Ape


The Magnificents


The Producers

“Ape”

Written by Paul Oakley Stovall

Showing: Dog and Pony Theatre at Raven Theatre West Stage, 6157 N. Clark St., through Oct. 13

Tickets: $15-$20

Contact: (773) 235-0492

By Louis Weisberg

Contributing writer

The characters in “Ape” are trapped by a blizzard in a high-school biology classroom, a fitting setting for a play that dramatizes the debate over the teaching of evolution. The storm is an apt choice as well, symbolizing the metaphysical confusion in which we mortals exist.

Unfortunately all the big ideas swirling around in this world premiere production blur the story that Paul Oakley Stovall has developed to illustrate them. Throughout his 90-minute, one-act play, the actors struggle to find real characters amid all the polemics, symbols and plot devices. The most annoying of these is having the four-member ensemble ape apes during set changes, a bit of monkey business that only serves to distance the audience emotionally from the action.

The plot revolves around Aaron (a petulant but sympathetic Evan Fillon), a closeted gay teen who has survived Jesus Camp only to wind up caught in the middle of a clash between his Bible-thumping mother and his favorite teacher, Campbell. She has her own cross to bear, having lost a teenage son to meningitis. Campbell finds solace in science, while Aaron’s mother seeks comfort in faith. In between these adversaries is the school principal, whose beliefs reflect what the play seems to consider a healthy blend of both.

As Campbell, Faith Hurley has power and poise, but at times she seems like a Discovery-program narrator. Celeste A. Frazier, who plays the principal, never overcomes a role that’s more ploy than person. Only Laurie Larson as the mother manages to resonate, even though she bears some of the script’s worst excesses, including an awkward after-life scene and the revelation that she’s really Jewish.

Stovall is a talented playwright and it’s to the credit of Dog and Pony Theatre Company, recently named the city’s best theater troupe by Chicago Magazine, that it’s willing to tackle ambitious original material like this. But “Ape” is too heavy-handed to be moving, and its Hallmark conclusions fail to provide fresh insight into an already overwrought debate. If Stovall had trusted his story and the audience more, maybe this would have worked.

“The Magnificents”

Written by Dennis Watkins

Showing: The House Theatre at Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Ave., through Nov. 3

Tickets: $17-$22

Contact: (773) 251-2195 or www.thehousetheatre.com

By Lawrence Bommer

CFP theater editor

A wonderful piece of table magic called “Sam the Bellhop” is performed by playwright Dennis Watkins in his utterly charming “Magnificents”: A closed-circuit camera shows his wizard hands deploying cards to tell an entire story simply through numbers, seemingly with an un-tampered deck. Just as the cards act out this anecdote, the show’s feats of illusion tell their own affecting two-hour tale. It’s the perfect fusion of style and substance. Thanks to director Molly Brennan, the result is a captivating theatrical thrill show. The House wins indeed!

“The Magnificents” is Watkins’ tribute to the grandfather who taught him not just magic and the power of make-believe, but the difference between con artists who use their powers to take and magicians who offer an audience amazement rather than trickery. An award-winning illusionist himself, Watkins uses his skills to tell a sweetly simple tale of an Old Man (Watkins), his gibberish-spouting, delightfully dotty wife (Marika Mashburn) and the renegade boy (Tommy Rapley) they take in. With chaotic help from some zany clowns (Michael E. Smith, Carolyn Defrin and Stephen Taylor), the boy learns the tricks of the trade–prestidigitation, artful misdirection, thimble-rigging dexterity, producing card tricks so astonishing you don’t want to know how they’re done. But the boy quarrels with his mentor when the magician refuses to return the canary that he made disappear, replacing it with an unwanted orange.

That restoration awaits the play’s deeply moving end, which mirrors the death of Watkins’ grandfather. (His last words were to ask his wife to marry him again.) Before that, Watkins reprises a Marx Brothers routine and a “sawing in half” trick to depict the old man’s surgery, while his passing is beautifully conveyed by an Asrah Levitation. The grandparents’ love is presented simply but with equal conviction: They dance to a supple waltz from Kevin O’Donnell’s score, itself as much an actor as anyone on stage. Finally, richly detailed film sequences paint the characters’ dreams and back stories.

Watkins plays his grandfather with a combination of Old World stolidity and New Age slickness. Mashburn’s endearing Old Woman is a comic marvel and Rapley’s Boy a perfect surrogate for the audience’s own learning curve. There’s enchantment to spare in a cabinet of curiosities that minute by minute spills over with marvels. Far better than The House’s silly and derivative “The Sparrow,” this is homegrown magic as rich a spell as theater distills.

“The Producers”

Written by Mel Brooks and Thomas Meehan

Showing: Marriott Theatre, 10 Marriott Drive, Lincolnshire, through Dec. 2.

Tickets: $42-45

Contact: (847) 634-0200 or www.marriotttheatre.com

By Web Behrens

Contributing writer

No matter how you feel about exurban dinner theater, there’s one compliment you can’t deny the Marriott in Lincolnshire: They do a great job at mixing “firsts” into their programming, so their subscribers aren’t subjected to endless iterations of “Grease” or “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.” The latest feather in their cap is super-smash hit “The Producers,” now receiving its first non-Broadway tour mounting.

Given that the zany musical was showered with Tony Awards six years ago (snagging more of those little round trophies than any other show in history), and also given that the lead hams, Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick, were so closely aligned with the show’s boffo box office (more than any other Broadway marquee name since Glenn Close in “Sunset Boulevard”), you could imagine that the Marriott crew might fret about that very long shadow. But the stellar leads, Guy Adkins (as nebbish Leo Bloom) and Ross Lehman (as shyster Max Bialystock), haven’t ever seen the original production. Neither did this reviewer, so we’re all on equal footing.

If you’re among the uninitiated as well, here’s a bracing dose of reality: This show making so many people swoon seems to be the biggest hoax since Bialystock and Bloom conned a legion of old ladies out of their money to produce “Springtime for Hitler.” It’s true that all the hype probably raised expectations beyond any reasonable threshold. Still, unless you’re a huge Mel Brooks fan (and to be sure, the guy’s made some funny movies), nobody should be surprised if you react to this musical with a big “Huh?”

Which isn’t to take anything away from director Marc Robins’ zippy, in-the-round take, or from its performances. You can’t exactly accuse anyone of overplaying in a show written this broadly. After all, Brooks never met a subtle joke he wasn’t happy to sledgehammer to small bits, then reduce to powder with a steamroller. The book overdoes almost everything and the score might be competent, but it’s nothing special. (David Yazbek easily out-composed Brooks with his infinitely more memorable “Full Monty” tunes, yet Brooks won a Tony for “Keep It Gay” and “Along Came Bialy”?!)

A few highlights almost make the show worthwhile: Adkins sounds like he’s on the verge of drowning until he clears his pipes to sing quite beautifully, and he even brings a bit of humanity to Leo’s neurotic kerchief-chomping; meanwhile, Michael Aaron Lindner nearly steals the show with his caricature of a comically crazed Nazi. Of course, caricature is a big part of the trouble with “The Producers.” These aren’t characters; they’re unimaginative one-note jokes—the Kraut, the fag, the blonde—who only evolve at the 11th hour if it suits the plot. “Keep It Gay” plays very differently when done by the Chicago Gay Men’s Chorus (or seen at Sidetrack’s show-tunes nights) than it does out here in Lincolnshire, where the mere sight of a man in a dress is inherently funny. Context matters.

“The Producers” isn’t offensive; it’s just tired, no matter how well this cast and artistic crew try to sell it.