Year-end wrapup, maybe for real this time

Hey, remember four posts ago when I implied I might not post again until after the holidays? Well, circumstances have conspired to make this one of the busiest weeks here at Storefront Rebellion since we started here in April. Even though I'll be touching down in the Ozarks about 36 hours from now and I have approximately 27 million things to accomplish between now and my Monday morning flight, I have a few points to get off my chest now.

Last night my friend Owens and I attended the press opening of Steppenwolf's Good Boys and True. I'm not reviewing the show for TOC; I previewed it in our pages a couple of weeks ago, and since I read a draft of the script before my interview with playwright Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa, it was up to Piatt to review the production. Because of Steppenwolf's curious decision to open a show four days before Christmas, the review won't show up until after New Year's, but I can offer a few not-quite-a-review thoughts. I wasn't as completely blown away as I expected to be, but I think that's largely due to circumstance. Good Boys was originally set to be directed by Amy Morton, before August: Osage County went to New York, and I think the ways in which the script wasn't fully realized are probably because the director who was brought in, Pam MacKinnon, just hadn't lived with the script long enough. It fell in her lap, and she did what she could with it.

It's still very, very good, and Owens, who knew nothing about it going in, can't stop raving about it. "Finally!" he said after the show. "A play for smart people!" And I agree. Aguirre-Sacasa's script stays one step ahead of the audience the whole way, without spoonfeeding anything. Every time you think it's going to go one way, it goes another. And the acting is terrific in the best way: In a cast that includes only one Steppenwolf ensemble member (artistic director Martha Lavey), there's no standout performance, because every actor gives exactly what is necessary. No showiness, no faltering. I highly recommend it.

Speaking of Steppenwolf, let's talk about August: Osage County. Since TOC's year-end issue arrived in my mailbox today, it's fully fair game. Today I also learned that A:OC earned the top spot on Melissa Rose Bernardo's Entertainment Weekly best-of list, as well as the first (alphabetical) entry on Charles Isherwood's list (though, interestingly, only an honorable mention on Ben Brantley's). Not to put to fine a point on it, but August garnered the #2 slot on TOC's list of the ten best Chicago productions of 2007.

As for that Hilton Als review of August in the New Yorker I linked to earlier this week, well, the more I read over it, the more it offends me. On every repeat reading, Als seems more and more to be saying, "This is three hours and twenty minutes about white, middle class Oklahomans. Why should anyone want to spend three hours and twenty minutes with white, middle class Oklahomans?" As a white, middle class Arkansan, the Mama's Family comparisons hit me at my mid-South heart. I feel the same way I feel here in Chicago when folks make jokes about me being from Arkansas: Really? Are we still doing that?

Specifically Als's implications that native-Oklahoman Tracy Letts is "provincial" in the same way a Texan playwright is "provincial," and that Letts was trying to up the stakes for his Broadway debut (in spite of the much-documented fact that the play is based on his family and written specifically for the members of the Steppenwolf ensemble) smack of the kind of New York elitism that sticks in my craw. This is exactly why Chicago theater should not be looking for NYC approval to validate our existence. If Letts or Anna Shapiro or Morton or Deanna Dunagan or Rondi Reed end up with Tony nominations, I'll be cheering them on. But Hilton Als, in this review at least, illustrates everything about New York theater that we don't need infecting us in Chicago.

Finally, with the New York Times critics' lists out, I can't help but give a shout-out to my good friend and college classmate Rebecca Brooksher for getting name-checked in both Brantley's and Isherwood's top tens for her performance in Christopher Shinn's Dying City at Lincoln Center. That's a New York honor I won't argue with.

Comments

[Kerry Reid]

It's too bad Als wasn't around to hear Chris Jones talk to Letts at the Printers Row Book Fair this past summer, where Letts pointed out, rather acidly, that a writer in New York is simply "a writer," whereas a writer from the midwest, or the south, or pretty much anywhere else in the country, is always going to bear their regional affiliation as part of their moniker. And Letts also pointed out that contrary to what might be suspected, very few Chicago artists are standing on the prow of the ship, looking anxiously off to New York in the misty distance as validation for their efforts.

I mean, it's nice, for sure. More productions, more attention, and more money should always be the result for stellar work. But the Als thing is just . . . well, you nailed it. It's dismissive and dumb. If someone doesn't like Letts' play on the grounds that it's more derivative than daring, then that's fine. I can see that argument (not agreeing with it, but I can understand the basis for it). But to suggest that Letts has just been DYING to break out of his affiliation with a lil outfit like Steppenwolf so he can finally escape a miserable burg like Chicago is just ill-informed. And insulting.

When Liebling was slamming "The Second City," there was an element of truth to it. Oh, and Liebling was a brilliant writer. It's not the 1950s anymore, and Hilton Als sure ain't no Liebling.

Safe travels, Kris.

[Mark Jeffries]

Let me ask the question: Do you think Jones and Hedy the Homophobe's pans were justified? I have the feeling that Hedy the Homphobe would hate it because the gays aren't HIV-positive and cute (and Aguirre-Sacasa's a comic book *and* TV writer, which are two strikes for Ms. Pole Up Her Ass), but did McKinnon's production sabotage the play that much?

[Annie D.]

Isn't the first thing you learn in Theater 101 that the point of theater is to display in mini-form how all human beings are, like, the same and stuff?