(Jane Fentress)

Roy M. Cohn is not a homosexual. As the high-powered lawyer explains in part one of Tony Kushner’s “Angels in America,” yes, he sleeps with men, and, yes, he appears to have AIDS (heretofore to be referred to only as “liver cancer”), but, he says to his doctor, “Homosexuals are not men who sleep with other men. Homosexuals are men who in fifteen years of trying cannot get a pissant anti-discrimination bill through City Council. Homosexuals are men who know nobody and who nobody knows. Who have zero clout. Does this sound like me?”

The implicit question of this new production of Kushner’s Tony Award–winning 1991 play is whether, twenty years later, Roy Cohn’s words still hold meaning. The play is set in 1985, a crucial year: AZT is still in clinical trials, thousands of young men are dying in the AIDS epidemic, and it is the height of the Reagan era. Twenty years later, AIDS does not evoke quite the same terror, few people have heard of Roy Cohn (who really did exist), and gay marriage is legal in several states.

On the other hand, homosexuality is still frequently ridiculed, disparaged, and condemned by many in the population-at-large, including a serious presidential candidate.

The fact that Court is timing this production right before a presidential election is no coincidence; Tony Kushner himself specifically asked the theater’s artistic director, Charles Newell, to stage this play right now. Having worked with Kushner on two other productions at Court—“Caroline, or Change” and “The Illusion”—Newell readily agreed.

The two-part, seven-hour-long play, subtitled “a gay fantasia on national themes,” follows three intersecting narratives: the story of Prior Walter, who gets AIDS, loses his boyfriend, and starts receiving messages from an angel; the story of gay Mormon Republican lawyer Joe Pitt and his Valium-addicted wife; and a highly fictionalized version of slimeball lawyer Roy Cohn’s life story.

The play is as complex and difficult to stage as it is long: multiple scenes occur at once; miracles shake the stage like an earthquake; and characters have vivid dreams and hallucinations, sometimes stumbling into one another’s hallucinations without explanation. As such, Newell’s direction faithfully follows the playwright’s instructions regarding minimal scenery, rapid scene-shifts, and no blackouts. The goal was to “create simultaneity and effortless cross-cutting, and flow from one production to the next with the least amount of time spent on scene changes,” Newell explains. Or, to put it another way: “Don’t stop for nothin’!”

The set is brilliantly designed with that purpose in mind. Behind the stage there is a platform intersected with two vertical lines, creating two stage levels, or six different openings, for the actors to work with. There are two balconies on one side of the stage, and a large, heavy wooden bed in the middle separates the stage into two sections. A scene can take place in Antarctica on one side of the stage, while on the opposite side of the stage the action is simultaneously occuring in New York City.

When a hallucination needs to disappear into thin air, the actor simply stands back, the lights flash over the doorway, and there is a whooshing sound. The sound and light design manages to create the theatrical illusion of instant teleportation, without trapdoors or smoke-and-mirrors.

The intimacy of the Court Theatre is also a boon: spectators in the front row could have reached out and touched the actors. The show is epic in many ways, and yet that intimacy can often make you feel, sitting just a few feet away from the stage, as though you are eavesdropping on an intimate conversation.

The only major piece of furniture is the thick, awkward wooden bed on center stage. Actors had trouble moving around it, and at first it only seemed to be in the way, a foreboding and anomalous presence. Later, when Walter is diagnosed with AIDS, the cumbersome prop becomes his hospital bed and its significance becomes clear.

Production dramaturge Deborah Blumenthal explained that many productions of the play involve huge, elaborate sets in an attempt to “compete with the movie.” Here, however, they have decided to “focus on the text” itself, and the simple set successfully allows the ideas of the work to take center stage; fitting, for a play that is primarily a play of ideas and a critical assessment of American values.

Production dramaturge Drew Dir explains that many of the scenes of magic and dreamwork do not try to hide the fact that they are theatrical illusions. When the angel flies above the stage, for example, the wires holding her up are clearly visible.

