#1 in Performink

Performink, Chicago's #1 theatre source, has named No Darkness Round My Stone (a show which I loved being a part of at the Trap Door Theatre) the number one show of the year!!!! Hooray!

End of the Year Theatre Awards

At the end of 2008 all the local Chicago publications released some top 10 and best of lists for all the theatre in Chicago and some of my shows won accolades and mentions, so here they are:

NEW CITY CHICAGO

BEST SHOW OF THE YEAR: No Darkness Round my Stone
MOST MEMORABLE SHOW BY A SMALLER THEATRE TROUPE: Termen Vox Machina

WINDY CITY TIMES

BEST SHOW OF THE YEAR: Termen Vox Machina
BEST SET DESIGN: No Darkness Round My Stone

ON CHICAGO THEATRE
BEST SET DESIGN: Termen Vox Machina

Latest Review on No Darkness

Another review has popped up for my show NO DARKNESS ROUND MY STONE still playing (for 2 more weeks) at Trap Door Theatre. Here it is:

No Darkness Round My Stone

One of the big draws of Trap Door for me is their ability to regularly pull work that no one else seems to have even heard of out of thin air. I may not always end up, and somewhat frequently don't, feel the same way about the final product, but their season announcements are often among the more exciting ones in the city. And when they do hit on something, the result is not only the pleasure of a good show, but also the thrill of discovery.

They've unearthed two such thrilling discoveries in No Darkness Round My Stone: playwright Fabrice Melquiot and director Max Truax. Melquiot falls under that biggest heading that Trap Door has the corner on: contemporary European edginess. This young French surrealist is making sense of life and death and sex by refusing to handle them separately. The fractured and obtusely resplinted narrative tracks a family as they relive their carnal tragedy beyond the grave while a living soul looks on with growing and frightening envy. The most unsettling aspect of the play is that Melquiot has hoisted a world in which every character can reach two of those three, but only burns with necessity for the third. In this tomb, the living and the dead can be one in the same but do so with a torturous desire for passion. Or the living can have a love which is of no use as long as death stands in its way. And while the dead may repeat their passions, they cannot carry this desire to the endpoints they never reached before having been torn apart by both life and its conclusion. With Melquiot, however, the longing for cannot overcome the tragedy of the not having, and so the cycle is endless: the dead continuously recycling their sorrows which have no hope of changing while the living can only look on green-eyed to the inevitability that they cannot hope to find in their own existence.

This is all achieved through the guidance of the other discovery. Max Truax, a recent refugee from the West Coast, is, mark my words, about to be a name on everybody's Windy City lips. As far as I am aware, this is his second major production in Chicago, after Oracle's Termen Vox Machina, which, if not always entirely successful, was deliriously high effect via low budget. It seems to be Truax's m.o. -- take a little and make it feel that much more inclusive. From the overlap in cast & crew between Termen and No Darkness (Casey Chapman, Cassandra Kaluza, David Steiger), I'm guessing he either came to town with posse in tow or is very rapidly going about forming one to call his own. Either way, he's picked good people, the acting is fantastic. Sam Lewis and Jesse McCabe's sound combo of twisted standards and atmospheric murmurs firmly places the world into a flashback without a history and Ewelina Dobiesz's set gives Trap Door and even more pronounced tomb-like claustrophobia -- a feat I didn't think possible. And then there's Truax, who makes people disappear with the simple action of falling down; who brings our sympathies with the tragedy of and after death to a peak and then immediately tops it by underscoring the pathetic existence of those still living; who uses actors to block lights in the name of shadow but also in the name of darkness; who has a whirlwind rising from the empty well that is mortality right now at Trap Door.

Highly Recommended

That Sinking Feeling - Paul Rekk

Pick of the Week!

My show "No Darkness Round My Stone" was listed as the New City "Number One Pick Of the Week" and was named the #2 event in all of the arts this month in Chicago - finishing second to the San Francisco Ballet, which is in town. Hooray!

Also the official webpage of the Cultural Services of the French Embassy have posted an article about our show. The link is here: http://www.frenchculture.org/spip.php?article1696

Windy City Times on 'No Darkness'

The following is the review from the windy city times:

“What's your job?” a young lady asks the boy she's just met. “I'm a gold-digger,” replies the smitten lad. In a manner of speaking, this is accurate. He and his brother occupy their nighttimes cutting jewelry and prying dental crowns from recently-interred corpses.

This distasteful choice of employment, we learn, was precipitated by the death of their mother—a traumatic event plunging their father into depression that propels him to roam the streets, dressed in his late wife's clothes, in which he poses as a prostitute. His son's dream of a new start for their bereaved family is in idyllic Switzerland, financed by the treasure they steal from those who, after all, no longer have need of it. Robbing the helpless dead, however, is not as safe as the desperate thieves anticipate.

