|
The Permanent Way
By David Hare
Directed by Brandon Ray
Produced by New Leaf Theatre
At the Lincoln Park Cultural Center
2045 N. Lincoln Park West
Chicago, IL
Call 773-828-4387, tickets $15
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 pm
Added matinees at 3 pm Feb. 25 & Mar, 3
Running time is 2 hours with no intermission
Through March 3, 2007
Dramatic look at bureaucratic indifference leads to tragedy
David Hare’s docudrama about the British rail system is a tad too provincial for American audiences and it runs much too long. We get the fact that once government privatizes a public trust institution, such as the commuter rails system, profits become more important that service or safety. This play deftly and completely covers the problems of faulty government in human terms. I’d cut the details from four train crashes to one thus cutting at least a half an hour from the show. This would give the show more punch. The varied British accents were mostly right on giving the show a true British flavor.
Hare shows that the British are more bureaucratic and bumbling that American institutions. The play puts a face on tragedy and portrays the human element in disasters. The pace keep us engaged and the acting was stellar, especially Jonathan C. Legat, Erin Shelton and Marsha Harman. Kudos to dialect coach (and cast member) Dominic Green for the authentic dialects.
Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: February 15, 2007
Jeff Recommended
The Permanent Way
Review by Warren Easton
Who are those people that climbed out of the wreckage of those British train crashes? What are those authorities really thinking about when they repeat, “it must never happen again.” I traveled “The Permanent Way”on a chilly night inside the cosy old Lincoln Park field house that also does duty as the New Leaf Theater. It took me on a compelling ride through the investigation of a series of train wrecks that happened in the years shortly before the July 2005 London Underground bombings.
From this ominous sounding title, (see a history of British railroads), which has immediate recognition for UK audiences if not for American ones, a piece of theater emerges about the impossibility of blame in a morally slippery age.
The play is made out sharply paced, info-loaded scenes but a drama eventually does break out. This ensemble performance does a credible job building the British milieu, first by dismantling any remaining quaint sentiment, and then by providing a picture of a society caught in the high-beams of rapid economic change with all of its tensions. The old social contract that was long held on faith is now broken with nothing to replace it – the series of fatal train wrecks is the damning proof.
Convincing scenes of personal testament, played strongly by the female cast, of the effects of the disasters on the bereaved families and the surviving victims, alternate with ones of bureaucrats, corporate executives and various officials who are first take seem take obvious targets for outrage. Yet the powers that be, sweating and pleading a little, hold to their familiar corporate convictions or bureaucratic oaths plausibly enough. So that nobody in this treatment of things comes off as particularly detestable or likable, because we know from the get-go that a squirming chief executive is no match for the pity for the mothers who have lost their young adult children.
Instead we feel pity for the loss of trust. And this is brought out well by the ensemble and the direction in the use of the theater space. Played so close to the audience, aided by effective light and sound design, the actors build a third, societal dimension in the play. Here, bureaucrats are mechanically shoved forward and quickly withdrawn while delivering lines in office chairs; a line of actors stands for rail cars; then they shake and rattle standing as passengers within them; they crash and freeze-frame with in a horrific tableau. I appreciated this realm, with its choreography reminding me of Robert Lepage’s work. Here the cast become ciphers, dehumanized men and women played for chumps by people they were brought up to trust.
Recommended
tuinheks@sbcglobal.net for comments
Date Reviewed: February 15, 2007
|