“Tony Kushner is a student of Bertolt Brecht, who advocated a theater in which the theater’s means of production were exposed, so that you would always be aware that you were watching a play, a fiction,” says Dir. “For Brecht—and Kushner as well—it’s more important for the audience to keep its critical mind active than for the audience to lose themselves in emotion or spectacle.”

So, while the plot focuses on the “gay fantasia,” the real soul of the work is in its treatment of “national themes.” Audience members may respond differently to some of these themes than they would have when it was first released. Cohn’s line that “American has no use for the sick” is particularly resonant in the wake of the healthcare debate.

“We’re a classic theater company, so by producing this play we’re implicitly taking the position that we believe ‘Angels in America’ to be a classic,” says Dir, “and we’re willing to take a gamble that in one hundred years, people will still be studying and performing it.”

Interestingly, Court Theatre plans to have two special performances of part one of the play for local high schools. It’s difficult to predict what high school students will think of the extremely long and self-consciously intellectual play (one character offhandedly calls himself a “neo-Hegelian positivist”), but it is not hard to predict that they will identify with it. The demographic with the highest rate of HIV infection is no longer gay men; today, it’s teenagers.

The play does sometimes drag during its seven-hour length, and only a few of the actors really stand out: Rob Lindley as the sarcastic and vulnerable Prior Walter, and Larry Yando as the delectably villainous Roy Cohn in particular. Nevertheless, this production succeeds in thrilling, upsetting, and challenging the audience. The play is, above all, an examination of what America stands for; what its future is; and what happens to the sick, the infirm, and the outsiders who lag behind in a system that, for better or worse, forever rushes forward.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through June 3. Wednesday-Sunday, times vary. $35-$65. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

The process of adapting “Invisible Man” for the stage began some years ago when film director and screenwriter Oren Jacoby paired up with Christopher McElroen, a New York-based stage director. The work posed challenges for the two early on—getting the rights to the novel from the Ralph Ellison Trust was not easy. Because of Ellison’s qualms about letting out his work for adaptation, the trust has closely monitored use of the book.

The script is composed only of direct quotations pulled from the novel, which was published 60 years ago this year. Though the work’s first-person narration has been pared down considerably, it has been a battle to whittle down the script to a manageable length. The show runs for three hours with two intermissions, which seems long until you consider that for most of last year, Jacoby, McElroen, and Court staff traveled around the country hosting readings, cutting chunks of the script each time.

The first of these readings was held in November of 2010, and the idea of adapting “Invisible Man” immediately struck a chord with Court and its audiences. “The show represents an intersection of Court’s recent mission—new adaptations and African-American stories,” says Court dramaturge Drew Dir. According to Dir, this story should be especially interesting when told in Hyde Park, both a South Side cultural hub and Barack Obama’s home base.

Both the novel’s content as well as it form proved difficult to rework—its non-linear, first-person narration of the title character’s journey from aspiring professor to radical spokesperson for “the race” is difficult to present onstage. The flashback, the voiceover, the memory, which are all vital elements of Ellison’s prose, might be better suited to the silver screen, where it is easier to rapidly switch between images. Court has taken on the challenge, and the product comes very close to a screen-like adaptation, even if at times the visuals come off more assaulting than arresting. The production is clearly meant to astonish and entertain—the sheer mass of lighting and projection effects make the small theater space shimmer like Times Square.

The design is difficult and intense, incorporating many intricate movements of partial walls and floor props. The effect is a little odd—the design is so technical and sophisticated that it feels slightly over-executed. The director and the designers,  brought in from New York, have had over a year to stew on the project, so every detail has been calculated and checked over. The whole technical component, dubbed “aggressive” by Dir, is so powerful it’s almost blinding. The unfortunate result is that it’s powerful enough to overshadow the acting, which often manages to hit right on target, especially considering the number of roles each actor must play—there are ten actors and twenty four characters. Invisible Man, played by Teagle Bougere, has more lines than you can shake a stick at, and he delivers them flawlessly and with poise. The actor playing Ras the Destroyer and the university president is also a standout.

