The Twins Would Like to Say – Dog & Pony Theater, one of the young storefront theater companies I admire a lot, continues to wow with this true story, adapted by Seth Bockley and Devon de Mayo, of immigrant twins in 1970s Wales who created their own set-apart world, with their own language and physical movement, and who wrote bizarre, eccentric, often violent stories about Malibu teenagers.  Staged promenade-style, this is the most innovative production in Garage Rep, with scenes playing out in various parts of the theater simultaneously (which is pretty ballsy, but also makes for somewhat choppy story-telling, since you miss the scenes that you’re not following), the use of shadow puppets, and a fabulous, Tony Manero-style group disco scene near the end of the show.  It’s a unique theater experience, a little different from the other recent promenade shows I’ve been to (but more similar I heard to Dog & Pony’s earlier critical hit As Told By the Vivian Girls, which I unfortunately didn’t see), and at times too unique, with a little too much stimuli hitting you between the eyes.  Speaking of eyes, Grant Sabin’s exceptional set design, with moveable panels that give way to scene upon scene, is pretty eye-catching.

 The very short 65 minute running time probably accounts for the fact that there seems to be a lack of exposition in terms of why these twin girls ended up creating a world of their own that shut out even their parents.  Ok, they were black immigrants in what could only be imagined as an unwelcoming and overwhelmingly white Welsh community in the 1970s, but is the difficulty of assimilation enough to make one not speak?  I’m an immigrant myself, and I know a lot of immigrants (including my extended family who came to the US in the same time period as the girls and their family, the early to mid 1970s) but I don’t know any that had Harpo Marx tendencies.  The performances of Paige Collins and Ashleigh LaThrop, though, as the twins are perfectly calibrated – creepy and infuriatingly inscrutable at times, heartbreakingly poignant at others. 

Adore – Although I was more emotionally engaged by The Twins Would Like to Say, I strongly believe that Adore is the type of production that a cutting-edge, innovative, offbeat theatrical series such as Garage Rep should showcase.  Its subject matter is pretty harrowing and quite fascinating, in a despicable sort of way (and what’s disturbing is that it’s based on a true crime story that happened in Germany in the early ‘noughts), the love story (if you could call it that) between two men who fit each other’s needs perfectly – a self-professed cannibal and the guy whose ultimate fantasy is to be eaten, who meet each other online. Written and directed by the exceptional actor Stephen Louis Grush for the theater company XIII Pocket in which he serves as Artistic Director, Adore is pretty intense going for most of it’s 70 minute running time, with monologues delivered in perfectly normal, non-creepy, conversational tones by the compelling pair of Eric Leonard (as Armin, the eater) and Paige Smith (as Bernd, the eatee).  I really like the way Grush directs these actors and stages these scenes, because the important point is made that these guys, despite how their actions are particularly repulsive to the rest of civilized society, believed how integral, and yes, how normal, these actions, desires, fantasies, are to the lives they lead.

I’m also pretty impressed by the use of video, shot by Mike Kwielford, with other characters in the play interacting with Armin and Bernd cinematically, instead of in live performance, again, making the point that their reality is not the real, normal, conventional world as we know it.   I’m perplexed by the negative reviews that the Trib, TimeOut, and the Reader gave this production, since with Adore, I think Grush sets XIII Pocket very much apart from much of Chicago storefront theater right now, where safe (Chekhov and Miller re-treads, work that panders to twentysomething Facebookers) seemingly reigns supreme.  So I’m going out there and giving a hearty, enthusiastic, two-thumbs up recommendation:  see Adore, right now, because it’s a great example of what the rest of storefront theater, in content and in form, should be doing.

Punkplay – Geez, the 1980s (or the time Francis discovered the beauty of shaving in the morning, Spandau Ballet, and The Goonies) seems to be back in full-force.  First, the elaborate John Hughes tribute at the Oscars, and now this, Gregory Moss’s new play (which had a well-received premiere in New York last year) about discovering one’s self through punk rock, as performed on roller-skates.  Despite the roller-skates, and a hilarious, over-the-top, seduction fantasia involving Ronald Reagan in a bikini, this Pavement Group production, directed by Artistic Director David Perez, is probably the most conventional production in Garage Rep.  This can be good and well…not-so-good.  It’s good because Punkplay, with its good-naturedness and optimistic sensibility, relieves some of the intensity of watching promenading mute twin girls and their out-of-this world fantasies, and star-crossed cannibalism encased by video technology.  It’s not-so-good, because I’m not sure this show really holds up against the risk-taking, imagination, and gut-punch of the other two.  And maybe I’m wrong, but the notion of a Garage Rep connotes a more brazen, experimental endeavor, something I’m not sure Punkplay really fits into.

Mickey (a touching, extremely watchable Matt Farrabee) and Duck (a good, but needing-to-tone-it-down-a-notch Alexander Lane) are two high-school misfits who bond together over their view of punk, and punk rock, as the epitome of rebelliousness and rule-breaking.  Moss writes a lot of memorable scenes with genuine feeling – the Reagan seduction scene and the boys’ discovery of porn (bestiality, in fact) are hilarious; the boys fight scene that ends in a startled kiss is movingly eloquent in communicating what they truly feel about one another without the use of explicit exposition.  But this type of coming of age story has been told before (exhibit A:  John Hughes movies), in different ways, yes, but it’s still not that fresh or creative, unlike the other two shows it is in Garage repertory with.  Perez stages the scenes crisply and cinematically, and Grant Sabin again demonstrates he is the stage designer to watch in this city, with his evocative, moveable design of Mickey’s bedroom, but I probably expected more from Punkplay and it’s inclusion in this particular theatrical showcase.

