Sucked Into Service @ Chemically Imbalanced

Act I: 1/2 Caf Chronicals

Paul Whitehouse recounted anecdotes from his time working at Starbucks. Off-the-bat, he had an engaging & approachable stage personality. For me, his immediate backstory of the employment was a little eerie…living in Wrigleyville, a BA in Theatre, & having spent more hours than you’d ever imagined crafting coffee creations.

His strongest bit was recounting the days

after a cab drove into his Starbucks at North/Wells.

People made the same lame joke:

“I didn’t know this was a drive-through location”

332 times. I so relate to his pain.

“The Coffee Serving Muppet Machine”

He spent equal energy dissecting his relationship with the management as he did recounting interactions with the customers. This was a strong balance, but his narratives relating to the customers had a much stronger, more cohesive point-of-view. The only bit that recurred throughout the whole skit was one in which he imitated Muppets portraying his bosses. He had good miming capabilities (especially of Elmo & the Cookie Monster) & physicality, but the point of the Muppetizing was foggy. The common strand of Muppetzing bosses cost some of the quality of his more insightful & subtle observations at times, the imitations even blurred the clarity of his story’s narrative line. The whole performance piece would have been stronger without the impressions and a dedicated reliance on his ideas.

One Moral I Appreciated:

Don’t leave gum under the table

because someday a human being will have to clean it.

Act II: Trapped in a Box

At intermission, I had a conversation with my friend because I was unsure if would I like the structure & I was wondering how interesting a solitary job could be. All of the anecdotes from the first piece were recounting interactions with 3-D humans. But the question posed to me in response was:

Aren’t people more obnoxious on the phone than in real-life?

It turned out to be true that there is more meat for humor erupting from a situation where humans can be faceless jerks. More of the root of the humor was found in recorded phone conversations, so the central character was largely reactionary, which is still to her credit since she wrote the show.

My first impression was that the styling was too colorful & over-stylized. This heightened tone was maintained throughout the piece. Her reactions were strong, quick, & extreme. Her emotions & physicality too pronounced. Initially she, created a character who was more bratty than whose frustrations were authentic & actually relatable. She reacted to the phone calls before we had a chance to develop the same perspective her character had already developed. The whining got old until she warmed the audience up. I grew to like her performance more as it progressed, and she turned out to be a very committed, talented performer. Eventually, I realized her attitude was based on frustration of being pulled upon & intrinsically dissatisfied with her life situation. 

Best Line:

"Gotta get me off the bottom of my totem pole"

And the production couldn't have faded out with a better song:

Billy Joel's Vienna

Black Swan

Disclaimer: I will probably ruin the ending if you haven't seen it.

When I first saw previews for this movie, I was expecting Center Stage meets V for Vendetta. There is something about movies about ballerinas that I automatically categorize as awesome but indulgent. The world's reaction to this movie made me question my instincts, but they were kind of right on. After seeing the movie, I felt the exact same way as after I saw the preview: that there were all these crazy things going on & I wanted to know what was behind them. This movie was like Lost Season 6...after all the hype & build-up, the questions they raised still remained.


From the beginning, it was trippier than I expected. I liked the thematic lines & imagery, I just wish they had been rooted with a more direct & purposeful perspective.  We saw the story from the point-of-view of Nina Sayers (Natalie Portman), whose reliability as a narrator is never made clear. As stress disintegrates her mind, she can't distinguish from what is real, who is who, & how events unfold in front of her. And since her perspective is the only one we have, it remains unclear what actually transpired.

There were themes that were consistently present, but vague. Upon receiving the role of the Swan Queen, Nina must fully embody the frigid beauty of the White Swan & the base sensuality of the Black Swan. The latter is her struggle & the struggle to balance the duality of one's self permeates the film. Another thematic element was self-sabotage, which I found to be more provoking & interesting. Since it was a movie about ballet, we had to see excessive self-control & bouts of bulimia. I didn't mind these obvious choices because they were being used to stir up different ideas.

What Happened To My Sweet Girl.

Natalie Portman earned that Oscar. She played the frigid innocent whose performance was the backbone of the entire film. She had to be tightly wound, intense, vague, obsessed, & buried all at the same time and gave a performance that was perfectly on point.

Mila Kunis was great. She played the new ballerina who posed a threat to Nina's new & fragile success. She created a character that was intriguing, but still casual, natural, & realistic. She held her own against Natalie Portman's huge performance & that is no easy task. I preferred the scenes where she was present


Winona Ryder played the crazy, washed-out ballerina who was being forced into retirement because the shelf-life of a ballerina expires at 30. She cracks up at the reality of hitting this glass ceiling & provided a great glance into the crazy future in store for our narrator. It was a good role for Winona Ryder. Her acting has gone from Girl Interrupted into Woman Interrupted. However, I don't know if she would be as appealing if casted outside her typecast as the frustrated, slightly insane artist.

Barbara Hershey played the ballerina who gave up her career when she got pregnant and lived aggressively & vicariously through her daughter. She had weak role commitment and made easy & obvious choices (granted, in an easy & obvious role). But I will always love Barbara Hershey for 2 reasons:
1. I love Beaches & always will.
2. I love Sayid & always will.

Also, do all ballerinas have crazy moms? Maybe ballet has such female associations that people think they have to stick a mother/daughter plot-line on the side, but I could do without it. Ballet always seems to become a metaphor for the jarred belle, when it could just as easily be used as a metaphor for the dedicated, driven, & successful woman. Speaking of moms,

Happy Mother's Day!!!