What’s next for Jacoby’s “Invisible Man?” Dir says that there are many different productions to come. “The book has never not been relevant…we want to reexamine “Invisible Man” in a new epoch,” he states, sharing the sentiment of many other theatres around the nation. The script is expected to develop beyond this stage and emerge within a few years as a more polished work—hopefully with fewer flashing lights. And in case you’re wondering, Court’s master electrician proudly delivers the number of bare bulbs onstage in Court’s design at exactly five hundred thirty-five.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 19. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

These questions are left unanswered in Lisa Peterson and Denis O’Hare’s compelling adaptation of Homer’s classic tale of the Trojan War. “An Iliad” tells the story of the last few weeks of the war, when the Acheans Agamemnon and Achilles are fighting over a woman, Briseis. Achilles loses Briseis and refuses to fight in the war. As the struggle within the Achean ranks unfolds, the war wages on outside the walls of Troy.

The story is recounted in its entirety by only the Poet, turning the performance into more of a storytelling event than a traditional play. And, as a result, the vivacity and emotional range of the storyteller comes to the foreground. But while the original poem—or at least the version known to modern readers—focuses on the triumph of Achilles, “An Iliad” centers the attention on Hector, the defeated Trojan warrior. This simple shift in perspective—from an emphasis the experience of heroism, success and glory to one of defeat and death—exemplifies the adaptation’s powerful underlying anti-war message.

The play begins with the Poet listing significant wars, from Troy up to the current conflict in Afghanistan. This serves to confirm what this adaptation’s title suggests: this is “An Iliad,” not “The Iliad.” It is about every “Iliad” that has happened after the first one, and the many more that are to follow still. The storyteller says that the war only went on for so long because both parties, having already put so much time into it, could not leave without some final resolution. The Poet attempts to put the story in twenty-first century terms. He equates this type of mentality to being stuck in a long grocery line: you can see that there is a shorter one, but you feel obligated to stay in your line because you feel as if you have invested something in it.

But Peterson and O’Hare use more than modern analogy, language and tone to make the story feel relevant. Above all, they bring the epic back to its original and most effective form: oral storytelling. Presented with one man recalling a story from his memory and imagination, the audience becomes a collection of listeners rather than spectators, establishing a rapport with the actor and the play itself.

An Iliad also returns to its ancient roots of oral tradition by incorporating the original Greek verse into parts of the play. The conglomeration of ancient verse, lines of Robert Fagles’ award-winning English translation, and colloquial speech to spice up the formal prose, was the most striking example of the play’s intermingling  of the ancient, the old, and the new.

When a tale is passed through the oral tradition, the story changes with the storyteller, the audience, and the culture to which it is loaned. The story itself is ancient, but an attempt to preserve every element of the original epic poem would lose the uniqueness and malleability of the present moment that is essential to the oral tradition. That is to say, an effective storyteller knows how to relate to his audience. Timothy Edward Kane does a phenomenal job of captivating the audience and performing the role of the Poet. He is not only a storyteller, but also an enigmatic, dynamic personality who, in retelling the epic, carries on Homer’s great tradition.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through December 11. (773)753-4472. $40-60 general/$10 students. courttheatre.org

As Court Theatre’s 2010-2011 series draws to a close, the award-winning team of Charles Newell and Doug Peck offer their austere take on “Porgy and Bess.” An operatic conclusion to a season of impressive performances, the musical tells the story of the romance between crippled Porgy, a driver of goat carts, and sweet Bess, already accounted for by another man.

