The New Balance – Theater In Chicago 2024
Chicago theaters spent the last three years making up for by-passing plays written by people of color. Perhaps we’ve reached some sort of balance in 2024 – plays represented a mélange of colors, all of them interesting.
Joe Turner’s Come and Gone by August Wilson
Produced by Goodman Theater, directed by Chuck Smith.
August Wilson is a favorite playwright of mine, but Joe Turner is an acquired taste for many. Second play in August Wilson’s Century Cycle, Joe Turner is the story of Black immigrants to Pittsburg at the turn of the 20th century.
The boarding house is owned by Seth Holly, son of a freeman. He’s a tinker, making pots and pans from sheet metal. His wife, Bertha, cooks, cleans, and supervises the large establishment. It is $2.00 a week, including two meals a day. The outhouse is in the back.
Their permanent resident is Bynam Walker, a spiritualist and realist who provides running commentary on the transients. Rutherford Selig is the white peddler who finds people because he travels among all the Black communities – lots of people owe him money.
Boarding house transients come and go – each with a story. The most poignant involves a father and daughter looking for eight years for their wife and mother. Selig helps the mother and daughter reunite, but the father keeps moving. Other transients bond and move on. The story is about the flux, flow, failure, and successes of the Blacks coming from the South. Their parents were slaves. Some of them were born slaves. They may be better off in the North, but Wilson’s vision is pessimistic.
If you attend any of Wilson’s plays, read about the Century Cycle first. Be prepared for reality, it’s not all fun. Be open to learning.
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood and Based on Her Novella of the Same Name
Produced by Goodman Theatre, directed by Susan V. Booth.
What a lovely play! Atwood turns a minor character, Penelope, in Homer’s Odyssey into the star. The suiters who want to claim her hand as soon as Odysseus can be declared dead torment the long-suffering, abandoned wife, surrounded by her 12 maids. Her son, both her delight and her devil, pines for his father and maturity. In song and dialogue, the 12 maids play all the other roles in this play.
Jennifer Morrison was splendid as Penelope. She’s a Chicago native, a convincing actress, and lovely singer. Is she just too beautiful for the role? My friend and I wanted to see Meryl Streep as the abandoned spouse bearing the weight of the kingdom on her shoulders – a bit more jaded and care-worn than the lovely Jennifer.
Purpose by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins
Produced by Steppenwolf Theatre, directed by Phylicia Rashad.
Be prepared for trouble when you arrive at the theater and see the stage set that includes a dining room table with at least six chairs. Dining scenes are the perfect launch pad for destructive behavior.
I loved this play. Loosely based on the Chicago family of Dr. Jesse Jasper, it covers the spectrum of wealth, entitlement, duplicity, religious conviction (and lack thereof), immaturity, lies, and truth – all in one Black family.
The Jaspers, Dr. Solomon and Claudine (a non-practicing attorney) have two grown sons: Solomon Jr. and Nazareth “Naz”. This is a memory play told by Naz, who frequently breaks the fourth wall to bring the audience completely into the picture. In Act 1, the Jaspers celebrate Jr.’s release from prison for misappropriating campaign funds. The celebration is disguised as a long-delayed birthday party for matriarch Claudine.
Jr.’s wife, Morgan, silent through most of the first act, will enter prison now that Jr. can care for the children. Her sentence is for tax evasion. To this tender scene returns the younger son, Naz, accompanied by a woman friend. He left Chicago and divinity school, finding himself as a nature photographer.
Performing this emotional and funny play are great Black actors. Harry Lennix of Blacklist and hundreds of other movie and TV appearances. Tamara Tunie, who I first fell in love with as a lawyer in As the World Turns – she is one of the first Black soap opera actresses. And stars from the Steppenwolf Ensemble, Glenn Davis, Jon Michael Hill, and Alana Aranas. New to me was Ayanna Bria Bakari as Naz’ friend, whose credits include almost all TV shows shot in Chicago in the last 10 years.
I believe Purpose is on its way to Broadway. Jacobs-Jenkins’ play Appropriate is currently on Broadway and nominated for eight Obies.
The Matchbox Magic Flute Adapted and Directed by Mary Zimmerman
Produced by Goodman Theatre.
Don’t miss this “light” opera. It’s everything we love about The Magic Flute without the lugubrious parts Mozart had to insert to satisfy his Masonic patrons. Zimmerman’s name is synonymous with spellbinding staging and imaginative narrative.
I first experienced her prodigious talent at Lookingglass Theater’s production of Metamorphosis in 1998. Today, all I recall is the transformation of the audience as we sat around a pool of water whose use changed with each vignette. Tears of pure joy cascaded down my cheeks as I experienced a level of wonder in the theater that I had never encountered before.
I won’t bore you with the story of The Magic Flute. We know Papagano, Papagana and the Queen of the Night – and Mozart’s thrilling music. Zimmerman adapts some of the story to dialogue but keeps the most famous sung parts and adds even more physical comedy than in the operatic version. I can easily see this produced by a university with a competent opera and theater department.
The Thanksgiving Play by Larissa Fasthorse
Produced by Steppenwolf Theater, directed by Jess McLeod.
A producer’s joy – a play that requires no color-blind casting (all white or white-looking actors for the plot to work), only a few cheap props, and no cultural sensitivity. In 90 minutes, Fasthorse tells the doomed story of four white people commissioned by a public elementary school to create a Thanksgiving play.
The woke director thinks she is hiring a native-American actor to play a native-American but hires an actor who “plays” native-American. She is no more native-American than the other three, with little to no woke-ness.
The history teacher revels in his research on harvest fests and the true story of native-Americans after the settlement of the Separatists, i.e. Pilgrims. The director’s boyfriend, a street performer who works part time at the elementary school, obsequiously bends to the director’s need to present a woke Thanksgiving.
The result is a slapstick farce with a righteous ending. This play requires comic chops from the four actors and the Steppenwolf Ensemble delivers.
Fasthorse chose to write the play with white casting because her previous plays with native-American roles have not received production. She admits that native-American actors often hide their ethnicity to avoid being completely excluded from casting. In response, the program notes said, “We recognize that Steppenwolf fits the profile of the type of institution that inspired the play. Given this historical inadequacy, we’re incredibly grateful for Larissa trusting us with premiering this show in Chicago.”
The Thanksgiving Play, first produced in 2015, appeared on Broadway and throughout the U.S. Nine years is a long time for this play to reach Chicago, so maybe our theaters should bear some responsibility. But we are best served by focusing on the future, what we want it to be, and what we learned from the past. If Fasthorse’s other plays are as relevant as The Thanksgiving Play, we will see more of her in the windy city.
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Let’s Have a Conversation:
What play(s) can you recommend for this season? Do you have tickets to see it? Are there plays you’ve seen multiple times? Do you have a favorite director?
