August Lysy

By John Patrick Shanley

Directed by Will Crouse

Produced by The Poor Theatre

Playing at Rivendell Theatre

“Hunger!”

A Play for the Lonely Savage in Us All

The Poor Theatre opened its 4^th season this week with a strong production of John Patrick Shanley’s 1984 play Savage in Limbo. Though Shanley didn’t subtitle this play, as he did his 2004 drama Doubt: A Parable, its existential portrayal of five lives caught in the seething pool of mid-life desperation certainly offers a parabolic, life-in-aspic examination of the hungering misery that befalls those who lack the courage either to dare vice or to sustain virtue.

It’s only 7:30pm in this misty, Bronx bar when Denise Savage (Abbey Smith) bursts in, brimming with energy and desperate for some thrills. But the jukebox is broken and the bar is virtually empty. That is, except for the presence of Denise’s former classmate, April White (Philena Gilmer), who is herself already heartily stoned into a stupor; and, of course, there is the taciturn barkeep Murk (Dan Toot), who caringly and continually extends April credit in order to help keep her in her oblivious daze.

As Denise settles down for a game of solitaire, in rushes Linda Rotunda (Erika Haaland), another former classmate of Denise, with tears in her eyes. Linda’s boyfriend Antonio Brunetti (Tony Aroncia), we learn, has just told her he wishes to see other women — other, ugly women, to be precise. Not long after this discovery, and after the three women have nearly agreed to move in together to begin their new lives, Antonio himself shows up and expounds upon his newfound, philosophical insight: ugly women, he has it, represent a class of women alien to him that holds the possibility of showing him a new perspective on life, one his wanton fornicating has never revealed.

As one might expect, neither Denise nor Linda are exactly impressed or convinced, and the remainder of the evening plays out with each of them attempting to lure the Italian stud into her arms: Denise, a self-avowed virgin, promises the exotic existence of a “bed-less” home (i.e. no sex); Linda, on the other hand, a women with three illegitimate children (one of them his), promises a life of marriage. Like in Sartre’s No Exit, each of them have a need that only an other can satisfy; unlike No Exit, all of them can find some semblance of solace — except one.

The comparison with Sartre I think is appropriate, particularly because Will Crouse’s staging highlights well the existential nature of Savage in Limbo: the set (designed by Gregory Pinsoneault) is rather surreal, what with the constant fog lingering over the bar and the floor seeming to ride up the wall and hang from the ceiling. Crouse also has his actors break the fourth wall at times, either to sit in the audience or to address us directly, as if pleading to us for aid. I don’t know whether that is in Shanley’s stage directions, but it was an interesting touch, even though I wouldn’t say it added anything to my experience.

Aside from his quasi-metaphysical staging, Crouse directs some wonderfully honest performances from his actors — something, I’m learning, that should be cherished for its rarity. Erika Haaland (Linda) has to perform a lot of active listening in this 80-minute piece, and I declare unironically that her attentive reception to her scene partners alone is enough to make her a fascinating actress to watch. Tony Brunetti (Antonio) does well to make his character both irresistibly captivating as well as sympathetically obtuse, whereas a lesser actor might have played him too abrasively macho. And Abbey Smith, as the titular protagonist Denise Savage, brings a lot of energy to her character’s deep and embittered desperation; although, regrettably, her existential hunger is the least sympathetic despite (or, perhaps, on account of) it being the least subtextual and the most . . . well, savage.

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By Neil Simon

Directed by Josh Anderson

Produced by Organic Theater Company

At Greenhouse Theater Center, Chicago

A Faithful Production for a Horrible Play

In addition to his better-known plays, Chekhov wrote over 200 short stories, most of them before his plays and many of them when he was a young man in his twenties. In The Good Doctor, Neil Simon, the popular Tony Award and Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of The Odd Couple and Lost in Yonkers, takes nine of Chekhov’s short stories and weaves them into a series of short “plays.” Explicitly advertised as a “laugh-out-loud evening of infectious humor, touching tenderness and unending fun,” I can understand why Organic Theater Company chose to offer this shameless comedy to balance out its more sober offering Out of the Blue that is currently playing in repertory with it. And I believe Josh Anderson directs The Good Doctor to its fullest potential, mining every comedic moment while keeping the pace as best as one can for a two-hour long production.

Nevertheless, for me — who holds in contempt trivialized content and hyperbolic comedic acting for its vacuity and falsity — The Good Doctor was nothing short of physical and mental torture. A tedious two hours of exaggerated nonsense, Simon’s The Good Doctor ached my body with its endless length and bludgeoned my senses dull with its pure, meaningless entertainment. I imagine some will indeed find this show entertaining (many in the audience did), but, for me, it was one of my many dark nights of the soul for theatre.

The Good Doctor begins with a kind of dumb show that shows a man (Bryan James Wakefield) directing his band of actors in a series of brief, comical “scenes” (also from Chekhov’s writing), each of which he quickly dissolves, evidently displeased with his work. This man is The Writer, ostensibly a representation of Chekhov himself. Following the dumb show, The Writer addresses us, welcoming us to his workshop and describing his feverish need to write write write (a la Trigorin — there are probably more references here than I am aware of). He then invites us to view some of his stories.

There are nine little stories, all of them comedic, some of them dipping into melodrama, and still a few that reach toward the poignant. We have the civil servant (Will Burdin) who accidentally sneezes on the back of his supervisor’s head (Jim Heatherly) and then proceeds to neurotically hound him with apologies; the simple-minded and good-natured governess (Sara Copeland) who permits her mistress (Laura Sturm) to cheat her out of her wages; the rube dentist (Bryan James Wakefield) who attempts to remove his patient’s tooth (Jim Heatherly) with a pair of pliers; the old widow (Laura Sterm) and widower (Jim Heatherly) who lament their old-age loneliness in comically sentimental song; the “greatest seducer of other men’s wives” (Bryan James Wakefield) who attempts to instruct us on how to do so until the sincerity of his latest “target” (Sara Copeland) compels him to change his ways; the sailor (Jim Heatherly) who makes an art out of drowning for three roubles; the fledgling actress Nina (Sara Copeland) who auditions with an excerpt from the end of The Three Sisters; the “defenseless” woman (Laura Sturm) who badgers a bank director (Jim Heatherly) for a sum of money until he finally relents to her irrationality and pays her; and, last and best among them, we have the father (Bryan James Wakefield) who takes his son (Will Burden) to a prostitute in order to make him a man.

As I wrote above, Anderson delivers a fine production of Simon’s play: all the actors embrace their roles with overwhelming enthusiasm and perform well in the given style; the pace is kept (as best as humanly possible) with quick scene changes; the costume design by Jeremy W. Floyd and Alyson McCandless and the properties design by David Doherty appear authentic to the 19^th century period; and even the lighting design by Ryan Breneisen and Graham Whipple contributes to the storytelling by helping to distinguish between settings. In short, all aspects of production were carried out very well — for The Good Doctor.

And yet — I myself took no pleasure in any of them.

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