Beside the cultural controversy that “Porgy and Bess” provoked, a fierce debate unfolded among critics about how to categorize the play. According to Court’s dramaturge Drew Dir, “Gershwin called it a ‘folk opera,’ in response to critics at the time who condemned the piece for being half-musical, half-opera. Though many of the songs do sound like musical theater, ‘Porgy and Bess’ is a true opera.” The play’s daring libretto requires tried and true vocal talent, particularly for the main characters, who are played in Court’s production by Todd Kryger and Alexis Rogers. Kryger and Rogers prove themselves more than comfortable with this style, which is evocative of soulful crooning. With his full but quiet voice, Kryger has the ability to create a rustic duskiness around his character, which is appropriately punctuated by outbursts of volume. Rogers’ strength lies in her vocal range, showcased by her ability to easily add stylish dips and staccato elements. Her emotionally charged notes illuminate the motivations of her character almost as precisely as does her acting. Together, the two actors create a striking portrait: Kryger, the physically disabled yet vocally assertive Porgy, and Rogers, who swings  through Bess’s lyrics.

In their first joint venture since the 2008 Jeff Award-winning “Caroline, or Change,” Newell and Peck have undertaken no mean feat in choosing “Porgy and Bess” for their newest production. Newell’s staging is playful, incorporating surprising jumps and quick movement, just like the score, which bounces along in the background, perfectly narrating the events on stage.

The stage itself is a solid building point for the characters to unveil the drama of Gershwins’ original vision. Dir explains, “[Newell] has stripped the show even in scenic design, leaving only a number of benches as part of a more abstract set.”  The set is sparse, involving only a number of white benches that the chorus brings to life by moving them to create different settings. The set and the chorus play off of one another, acting as a single, mobile unit. No one person upstages the others; all are collected into the scene until, suddenly, one steps out and begins a solo. Even then, the chorus is not simply stuck in the back, but adjusts itself in concert with the soloist so it appears both involved and disparate

Newell’s production succeeds in removing the embellishments from the play, leaving only the essentials of engaging theater. “Charlie’s looking to strip away the extraneous elements of “Porgy and Bess,” says Dir, “focusing on relationships and elements of the opera,” which many other productions have ignored. But there are limits to Newell’s back-to-basics philosophy: “The first production,” says Dir, “and many subsequent productions used a live goat because Porgy’s cart is driven by a goat. Court Theatre has not hired any goats for our production.”

Court Theatre, 5535 S Ellis Ave. May 12 through July 3 (some dates sold out). $10-$65; $10 with UCID, Wednesday-Sunday. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

Michael Brosilow, Courtesy of Court Theatre

Few could interpret the nuances of Edward Albee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Three Tall Women” with as much fluidity as director Charles Newell does in Court Theatre’s most recent production. A play which charts the life of an old woman from three different perspectives—the woman’s own, first at the end of her life, next in her middle age, and finally in her youth—“Three Tall Women” forces a director to maintain both synchronicity and contrast. Indeed, the very names of the characters in the play—A, B and C—emphasize this difficulty. The differences between the women are seemingly trivial, but nonetheless important: although they must have a single psychology, this psychology must have changed under the influence of the formative experiences it has endured. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the Jefferson Award–winning Newell not only rises to this challenge, but mops his bathroom floor with it.

An old hand at both Albee and Court Theatre, Newell was such a success in 2004 after his production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” that Terry Teachout of The Wall Street Journal said it was “the finest production [of the play he had] seen to date.” What makes this more difficult to stage than “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” is the increased intimacy of the characters, whose lines dance off each other in a whirling spectacle of witticism and rebuttal. Negotiating the accelerations and decelerations of the play’s speeding dialogue is no small feat, one that is accomplished thanks to the gripping performances of Lois Markle, Mary Beth Fisher, and Maura Kidwell. During the moments when Markle cries, convulsing in tears of helplessness, an audience cannot help but fall deathly still, not a splash of sound in the theater as it waits desperately for the torturous moments to end.

Court Theatre, renowned for reinventing old favorites in avant-garde ways, was surprisingly conventional in its approach for this production—actors delivered the lines as written from within a set constructed with beautifully traditional attention to detail. Green velvet and heavy wood adorned the stage, lending the superficial mood of opulent wealth that is so cleverly undermined. But the conventionality worked well for a play that is dangerously easy to stylize into absurdity. Subtlety is Newell’s key—and it fits Albee’s lock.