The Twins Would Like to Say, Adore, and Punkplay are playing in rotating repertory at Steppenwolf’s Garage Theater, 1650 N. Halsted St. until April 25.  Please check www.steppenwolf.org for the specific schedules of each of the plays. You can purchase a pass to see all three, which gives you $5 off each individual ticket.

Best Supporting Actress

Are we even talking about anyone other than Mo’Nique to win Best Supporting Actress?  No tsunami, no earthquake, no worldwide economic meltdown, no swine flu will get in the way of Ms. Mo’ being awarded a golden statue this Sunday.  When I first saw Precious last Fall, I was gut-punched by her terrifying, unforgettably etched Mary Jones, the mother from Hell who made Joan Crawford look like a Carmelite nun. I wanted to scream: Stop the voting, FedEx her that Oscar already!  It’s a brilliant, unnerving, boundaryless, multi-dimensional performance – one of the best I’ve seen in the past ten years.   Only the two Up In the Air nominees, Vera Farmiga, wonderfully understated as a worldly business traveler, and Anna Kendrick, excellent as a wound-up young consultant with a heart, come close as worthy contenders in this category.   The nominations of last year’s winner Penelope Cruz (dear Pe:  I love you darling, but why did you sound like you were chowing down on some pork chicharones while singing one of my favorite numbers from Nine, the usually very witty, but now unintelligible, “Call from the Vatican”?) and Maggie Gyllenhaal in a pretty reactive performance from Crazy Heart, were as perplexing as a flash-sideways storyline from an episode of Lost.

 Predicted Winner:  Mo’Nique, Precious

Best Supporting Actor

Are we even talking about anyone other than Christoph Waltz to win Best Supporting Actor?  No tsunami, no earthquake….ok, you get the picture. Waltz’s Oscar for a giddy, menacing, inventive, multi-lingual Nazi colonel in Inglourious Basterds would be one of the most richly deserved in a category that often has winners who win because the Academy thinks they’re going to croak soon or because some make-up/consolation prize had to be given.  The only other competition (if you could call it that) is Woody Harrelson’s tour-de-force as a military officer tasked to inform the family of dead soldiers in The Messenger, a funny-sad, heartbreakingly authentic performance.  I wasn’t exactly sure what got nominated in Matt Damon’s unmemorable rugby player in the equally undistinguished Invictus?  His flawless Afrikaans accent?  His obviously well-worked out thighs, which looked so deliriously sexy in those rugby player boy shorts?  His perfect chest wax and classy blonde dye job that looked more expensive than Sandra Bullock’s in The Blind Side?

 Predicted Winner:  Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Best Actress

What does Meryl Streep, now on her 16^th nomination, the most of any performer in the 82-year history of the Academy Awards, have to do to finally win her third Oscar and second Best Actress trophy?  Perform Lady Macbeth while Nordic skiing?  Film a one-woman version of “War and Peace” while blasting off in a space shuttle?  Replace Tobey Maguire in “Spiderman 4” and do her own stunts?  Although I think Meryl’s Julia Child in Julie and Julia was a little too lightweight given all the other roles that she didn’t win an Oscar for, it was a wondrous, mesmerizing, incredibly detailed performance, very much worthy of a third nod.  I am flabbergasted that many Oscar pundits have been pounding the Sandra Bullock drum since The Blind Side came out late last year.  Really, SaBu as Best Actress?  For a performance that was taken from the Julia Roberts/Erin Brockovich/miniskirt-high-heels-push-up-bra playbook?  For acting that was so calculated you could almost see Bullock count to ten before she raised an eyebrow or flared a nostril?  For a blonde dye job so heinous it made the Real Housewives of Orange County’s bleached big hairs look as natural as morning dew on a leaf?  Although SaBu seems to be well-liked in Hollywood, let’s see if that Razzie nod for Worst Actress for All About Steve doesn’t wreck her chances.  For my money, it’s Gabourey Sidibe, devastating and unforgettable as the abused Precious who actually gave the leading actress performance of the year.

 Predicted Winner:  Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia

 Best Actor

I’ve resigned myself to the fact that Jeff Bridges will get his Lifetime Achievement Award masquerading as an Oscar Best Actor statuette this Sunday.  I love Jeff Bridges (hey, he’s The Dude, for crying out loud!), but his drunken, puking, slurring, gut-exposing, sweaty-armpit, broken down country singer in Crazy Heart is a serviceable performance.  Ok, he was touching in some scenes, he did his own singing, and yes, he bravely agreed to look like he didn’t use conditioner, deodorant, or a nose hair trimmer, but there were three other superlative performances in this category.  I’ve never been a big George Clooney fan, but his melancholy, touchingly resonant Ryan Bingham in Up In the Air was a masterpiece of lived-in acting.  I thought Jeremy Renner’s Sgt. James in The Hurt Locker was layered, intense, emotionally powerful.  I especially loved Colin Firth’s beautifully wrought and delicately nuanced lonely, suicidal, gay professor in A Single Man (that scene at the beginning of the movie when he first heard about his boyfriend’s accidental death was heartbreakingly great).

