Jacob Davis

By William Shakespeare

Directed and Designed by Vladimir Shcherban

Adapted by Nicolai Khalezin

Produced by Belarus Free Theatre

Playing at Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Belarusian Dissidents as Nasty as They Wanna Be

If you need proof of Shakespeare’s enduring importance around the world, look no further than the Belarus Free Theatre, now at Navy Pier for a limited engagement. Part of the Shakespeare 400 Festival, this production follows the Russian-language Measure for Measure that played here last month. But while Measure for Measure had a relatively simple plot to showcase Eastern European dramatic techniques with, the Belarus Free Theatre’s production of King Lear is more of a commentary on the play than a telling of its complicated story. The artists’ program bios are a long list of persecutions they have suffered for protesting the revived Soviet regime and refusing to submit to government control. Even the fact that the production is in Belarusian carries significant weight in Belarus, which many of the company members are exiled from, and where their ensemble performs secretly. I advise theatre-goers to brush up on King Lear before seeing this version of it, in order to focus more on the specifics of director Vladimir Shcherban’s presentation.

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Written and Directed by Nathan Allen

Puzzles by Sandor Weisz

Artistic Direction by Chris Burnham

Produced by The House Theatre of Chicago

Theatre Company Destroys Chicago

18:30: I arrive early to the downstairs Chopin to take over my task as last defender of the world. The command center is still being re-set from the previous last defenders’ shift. I am issued my identification card, and page through my program of Nabucco while awaiting the arrival of the rest of my team-mates. I am in the communications division.

19:00: Orientation begins. Our task is to monitor Soviet nuclear activities, and to save the world, destroy it, or reach some kind of compromise. We are told that saving the world is the most difficult outcome to achieve. Assisting us in solving puzzles will be silent crew members in black bunny masks, and one in a black bear mask. Teamwork will be crucial, so we are reminded to share information, and defer to those who display natural leadership. Tight lips sink ships.

19:05: We enter the locker-room to change into our jumpsuits. The lockers have combination locks. In our first exercise in teamwork, we share our recollections of facing this problem in school, and succeed, after some struggle, in opening our lockers. Within are our jumpsuits (we supplied our sizes in an emailed form ahead of time), belts, and quarters for operating our work consoles. Our defender names are written on our uniforms. I am Defender Countdown. The other member of the communications division also returned his guest ticket, so there were only two of us. I think he was called Defender Strikethrough. Normally there are sixteen team members, but we were down two.

19:10: We take an elevator to our deep underground base. Within is a warning that Zelda, the artificial intelligence in charge of managing the nuclear missiles, tends to malfunction a lot and supply dubious wisdom. There is a key for accessing the nuclear override interface, which we entrust to Defender Strikethrough, thinking him the most competent.

19:20: Inside the main base, we view a tutorial video instructing us on the tenets of Mutually Assured Destruction. Our job is to stay wary in case the Soviets launch missiles at us. If Zelda informs us they have, we are to contact Central Systems Command to verify the threat. If verified, we are to allow the counterstrike to launch automatically. If not, we will have to override the return strike. We are also presented with our orders of the day. I am tasked with going to the library in the corner, and examining the encyclopedia.

19:30: I determine that the encyclopedia is a collection of video cassettes with names of people and cities on them. I assume this will be important to determining a pattern-puzzle later. While I examine the cassettes, an alarm goes off, telling us that the Soviets have launched their missiles. A sixty minute timer appears on the main screen, telling us we have until it runs out before Zelda launches the counterstrike. The ghost bunnies usher us to our consoles so we can attempt to reach Central Systems Command. Our first task is to figure out which city Central Systems Command is located in.

19:35: Defender Strikethrough and I share ideas and information about how to reach Washington. Tight lips sink ships. One of the ghost bunnies points out that while we have been sharing ideas, we neglected to read the instructions directly in front of us. We contact Washington, and find that the phone menu has been encoded. While we work on decoding the phone menu so we can tell whether or not we are under attack, Zelda lists American cities that have been wiped out, at the rate of one about every ten seconds.

19:39: We reach Central Systems Command and are put on hold.

19:40: We ascertain that the purported Soviet strike is a computer error. The ghost bunnies guide us through figuring out how to access the override module. It involves spelling out “denuclearization” with only a sign with the word “denuclearization” written on it to guide us.

