GoodBye GlassHouse Part II: LG ALICE

My time at Lookingglass opened my eyes & gave me my first taste of

The style of Chicago theatre.

Living here, I have seen a scene with a more distinct flavor

than I saw in Philadelphia, New York City, & Boston.

One dominant strand being the influence of physical theatre,
which was very present in Lookingglass Alice.

This is the reinterpreted classic story that has
turned into a classic icon of Chicago theatre.
It tells the story of Alice falling into the Rabbit's Hole &
Her adolescent return to Wonderland.
Each square on the chessboard is a challenge she must conquer
to attain her ultimate goal:
To become A Queen.
While each square brings her closer to her goal,
it also enlightens her to the costs, trials, & losses
that result from shifting from
A Little Girl to A Queen.



This production was like a classic recipe reworked.
Adding this fresh physicality to an aged story was
like adding peanut butter to the chocolate chip cookies.
And after the random new ingredient is introduced,
it is difficult to imagine the recipe without it.

I was excited to see Lauren Hirte in the role of Alice.

I love an actress who commits to a part,
from the dream of the workshop to its' blow-up success.
Like Lea Michelle w/ Spring Awakening, Lea Salonga w/
Miss Saigon, Stephanie J. Block w/ Wicked 
(who got dropped right before it went to Broadway
because Idina Menzel had a Tony to her name, but that's its own thing).

It just gives their performance a richness
when an actress has marinated in it so long.

5 Minutes with Lauren Hirte



GoodBye GlassHouse Part I: Lookingglass

Hindsight makes current vision clearer,

so recent events qualify as inspiration for current blogposts to me.

I recently completed a Marketing Internship @

Lookingglass Theatre Company.

It was a great experience,

especially since Lookingglass was my

#1 Theatre of Interest
when I moved to Chicago last June.

The theatre resides in the Water Tower &

the administrative offices are in the Hancock Building.

As a new-comer to Chicago, this internship was also an A+ introduction to

 the world of Chicago theatre.

My responsibilities included:

mailings, research, databases, e-blasts, etc.

meetings with only the best of views.

errends/base-touching to the ever prettiest theatre.

working at awesome events, like this one at the

Signature Room on the 95th.

And always saying good morning

to my handsome Hancock buddy boy.

DreamCast: Ragtime

The 1998 Broadway production of Ragtime is still the best show I have ever seen.

Matthew St. Patrick as Coalhouse

On Six Feet Under, he played a man like Coalhouse who has an undercurrent of rage that erupts as quickly his over-current of the best intentions. He could handle the dissent of a strong man who quickly splinters.

Rutina Wesley as Sarah

On True Blood, she plays a perfect sweet & hopeful dishrag who will latch onto anyone/thing to get out.

but still holds onto a strange & self-reliant strength.

Chris Melroni as Father

On SVU, he played a super-strong man, who always has good intentions that are not necessarily the correct ones. He could pull off the dynamic of acting on realizing his instincts have become antiquated, but still relying on them because they have always proven correct.

Gwyneth Paltrow as Mother

Ms. Paltrow is the perfect picture of the contemporary, Whole Foods, goop-livin' Mother.

John Gallagher, Jr. as Mother's Younger Brother

He is from Delaware & is awesome at everything.

Larry David as Tateh

This has always been my least favorite role because it is always played so seriously. There are so many social absurdities & missed opportunities for humor in this part.

Kathy Bates as Emma Goldman
It seems like she's already played this part a million times.

David Blaine as Houdini
Our contemporary cultural counter-part of a creepy & awesome social magician.

Lindsay Lohan as Evelyn Nesbitt
This is a role that calls for beauty, appeal & charm,
while we watch up her exploiting her personal disasters for a few minutes of fame.
LiLo could definitely be the girl on that swing.


Suri Cruise as The Little Girl
First of all, she couldn't be prettier.
Plus, throughout the show, Tateh drags & carries The Little Girl around
in a protective heap of blankets & bags,
as she peeks out perplexed at what a new & crazy world she has entered.
From the ten million pictures I've seen of Suri, I think she has that look down.  