The transience of these hopeless moments when the audience sees, with naked clarity, what it might mean to grow old and forget what has happened, is part of Albee’s cruel magic. Humor follows fast on the heels of painful revelation—humor that only anticipates more pain. In fact, revelation is central to “Three Tall Women,” which is the most autobiographical of Albee’s works—“an exorcism,” as he called it. He once said about this play that he “wanted to […] write as objective a play as [he] could about a fictional character who resembled in every way, in every event, someone I had known very, very well.” Thus he wrote the story of his mother, the six foot tall Frances Albee from whose house he, like the son in “Three Tall Women,” fled. Frances lived what seemed to be a charming life, trotting around her estates on show horses, but Edward saw a different side of her—the WASPy bigot who could not forgive him for his homosexuality. He ran away from home and remained out of contact for seventeen years, around the length of time the boy runs away from his mother in the play. Despite this, “Three Tall Women” seems utterly condemning of the boy’s decision to run, largely as a consequence of the fact that the play is written from the mother’s perspective(s). So it seems surprising to learn that Albee said he “didn’t end up any more fond of the woman after [he] finished [the play] than when [he] started it.” The enigmatic core of the play is further encrypted by the playwright who lived it.

Court Theatre. 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 13. Wednesday-Thursday, Sunday 7:30pm; Friday-Saturday 8pm. (773)753-4472. courttheatre.org

By Michael Brosilow

Wearing a jacket that suits him as poorly as urban life, Cephus Miles is brought to life in Court Theatre’s new production of Samm-Art Williams’s “Home.” Yet the northern metropolis through which he wanders has nothing wholesome to offer the God-fearing farmer Cephus, played masterfully by Kamal Angelo Bolden. The entire production faithfully renders Williams’s view of American urban centers during the ’60s and ’70s as hubs of despair for poorly educated Southerners. Cephus is a case in point—recently out of prison, he arrives in the city only to realize that his ex-convict status prohibits him from overcoming his destitution. Hard work and good intentions do not protect him from the cold northern winters.

Despite all appearances that Cephus is just one of the countless bums who populated city centers in the ’60s, Williams’s careful interweaving of introspection and reminiscence builds a strong image of an empathetic individual who is lured by the promise of jazz and the good life into urban mayhem. Although at first glance Cephus seems to be a simple country boy, as audience members sink deeper into the story, they discover the idiosyncrasies, and as the details are uncovered, his rich humanity is revealed. Cephus was imprisoned for five years, not for some violent crime, but because he was a conscientious objector to the American role in Vietnam. His objection was a religious one, and his zealous commitment in particular to the commandment “Thou shall not kill” separates him from the nameless masses.

In this vivid portrayal of “Home,” directed by Ron OJ Parson, only three actors play all of the characters, and Bolden is the only one with a single role. The other two actors, Tracey N. Bonner and Ashley Honore, switch nimbly through parts as varied as a Baptist preacher, a ragamuffin kid, and a mature seductress. The agile character changes do not, however, cause the play to lack coherence. They are right in keeping with the minimalist set that consists of a farmhouse frame, humble props and simple costumes.

The production showed the advantages of concentrating on the actors’ abilities over an elaborate set or costume, and there’s a historical precedent for doing so. “Home” was one of the productions that represented the generation of young and talented black actors, playwrights, and artists who formed the Negro Ensemble Company. Among their ranks are Denzel Washington, Joseph A. Walker and Samuel L. Jackson, the last of which who played the part of Cephus Miles in the original 1981 production.

The historical importance of the play, though, could easily be lost on a contemporary audience without sensitive directing and acting, and both Parson and the actors are successful on that account; “Home” connects. After the performance one audience member described her experience of the play as something hearteningly familiar. “It makes me feel like a great Negro book of poetry that I would take to bed with me at night,” she said.

