My friend Anita and I went to see The Elephant Man at the new Theater Wit space, but first we stopped off at The Gondola. The Gondola is the new restaurant across the street there, where Joey's Brickhouse used to be, and let me tell you, it was hoppin'!
We didn't have tons of time, so we settled on an order of baked clams and a conversation about our lives.
When the food came out, Anita put a whole clam in her mouth. She bit down and with shock and despair in her voice she shouted "They left half the goddammed shell on this thing!"
Yes, Country Mouse, they sure did.
After we figured who to blame for leaving the shells on the bottom of these baked clams, we told the waitress we would only be paying half price, because you could only eat the top half of these things and we also suggested that the chef should, perhaps return to cooking school and take a class on mollusks.
After dinner, we wandered over to Theater Wit. What a great new theater! The box office was friendly and the concessions area was clean and bright!
I ordered a ginger ale with some ice for the show. I saw that it was about 1:45 without an intermission and I knew I would be thirsty.
Why do shows go that long without intermissions? Can they not afford one?
I wanted to let them know that over at Steppenwolf they have a show with 2 intermissions, and maybe they would be willing to donate one. This seemed like it might come off as a little sarcastic, so I just let things be and found our seats.
What do you know about the play "The Elephant Man"?
Here's what I knew.
John Merrick was this real dude that had some crazy weird growths all over him. I had also surmised from this that the play was about acceptance of others no matter what their appearance is and that people would probably have accents.
I was right about both of those things.
The play is directed by June Eubanks, and one of the tricks she uses is, she projects the scene number and name up across the stage (like Frazier), and then an actor comes out and reads it. This device is used sometimes to make scene changes seem less utilitarian and add a touch of whimsy to the thing. Now, there are like 57 scenes in this play, so needless to say some of the scenes are very short, so sometimes it would go like this:
A scene would end, and a new scene would flash across the stage. For example:
Scene XIVX
There Is Only Darkness In This Room
and then here's the scene...
Doctor: What are you doing here?
Merrick: Catching lightning bugs. I use this for light.
Doctor: What for?
Merrick: There is only darkness in this room.
And that's the whole scene.
So there were like, 80 scenes like that. Now, to the directors credit, it was easy to follow everything, and you were always rooting for the Elephant guy. You want him to live or whatever he wants to do, and he also builds little cardboard houses or something, they never really got into that, but I bet that's what it was because once he was taken into captivity, he was probably pretty bored, just like elephants at the zoo.
Well at about scene 37, I was running out of ginger ale and so when I put the cup to my mouth, the ice would slide all the way down and when I put the cup back, the ice would crash at the bottom of the cup. At first I didn't notice, but as I kept doing it, I started to notice a certain set of eyes on me. Those eyes belong to a certain reviewer in town with a name that rhymes with Rom Rilliams. He was looking at me like he wanted to rape me in the alley. Well, you can bet that that was the last time I tried to drink any ginger ale!
Anyway, the acting is pretty good I guess. Here's the thing. Remember when you where in high school and everyone made fun of you for doing faggoty plays with British accents? This is one of those plays. The guy who plays the Elephant man is named Mike Tepeli. He's pretty new I think, but he's good. He's sort of like Will Allan I think.
Then there is Cameron Feagin who plays a whore with a heart of gold. She is REALLY good, but they don't do the topless scene for everyone to see boobs, only the Elephant Man gets to see them. Feagin has been doing a lot of plays lately and you can see why. She's very natural and has a nice speaking voice.
Zach Bloomfield is this guy who plays weirdos and he doesn't disappoint here. He plays a really creepy dude that ends up looking for some forgiveness, but is really just a douche.
But I think the BEST performance of the night goes to Steve O'Connell. He was great as the doctor on the edge and I have high hopes of never auditioning against him. That will be hard, since we are both tall and handsome leading men.
Go see this play, it's got a minimal set but I hear Bohemian Theatre is a great company to watch in the future, so get in on the ground floor!
B+
-Anderson Lawfer, Eric Roach
P.S. After the play, I saw Rom Rilliams order a ginger ale, so maybe he was just looking at me like that because he was jealous.