 Predicted Winner:  Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

 Best Director

I am quietly savoring the fact that one word will describe the Best Director category on March 7, and that is “Historic”.  For the first time in the 82 year history of the Oscars, I’m pretty confident that a female will win Best Director, the last bastion of exclusive white-male privilege (no African-American or Hispanic director has ever won, and only one Asian, Ang Lee, for Brokeback Mountain, has).  I think it’s a significant milestone, definitely, but I think it’s also undeniable that Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker was the best directed film of the year.  It was gripping, harrowing, heartbreaking, with a great story, fantastic technical work (the editing alone is unbelievably stunning) and exceptional performances; the best film about the incomprehensibility of war that I have seen since Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Yes, Jim Cameron might have broken cinematic ground with all his technical hoo-hah in Avatar but it was, ultimately, a run-of-the- mill film with a barely-there storyline hiding behind all the technological razzle-dazzle.  In my book, a director needs to be able to tell an engaging, articulate narrative, and Cameron failed to do that with his Wii-game disguised as a three hour movie. 

 Predicted Winner:  Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Best Picture

The Academy’s decision to increase the Best Picture nominees from five to ten this year is up there in inanity toxic levels as high as The Bachelor Jake’s decision to propose to Vienna over Tenley.  What did having ten nominees actually accomplish?  Well, it got the kind of movie that NRA members and Christian conservatives love, The Blind Side, a Best Picture nomination.  Sigh…Moving on…I actually think that this is a two-horse race, what many Oscar pundits have dubbed David vs. Goliath, small indie vs. most profitable movie ever made.  The Hurt Locker was the best film of the year for me – it brought to very vivid, uncompromising life a world that I was unfamiliar with and struggling to understand, the psychological, physical, and emotional life of soldiers in Iraq.  It was provocative, intelligent filmmaking that was also viscerally exciting, the trademark of the best cinematic experiences.  I think it’s a deserving Best Picture winner, and I have faith that the majority of Academy voters will think it is….but then there’s, ummm, Avatar. 

If Avatar is the future of film as many critics and fans have said, then I actually would be better off going into a cloistered Tibetan monastery and never seeing a film again in my entire life.  Sure, the technology and visual effects were literally out-of-this world, and Jim Cameron should be commended for his risk-taking and vision.  But technology doesn’t make cinema, it enhances and complements it, and overwhelm it.  Film is, ultimately, about stories, and Avatar told a clichéd, one-dimensional, appealing-to-the-least-common-denominator story (that Na’Vi birthing ritual/forest rave scene, for one, was execrable!).  It’s a movie that refused to allow its audiences to think and process – it’s like watching COPS but with better visual effects.

 Predicted Winner:  The Hurt Locker

 Other Categories

 Adapted Screenplay:  Up In the Air

Original Screenplay:  The Hurt Locker

Cinematography:  The Hurt Locker

Film Editing:  The Hurt Locker

Art Direction:  Avatar

Costume Design:  The Young Victoria

Original Musical Score:  Up

Original Song:  “The Weary Heart” from Crazy Heart

Sound Editing:  The Hurt Locker

Sound Mixing:  Avatar

Visual Effects:  Avatar

Make-Up:  Star Trek

Foreign Language Film:  El Secreto de sus Ojos (Argentina)

Animated Feature:  Up

Documentary Feature:  The Cove

Documentary Short Subject:  The Last Truck:  Closing of a GM Plant

Animated Short Film:  A Matter of Loaf and Death

Live Action Short Film:  Kavi

I haven’t seen any of Brett C. Leonard’s previous plays but I have heard a lot about them, especially Guinea Pig Solo, which had an acclaimed Chicago premiere from Collaboraction in 2006.  I was expecting The Long Red Road to be gutsy, devastating, an emotional electric shock to the system.  And in parts it is.  In some parts it feels like a TV movie, but with a very strong visual feel.  In fact, I think it is Hoffman’s direction, which feels very cinematic- experimenting with overlapping blocking of scenes set in different locations; unabashedly relying on prolonged pauses and silences to create character tension; judiciously and creatively using Eugene Lee’s large, multi-level, impressively detailed set to allow for one scene to be played out in the foreground of another scene- that is the strongest element of this production.  But man, the play is a mass of incomplete, imperfect information.  As avid readers of this blog know, I’m not a spoonfeeding kind of theatrical guy, but I do like to have some information to draw conclusions about the play I’m seeing.  Sam, an alcoholic tortured by memories of his tragic past, has been hiding out in a South Dakota Indian reservation after running away from an accident that killed one of his daughters and crippled his wife nine years ago.  The wife, Sandra, and the surviving daughter, Tasha, is now living with Sam’s brother, Bob, in a dysfunctional quasi-family unit.  Bob, who has demons of his own, and Tasha, hungry for paternal love, visit Sam at the reservation upon the urging of Sam’s new girlfriend, Annie, a teacher on the reservation, hoping to take him back to Kansas and start his life all over again.  But there are so many questions, and so little time. Why is Sam an alcoholic?  He was driving drunk during the accident, so he didn’t turn to liquor because of the tragedy. From what Bob recounts, he was the favored child and got his own way even as a little boy.  How did Sam end up in the Indian reservation?  Actually, why is the play even set in the reservation, when there really isn’t any strong evocation of the milieu?   I mean, as it’s written and staged, The Long Red Home can be set in Staten Island (which is as effective a hiding place as South Dakota is).  Why is Annie sticking it out with Sam, who is self-absorbed, drunk, self-destructive, drunk, self-pitying, drunk?  What is it in her back story that draws her to a man like him when she’s smart, calm, independent?  Ok, so Bob thinks she’s a “saver”, but I think that’s a tepid reason to keep Sam’s lazy, mooching, drunk ass around.  What is keeping Bob as surrogate father and husband to Sam’s family when Sandra isn’t sleeping with him anymore, and he has his own issues with Sam whom he has resented since childhood?  Is his sense of sibling responsibility that strong?  Then why didn’t he exhaust all means to find Sam when he disappeared nine years ago?  Finally, what is the deal with the Indian chief?  Is he Sam’s therapist, mentor, guardian angel, or am I overthinking this and Clifton is just the guy who pours his copious drinks?  The character doesn’t really play a significant role in the drama.  The questions aren’t really helped by the shortness of the scenes, with emotional volatility seemingly bubbling underneath, but rarely spilling forth.