Andrew Marvell may have declared “the grave's a fine and private place/but none, I think, do there embrace,” but the revenants in actor-turned-playwright Fabrice Melquiot's whimsical view of the hereafter are not content to requiescat in pace. Indeed, the sole still-breathing participant—a nervous necrophile poet (played by Casey Chapman) searching, à la Edgar Allen Poe, for his recently deceased beloved—emerges to interrupt the departed.

Scenic designer Ewelina Dobiesz envisions our cemetery setting less as that of a pastoral garden than of a gone-to-seed funeral parlor, ambience heightened on opening night by the rain drumming on the roof of Trap Door's carriage-house auditorium, its decay acclimating us to conventions such as characters collapsing like unstrung marionettes by way of exiting a scene.

Likewise, securing our attention for the play's 90-minute running time is an ensemble of actors whose grasp of their respective personae reflects an infectious suspension of disbelief that quickly draws us into their universe. David Steiger and Kevin Lucero Less anchor the action as the two Beckettian siblings, Casey Chapman's poet and Tiffany Joy Ross' phantom bride join Cassandra Kaluza's exuberant ingenue and Bob Wilson's stately Sunset Boulevard-styled transvestite.
RECOMMENDED

The Tribune Agrees!

Our new show: NO DARKNESS ROUND MY STONE - just recieved a great review from the Chicago Tribune! The biggest paper in the city of Chicago. I am so proud of the show - and I hope you can make it out to see it if youre in the area.

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'Darkness' cast is up to grave challenge

By Kerry Reid | SPECIAL TO THE TRIBUNE
September 12, 2008

The flowers of evil are in bloom again, and such strange flowers they are. Contemporary French playwright Fabrice Melquiot's disquieting and occasionally mesmerizing meditation on death, grief, and grave robbers, "No Darkness Round My Stone," plays in its English-language world premiere with Trap Door Theatre—like a cross between 19th Century symbolist poetry a la Charles Baudelaire and a gritty psychological noir thriller set in the underworld. At least six feet under.

Using disjointed chronology, Melquiot's play, (translated by David Bradby), traces the love affairs of two brothers, swaggering Dan (David Steiger) and sensitive dreamer Ivan (Kevin Lucero Less). When we first see them, they are rifling a recently interred corpse for jewelry and gold teeth. Dan insists on saying a prayer over the woman's body—right before he is apparently shot and killed himself by an outraged bystander.

From this bold and unnerving opening sequence, director Max Truax's louche and lugubrious production takes us into a twilight world of infidelity, necrophilia, voyeurism and cross-dressing. The brothers' father, Louis (Bob Wilson), spends his nights dressed in his dead wife's clothes, prowling for tricks as "Lullaby." Mysterious wannabe poet Juste (Casey Chapman), tries to get over his own broken heart by taking, um, liberties with the dead. Dan's abandoned, pregnant girlfriend Dolores (Tiffany Joy Ross) and Laurie (Cassandra Kaluza), Ivan's feverishly virginal partner, round out the gallery of damaged questing souls.

This is dark stuff, to be sure, and the interwoven story lines occasionally confound comprehension. At times, the connective tissue falls lax as the dialogue turns to poetry devoid of passion. Thankfully, however, the material isn't played for self-conscious shock value. Truax, who most recently brought an intriguing visual sensibility to "Termen Vox Machina," a multimedia piece based on Soviet spy and inventor Leon Theremin at Oracle Productions, makes a good fit with Trap Door's decadent European aesthetic. He also has a fairly good grasp on the more humane aspects of Melquiot's challenging script. Richard Norwood's nightmarish lighting and Ewelina Dobiesz's moldering set mesh beautifully to suggest an end-of-the-world environment where everything the characters want is just out of reach, taunting them in the dreamlike shadows.

Two performances in particular stand out in the mists of Melquiot's tone poem. Ross' betrayed bride-to-be, ripe with bruised pride and unashamed passion, plaintively declares to the faithless Dan "I want each one of my dreams to be a refuge or hospital for you." And as Louis/Lullaby, Bob Wilson is simply marvelous, his sadly comic and understated demeanor imbued with unbearable loss.

Through Oct. 11 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Ave. Tickets are $20 at 773-384-0494 or www.trapdoortheatre.com.

The Reader Weighs in!