19:50: We succeed in spelling “denuclearization” despite the absence of two team-mates, and access the override console. There are ten missiles in the Chicago base which will launch in forty minutes, and we have to disable each one individually by plugging in certain letter-number combinations. To obtain these combinations, we have to solve the puzzles throughout the room. Delegation is required. Some team members who happen to be professional actors step into the role of leadership, and dispatch us to stations. I have noticed that often when a group of people are confused and irresolute, actors will take charge. I think this is because they are able to project their voices and are accustomed to making strong character choices. As a critic, I was concerned that we had not given sufficient debate to whether we wished to prevent a nuclear war or cause one, but I am less accustomed to being inspirational or co-operative.

20:00: A ghost-bunny holds my hand while I attempt to figure out the secret of the cassettes. Following our ghost-bunnies’ non-verbal urging to provide help to others, nobody actually ends up at the station they were delegated. Instead, we flit around, solving parts of mind puzzles, or attempting to figure out what the puzzles are. There are ones involving weights, the game battleship, the cassettes, dots on pillars, laser dots, and bunkbeds, among other things. I end up with a box which, by its label, contains a tactile puzzle. I sit despondent and perplexed, sifting through the box’s contents until a ghost-bunny takes pity on me, and brings over help.

20:10: My team-mates find an instructional manual in the box, which I somehow overlooked. I resign the tactile challenge, and join the group working on the cassettes to “help.”

20:15: I join the group working on electrical paths and “help.”

20: 20: I join the group working on dots and “help.”

20:25: The group working on the tactile puzzle realize that they need my help to identify chess pieces and set up the game board. Using my unique skill set, we are able to complete the puzzle, obtain the code, and disable a missile. Each of us feels like a valued member of the team, and that we have gained insights into co-operation and communication. The ghost-bunnies are proud of us.

20:29: With less than a minute to go, nobody has any idea how to solve the last puzzle. One of our leaders decides we should blow ourselves and the Chicago area up to disable the last missile, and those of us nearby meekly hand over our key cards in deference to the loud voice. We also collect key cards from the team-members who were distracted and don’t know what they are agreeing to, but understand we need their cards for something important. I feel that we have gained insight into how mass suicides happen. The ghost-bunnies brace for impact.

20:30: The world is saved, at the cost of Chicago. Following the conclusion of the game, we are told the secret of the final puzzle, and I still don’t understand it. Apparently, it is very rare for anybody to succeed in obtaining peace without casualties. Our team came the closest one can to achieving the best outcome without actually achieving it. We are invited back to play the game again.

Certainly, there was a huge amount I didn’t see. There were some puzzles I didn’t touch at all, and some I wasn’t even aware of because I mostly kept to one side of the room. On the other hand, it is possible for a person who already knows how most puzzles and the override console work to push their way through without sticking to the script. That might not be a bad thing; given the interactive nature of this kind of story-telling, more of a role-playing element would have been welcome. New players are likely to spend much of the ninety minutes too confused to do anything but what they are told.

Those who were most active in taking command and matching the game’s rapid pace seemed to have had the most fun, and nostalgia for eighties titles like War Games seemed to help a lot, too. The only one of Sandor Weisz’s puzzles I saw through from start to finish looks ridiculously easy in retrospect, and the difficulty was created mostly by the chaotic environment of the room. But it may have been unique in that regard, or maybe that’s just the nature of mind puzzles. As usual for the House, the event has incredibly cool aesthetics. This game is definitely a must-play for puzzle nerds, and is worth checking out for anyone whose interest is piqued by the premise.

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By Philip Dawkins

Directed by Stephen Brackett

Produced by About Face Theatre, Chicago

Presented by Special Arrangement with Doug Nevin

LGBT Americans Ready for Romantic Comedies

With the expansion of marriage rights to include gay couples, and youth opinion overwhelmingly in favor of full equality, it is now possible to envision an America in which gay people are no longer “queer.” One of the signs of growing acceptance could be the use of gay protagonists in otherwise unremarkable romantic comedies. Indeed, “romantic comedy” is the phrase About Face Theatre uses to describe Philip Dawkins’s latest play, Le Switch, in contrast to Charm, which played last year at Steppenwolf’s garage in a production by Northlight, or his other recent works. I’m not a fan of the genre, and don’t think Dawkins did anything particularly fresh with it, but the night I attended, the house was at full capacity, so clearly, there is a demand for light-hearted gay material.