I think the other problem is that the audience really needs to empathize with Sam, and it has to be strong empathy even without sympathy or identification.  Tom Hardy, the hot British actor who plays Sam, does some interesting work here.  His drunken meltdown is riveting, and there are some intriguing shades in his line delivery and physical details (he sometimes rubs his chest to indicate anxiety or alcoholic withdrawal or both).  It’s a pretty subdued performance in my opinion, though, as if he is keeping all his demons inside, in his head, which can be a refreshing alternative to how this potentially scenery-chewing role can be played.  However, we don’t really get the bombast and dazzle that the dramatic arcs seem to demand, so ultimately it is an unsatisfying performance.  I think the best performance in the five person cast is turned in by Fiona Roberts, startlingly still a student at The Chicago Academy for the Arts High School, as Tasha.  When she finally meets her father, Sam, whom she knows about, but don’t remember, as she fiercely embraces him or sensitively, heartbreakingly finger the beaded necklace he gives her as a gift, she is magnificently shattering.  It’s a very lived in, very ferocious performance, and gives the surroundings that jolt of electricity I wanted to find.

The Long Red Road feels like a play that still needs to be workshopped and further revised, an unfinished work that can eventually become memorable work.  Maybe I had high expectations for Hoffman’s Chicago directing debut, thinking that with an artist of his caliber, it was going to be quite auspicious.  Unfortunately, I left the Goodman after the play feeling quite auspiciously deflated.

The Long Red Road is at the Goodman’s Owen Theater, 170 N. Dearborn St., until March 21.

Great theater needs to be experienced, so reducing The Brother/Sister Plays to a “plot summary” more appropriate for a newspaper arts page events listing is unfair.  Suffice it to say that In the Red and Brown Water is about Osha, a talented track runner who misses an opportunity to change her life circumstances by giving up an athletic scholarship to care for her dying mother; The Brothers Size is about the fraught, complicated relationship between two brothers, the younger one just released from prison; and Marcus; or The Secret of Sweet is about a boy coming to terms with his sexual identity. And the way McCraney tells these stories is stupendously breathtaking:  sometimes impressionistic and stylized, sometimes realistically unnerving; with characters that weave in and out of the plays, some of them their older selves, or versions of themselves, or echoes of themselves; with dialogue which can be poetic and mythical on one hand, and blisteringly raw and foul-mouthed on another; ensconced in music (pop, gospel) and dance (stepping, hiphop, vogueing) and a myriad of theatrical devices (Greek choruses, characters saying stage directions aloud, pantomiming of a character’s movements); delicately balancing both folklore (the characters are named after Yoruban deities) and socio-political commentary (the characters’ perspectives on their lives in the Louisiana “projects”).  The plays, taken together, are an incomparable, immersive, highly original experience:  you lose yourself in the sensuality of the visual imagery and the aural cues, the riveting emotional pull, and in the sharp intellectuality of a playwright who can write scenes of both devastating heft and joyous life-affirmation.

 And some of the scenes are doozies, with so much emotional power that I have not felt in any other play I’ve seen recently:  in Red or Brown, Osha’s presentation of a “gift” to her lover Shango who spurns her for her inability to conceive a child is so full of gut-punching heartbreak;  in The Brothers Size, the brothers’ joyful, profound emotional bonding by dancing to Otis Redding’s “Try a Little Tenderness” is so full of glorious, exuberant affection and love of life;  in Marcus, a complex, wonderfully staged scene about homosexuality among slaves powerfully, richly, astonishingly establish the history and context of the ambivalent, inconsistent view on homosexuality among African-American men in a few short minutes.  I can’t overlook director Tina Landau’s masterful, calibrated contribution in bringing McCraney’s indelible world alive. Landau, who also directed Red or Brown at the Public last year but who directs all three plays here, between astute use of lighting, pacing, physicality, and stage composition manages to make McCraney’s world believable in its mix of realism and mysticism, the unlikely co-mingling of the serrated edge of Precious and the diaphanous hauntedness of a Garcia Marquez or Murakami short story.

I have never been an actor, but I could guess that with material this exceptional, an acting ensemble would be inspired to constantly be on their A-game.  The nine person cast of The Brother/Sister Plays is without a doubt delivering nine of the best performances you can see on a Chicago stage this season, so it’s so hard to single any one out because their work is so integrated and so essential in the overall fabric of the three plays.  But if there is one dominant performance over the two nights, its Steppenwolf ensemble member K. Todd Freeman’s intense, emotionally complicated Ogun Size, the older, more responsible, more reflective brother.  Because Freeman plays the character in all three plays, it’s marvelous to see how he shades and differentiates Ogun across the different works:  in Red or Brown, his younger Ogun is less confident and more idealistic, in The Brothers Size, a bitter, older Ogun, still scarred by Osha’s decisions, is tightly wound and inaccessible but is able to show flashes of tenderness towards his brother, in Marcus, Ogun is both world-weary and intrigued by the boy Marcus’s feelings towards him.  Freeman gives a magnificent, riveting, unforgettable performance.  But he isn’t alone:  Jacqueline Williams’ meddling, earthy Aunt Elegua is funny, touching, bombastic, indelible; Alana Arenas’ Osha is radiant, haunting, beautifully layered; and Glenn Davis’ Elegba is sexy, dangerous, smoldering.