Parson and the Court’s success with their production certainly achieved their goal of paying tribute to a historically significant play produced in a new context. As the curtain drops, spectators can take comfort in the fact that Cephus, ultimately rejecting the rhythms of blues and jazz in the middle of the night, is able to find peace in the more reassuring rhythm of a Greyhound bus taking him home.

Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through December 12. Prices vary. (773)702-7005. courttheatre.org

Tucked away on Ellis Avenue, Court Theatre’s mission is summarized well by its claim of taking a “bold and risky approach to the classics.” Its name embraces its grounding in the classic theater and masque that flourished at the 17th-century English court while the slogan in its brochure, “Just minutes from the Loop in Hyde Park!” reflects an awareness of its position as an outpost of professional theater on the South Side.

Its most recent reinvention is Sean Graney’s interpretation of Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors,” reworked so that the more formal madness of the original is loosened into a mystifying contemporary dreamscape. In person, director Graney betrays his partiality for this blend of the classical (his zero-tolerance policy concerning theatre novices) and the innovative (his quirky hat). His lecture at the University of Chicago, was titled “Can monkeys make theater?”—a question he promised that he would not be able to answer. At the talk, he exuded the kooky intelligence that permeates his latest production. He discussed the notion that “all the world’s a stage,” illustrating scenarios in which people “accelerate” their personalities and in doing so create characters out of themselves. He warned his audience not to try to distinguish earnestness from performance for fear of “losing your minds.” The irony of the lecture was that Graney was himself a character; while he seemed startled one-on-one, he was as hard as nails during his speech. The swearing and sexual references during the lecture seemed very much at odds with the person one shook hands with afterwards. Even the hat seemed to be a costume.

And costume really is one of the highlights of Graney’s newest production, an even more farcical representation of Shakespeare’s famous farce, “The Comedy of Errors.” Every aspect of each actor’s attire is ridiculous and extreme, but in a way that holds together the character’s essence so that the sharp angles of Egeon’s coat and his obscured face make him seem even more tragic than his words and body language already convey. The visual impact of the costumes intensifies the two-dimensional nature of the characters (with the exception of the spherical Luce, whose appearance in Act III Scene I is a highlight of the show) and thus makes the play into theater of the absurd. By modernizing the figures parodied in the work, Graney reanimates the humor in “The Comedy of Errors” so that Shakespeare’s jokes come through for Court Theatre’s contemporary audience, missing the mark only once or twice. And even then the actors’ flexible improvisation makes up for the momentary awkwardness. The chemistry is particularly evident between Alex Goodrich (Dromeo) and Erik Hellman (Antipholus) who seem to understand even the most intimate nuances of their characters’ relationship, so that even sexual innuendo succeeds in piercing the play’s archaic dialogue.

All the actors skillfully emphasize the tricks in Shakespeare’s language, exaggerating them so that the words become as significant in their wit as they would have been in the time they were written. In Act II, for example, the interchange between Dromeo of Syracuse and Ariadne, ‘By me?’ ‘By thee’ is repeated four or five times, to great comic and linguistic effect, acknowledging the symmetry of the words in a very intelligent analysis of Shakespeare’s language. The most satisfying aspect of the production is precisely this: the combinations of the comic and the intellectual, old and new, Epheseus and Chicago, reality and dreams are all so well manipulated that an audience can leave feeling glad that Graney has restated the Great Bard’s words in his own strange tongue. 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through October 17. Wednesday-Thursday, 7:30pm. Friday-Saturday, 8pm. Sunday, 7:30pm. (773)753-4472. courtheatre.org

(courtesy of Court Theatre)

Though only two actors command the stage and the set consists of little more than chairs and a backdrop, Court Theatre’s production of “Sizwe Banzi Is Dead” is filled with an energy and charm that belies its spartan setup. Deftly directed by Ron OJ Parson, the play is served well by the intimate nature of the Abelson Auditorium. Although more obscure and seemingly dated than other work by Athol Fugard (best known for “Tsotsi,” which was made into an Academy-Award winning film), “Sizwe” carries underlying themes of alienation and identity that move the piece beyond its 1970s South African setting.