The Chicago Reader has chosen No Darkness Round My Stone to be on its shortlist, the most highly recommended shows. Here is the review which will appear in Thursdays paper:

No Darkness Round My Stone
When: Through 10/11: Thu-Sat 8 PM
Phone: 773-384-0494
Price: $20, two for one Thu
Set in and around a graveyard, French playwright Fabrice Melquiot's hallucinatory play isn't for the timid--or for those who need a linear storyline. Melquiot gives us six fascinating characters, five of whom are corpses at the start of the evening, and sets them loose in a series of hallucinatory scenes--some quite witty, some terrifying and violent--that offer intriguing echoes of Beckett, Wedekind, Fassbinder, Albee, and Poe, but don't quite add up. Max Truax's inspired, eccentric direction leaves as many unanswered questions as Melquiot's highly fragmented text (translated here by David Bradby). But an intense and energetic ensemble keeps our attention. Highly Recommended. --Jack Helbig

More praise

This review taken from Time Out Chicago:

BRIDE, HEAD REVISITED Trap's cast enjoys the wedding suite.

This drama by young French playwright Melquiot provides what some might consider the stereotypical Parisian theatrical experience: There's lots of bizarre behavior accompanied by ironic musings on the emptiness of human existence, delivered by pitiful lowlifes wearing ghoulish makeup and staring off into the middle distance. Look closer, though, and you'll notice that Melquiot uses these elements to mask what's essentially a very conventional play.

On the surface, the main themes are those old chestnuts, loneliness and mortality. Brothers Dan and Ivan are grave robbers who encounter trouble on a job one night that leaves one or both of them (it's not entirely clear) dead. This occasions the introduction of other (apparently also dead) members of the family: Dan's pregnant, jilted bride-to-be, still wearing her tattered wedding gown; Ivan's effusive but unfaithful girlfriend; and the men's desperately unhappy father, who leads a double life as a transvestite prostitute named Lullaby. Melquiot's sensibility is cheerfully macabre, his writing style quasi-absurdist with a dash of the lyrical. And yet, crazy characters and borrowed style aside, the plot mechanics are pure melodrama (the climax, for instance, depends on a love triangle and gunshots), gussied up with the occasional flight of fancy or fatuous pronouncement ("God is dead, but I'm not").

Truax's production endows the play with both verve and gravity. Kevin Lucero Less and Cassandra Kaluza give Ivan and his girlfriend a nice, loopy innocence, but only Bob Wilson, as the tortured tranny, truly taps into his character's mad desperation.

**** - RECOMMENDED!

3rd Review!

The reviews keep coming in for my new show: No Darkness Round My Stone, playing at Trap Door Theatre in Chicago. For all the info - please visit: www.trapdoortheatre.com

This review is taken from Chicago Stage - critic: Venus Zarris

No other theater can consistently suspend reality to create overwhelming and oftentimes-otherworldly atmosphere, usually before the action or dialogue even begins, like Trap Door Theatre. To say that they are the foremost purveyors avant-garde theater in Chicago is to understate this portal to alternate realms. Hidden down a narrow walkway, next to a bar, behind a restaurant, on a side street in Bucktown is a black trap door that opens into the extremes of theatrical imagination. You could drive by it and easily miss this purgatorial paradise of the sublime surreal.

Trap Door Theatre presents the English language premiere of No Darkness Around My Stone, by French Playwright Fabrice Melquiot. This macabre and melancholy dreamlike tale of grave robbers provides a perfectly eerie adult prelude to the Halloween season. But don’t expect vampires or werewolves. Instead, you will find a room full of corpses dealing with unrequited longing, obsessive desires and love.

Director Max Truax takes this complex fusion of hyperrealism and surrealism and creates more emotional connection than can be found in many straightforward scripts. The humanity of the characters is reduced to raw, desperate, intimate, funny and urgent exchanges as the corpses animate, collapse and then reanimate, creating scenes that tell a story more concerned with emotion than with a linier narrative.

The intense interaction between the audience and the production comes by way of a created atmosphere that is so tactile; it stays with you after you leave. There is nothing familiar about the setting but the emotional truth of the characters is completely compelling and evocative.

Communicating this script requires a visionary director helming a brilliant cast. Kevin Lucero Less is particularly outstanding, displaying charming humor and vulnerability as the grave-robbing brother Ivan. In addition to the startling performances, the incredible deign team is completely in tune with creating this abstract and suggestive reality. Set designer Ewelina Dobiesz and lighting designer Richard Norwood create perhaps their most amazing work to date. Sam Lewis and Jesse McCabe’s sound design accents this creation beautifully and the costume design, by Beata Pilch and Sir Iris Bainum-Houle, and ghostly make-up design, by Zsofia Otvos, complete the dark illusionary magnificence.

No Darkness Around My Stone is a spellbinding, poignant, chilling and profound mix of existential destitution and sweet tenderness. Do not miss this unique opportunity to experience a challenging, chilling, peculiar and incomparably haunting production.

4 STARS out of 4 STARS
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

(A SPECIAL NOTE REGARDING AVANT-GARDE THEATRE)

The bold or delicate delivery of surreal theater is as complicated as the execution of a complex piece of classical music.