 I could go on and on and rave about The Brother/Sister Plays in more spaces than my blog would accommodate.  But I’d hate for you, my dear blog readers, to just stay in and read; I’d like you guys to hurry up and brave the slushy, slippery Chicago streets and go experience two of the finest, freshest, wondrous, glorious nights of theater you’ll ever have.  And yes, you can all thank me later. 

The Brother/Sister Plays are playing on alternate nights at the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theater, 1650 N. Halsted st., until May 23.    If you are true lovers of arts and culture, which I assume almost all of my blog readers are, you’ll be rushing out to go see both nights.  I’ll personally unsubscribe anyone from my blog who misses these plays!  No excuses!

If there’s only one play you’re going to see this quarter, then I enthusiastically, loudly, fiercely encourage you to go to Tarell Alvin McCraney’s brilliant, exhilarating, unforgettable The Brother/Sister Plays at Steppenwolf’s Upstairs Theater.  Actually make that two plays, since The Brother Plays (Brothers Size and Marcus; Or the Secret of Sweet) play in repertory on consecutive nights with The Sister Play (In the Red or Brown Water).  I’ve been to one breathtaking night already and I’m scheduled to go to another one tonight, so expect a blog post on these plays later this week.  I seriously doubt the chops and the commitment of any self-described theater lover who misses these wondrous nights, especially since they’re running till mid-May.

The Goodman is indisputably the lair of ill-mannered theatergoers that deserve to be tasered into silence and immobility, as this post from Rob Kozlowski’s blog hilariously, but also truthfully depicts.  But I think I can brave the wild so to speak to see the Philip Seymour Hoffman-directed world premiere of Brett C. Leonard’s The Long Red Road about an alcoholic’s wrestling with his dark, tortuous past, set on a South Dakota Indian reservation.  I’m not really sure what to expect, but I’ve always respected Hoffmann’s choice of material as actor and director, on stage and screen, so I’ve purchased my ticket for this already.  Plus, the hotter-than-a-Bhut-Jolokia-pepper British actor Tom Hardy (who was in Band of Brothers and RocknRolla) is playing the lead, so if the play turns out to be less than engaging, there’s still plenty of eye candy to go around.

Speaking of eye candy, the brilliant, intense, one-can’t-ever-have-enough-seconds-of actor Stephen Louis Grush isn’t appearing in his storefront theater company Thirteen Pocket’s newest production, Adore, part of the Steppenwolf Visiting Company Initiative mini-Festival this month at the Steppenwolf Garage (the other two theater companies who are participating are Dog&Pony and The Pavement Group).  He is writer and director of the piece though, which is based on a true story which grabbed headlines in the early 2000s in which a man in rural Germany posts an online ad looking for another male to eat (yeah, eat, as in Hannibal Lecter cannibalistic feasting), and actually found someone who agreed to it.  It’s also supposedly being staged as a live play and as a film, which I think may just make Adore potentially one of the most talked about plays this month.

I’m also planning to make another trek this month to that black box theater on the 4^th floor of a warehouse building by the Irving Park and Ravenswood railroad tracks, for The Right Brain Project’s production of local playwright Randall Colburn’s play Pretty Penny which is about phone sex operators, staged without sets and props. Interesting.  Hopefully, there will be clothes!

Since I’m an equal opportunity arts consumer, I traipse around from warehouses and railroad tracks to well…the MCA, where I’ll  be seeing British contemporary dance sensation Akram Khan’s work bahok (or Bengali for “carrier”), a collaboration with the National Ballet of China, exploring themes of multi-cultural and multi-national identity.  It’s a topic I’m very passionate about and I’m very interested to see how Khan, whose mega-talent has attracted such diverse artistic collaborators as Juliette Binoche, Anish Kapoor, and Kylie Minogue (whose “iconic gay goddess” status allows me to forgive her from stealing the walking hotness of Olivier Martinez away from us gay boys) tackles its complexity and potency.

Speaking of mega-talent, or mega-ballsiness or mega-ambition or mega-insanity, or maybe all of it, there’s the Building Stage’s six-hour, non-singing theatrical adaptation of Richard Wagner’s The Ring Cycle.  Looks like co-directors and co-adaptors Blake Montgomery and Joannie Schultz are giving Wagner purists a kick in the groin with this admittedly imaginative, mind-blowingly courageous adaptation, and I can’t wait to join them!  Maybe I’ll see some of you there as well. (Joel, I’m looking at you!)

 Best Picture

(500) Days of Summer

Avatar

The Blind Side

District 9

An Education

The Hangover

The Hurt Locker

Inglourious Basterds

Precious:  Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

Up In the Air

Next to the existence of John Edwards’ alleged “personal video” with ex-mistress Rielle Hunter, the Academy’s decision to expand the Best Picture nominees from five to ten is probably the wackiest piece of news I’ve heard in the past twelve months.  Where are they going to scrounge ten films to nominate when there were past years that the Academy could barely find even five worthy films to honor?  I’m planning to cleanse my system of anything liquid for the next twelve hours to avoid puking up brown matter in case critically-derided box-office hits such as The Hangover and The Blind Side are called tomorrow (which are very likely).  I’m also hoping though that the welcome result of this crazy, possibly medication-induced decision is that films with passionate followers such as District 9 and (500) Days of Summer, my two “No Guts, No Glory” picks are given the recognition they deserve.

