocrites—I learned fast that, wow, the Chicago theater scene is amazing! Bold artists, bold audiences—that’s my kind of town. So when the opportunity with About Face came up, I jumped at it. About Face has always had a unique place in the American theater as a home for new work that furthers the national dialogue on sexuality and gender.

How do you plan to continue what is great about About Face?

I will continue the commitment to artistic excellence and to developing the voice of our youth. I will expand the tradition of collaboration by continuing to find new ways to reach out to the community. And I will throw really great parties. I am excited and proud to be producing our whole season at the Center on Halsted. The Hoover-Leppen Theater is gorgeous! And having a home in the heart of the LGBTQ community feels right.

What excites you about Chicago?

Chicago is fierce—in its commitment to the arts, its celebration of diversity and in its history of political struggle. So for someone like me who is interested in the messy intersection of art and politics, Chicago is a fascinating place to be in 2008.

The country is changing for the LGBTQ community. What is the role theater can and must play in shaping perceptions and advancing LGBTQ causes?

The country is not changing for us. We are changing the country—by working hard, building bridges, making art that moves us all closer to each other. We need to feel the urgency in each day—as citizens and artists, in our homes, in the streets and in our art—if we dare to believe that another world is possible.

What message do you have for the LGBTQ community as we enter this year’s gay pride celebration?

Our community is in all communities. Reach out. Beyond your comfort zone. And support LGBTQ artists in Chicago during pride and all year round! (William Scott)

Learn more about Bonnie Metzgar and About Face Theatre at aboutfacetheatre.com

RECOMMENDED

Former Chicago playwright Sarah Ruhl is getting lots of attention and performances these days, and rightfully so.  So much so, in fact, that Ruhl was in London opening a new play while her hometown Steppenwolf opened this production, and thus sent her mother, Chicago actress Kathleen Ruhl, in her place.  But like Ruhl’s “Passion Play,” which Goodman presented last fall, “Dead Man’s Cell Phone” feels more like the torso of a great play in progress rather than a finished work.  The first act is brilliant: a bored woman chides a man whose cell phone keeps going off at a café, only to find that the poor guy has died.  She answers the phone and begins interacting with the world of the dead man, trying to tell those that she connects with what she thinks they want to hear.  Knowing nothing about the dead man, her good intentions often backfire and create Seinfeldesque scenarios of their own that are funny and moving at the same time.  But by the time the second act begins and the dead guy himself shows up and explains what was going on that day, the play loses its credibility.  Up until that point, everything we know about the guy we learn from the information gleaned by the woman who answers his phone, which is fascinating.  And if the guy never showed up, whether in her mind or “outside of time,” Ruhl would really be on to something (she is young and often keeps revising and revisiting, so it could still happen).  We would then continue to learn his bizarre secrets as she does, rather than be tipped off.  We would also avoid the needlessly complicated and contrived plot twists that depend, ironically enough, on “Liliom” and “Carousel,” believe it or not, right down to using “You’ll Never Walk Alone.”  Still, Ruhl is one of the most unique theater voices to come along in quite a while, and it is clear that when the smoke clears and her voice is finally unleashed full force, look out.  Even this show, despite its flaws, is well worth seeing for Ruhl’s masterful use of language alone.  (Dennis Polkow) 

At the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650. Through Jul 27.

RECOMMENDED

Watching Eric Simonson’s “Carter’s Way” brought me back to when Clint Eastwood’s “Bird” was released some years ago.  The Charlie Parker biopic was playing downtown and Bird’s longtime collaborator Dizzy Gillespie was playing in town and I tried to twist his arm to get him to see it.  Gillespie was adamant that he wanted no part of it: “Either they got it wrong, and I’ll be mad as hell, or they got it right, and I’ll cry like a baby.  Who needs either one at my age?”  Eastwood’s “Bird” did what most jazz dramas do, concentrating on the drugs and the affairs, but virtually never the art.  Happily, “Carter’s Way” is a notable exception and gives us some powerful insight into what drives a fictional Kansas City saxophone player (James Meredith Vincent) who has to do his art “his” way, without compromise.  Sure, you could quibble about technicalities, including the fact that many of the jazz pix on the club wall were taken decades after the play was taking place (the mid 1930s) and that the original jazz used in the play is elevator bop, not the Kansas City style of the era, and the innovation that develops is tame, linear and melodic whereas Kansas City innovators extended music on all fronts, including rhythm and harmony.  But no matter.  What the play does capture magnificently well is how groundbreaking art comes about by refusing to compromise and that the artists who become innovators are often as unyielding in their personalities and personal lives as they are in their art, which often takes a high toll on those around them.  What is also fascinating in an era where a white woman and a black man are vying for a presidential nomination is how those two marginalized and powerless groups come together in this work for solace, raising the question of which group was actually more marginalized than the other.  After all, even decades later, women remain the marginalized within the marginalized.  (Dennis Polkow)

At the Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650. This production is now closed. 

RECOMMENDED

From the moment that Nambi E. Kelly takes the stage as the title character in the world premiere of Chicago playwright Lydia Diamond’s “Harriet Jacobs,” based on the memoir “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl,” being given at Steppenwolf for Young Adults, she addresses the audience at a direct and visceral level of the apathy that most of us are apt to feel experiencing a “slave drama.” “Tell us something that we haven’t heard or that we don’t know? I lived it and I don’t understand it,” she says. There is an immediate connection made, which becomes more vivid by the fact that the entire cast is on stage to witness the story—even commenting upon it via haunting and superbly harmonized a cappella spirituals—for every moment of this gripping drama which seeks not so much to explain slavery, which as Harriet rightly says, could never be done, but rather, to experience what she went through and what her thoughts were and why she made the choices she made while being treated “like a piece of furniture.” This play pulls no punches, sometimes with onstage violence, but ironically, the descriptions of offstage violence are even more brutal than what is shown, suggesting that the play might actually be more effective by showing less. The main caveat about this otherwise superb play and production is the conscious decision to have an all-black cast, including blacks playing the brutal white slave owners, which ends up blunting the power and the horror of those scenes by not only taking the audience out of the reality that has been created, but by inadvertently suggesting the possible and dangerous interpretation that black slavery is somehow merely a “black story” rather than a reality beyond race. (Dennis Polkow)

Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted, (312)335-1650. This production is now closed.