Shiloh Jolie-Pitt as The Little Boy
She clearly wants to be a little boy, so let's just let her.
I once wrote an adaption of Charlie & the Chocolate Factory & directed it with my sister.
We cast a girl as Charlie & it ended up bringing
a whole new artistic perspective & light to a pretty bland boy part.
Plus, as the show's pseudo-narrator & the world would gladly listen
to any story she had to tell.

And Ragtime really does have a story that needs to be told.

The Homecoming @ Mary-Arrchie

The Players

A cast was comprised of actors with a wide & wild range of skill sets.

We had promising middlemen, amateurs, & all-stars.

 

Michaela Petro as Ruth

As the only female in the cast she used her face as an instrument

with heavy-lidded eyes, slight/silent smirks,

& reactions loaded with subtext.

[also, as the only female, why weren't her costumes impeccable?] 

She intertwined her character's role as an

observer, active participant, & outsider seamlessly.

She was all-star calliber.

Vance Smith as Lenny

This is an actor who understands how to translate Pinter's text.

Heightened is the word that comes to mind.

He screamed the lines that required it, he lurked, dropped hints, dropped loaded statements, dropped bombs,

& infused the production with a very necessary energy.

Dereck Garner as Joey 

Luke Hatton as Teddy

Their performance quality was strikingly similar,

 considering their starkly different roles.

They were cast in appropriate parts for their physicality & skill sets.

And they gave decent first impressions that blossomed in the second act.

Their presences provided a degree of

equilibrium in an play of polarized acting skill-sets.

Jack McCabe as Sam

I wanted to like him more than I did.

The part wasn't the most relevant, his acting wasn't the most fine-tuned,

but there were some

chord-striking & heart-breaking moments

his sub-par performance.

Richard Cotovsky as Max

His performance as the father was overall lacking.

The moments of explosive violence barely detonated,

his minimal attempts at an accent were more distracting than anything,

& he lacked chemistry with the rest of the cast.  

However, those complaints are surface-level.

The real problem was the play revolved around

his actions,

his history,

and the person of his character.

With an anchor playing the captain,
a show's ship can only sail so far.

And in this case, so far was only so good.

DreamCast: Parade

I love PARADE like none other.

On Lost, Ian Somerhalder & Terry O'Quinn were nothing if not dedicated soldiers to an antiquated cause. As The Young Soldier, Ian Somerhalder would provide an earnest & attractive introduction to the show. And his poetic face & baby blues would be a nice way to easy into the show with some poetry before we get bombarded with facts & courtrooms. Terry O'Quinn exudes the rawness that falls out with life experience. He could enrich The Old Soldier's role from a role with some great harmonies to a role with great impact.

Michael Emerson clearly has the physical embodiment of Leo Frank down. He gives a terrible & incriminating first impression, followed by some weird heart-warming sense of that's he's not all bad.

Mariska Hargitay has already shown in SVU that she can solve any crime by dinner time. Lucille Frank is a magnolia crafted from most hardcore of steel, and Mariska Hargitay is a perfect marriage of bound magnolia meets sexual crimes investigator.

Evan Rachel Wood has proven time & time again that she can play the spunky, ragmuffin roles like Mary Phagan. The Mean Girls Trio seemed like a strangely appropriate counter casting as the gaggle of Factory Girls, and Amanda Seyfried seemed the sauciest, sassiest, & most capable of handing Iola Stover.

I would cast Craig Robinson as Jim Conley because he plays roles subtlety that could easily become caricatures. His timing, slightest mannerisms, and vocal inflections all add up to a potentially powerful performance from the character whose actions are at the root of the show. Perez Hilton is our modern-day Britt Craig. Both of them created an identity putting celebrity/human interest stories on full-blast. Plus, Perez Hilton is a pioneer for the blogging generation, which makes him all the more appropriate.