Best Director

Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

James Cameron, Avatar

Lee Daniels, Precious

Quentin Tarantino, Inglourious Basterds

Jason Reitman, Up In the Air

I think this is a pretty solid line-up (it’s the nominees list of the Directors’ Guild of America Award, which Bigelow won over the weekend), but there is always some out-of-left-field nominee that can crop up in this category.  I am not ready to make a “No Guts, No Glory” prediction since these directors all have been acclaimed and buzzed-about throughout the year for their work and their back stories, but one of them can be supplanted by the great Michael Haneke for The White Ribbon or Neill Blomkamp for the unexpected summer critical and commercial hit District 9.

Best Actor

Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

George Clooney, Up In the Air

Matt Damon, The Informant!

Colin Firth, A Single Man

Jeremy Renner, The Hurt Locker

Bridges, Clooney, Firth, and Renner have all been nominated by various award-giving bodies.  Matt Damon had two noteworthy performances in 2009.  His South African soccer player in Invictus, all smooth barechest, muscular legs, sexy Afrikaans accent, and blazing blonde hair, has been getting the awards attention in the Supporting Actor category, but the Academy LOVES physical transformations as the primary indicator of an actor’s craft (just ask Charlize Theron, Felicity Huffman, Robert de Niro, etc.) so I think it’s his other performance, as the pudgy, middle-aged, mustachioed, beige slacks-wearing (horrors!) corporate drone in The Informant! that will bring Damon his second acting nomination after his career-making one in Good Will Hunting twelve years ago.  It’s my “No Guts, No Glory” pick for this category.

Best Actress

Sandra Bullock, The Blind Side

Helen Mirren, The Last Station

Carey Mulligan, An Education

Gabourey Sidibe, Precious

Meryl Streep, Julie and Julia

I don’t think there will be any surprises in this category, other than if Sandra Bullock (SaBu to us mere mortals), in all her blonde highlights, high-heeled, Texan twang, Julia-Roberts-as-Erin-Brockovich-channeling glory, doesn’t get nominated.  This will only happen if Lady Gaga decides to shoeshop with Susan Boyle…which is, like, highly unlikely.

Best Supporting Actor

Brian Geraghty, The Hurt Locker

Woody Harrelson, The Messenger

Anthony Mackie, The Hurt Locker

Stanley Tucci, The Lovely Bones

Christoph Walz, Inglourious Basterds

I actually think the Supporting races are the more wide-open ones this year and will most likely yield the buzzworthy nominations tomorrow morning.  With its recent Directors Guild and Producers Guild Awards victories and its Screen Actors Guild Awards nomination for Best Ensemble, I think there’s widespread respect for The Hurt Locker.  Jeremy Renner is deservedly getting the awards attention for his incredible lead performance but Brian Geraghty and Anthony Mackie as the other two members of the bomb unit turn in memorable performances as well, so my “No Guts, No Glory” picks are the two of them securing slots in this highly-competitive category (and if I have to pick only one, I think the vote will go to Mackie who turned in more restrained work).

Best Supporting Actress

Vera Farmiga, Up In the Air

Anna Kendrick, Up In the Air

Diane Krueger, Inglourious Basterds

Melanie Laurent, Inglourious Basterds

Mo’Nique, Precious

I would argue that Inglourious Basterds is more radical filmmaking than Avatar.  It might not have the technological razzle-dazzle of the latter, but it has the screenwriting, directing, and acting chutzpah to invert our traditional conceptions of war genre films.  I think actors, who make up the majority of Academy membership, will want to reward a film that has juicy roles all around.  Christoph Walz is a shoo-in for Supporting Actor, but I think his two female co-stars, the gloriously scene-stealing Diane Krueger and the more heartfelt Melanie Laurent, will also get their names called tomorrow.  They’re my “No Guts, No Glory” picks for this category.

Let’s see how I do tomorrow morning!  (The announcement is usually carried by the networks’ morning shows, CNN, and E! at 7:35 am central time).

Trying to describe the plot and the characters of Killer Joe in a blog post is like trying to describe the state of shock that a Chinese firecracker setting off close to your eardrum inflicts.  It’s a play that you just have to see, instead of read about.  In essence, the story boils down to a trailer park-living, white trashy family hiring a policeman moonlighting as a hired killer to whack the family matriarch for insurance money to pay off the son’s drug debts and ensure that everyone else live happily ever after.  And all these characters, the cop, Killer Joe Cooper; the high-strung son, Chris; the slovenly father, Ansel; the slutty stepmom, Sharla; and the dreamy, somewhat mentally challenged daughter, Dottie, are so vividly depicted and have specific, idiosyncratic qualities, that they reminded me of the brilliantly etched characterizations of the August extended family.  Between the five of them, Killer Joe comes off like a low-rent cross between No Country for Old Men and Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (and I say that fondly), a lurid opera populated with scummy, outrageous, mostly dim-witted characters who still all come off sympathetic and engrossing.  Unlike August, it’s really the character writing that you come away with from this play versus any narrative brilliance.  Oh, plus that scene with the KFC drumstick (more on that later).

