LION IN THE STREETS
Roadworks Productions at Synergy Center
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Roadworks Productions offers a very watchable production, a midwest premiere, sacrificing little of Thompson’s raw fatalism but cushioning it with a highly theatrical staging that includes several dances (beautifully choreographed by Peter Carpenter) echoing the play’s action. In fact director Abby Epstein begins the play by putting Isobel–the lost girl who turns out to be a ghost searching the neighborhood for her killer–at the center of a long, involved dance with the rest of the ensemble (or neighborhood) in which she alternately tries to join and flee them. It’s an enthralling introduction, well executed by the ensemble and filled with foreboding.
Isobel’s subsequent journey is episodic, taking her to the homes and hearts of her neighbors, most of whom never notice this plaintive ghost, wrapped up as they are in their own troubles and machinations. The lion of the title lives in these streets, and it can strike at any time–in the form of infidelity, bone cancer, cerebral palsy, a stranger in a long silver car. A frustrated actor emotionally blackmails his fiancee into admitting that the rape she suffered six years ago was her fault–and rewards her by promising to go pick out a china pattern. A businessman confronts a past homosexual experience by locating and browbeating the childhood friend who shared it, a friend he’d long since abandoned and betrayed. A PTA meeting (or its equivalent) turns ugly with a single accusation, and a hard-edged working mother ends up kicking the person with cerebral palsy she was sent by the local paper to interview.
“Man’s actions result in consequences. Actions result from a desire for a thing.” This is a fine explanation for what drives the hero (or the monster, or the princess) in any classic fairy tale. In Richard Maxwell’s Fable, now playing at the Cook County Theatre Department, this bit of information is imparted by a classic storybook figure–the Wiseman (Brian Mendes). This Wiseman, however, differs from most in that he’s dressed only in a pair of B.V.D.s, a T-shirt, and blue socks. Which makes about as much sense as having a deadpan and dapper Mon- ster (Maxwell) in a tuxedo and earplugs. While I can make some sense out of the Princess (Kate Gleason) wearing a business suit
The sheer charm and comic finesse of the ensemble make the first act not only intriguing but hilarious. They can’t keep it up forever, though, and the second act falls far short, hav- ing nowhere to go and nothing to achieve, not even the telling of a story. Tired of absurdities, I searched for some sort of shape, and was ultimately disappointed. Maxwell doesn’t seem to have much to say about the classic fairy tale, although he makes it into fairly good farce, at least for a while.