Red-heads in this age-range are a rare commodity. Rupert Grint has the acting chops & heart-breaking chops to pull off Frankie Epps.

There are at least two things in this world that I know inside & out & upside down: Lost & Parade. I feel this is an angel-sanctioned union of casting & my loves. On Lost, Paula Malcomson played an under-appreciated, underdeveloped, & haunting part. Mrs. Phagan is a role of the same color & Paula Malcomson pulls off a perfect downtrodden dishrag.


Christopher Walken is clearly capable of taking on challenging & sickening roles, and Tom Watson calls for nothing else.

In Thank You For Smoking, Aaron Eckhart played a charming advocate for the side of the devil. Hugh Dorsey shows shades of those characteristics, and Aaron Eckhart could play the part with complexity, charm, & an underlying air of distrust.

The Goat, or Who is Sylvia? @ Remy Bumppo

Hands down, the best Chicago play I have seen thus far.
It was a perfect production of a script that is a thick mountain heavy wording & a heavy-headed trip of a story. I went with a friend who had never seen a play before, so it was a relief that his first taste of the stage was a great one. Their front-of-house staff also stood out as being especially friendly, accomodating, & approachable.

It was clear that this production had hours of energy from a variety of sources to finely-articulate the end-product. It was staged well, which allowed for poignant, snap-shots of moments. The set was great, which is not something on which I usually have a huge opinion, but it did stand out. It is easy to get lazy when a play has one set, especially when that one set is in a living room. I think the standard should be higher when there is only one set because it is the sole result of the set decorating efforts. This set was a realistic interpretation of a beautiful living room for a beautiful family. It was also the perfect stage to set the scene for the imploding/exploding of the family unit. The fact that the set was great, and the fact that it was destroyed so well, just served as a visual/thematic hammering in of the reality of what was happening to this family. The set actively contributed when it could have been slighted, which is an example of what made me think so highly of this production: they majored in minors. Details did not go unnoticed on the production end, and were highly noticable & effective on the audience's end.  

thinkTalk: the official Remy Bumppo Theatre Company blog

 The Players
In a quadrangle of a play, the effect of one weak link can be an irrevocable poison to the production. Luckily, Remy Bumppo's cast was individually & wholly thoughtful, effective, & engaging.

Will Allan as Billy
His character served as a punctuating point to mark how far the chaos has fallen, as well as the face of the future this diaster has broken. He had limited time to present the entire color wheel of emotion from the perpective of a man young in years & life. He was cast very well in terms of age-appropriateness & chemistry with both parents, which is important because this play means nothing if we don't care about this family. As the only child of a married couple, this character served as the heart of this play's heartbreak. And this actor hit the nail on the head, heartbreak & all.

Annabel Armour as Stevie
She changed with the character. Her acting was like a surfer who adjusts their balance based on the curl of the wave. With the shocking curl of information that Stevie has to survive, there are a thousand tiny moments where an actress could drop the ball, lose character, make the absolute wrong choice, or just lose momentum. Luckily, she avoided all of those potential pitfalls and gave a seething, crystal-clear performance. She created a character whose life i could picture off the stage. She created a character whose past & future I could clearly envision.

Michael Joseph Mitchell as Ross

His role serves as the involved but removed, third-party informant/victim. It's a part without tons of stage time, but the most relatable the the audience. In watching this family fall apart, we become involved & invested in their trauma even though we are audience members. Ross is an audience member of this conflict, so his reaction should provide an arena for the audience to emotionally resonate with actualizing the unimaginable. He achieved this, while bringing a fresh energy, comedic know-how, & an authentically personal performance.

Nick Sandys as Martin

He is clearly a very seasoned actor. The challenge of this part is, not only to make the audience somehow able to believe this man made this terrible choice, but to also stir up empathy of the resulting disintegration of his life. As the backbone of the cast, I couldn't imagine a stronger spine.

I forgot about my 3 favorite quotes from The Goat & was very happy to hear them spoken.

