Ms. Smarty Pants Know It All

Ask Aunt Susan by Seth Bockley
Directed by Joanie Schultz
Goodman Theatre, Owen Theatre

This post is two months late. Ask Aunt Susan played in November as a part of the Goodman’s New Stages Amplified series, which is such an interesting idea. Three playwrights were given the opportunity to workshop brand new plays in front of live audiences. Essentially, I would be watching a work in progress, and I would just happen to catch this one on the last day of its run.

With that in mind, I must nevertheless recommend to Seth Bockley that he really has to buckle down and do some additional work on this piece if he wants to make it live.

If I remember correctly, the play was 90 minutes with no intermission, a requirement of the workshop. The play that I saw was not a 90-minute play.

The plot set up is pretty straight forward. A young computer guy gets roped into writing content for an online advice site as “Aunt Susan.” His troubles multiply as this fictional character explodes in popularity.

The play starts off really well with a good establishment of character and the promise of some lively dialogue. Here, we are grounded in a pretty realistic world. As the play progresses though, it morphs more and more into techno-noir.

I have no idea if “techno-noir” is a thing or not but I must confess that I didn’t pick up that this was a noir work until the post-show discussion.

Noir is a lot about atmosphere and feeling, sometimes at the expense of a logical plot. Noir hides characters’ motivations and invites sinister undertones. If the audience (me) is not aware of this noir intention, a disconnect and dislike can really come quickly.

Independent of this, I felt that there were too many other competing trends and themes to go along side. Are we going to talk about identity, alienation, cyber-morality, the validity of relationships online, and capitalistic greed?

The play either needs to be expanded in length to better develop what needs to be developed or have its content edited to be more comfortable in its 90-minute skin. The characters were either too many or not-developed enough. The main character’s breakdown either needs to be more realistic or more crazy. The play felt trapped in between both ends of what it could be. To be entirely honest though, I’m not sure it could be saved into something beyond merely ok.

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I caught the traveling company of Fiddler on the Roof in Chicago’s Auditorium Theater last week. I have seen the movie before, but I have never seen this musical come to life on the stage.

I had almost forgotten what musical theater used to be like. I’ve gotten so used to the more modern productions fielding massive sets that move and flash and smoke. Everyone’s in complicated costumes and complicated make-up.

This traveling production of Fiddler brought in just a few well-made pieces to establish place, and then it let the actors carry the stage. A very nice change of pace. I was very aware that I was watching a stage performance, if that makes sense at all.

Overall, I think this company does a passable job, but I do have some qualms to share.

My first note has to do with the number of people on stage in relation to the size of the stage. I can’t imagine that the Auditorium’s stage is really that much smaller than other stages around the country, but for whatever reason, the crowd scenes felt overly crowded. This muddles the action and makes things harder to follow.

A jammed stage also hems in Jerome Robbins’s original choreography. I would have loved to see the dancers highlighted in those now iconic set pieces. I imagine that this is a constant challenge for every traveling show, but it seems like they should have a system figured out by now.

I also didn’t think that the featured dancers were all that strong, but this could be due to the constrained square footage with which they had to work.

Unfortunately, I also felt that some of the casting could have been better. The rabbi, for one, did not have a voice that fit the character. The constable, while large, did not project the presence that he should have to make the role work.

If this production is going to rely on the talent, the producers need to find the right people for the parts. As it is, I feel like I saw an enjoyable effort but not a top-notch one.

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Million Dollar Quartet is a home-grown musical that is a fictionalized account of a December day in 1956. Four would-be legends ended up in Sun Records, the baby of pioneer producer Sam Philips.

Personally, I find awkward the musicals that cobble established songs together into a new storylines. In the case of Million Dollar Quartet, where the characters are performing them straight-up as songs rather than as story elements, I found it additionally odd.

This is a show where a couple lines of dialogue, really—of exposition, are jammed in between the songs. The night jumps from hit to hit to hit.

It’s not bad if that is what you want, but it does make reacting to it a bit difficult. Is it a concert? Is it a play? How should I blend the two?

The up-close seating of Chicago’s Apollo Theater heightens the confusion. The actors can see you, and you can see each other. The loud, brash rock ‘n roll, as well as the narration, definitely go through the fourth wall. The talent of the cast is not in question. They bring the charisma and abilities of the original performers through, and the resulting music is pretty stupendous, but it does bring to the fore an interesting social phenomenon.

Even now, this early rock ‘n roll comes across so raw and powerful. The beats, rhythms, and energy power right into you. But what if those teens who propelled this music into the mainstream the first time are now a little too settled to “shake it, baby, shake it?”

Well, what happens is that the music and attitude come blasting from the stage while the audience may clap along a little bit… sometimes… if some people feel like it.

At least that’s what happened on the night that I went.

It was awkward.

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