The play begins in 2011, shortly after marriage equality was legalized in New York. David Fienberg (Stephen Cone) is a professor of library-sciences in his mid-thirties who uses a radical leftist anti-marriage/monogamy/long-term relationship ideology as a thin cover for his lack of social skills and other personal deficiencies. He has a twin sister, Sarah (Elizabeth Ledo), who has likewise rejected conventional marriage out of fear of repeating her parents’ tumultuous relationship, except she has the self-awareness to know that this is more of a personal choice than a revolutionary statement. David, his sassy black friend, Zachary, (La Shawn Banks), and his sassy old friend, Frank (Mitchell J. Fain) had been used to living without the option of getting married, but now that equality has arrived to New York, Zachary is tying the knot with his partner. David is confounded that Zachary would actually want the thing they have been demanding for years, and he lets slip that he doesn’t consider Zachary’s wedding to be “real,” but he agrees to accompany him to a bachelor party in Montreal. Although, really, for the grooms to hold a joint bachelor party defeats the purpose.

Once in Montreal, David has a meet-cute with Benoît (Collin Quinn Rice), a twenty-three year old florist and Luddite, who is smitten with him. They enjoy their time together, and David is mystified by the lack of tragedy in Benoît’s life. If attempted suicide is no longer a rite of passage for young gay men, then David no longer recognizes the world, and that makes him uncomfortable. Three years later, the US Supreme Court’s refusal to hear appeals from three federal circuits where bans on same-sex marriage have been struck down signals their intention to legalize it nation-wide, and David and Benoît have settled into a stable long-term relationship (albeit one made difficult by Benoît’s refusal to own a phone). Zachary and his husband find that they are seeing too much of each other, while Sarah has fallen in love with the man she married to help him obtain a green card. Frank wisely observes that relationships take work. Without marriage or the opportunity for it, there was less pressure on people to remain committed, but that made commitment more meaningful. After David callously brushes off a proposal from Benoît, it comes time for him to finally learn the moral of the story and fix things.

The actors here are all fine, and Ledo and Rice are even quite good. Ledo’s character has a sub-plot involving her working as the authority on continuity for a sci-fi franchise, which she regards as the most pointless, ridiculous job imaginable. But as her marriage turns into love, she begins to take the themes her job requires her to think about more seriously. It provides Ledo’s character with problems and resolutions that have nothing to do with her brother, which is probably why she seems so much more compelling. Despite her constant reassurances that he deserves love and happiness, we see very little reason to like David. He’s a self-absorbed cynical know-it-all who has little regard for anybody else, and doesn’t seem to enjoy anything except inventing classifications for people and collecting unopened antique books. I thought that Benoît could remain alone and still be doing better for himself.

Banks and Fain are stuck with stock characters, but give enthusiastic performances anyway. Set designer Joe Schermoly wrestles with a script that’s many changes in location would have worked better if it was for a TV movie. He elected to create a naturalistic design for a Frank and David’s apartment, and allow all the other scenes (including several poetic descriptions of Montreal’s skyline) to occur in the dark or without reference to the props and background. Director Stephen Brackett winds up having every scene outside the apartment take place in tiny little corners. I recognize that this play has generated some interest, and that gay people may enjoy having come far enough to be subjects of a romantic comedy instead of high tragedy (this play’s themes are like a lighter take on Mothers and Sons, now at Northlight). But I still maintain that if I’m hoping that the main relationship fails, something’s wrong in the writing.

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By Terrence McNally

Directed by Steve Scott

Produced by Northlight Theatre, Skokie

McNally Contemplates Old Wounds

Chicagoans had the opportunity to enjoy a miniature unofficial Terrence McNally festival last year. Eclipse Theatre Company dedicated their season to the AIDS-dramas he wrote in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and some other non-Equity companies mounted productions of his musicals. For those who know the works, as well as newcomers, the capstone is Northlight’s regional premiere of Mothers and Sons, a drama McNally wrote in 2013. The play is directed by Steve Scott, who also directed Eclipse’s production of The Lisbon Traviata, and recognizing the opportunity for a tie-in, Scott and Northlight artistic director BJ Jones hosted McNally at Bookends and Beginnings last fall for a signing of his latest anthology. Selected Works: A Memoir in Plays includes Mothers and Sons and the three plays Eclipse mounted last year, among others. The major theme that emerged from the interview and his recollections in the book is how McNally has documented great changes in gay life in American over his long career. Now seventy-seven, he writes in the anthology, McNally does not intend for Mothers and Sons to be his last play, but he wrote it knowing it might be, and he wanted to contextualize his works’ place in history.

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