DreamCast: Into the Woods

The man defines dapper & I would gladly listen to any story he had to tell. Plus, Mr. Grey is nothing if not mysterious.


I first thought of Kate Walsh for the Baker's Wife because my attention span lights up everytime she comes onto the Grey's set. She also is a contemporary physical reinterpretation of what The Baker's Wife has become. Originally for the The Baker (so difficult because the possibilities are endless), I thought of Matthew Fox and was dead-set. But then I considered him with Ms. Walsh & the chemistry seemed impossible. Then I realized Patrick Dempsey has that sincere effort muddled with uncertainty, and those 2 have already established in my mind the marital chemistry/history necessary for the casting of these 2 parts. And I would rather see an amazing duo repeat the similiar setting of coupling than risk some inauthentic chemistry. Plus, bakers and surgeons have a lot in common.


Kimberly Paisley-Williams was a belle in Father of the Bride and would be a sweet, strong, sassy belle as Cinderella. In playing the Wolf & Cinderella's Prince, Clive Owen could handle both the sexually predatory Wolf & charasmatic, faux genteel Prince with comlplexity & charm.


First of all, LOST alumni are perfect & will be forever.
Emilie de Ravin is actually a great actress who brought meat to a potentially bland blonde role on LOST. She would do the same thing to Rapunzel. From her brilliant time on the brilliant LOST, she tackled all the acting requirements for an ideal/pretend Rapunzel: perfecting the blood-curdling scream, pulling off a pretend pregnancy without it seeming like a joke, & the ability to channel the blonde & green-finch caged-bird. She could really light the part up.


Something about Californication and True Blood seem to draw upon the same acting skill sets. They both are set in settings that seem so close to being possible, even though they are clearly contemporary fairy tales. In playing Little Red and Jack, Madeleine Martin & Ryan Kwanten could bring bright, thick, & youthful portrayals of their respective roles.


Estelle Parsons has a voice that was cater-created for Jack's Mother. I am not ashamed to say that I love Roseanne & think it is TV show that was stocked with great actors, E.P. being one of them. She is a great actress in terms of subtle humor, comedic timing, & understanding of one's opportunity as an actor to personalize the comedy written in the subtext of great text.
Susan Sarandon has proven she can play a Stepmother. And, in playing Janet in Rocky Horror, she has solidified herself a role in musical theatre history, which must be respected.

And,
Finally,
Our Glorious Queen...
For only the most obvious reasons.
Who else would have the creative competancy, respect for the work, & visionary chops to reign as one of Captain Sondheim's most beloved lady-part creations?
I think Ms. Peters would approve.

I wish!

April WishList

http://www.maryarrchie.com/

Mainly because it's local, I'm a good neighbor, and have a very hard time saying no to Pinter.
Closes: April 10

http://www.goodmantheatre.org/

I love a good, 4-person cast. This production has gotten great reviews & intrigued me when it/I was in New York. Plus, I have yet to see a show at the Goodman.
Closes: April 17

http://www.atcweb.org/

I have no doubt that this will be as awesome as it seems. It is going to have new songs, a new R-rating, and I have been looking forward to it since last summer. And I am sure it will be an all-star cast since 850 actors auditioned for the the original Grease.
Runs: April 21-June 5

The Warriors - The New Colony at The Second Stage

This piece seems like a recipe for favorite flavor of theatre. It sounds like the love child of a Jodi Picoult novel, an Anna Deavere Smith play, and an episode of SVU. I love this strange corner of playwriting I have dubbed Interview Theatre. Certain memoirs can fall under this umbrella term & I do believe this may end up being one of them.
Closes: April 17

The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia? by Remy Bumppo Theatre Company
@ The Greenhouse Theater Center

Albee's plays are always enticing, exciting, & excellent, assuming the theatre company can handle the subject matters & attacks the text head-on. This assumption is dangerous & hopeful, which are both ingredients to a theatrical experience that is interesting & engaging, at the very least .
Runs until: May 8