The ninety-minute play opens with an extended monologue by Styles (Chiké Johnson), a photographer in New Brighton who regales the audience with tales of his past as a line worker and his battles with cockroaches in his studio. Just when it seems his stories will never end, a rap at the door interrupts him. The nerve-stricken man he photographs, Sizwe Banzi (Allen Gilmore), falsely introduces himself as Robert Zwelinzima. Styles does his best to draw out this sorrow-ridden character, whose reasons for mystery and misery soon become clear. As the audience finds out, Banzi came to Port Elizabeth in order to find work. Unable to do so, he has found out he has three days to return to King William’s Town—he can work the mines there or remain jobless. After a long night of drinking with Buntu (also played by Johnson), a friend of a friend, the pair comes across a corpse in an alley. The corpse carries papers with a work permit. Name? Robert Zwelinzima. Banzi is then faced with the decision of returning home a failure or adopting the identity of this dead man, losing his own in the process.

The history of this play is in some respects as fascinating as the play itself. Fugard wrote this work in combination with John Kani and Winston Ntshona, who both acted in the original production of the play. Kani used to improvise Style’s opening monologue, in some cases extending his lines until Ntshona forced himself on stage. Although never overt with its condemnation of apartheid, “Sizwe” was controversial enough to warrant the arrest of both actors for obscenity in 1976. Showings were marked by active audience participation and dialogues about the ethics of Banzi’s act would break out in the middle of scenes. The audience at Court Theatre for this production was a good deal more passive, though not for lack of trying on the actors’ parts.

Although the play is certainly a product of its time, this production of “Sizwe” has more going for it than its historical elements. The story’s personalized commentary on apartheid is well matched by the close physical proximity of the actors to the audience, and neither character is afraid to directly confront their viewers, grabbing hands and climbing over seats in one climactic scene. The play is strikingly physical: Johnson appears shirtless, and in one cathartic moment, Gilmore strips to his briefs. Without props or staging to hide behind, Banzi and Buntu’s physiognomies are all the audience has to understand the characters. Questions of identity abound, some obvious and others subtle. At what cost should one give up one’s name? For family, food, life? The dead man who Banzi becomes is not a deus ex machina solution to a problem of work but an absurdist beginning to a debate on identity. Although the play may have begun life as a political feature, its current aim is more philosophical—and Court Theatre meets that aim admirably.
Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through June 13. Wednesdays, 10:30am and 7:30pm; Thursdays, 7:30pm; Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays, 3pm and 8pm; Sundays, 2:30pm and 7:30pm. courttheatre.org

(Michael Brosilow, courtesy of Court Theatre)

The lights open on an empty elevated platform marked only by a small wooden table with a coffee cup and flowers atop it. There is also a simple chair. The performance is already an intimate one. Soon thereafter, Fisher as Didion walks onstage and says, “This happened on December 30, 2003. This may seem like a while ago, but it won’t when it happens to you. And it will happen to you.” And so begins the story of the deaths of Didion’s husband and daughter.

In the ninety-minute play, performed without an intermission, Didion chronicles the two-year period in which both John and Quintana, her daughter, die. Unable to simply list facts, Didion constantly interrupts herself with lists of memorized medications and neurological terms, long heart-breaking silences, and memories. Didion refers to these moments of consumptive memory as “the vortex.” In the vortex, the backlights of the stage shine directly onto the audience with blinding intensity. In the vortex, John still works in his office in their Malibu home, and Quintana’s hair is still green from pool chlorine. In the vortex, one dwells on life and health, not death and sickness. But eventually the lights refocus on the stage, and we are brought back to the drips of IVs in the sterile ICU at Beth Israel Medical Center’s Singer Division.

One reason we share Didion’s horror and sadness is she is among the world’s greatest observers. And here, she observes her own life in exacting detail.