The characters in Killer Joe are, well, killer roles so a production’s success really hinges on a cast’s ability to not only play (or overplay, but just enough) the Grand Guignol elements but also find the subtle shadings that Letts imbues each character with.  The Profiles production has a terrific cast.  Profiles Associate Artistic Director Darrell W. Cox is known around town for giving these blistering, sweaty, screaming performances of imperfect, sometimes brutish men (which, truth be told, I’m not a big fan of) but he gives Killer Joe the right balance of menace and sadness.  He makes you believe that this ruthless, conscience-less killer can fall for the delicate, childish Dottie (their dinner date scene is particularly poignant).  An interesting young actor, Kevin Bigley, comes screeching in like a hellcat during the first scene in typical Profiles fashion, but settles into a more shaded performance as the play progresses, demonstrating not only Chris’s panic, fear, and anger, but also his tenderness and vulnerability.  The standout performance though, in my opinion, belongs to ensemble member Somer Benson whose Sharla is gutsy and no-holds-barred, delusional and pathetic, heart wrenching in the foolishness of her decisions and actions.  She also has some of the “did Letts actually write that?” scenes such as lounging around bottomless in the opening scene when Chris comes barging into their trailer; and the infamous (and pretty lengthy) chicken leg scene in which Killer Joe discovers her role in the pursuit of the insurance money and humiliates her by making her give oral sex to a drumstick attached to his crotch.  I think Benson’s performance, boundaryless but genuinely heartfelt, makes the scene less cringe-inducing that it could have been.  In my opinion, Claire Wellin’s Dottie is a little too spacey, losing some of the steely fragility that I envision the character to possess (I mean she’s able to attract and hold on to a killer), and Howie Johnson’s Ansel is a little laid-back content to have all the other characters chew every scenery, prop, and Diet Coke bottle in sight.

Killer Joe is enjoyable- a pulpy, racy evening, unobtrusively directed by Snyder, letting Letts’  amazing writing skills shine through- although it’s probably not recommended for the squeamish.  However, it is highly recommended for the multitudes of Tracy Letts and August fans out there who want to see where he’s been to appreciate even better what he has remarkably achieved.

Killer Joe is at Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway, until February 28.

 As BFF Debra and I discussed after the play, the key probably lies in how Didion herself differentiates the book from the play, which is included in the Play Notes:  “When I was writing the book, I did not know whether or not I would survive.  When I was writing the play, I knew I had survived.” The Year of Magical Thinking, the play, then, has a quality of restraint, of almost-clear-headedness that comes with somewhat being removed from the state of loss.  I think the other difference is that when the play was written, Didion’s daughter, Quintana, had already passed away as well.  So there is less of this uncertain terror at losing her, which is in the book, versus the qualities of remembrance and inevitability, which come out more in the play.  The play is still quite moving in parts, such as when Didion, the character, says “Grief turns out to be a place none of us know about until we reach it…We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss.  We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return and need his shoes”, some of the most gut-wrenching writing in the book which Didion gracefully brings over.  It is also a very honest, self-aware play, in which Didion paints herself as difficult, questioning, and implacable, qualities that become more pronounced as she tries to come to terms with her grief.

 And Fisher, in a tour-de-force performance, brilliantly portrays these qualities and some, navigating complicated emotions for eighty intermissionless minutes by herself, with just a table, a chair, a tea cup, an orchid plant, and a scarf as props to aid her in holding the audience enthralled.  It is an impressive performance, but at times, it also feels like too much of a cerebral performance (again, possibly driven by the rhythms and emphases of the playwriting), lacking some of the emotional rawness and the heartbreaking empathy of the book’s Joan Didion.  Fisher also seems to be a little too young to be the Didion who was 70 when Dunne passed away, and so I really don’t get a lot of that bitterness and confusion that happens when your life partner, who you have been with for a long time, is suddenly wrenched away from you (one of the great, complex paragraphs in the book which Didion doesn’t carry into the play talks about her self-realization that she has to see herself as others see her now, versus for the past forty years, when she saw herself in relation to how Dunne saw her when they first got married).  Newell’s direction is unobtrusive, as it should be, since The Year of Magical Thinking is ultimately about the writing and the performance, but the staging can also use a little bit more intimacy and familiarity in my opinion (having Fisher on a relatively large, raised stage, and limiting the times she comes to the edge of it to address the audience, heightens the arms-length feel of the material).

 The Year of Magical Thinking will definitely appeal to audiences who like sophisticated, intellectually demanding theater, so it is worth seeing from that perspective.  For an honest, warm-blooded depiction of working through grief and pain, I would suggest you read the book first, or instead.

The Year of Magical Thinking is at the Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Avenue, in Hyde Park, until February 14.

 The title refers to the, well, ribbon, that the strict, unforgiving pastor of a remote German village in 1914 forces his children to wear publicly for any perceived infraction against purity and goodness.  Children are not only publicly humiliated in this strongly authoritarian feudal community, they are also physically, psychologically, and sexually abused by the adults – who are also either morally dubious (the village doctor is having an affair with the midwife, the pastor acts morally superior but is willing to lie to protect his family) or socially ineffectual (most of the farmers are grudgingly beholden to the Baron who owns the lands they work in; the schoolteacher is not taken seriously by others probably because of his youth). But there are more violent things happening in the village as well– two children are found badly beaten, one of them to near-blindness, a suspiciously placed wire trips the doctor’s horse and causes the doctor to break his collarbone, a middle-aged female laborer dies after falling through loose floorboards in a barn, which later in the film is mysteriously burned down.  In typical Haneke fashion, he never tells you who the culprits are and why he/she/they did what they did (you’re left to draw your own conclusions, especially after seeing the final scene) but he does tell you, via voiceover remembrances of the now-elderly schoolteacher that the events of this year in this particular German village may clarify what happened in the country years later.