Music, by the sheer nature of itself, is an abstract proposition for our brain to process. The stringing together of tonal variation, deliberately or randomly, to create an auditory phrase of notes by definition is something that should be very difficult to digest and yet, for most people, music is instantly accessible and, whether favorable or not, very evocative.

Abstract visual art has a similar effect. Oftentimes we may not understand the composition of the work or the intention of the artist and yet something, perhaps the colors or the objects rendered, strikes a chord and we are moved.

But abstract theater, in general, meets greater cerebral opposition. Because we have stricter preconceived notions of human behavior and interaction, when these notions are violated by unpredictable, taboo, or irreverent actions or mind throws up walls and the traffic of incoming messages to our brains comes to a screeching halt.

We want reasons, explanations for behavior. If we don’t immediately understand we feel stupid, unsafe and we disconnect, fixating on the point of confusion instead of allowing the moments to simply sink in like an unfamiliar tune or a lavish explosion of color on canvas.

I challenge you to take this marvelously macabre play in like a melancholy melody from a haunting and foreign location. Not a foreign country, but rather a beautifully bleak suspension of reality, inhabited by longing, love, desperation, desire and moments of irreverent humor.

Don’t try and figure it out, let it wash over you. The pieces will fall together. The moments will engage you and you’ll come away compelled by something deeper than the satisfactory safety of standard theater.

2nd Review!

Our second review has come in:

What might happen if Henry Miller and Edward Gorey sat down to rewrite “Our Town” when both were going through a surrealist phase and hitting the absinthe hard. “No Darkness Round My Stone” is one long, creepy, sexy poem about death and twisted love, and it’s a massive understatement to say that the play is hard to stage. Very few Chicago theater companies other than Trap Door Theatre could have really pulled it off with style (in fact, this is the first time Frabrice Melquiot’s play has been performed in the United States), but director Max Traux has created an impossibly entertaining production that makes the fact that the story doesn’t go anywhere completely irrelevant. The story centers around a pair of grave-robber brothers, straight out of a dark Jacobean tragedy, and with dazzling dialogue to match, but there are as many laughs as winces, with a fabulous Bob Wilson as a grieving father and transvestite, and the requisite corpse bride providing comic relief. Technically it’s incredibly beautiful, and the thoughtful choreography, mostly centering on dead bodies slumping to the floor in various ways, adds to the Gothic ambiance.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

(Monica Westin) - NewCity

COME DOWN TO TRAPDOOR THEATRE to see No Darkness Round My Stone

The First Review

The first review for my show: No Darkness Round My Stone is out! It is from Chicago Critic (aka Tom Williams). It does feature some spoilers - so if youre going to check it out - you may not want to read. Here it is in full:

David Bradby’s translation of French playwright Fabrice Melquiot’s poetic “No Darkness Round My Stone” is a theatrical triumph of the first order. From the eerie set design (by Ewelina Dobiesz) to the tattered custumes and make-up, “No Darkness Round My Stone” take us into the world of the dead where two grave robbers and a necrophilia vie for the affection of the dead. Director Max Trax mixes hyper-realism with surrealism with doses of absurdism, banality and complexity into a darkly comedic look at the bleak life of grave robbers. Filled with haunting lyrical, almost poetic language. This unique show fully engages us as we wonder what will happen next. Juste (Casey Chapman) wonders into the cemetery in search of sex but he runs into Dan (David Steiger) and his brother Ivan (Kevin Lucero Less) plucking gold teeth and wedding rings from the dead.

Juste encounters several corpses come alive in search of sex and new beginnings. Laurie (Cassandra Kaluza) and Dolores (Tiffany Joy Ross) want love, Laurie with the virgin Ivan and Dolores first with Dan, then Juste. Next we encounter Louis Bayle (Bob Wilson), Ivan and Dan’s father who turns into the tranny, Lullaby. The adventures allow the dead to die and to come alive throughout in an allegory for life’s tragic failures as well as to celebrate new beginnings. We see the power of sexual attraction on the human psyche at work. “No Darkness Round My Stone” is splendidly performed by the entire cast with hauntingly honest and engrossingly deep acting. I especially like the work of Casey Chapman and Kevin Lucero Less.

For an evening of surrealism French style theatre with outstanding acting — get to Trap Door Theatre to see their world premier of the English translation of Melquiot’s excellent play. This is wonderful Chicago storefront theatre at it's absolute best.

HIGHLY RECOMENDED!

Tom Williams - Chicagocritic.com

New promo shot

Here is a new promo photo for my show: No Darkness Round My Stone, opening at the trap door theatre next Thursday! Come see it!

Coming Soon: No Darkness Round My Stone

My new show; opens September 4th.
Runs through Oct. 11
Thursday, Friday, and Saturdays