Hello, Bob
Aardvark
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Twenty years after his stint in off-Loop theater, a new generation of artists is mining Patrick’s canon. Though his writing isn’t going to overturn the reputations of guys like Albee and Horovitz and Shepard and Mamet, his quirky, little-known pieces are a refreshing change of pace from these much-produced lions. By sheer coincidence (or fate, if you prefer), two youthful theater groups are presenting Patrick plays this month–an unintended rotating repertory that constitutes a mini revival. It also represents an opportunity for the playwright to revisit his old stomping grounds (he’ll be in Chicago this weekend for a round of receptions and book signings). The Retro Theatre, which established a relationship with Patrick by doing his short plays in their “Evening at the Caffe Cino” series, has taken over the Chopin Theatre’s basement to present the Chicago premiere of Hello, Bob, a 1990 collection of monologues spoken by people whom Patrick encountered as he toured the country as a Famous Playwright. (Again by coincidence, the Retro show opened last weekend, almost exactly 20 years to the day after Kennedy’s Children opened on Broadway.) And a company called Aardvark is offering the local debut of I Came to New York to Write, a series of short scenes from the Cheep Theatricks book depicting the artistic inhabitants of a Manhattan apartment between 1955 and 1969, the year the script was first produced.
Given that most of the actors, directors, and designers involved in these shows were barely walking (if indeed they were born) the last time Patrick had a high profile here, it’s not surprising that the most notable flaw in both productions is their lack of period flavor. This is a more serious problem in Hello, Bob since the play depends on the audience’s understanding of events in Patrick’s life for its full effect. The repeated references to Patrick’s fame, for instance, are likely to seem outrageously self-promotional if you don’t sense the playwright’s self-deprecating chuckle, reminding us how illusory that fame was–and in Steve Reily’s Retro staging you too often don’t.
This scene, performed with dancerly aplomb by Alexandra Billings and Mark Joslyn as the two-person mod squad, captures nearly perfectly the Patrick aesthetic: frivolous but probing, manically charged but permeated with longing for cultural and personal connection. Billings especially is breathtaking, not only in this scene but as the self-styled literary hostess, worrying that helping young artists won’t make it in a culture where the best way to get ahead is to sleep with the right people. Though I’ve often found Billings uncredible and exaggerated in the past (owing sometimes to incompetent direction), here she makes a major acting breakthrough, combining stylized attitude with an underlying emotional investment and vulnerability that recall the young Barbara Harris–a perfect role model considering when the play is set.
