2. They used to say that Nicaragua was a country of poets. Who said this? Leftists, compañeros of the Sandinistas (as I was). And then someone said--. Who was this someone? I don't know, some cynic among the former comrades, or a realist, though that may be the same as cynic. Someone said--yes, Nicaragua is a nation of poets. Of bad poets.
3. Correspondingly, they say Chicago is a city of little theatres. And I say--right, a city of bad little theatres. And bad theatre, not exactly the same thing. But also much much overrated big theater. When I see a stage or a description of a stage that answered to the siren call of verisimilitude--meaning a kitchen that looks like a real kitchen, down to the labels on the 2,400 cans on the 30 shelves--my heart sinks. You can judge a book by its cover. And you can most of the time judge a play by its scenery. If it's blandly realistic, you can usually say that the vision of the director is the same.
4. When I go to theater with L and our friends--and good bourgeoises that we are, we subscribe to two, TimeLine and Court--I usually have the minority opinion. But I am right. And I am always in disagreement with M, who comes from the Casual Realism school of acting.
5. The first great performance I ever saw was "The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail" in Houston in the early '70s, when I was in junior or senior high. I wrote a fan letter to Thoreau. This is a secret: Houston is a city of great theater. There isn't much of it, but I saw "Jitney" at the Ensemble Theater in Houston and "Jitney" at the Court in Chicago, and Houston's was better. More alive, more intense. The actors seemed to believe more in what they were doing. I saw a reworking from the Greeks at the Alley Theater some years ago--I will have to consult my 86-year-old mother for the title.
6. The most stunning performance: Brecht's "Caucasian Chalk Circle" in Chicago in the 1980s, I think. And I mean stunning; I am not using the word "stunning" the way realtors [I will not capitalize the noun] bandy it about when referring to any sleek expensive copy-cat soulless condo in the high six figures. I was stunned. During intermission I could not speak.
7. Best Chicago theater that I have seen, in no particular order:
An impressionistic "Diary of Anne Frank" that ended with Anne bent over, plaintively and weakly screaming, "My stomach," which was probably what she indeed was screaming inside as she was dying.
TimeLine: John Conroy's "My Kind of Town," "The Front Page" (of course M. thought the actors were affected, unnatural), "Fiorello!," "A Raisin in the Sun," "The Normal Heart" (in which Mary Mary Beth Fisher played, as always, a credible Mary Beth Fisher), Gore Vidal's "Weekend,""Concerning Great Devices from the Distant West" by Naomi Iizuka, "Danny Casolaro Died For You" by Dominic Orlanda
Goodman: "King Lear" with Stacy Keach (Alas, I missed Larry Yando's recent Lear at Shakespeare), visiting monologuist Spaulding Gray
Steppenwolf: "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," Wallace Shawn's "Aunt Dan and Lemon" with Martha Lavey,
Shakespeare: all-male "Pacific Overtures," though there were a couple of weak performers; "Julius Caesar," "Rose Rage," "Since I Suppose" (disclosure: by Australian friends), "Othello" (2007/8 season), and most of the Shakespeare plays when we were subscribers in the early- to mid-aughts
Court: "Guys and Dolls" (great chemistry between the leads), "Travesties" (perhaps Stoppard's best play), "Arcadia," "Caroline or: Change," both parts of "Angels in America," "M. Butterfly"
Organic: "Bleacher Bums,"
Cloud 42: "Living Up to My Blue China: the Art and Passion of Oscar Wilde" with a perfect Harry Althaus as Wilde and others, 1989
Wisdom Bridge: "Travesties" with Frank Galati, 1980; "Hamlet," 1985 or 1986, with Del Close as Polonius
8. The most credible critics in town: Tony Adler, Justin Hayford, Kerry Reid.
9. I am not this dogmatic within my field of expertise, creative nonfiction.
10. All this is to say that BoHo Theatre had a great great production of "Parade," about the arrest and lynching of Leo Frank near Atlanta. The main character was played by a Woody-Allen-esque New York Jew-fish-out-of-water, whose ways of speaking and kvetching may or may not have been the ways of East Coast Jews a 100 years ago, but I accepted it. The main theater critic in town did not like it, saying: "The unwieldy physical production here is run-of-the-mill and it traps the actors in some awkward geometric arrangements without offering much of the necessary visual sweep that carries Frank's accusers along on a wave of hysteria. DeSelm's Frank is a very alienated and cold figure, which is one side of this character, for sure, but, when taken this far, means that one does not empathize as one should, nor feel the great rush of confusion and indignation alongside the musical's central figure and a wife whose spousal loyalty is sorely tested." But I went to see it anyway, because I am writing about the South and Jews in the South, and I didn't see the play when it was in town before because I couldn't imagine a musical about Frank's experience. And I say to you, dear reader, the main theater critic in town was wrong, wrong, wrong.
(I reviewed Nora Ephron's book, "I Feel Bad About My Neck," and said it was barely feminist. When she spoke to a packed house at the Harold Washington Library Center, I asked her if she considered it feminist. She said yes and asked if I did. I said no. You are wrong, she told me.)
But I wasn't. Not then and not now.
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