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Chicago Tribune
21 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Girls & Boys' by Griffin Theatre is a devastating solo memory play
As I walked out of Griffin Theatre's extraordinary production of 'Girls & Boys,' in that dazed state that sets in after a show really messes with your head, two thoughts immediately ran through my mind. First: Cynthia Marker just gave a hell of a solo performance — one of the best I've seen in a long time. Second: how on earth am I going to convey the impact of this play without spoiling too much of the plot? I'll give the latter my best attempt. In this one-woman play, British writer Dennis Kelly (a Tony Award winner for the book of 'Matilda the Musical') manages a tricky balancing act, tackling an extremely dark subject in almost surgical detail while softening its harshest blows for the audience and maintaining some sense of hope in humanity. Oh, and the show is also hilarious. Griffin's Midwest premiere of this 2018 play is directed by Robin Witt, who excels at the helm of intimate dramas, as recently demonstrated by the moving two-handers 'A Case for the Existence of God' and 'A Slow Air' at Steep Theatre. Her knack for shaping exquisitely paced, quietly devastating emotional arcs works equally well in 'Girls & Boys.' With a skilled writer and a sensitive director in her corner, Marker holds the audience in rapt attention for 100 minutes straight in the role of the unnamed narrator, a quick-witted, irreverent Londoner from a working-class background. She launches her opening monologue with a bit worthy of a stand-up comedy set, recalling how she first met her future husband while waiting to board a JetBlue flight in Naples, Italy. As he sarcastically dashes the hopes of two gorgeous models trying to flirt their way ahead in the tense queue, this previously unremarkable man starts looking like a Greek god to our narrator. The attraction proves to be mutual, and Marker's character rhapsodizes about their passionate physicality and seemingly perfect compatibility in the early stages of their relationship. Suddenly, a sound cue and a shift from white to blue lighting indicate a leap in time, and this woman begins to relive a mundane interaction with her two young children, Leanne and Danny, while speaking to thin air and miming her motherly motions. Although we don't initially understand the purpose of this disorienting scene, in which the narrator no longer addresses the audience but instead seems wrapped up in her own memories, it does begin to make sense of the striking scenic design by Sotirios Livaditis. The set's ground level consists of a simple couch, throw rug, end tables and lamps in grays and off-whites — an ensemble that is mirrored by blue furniture suspended from the ceiling and strewn with children's toys and two stuffed animals. The overhead set pieces light up during the blue-tinged memory sequences, with lighting designer Brandon Wardell and sound designer Thomas Dixon working in tandem with Livaditis to toggle back and forth in time as the play inches toward revealing how the narrator's own life was turned upside down. When the action flips back to the brightly lit, right-side-up look, Marker's character recounts how her husband, a successful entrepreneur, cheered her on as she pursued a new career in documentary filmmaking. In another comedic moment, she tells the story of her first job interview in the industry, which pitted her against a horde of posh young people who could afford to pad their resumes with unpaid work experience. But with a combination of grit and humor, she gets her foot in the door and works her way up. A happy marriage, a fulfilling job and soon, a growing family — her adult life seems off to a promising start. Of course, that's not where the story ends. I won't reveal more here, but the script drops enough hints of the horrors to come that when the crisis finally arrives, the narrator acknowledges that the audience probably knows where it's going. Then, she gives the gentlest, most generous trigger warning imaginable. When the story gets difficult, she tells us, remember two things: this did not happen to you, and it is not happening now. But in this fictional world, the unspeakable did happen to her, and the narrator's reflections on violence, grief and memory are both poignant and profound. Marker never succumbs to a full breakdown in the telling, and her character has had years to process the trauma, but her pain is no less palpable for this restraint. It's a performance that will haunt me for some time, I suspect. Don't miss 'Girls & Boys' (4 stars) When: Through Aug. 16 Where: Griffin Theatre at the Bramble Arts Loft, 5545 N. Clark St. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes Tickets: $30-$43 at
Chicago Tribune
07-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
In ‘Fool for Love' at Steppenwolf, Caroline Neff takes on an iconic role
Caroline Neff, a native Texan, first came to Chicago in 2004 to study acting at Columbia College. After graduation, she became one of the city's most intense and respected actors, serving as a busy ensemble member at Chicago's acclaimed Steep Theatre and appearing in shows at theater companies like Victory Gardens, Griffin, Northlight and Jackalope. In 2010, Neff became an ensemble member with the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, where she worked on such productions as 'Airline Highway' and 'The Minutes,' both of which transferred to Broadway. On Saturday, Neff opens at Steppenwolf in an iconic and very on-brand role: as May in Sam Shepard's intense 1983 drama of warring lovers in the Mojave Desert, 'Fool for Love.' She plays opposite Nick Gehlfuss (known for TV work including 'Chicago Med') as Eddie. Steppenwolf previously staged the play in 1984 with Terry Kinney directing Rondi Reed and William Petersen in the leading roles. May is now widely associated with the actress Kim Basinger, who appeared in the 1985 film version. Neff, who moved to New York in 2020 after 15 years of living and working in Chicago, spoke during a break in rehearsals; our conversation has been edited for clarity and length. Q: It's been a while since I saw you on stage after seeing you so often for so many years. A: 2024 was a very bleak year. Q: But now here we are. An iconic role. A: Here we are. I love our board of directors, I say that unironically, but their memories are way too good. After I was cast, I got two text messages saying they'll never forget Rondi's performance in this role in 1984. Cool! This will be different! That cannot be replicated! This is the first Sam Shepard play I have ever done. Maybe even the first in the American canon, given that I have done so much new work and British work. Q: You must have read the