The Mercy Seat

Profiles Theatre
Uptown, Chicago

Now playing through November 15th

At the bequest of my good friend Amanda, I headed into the city to check out Profiles Theatre's production of Neil LaBute's The Mercy Seat. She was the Stage Manager.

(Not like the character, The Stage Manager, from Our Town. She was the actual Stage Manager. Just so we're clear.)

The play concerns two people in a New York apartment the day after the attacks of September 11th. One is married, one is not. One has decided to use the attacks as a means to get out of his fading marriage, as the ultimate Reset Button. A nice clean escape, only not so much.

Two people in a room, quietly talking, then massive shouty anger, then quiet again. It was like a Pixies song done as a 90-minute play.

LaBute's plays are about awful people doing awful things, and not even the horrors of Sept. 11th can cover the horrible choices pondered by these two people. It's real good.

Got the chance to meet a few of the Profiles crowd, and caught up with Amanda a bit. It's always wonderful to see her, and whenever we hang out we slip into this rapid-fire sarcasm-filled dialogue that wouldn't be out of place in a Howard Hawks film.

As usual, after consuming good quality Chicago theatre, I start wondering whether I could ever get involved with one of these groups. Sure I write and direct and run a successful (youth) theatre program, but I always wonder if I'm just a country mouse who would get laughed right out of them big fancy PRO-fessional-type places.

I've been told that I need to move on from my current station, and try something new, and I think about that sometimes, but then I'll get into a teaching groove, or Limelight will get more awesome, and then those plans fade away. The plan to publish The Last Dance is now over six years old, by the way.

We started working on a new play this week, speaking of Limelight. All These Will Be Worthless. So far it's a comedy about the fear of the end of the world, the fall of the Berlin wall, and a mutant-hunting Ronald Reagan. It'll be way better than The Mercy Seat.

Duder and Swannie

I just spent several days up in Door County, which is in Northern Wisconsin. For those not from this area. Door County, and Wisconsin in general, is a place where Illinoisans travel when they want to get away for a weekend.

We are generally referred to as FIBs, or "Fucking Illinois Bastards." Still, we pump a lot of money into Wisconsin's economy, so they need us just like we need them. Like sharks and them little fish that tag along.

Anyway, here's an interesting story from the Door County trip. There is a theatre company up there called the Peninsula Players, a place where a lot of the Chicago and New York talent go to get away from the cities and work with different people.

A long-time Limelight member has been doing an internship up there all summer, and had hoped I could make it up there to see the place and to catch one of the shows. It was an extremely busy summer for me, but luckily the Duders wanted to go up to the cabin before summer ended.

I can't get any cell reception at the cabin, so it was a bit tricky trying to track Eric down. But (different) Eric and I found him eating lunch in the mess hall. He jumped up and gave me a big hug and proceeded to give us a tour of the place, all while carrying his plate of food with him.

We saw the new 700-seat theatre, the scene shop, got an up-close look at the set, and then he took us to his barracks. Yes, barracks. I think that's the right term.

The directors and the Equity actors get fairly plush accommodations up the hill, but the interns get a more rustic cabin at the edge of the lake. The view is gorgeous, and you get to fall asleep every night to the sound of the water lapping against the shore. A nice gig for someone who's spent the last two years living in the south Loop.

"Yeah, but we had to cover the ceiling with tarp, otherwise we'd wake up covered in bat shit every morning."

I don't know how that reads, but if you hear Eric Swanson say it, it's hilarious. He has a rather unique voice, usually peppered with plenty of profanity, and can make a phrase like, 'How's that meat taste?" into something legendary.

Eric (i.e. Duder) and I caught the show that night, and it was good. A fairly-obscure romantic comedy about witches and sin and death. We had great seats and got to hang with Swanson and most of the players after the show, drinking dark beer by a big bonfire.

We were talking to Tom Mula, who played Scrooge for a number of years at the Goodman's annual production of A Christmas Carol, when Eric/Duder said, "Hey, I'm just a meathead, and I really enjoyed the show!" Tom quickly turned to Greg Vinkler, the director of the show (and Artistic Director of the Peninsula Players), and said, "Here, you need to hear this."

