What’s Wrong With Melodrama?
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Some Chicago critics have labeled the play a shameless melodrama, but all have remarked favorably on the quality and power of the production. Reader critic Albert Williams described the script as a “heavy-handed…PC potboiler…bogged down by schematic propagandizing and unsubtle characterization,” yet he found Crocker’s staging to be “impressively acted and beautifully designed…making the production well worth seeing.” Others gave less qualified praise. The Sun-Times’s Hedy Weiss called the show “one of those events that really define Chicago theater.”
Though Pulitzers often bring rewards at the box office, Schenkkan’s play didn’t arrive here riding the huge wave of hype that accompanied other prizewinners, like Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. Attempts to stir up advance stories met with no success. “I thought it was going to be a piece of cake because of the Pulitzer, but it was murder,” says the play’s publicist, Michelle Madden. “The papers didn’t want to deal with it.”
Pas de Dish
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): Nathan Mandell.