play in college. A: I don't think I've picked up the play since then. And the difference between reading the play and feeling those characters at 20, versus now doing it at 39? The risks are so much bigger for these two people. And the reward is much more necessary. It makes me nervous. This conversation is going to make me cry. When I read the play in college, my inroads to the irrational emotional choices these character made were much clearer because I don't think I was using a lot of logic at that time in my life. But now as a person who really thinks about the impact of the choices that I make, how that impacts other people, my partner, my community, my self, my sweet, sweet underpaid therapist, it's much more complex. I have the question 'why?' a lot more frequently now than when I experienced a lot of Shepard's work when I was younger. His characters are driven by their needs; they're not driven by rational thinking. I believe the biggest gift we have as actors is to rationalize the emotional choices people make. Including ourselves. So to strip away all of that stuff and just do, takes a lot of unlearning. We talk a lot in rehearsal about how the way we talk about mental health now is really different. And we can't approach these characters like they had kind of access to mental health treatment in any way. It's both fun and scary to play a character driven by her base impulses. Q: Do you think this is still a shocking play? A: I think it is more shocking now because you have to accept that there were two people with knowledge who continued to act on their impulses. The idea of consent is so prominent now in how we talk about intimacy. I believe there was more than one version of the play. We are working from several texts including Sam's own text with lines added in the margins. We're not speaking them but they are very informative. Q: Your background must help with Shepard. A: Yes. I was born in New Mexico. It's like my siren song. The way my body feels there. Look at Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings. When she painted New York, it was like she was observing it. When she painted New Mexico, it was like an extension of her arm. I'm like that. I'm so at home in this play. Unfortunately. People will say to me, 'you're great for this role and I will say, what exactly do you mean by that?' Q: Perhaps that you are right for a play about wide-open American spaces? There's danger in the desert and it's not like anywhere else. It's built of survivors. The plants, the insects and the human beings that live there must be survivors. It's baked into your bones. You know, I'm always surprised it's only 40 pages long. It says it should be performed relentlessly. Without a break. If these characters were thinking, they would not be doing what they are doing.
Chicago Tribune
28-01-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: In the intense ‘A Slow Air' at Steep Theatre, a conversation between siblings is backgrounded by a terrorist act
The Scottish playwright David Harrower, whom Chicago theater fans likely will best know for the harrowing 2005 drama 'Blackbird,' not that any theater would dare produce that play now, is a famously minimalist scribe. His work also is poetic and intense. Some years ago, when he emerged as part of Britain's so-called in-yer-face group of writers, Harrower gave an interview to The Guardian. His interlocutor asked whether he was part of an 'exciting time' for British theater. His response? 'To agree a time is especially 'exciting' is pointless. It's a word that tells of nothing — probably why it's ubiquitous in theater publicity.' So that's a clue as to the man's gestalt. Steep Theatre isn't fazed by such writers; on the contrary, it specializes in them. And its new production of Harrower's 'A Slow Air,' starring Kendra Thulin and Peter Moore, two of Steep's best-known actors, is ample evidence of the benefits of experience. The play, which premiered in Scotland in 2011, is centered on a 2007 incident at Glasgow airport wherein a pair of terrorists, Bilal Abdullah and Kafeel Ahmed, drove a Jeep Cherokee filled with propane tanks into the terminal building, injuring five, surviving themselves (although they said they had intended to die) and unsettling a Scotland that not seen the likes since Lockerbie and Pan Am Flight 103 in 1988. Just that level of detail is perhaps enough to explain why a theater might be interested in this play, given recent incidents at a German Christmas market and in New Orleans. Harrower sets his play partly in the diverse Glasgow suburb called Houston, where the two terrorists happened to live, and partly in suburban Edinburgh, geographically close but culturally more different than you might think. We listen to two overlapping monologues spoken by a prosaic pair of long-estranged siblings. Morna (Thulin) is the livelier of the pair. Something of an aging rocker, she cleans posh houses and loves U2. Athol is more subdued, or wound more tightly, at least on the surface. He installs floors in homes for a living and prefers the band Simple Minds, and, yes, the bands matter to the play. I'll stop there, except to note that Morna's adult son shows up at Athol's place, impacting Athol and his community. You are better off experiencing what is revealed thereafter in real time. If you go, expect a slow burn but plenty of flames, from which it becomes increasingly difficult to look away. The incident I detailed above is a backdrop, mostly, or maybe not; either way, 'A Slow Air' is not so much a study of terrorism as one of division or alienation, which is of course relevant. The fascinating thing about this play is how well the writer teases out such themes from what really feels like an ordinary, working-class conversation among two Scots, carrying scars but maybe (only maybe) also some hunger for unity. In U.K. terms, of course, that has further resonance. Thulin and Moore have worked together countless times in Chicago and you can tell. They both are excellent here under Robin Witt's careful direction; Thulin comes with her familiar dialectal excellence and Moore his signature ability to dissect introverted men who don't fully know of what they are (or could be) capable. You should know you are just watching two monologues spoken by reluctant narrators in a bleak room and that the play is the work of a writer who conveys emotion and meaning only with a very glancing blow. It's not an 'exciting' play. Harrower would not know how (or want) to write one. But I've not been able to shake it since I walked out of Steep's door. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. cjones5@ Review: 'A Slow Air' (3.5 stars) When: Through March 1 Where: The Edge Off Broadway, 1133 W. Catalpa Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 25 mins.