Tom asked Eric to repeat what he had said, word for word, and it seemed to make Vinkler the happiest man there. I guess the show hadn't been as well-received as the others, but if a "meathead" like Duder enjoyed it, well...it's nice to hear these things.

Talked to Mula and Vinkler for a while (Vinkler is known for his legendary performances of Falstaff in the Chicago area), and then it was time to pack it in. Eric (Swanson) walked us back to the van, and I marveled at the changes that have come over him in the past two years. He was confident, mature, and spoke about acting, and theatre, with a deeper insight than I had ever given him. The boy's growed up good, and I'm incredibly proud of him.

The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz

In addition to catching The Pogues on Monday, I must say a few short words about a show I saw last Friday: The House Theatre's short revival of The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz.

The House is my newest obsession, after seeing The Sparrow a few weeks back. In fact, Cori the roommate is also hooked, so she convinced some of her thespian friends to come see The House's original adaptation of the Oz story.

It's a tough, stripped-down adaptation of the Baum story, with darker elements and a greater sense of tragedy, with Dorothy cast as the unwilling Witchslayer, sent down a road of destiny she doesn't quite understand.

After the show I was talking with Phil Kapperich, the playwright who adapted this and the 2002 production of The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan, about why he's drawn to these iconic stories. There's such a danger in attempting to put your own stamp on such a well-worn story, but as he pointed out, there's something in them that made them great in the first place. There's a reason why we keep going back to them over and over again.

Anyway, their shows have so much cool shit going on, I can't recommmend them enough. If you live in the area, I highly recommend catching either the final performances of Oz this weekend, or catch The Sparrow, now extended through mid-April at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre.

The Sparrow

Written by Chris Mathews, Jake Minton, and Nathan Allen
Directed by Nathan Allen
Produced by The House Theatre of Chicago

The Sparrow centers around an accident, an accident involving a school bus and a train stop, an accident that happened years ago but has haunted a small Illinois town for a very long time.

A high school girl returns to the town, to the school, to be the only senior at that school. A dark, brooding girl by the name of Emily Book. A girl with secrets, a girl with special abilities.

Many of the characters are archetypal, familiar sketches from other stories: the blond cheerleader, the "cool" teacher, the upright Midwestern parents who take Emily into their home. And sometimes the story itself seems overly familiar: The Sweet Hereafter meets Heroes meets Carrie, only here the characters occasionally break into song and dance to a Postal Service-type electronic score.

About a third of the way in you pretty much know how everything is going to play out, how it's all going to end, but it doesn't matter, because watching the story get there is the best part. What makes The Sparrow so original, so joyful to watch at times is the way the tragic-yet-hopeful comic-book story mashes up so well with the sounds and the visions to create something youthful and daring and new.

The company of players behind the five-year old House Theatre seems to be somewhere in the transition between Generation X and Gen Y, where irony was left behind and sincerity became the new black. That same path where Kurt Cobain became Sufjan Stevens.

No need for knowing winks at pop culture references or jaded commentary on society. In the show, high school is presented, for the most part, as a semi-positive place to be, where the small-town kids are decent to each other because, in the end, they know they're all in it together.

The House writes all their own stuff, with cheery titles like Dave DaVinci Saves the Universe, or they take fresh looks at those old archetypal classics like The Wizard of Oz. (I talked to them a while back about getting the rights to their original production The Terrible Tragedy of Peter Pan, and of course it wasn't available for production by anyone else.)

Before the show started the actors wandered in from backstage, in costume but not in character, chatting with friends or former teachers in the audience, reminding everyone that this is a shared experience, live theatre, and that all of us in the house that night, watching this story, were in it together.


The Sparrow has been extended until April 21st and will be presented at Steppenwolf's Garage Theatre. Go see it: I'd catch it again in a minute.

A 10-day run of The Great and Terrible Wizard of Oz will be presented at The Northlight Theatre in Skokie starting March 1st.

The House also has a Flickr site, featuring photos from past productions. No photos of The Sparrow are currently available, which kind of sucks.