 Many reviews of The White Ribbon, and even Haneke himself in his interview with Le Monde, talk about the film as portraying the roots of Nazism in Germany.  These abused pre- and pubescent children (who would be in their 20s and early 30s twenty years later, in 1934, during the rise of Hitler and the Nazi Party), because of their early experience with fear, intolerance, dictatorship, and violence as a way of life, will become more prone to turn into fanatics who will use these same things to embrace and advance a heinous ideology.  Even if they do not participate directly, they will turn into silent conspirators, who will look the other way, as most of the German population did during that period (very powerfully brought home by the scene in which one of the girls insists she dreamt of one of the children’s beatings, proclaiming premonition and denying receiving any foreknowledge of the event, even under threats and loud slaps from the town police).  For the most part I get it – environment drives behavior.  But tantalizingly, I think Haneke also makes a point that people, even children, have an intrinsic meanness and propensity to do wrong in them.  There’s the doctor verbally abusing his mistress, the midwife, for no apparent reason; there are the steward’s sons who nearly drown the Baron’s son because he is able to carve a whistle on his own and they couldn’t.  Malice and brutality is in our blood and our core nature, and that potentially some cultures may tend to surface this core nature more than others (the German national culture in this case), due to it’s social strictures (a feudal landscape, a deep Protestant religiosity, a generation-defining event such as World War I) – an intriguing, cynical inference, and highly polarizing. 

 There are so many other rich threads in Haneke’s screenplay that I can’t even begin to parse.  The midwife who has a mentally challenged son and who is emotionally maltreated by the doctor is seen by the villagers as paying for the “sins” of the generations that went before her (what these sins are, of course, Haneke doesn’t say…hey this isn’t Avatar’s screenplay where everything needs to be slowly…explicitly…pointed…out).  If this is seen as Haneke’s commentary on German cultural guilt and complicity, then he seems to be saying that the German population will never be freed of the remembrances of the Holocaust for years and generations to come, regardless of what they do.

 Christian Berger’s black and white photography is breathtaking (actually Haneke shot in color and used a process to drain the colors away) with many scenes looking like black and white images of Flemish paintings (the workers in the field, shots of the town covered with snow, the burning barn, etc.).  The night scenes have an impressive quality of dreaminess and malevolence, which heightens the more mysterious and more chilling aspects of the narrative.  The period design is flawless, the music evocative, the acting strong.  It’s the children though, all uniformly excellent, looking and acting like they all came from a casting call for a bizarre performance piece combining Children of the Corn with a kids’ version of Dogville mixed up with traces of Bad Seed, who are haunting, captivating, and utterly unforgettable.  Without any artifice or exaggeration, the young cast of The White Ribbon subtly yet firmly bring to life Haneke’s thesis on the capability of people for collective evil.

Howard Barker is a British playwright who came up with the phrase “Theater of Catastrophe” to describe his works which are written to intentionally come up with a unique, individualistic response from each audience member.  From his Wikipedia entry:  “Where other playwrights might clarify a scene, Barker seeks to render it more complex, ambiguous, and unstable.”  Ok now!  Taken on these terms, then, Minna, somewhat based on Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s comedy of manners Minna von Barhelm, about a young lady’s romance with a bitter, penniless military officer, is quite successful as a Barker work.  This is the first play I’d been to in the couple of years I’ve been writing this blog that I absolutely had no idea what was going on most of the time – discombobulation is the natural audience response between the stylized acting styles; the fast forwarding and back tracking between time periods; the disconnected conversations;  and the random characters including a mute, barechested Cupid slinking along the stage in either sheets, hotpants, or hipster jeans, two hanging “live” corpses who alternately mimic and annotate the headscratching action, and a hotel owner who shares a split personality with his baby girl doll.  In the second act, when the male servant Just crossdressed as a farm maid, sat on a swing, and sang a rap song with the hanging corpses dancing (or nodding) along, I thought the entire solar system exploded and I found myself in some alternative proto-universe of theatrical craziness.  WTF!!!

Yeah, yeah, so Barker makes some points about the immorality, deception, and delusion of supposedly virtuous people, but really, the script is so trashed, it’s not even important to discuss it.  I think the evening is ultimately memorable because Wiesner and her actors and creative team throw themselves firmly, fiercely, and committedly into the weirdness.  Wiesner’s images, with great contributions from the sexy, vaguely debauched costumes designed by Beata Pilch and Nevena Todorovic and the creepy-noirish lighting of Richard Norwood, are memorable:  Minna and the three actresses playing Francisca solemnly but almost menacingly parading through the theater wearing black shrouds; Minna’s lover Tellheim being buggy-whipped by the sergeant Werner in a subtly S-and-M-way; the naked Cupid on a catwalk dropping the billowing sheet he is wearing onto the actors onstage below (as is usual at Trap Door, where everyone pairs acting in the play with something else, the actor playing Cupid, Dave Holcombe, is also the box-office person.  Where else in this city, other than Trap Door Theater, can you have a guy cross your name off the reservations list and hand you a program one minute, and then show you his bare ass the next?)

I also admire Wiesner’s cast since works like Minna may be as infuriating to the actors, who are attempting to find character arcs in characters that seem to be written without any, as they are to the audience members trying to understand motivations and relationships.  The whole cast is commendable, with everyone throwing themselves onto the demands of text as if they’re jumping into lifeboats being launched out of the Titanic, but special props go to Geraldine Dulex who plays Minna as a cross between a young Gloria Swanson diva-in-training and a contemporary heroine; the always-riveting Kevin Cox whose Tellheim is inadvertently funny in his mix of sarcasm and cluelessness; and Carl Wisniewski whose Just is both sleazy and sympathetic in his despair at his servant class status and his fierce, almost homoerotic,  protectiveness towards his master Tellheim.   Minna is consistent with the type of obtuse, headache-inducing theater that Trapdoor has the dubious monopoly on in this city; it’s probably one of the first shows I’ve seen there, though, that has made me want to come back.