The Great Fire @ Lookingglass



Towards the end of my Lookingglass internship, I attended a staff meeting where they announced the 2011-12 season. I was immediately excited about The Great Fire. It was a challenging production with a hugely intriguing & applicable subject matter for the audience base. Artistic Director Andy White also discussed the applicability of this piece of history to the American audience in this post-9/11 world because it showcases a city’s ability to rise from the ashes and revive itself. Part of what this play highlighted was how foreign it feels to envision an urban disaster without our contemporary advances & conveniences. The play opened & closed with vignettes of letters of people communicating the disaster of the fire with their distant loved-ones. The mayor had to telegraph The White House to seek assistance. The communication culture clash was an interesting element to emphasize & address. In the same juxtaposed light, it was a very cool effect to enter the Water Tower, see those pipes, and then leave the theatre with the realization that everything around me had been leveled by the fire except for the building I was leaving.

 

I appreciated the fact that this play served as a study on human reaction in the face of mass tragedy. Many people developed an immediate, morbid fascination with the fire & wanted to go watch the river while it was still south of the river; this is a realistic & rational acknowledgement because the attraction of tragedy to spectators seems to be a timeless human habit. It also honestly addressed the kindness of distant strangers in aftermath of a tragedy versus the dog-eat-dog factor during the tragedy. The script exposed an excellent cross-section of different reactions to the impending disaster: the Alderman wants to literally fight fire with fire, the businessmen who quickly adopt the mentality that confusion equals potential income, the comparative indifference of the masses as a result of overexposure to tragedy, and the prisoners who are released for fear of bad press & see the fire as freedom. However, the base & primary goal of all these characters is to gather up the loved ones & flee. Theatre should cause contemplation and this script & production was one that provoked self-reflection, new knowledge, and humbling appreciation for the safety & convenience of our contemporary world.



The Players

The cast was comprised of smart, small ensemble (with a refreshing disregard to age/gender) that served as a collective representation of the people of Chicago. As the personification of The Fire itself, Lindsey Noel Whiting created a character with the otherworldly, innocent seduction of a glowing fire while still also presenting the mocking, almost vindictive nature of the fire’s aggression. Just as the character she created was well-rounded, the quality of her performance was equally well-rounded in physicality, artistic presentation, and interaction with the text. But that sentiment applies to the ensemble and production as a whole.