On the page, Didion’s prose is extraordinary in its calmness in light of chaos and tragedy, but onstage a different dynamism is required. And Fisher has found it. With an oversized silk blouse and a long scarf draped around her shoulders, Fisher moves across the stage with an ease that causes you to forget that it is one. While Fisher’s energy on stage feels different than Didion’s on the page, she, like Didion, has captured the power of detail. From fidgeting with a bracelet to speaking with a quiver in her voice, Fisher brings life to both the truly funny moments and truly tragic ones.

There is no greater special effect than a well-paired director and actor. In Charles Newell’s production of “The Year of Magical Thinking,” a minimal set is the scene of a nuanced drama. Throughout the play, the greatest changes are Fisher’s movements around the chair. As she jumps forward and backwards in time, Fisher’s Didion sits and stands, she moves the chair left and right, and she faces each section of the audience. Eventually, with her back to the audience, sitting in the chair she has moved so many times to punctuate the unfolding chronology of the play, Fisher’s Didion silently settles into its cushion. She seems to have tired of moving around. A soft melody plays. With her back to the audience, Fisher’s Didion spends the last few minutes of the play as a witness to her own story. This is how Newell’s production ends and this is how Didion finally “lets things go.”
Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis Ave. Through February 14. Wednesdays, 10:30am and 7:30pm; Thursdays, 7:30pm; Fridays, 8pm; Saturdays, 3pm and 8pm; Sundays, 2:30pm and 7:30pm. courttheatre.org

The sort of production that samples from every satirical subgenre in the book, “Irma Vep” can most concisely be described as a parody of gothic horror culture—at least, this is the outermost layer of commentary. Vampires, werewolves, and mummies all make an appearance, and the abrupt facial reactions and over-the-top dun dun duns call to mind the accidental hilarity of early horror films.

But campy horror is only one element of “Irma Vep,” if the most obvious. It would be criminal to neglect the brilliant gender commentary of the two-actor play, in which numerous characters, men and women alike, glide in and out of the parlor with swiftness and confidence. Erik Hellman and Chris Sullivan handle all of these characters with a thought-provoking ease. In one scene, Hellman’s Jane, the saucy maid, engages in a flirtatious conversation with Sullivan’s thuggish stable hand Nicodemus; seconds later Hellman has transformed into the heavily mustached master of the house, Lord Edgar Hillcrest, who calms Sullivan as his relentlessly perturbed wife, Lady Enid. The constant presence of two actors with continuously flexible gender was an obvious statement by Ludlam, who, in drawing up the rights to perform the play, stipulated that the two actors must be of the same sex.

It is testament to the abilities of both Hellman and Sullivan that the individual characters remained coherent throughout. After a short time, however, the sheer gut humor of dude-looks-like-a-lady was sapped; you can only laugh so long about a man in a dress. Luckily, the play moves just one rung up the maturity ladder and offers a complete smorgasbord of bawdy innuendo directed mainly at Jane, the big-busted, highly sexualized maid. Adopting the meta techniques of epic theater, the actors also move beyond the stage, squeezing uncomfortably through the audience and briefly interacting with its more alarmed members. This inclusion furthered the intimacy of a broken fourth wall, inviting the audience along for the increasingly crazy last two acts.

While the humor often pleased, the constant barrage of jokes was sometimes exhausting. Yet there was something admirable about the many directions explored by the fast-paced production, which included physical humor, anachronism, excessive special effects, and nods to the film world. Every little element—and every character—was so good-naturedly embraced by Hellman and Sullivan that it is all but impossible to separate their performances. Indeed, this must have been one intention behind the production: having two actors perform a variety of characters and shift their gender with ease makes each actor seem purely a medium, without the innate qualities that are assumed when the actor portrays one character throughout.

The plot of “Irma Vep” is really the least important part, apparently sewed together with bits and pieces from early Gothic drama and horror. Its campy predictability is just a vehicle for an assortment of commentary sprinkled like confetti on the stage. It is this—the self-conscious humor and gender-bending cross-dressing—that make the production worth seeing.
Court Theatre, 5550 S. Greenwood Ave. Through December 13. courttheatre.org