Sugarward (The Side Project) JOHN TAFLAN REVIEWER

Sugarward, the boringly mesmerizing new play by Sean Graney (though not directed by Sean Graney; directed by Geoff Button), strikes that delicate balance of being almost impossible to follow if you aren’t paying attention at all and being about several things it’s not ostensibly about.

In four terrible but excellent performances, John Henry Roberts (as Colonel Parke) and Joel Ewing (as manservant Thomas Kirby, former Governor Christopher Codrington, and corrupt sugar baron Edward Chester) have obviously memorized their lines.  And what lines they are!  To be honest though, I didn’t immediately understand some of the words in those lines until I thought about the context in which they were used.  Having then gleaned their meaning via a process of brain engagement, it was exciting because the writer (Sean Graney, who didn’t direct the play) would use them again and again and it was like getting a little treat every time you heard them because you had learned something earlier that you didn’t know before but now that you had learned it it was fun to be in on the joke and all of the sudden realize that a play can be about something other than people just sitting around complaining about a playwright’s loosely fictionalized friends and relatives.  (Also: don’t worry if you’re hard of hearing or feeling, because Joel Ewing projects at Metallica concert-like levels, accompanying every plosive with a justly infused shower of spittle.  [As alluded to above, Joel Ewing does play several different parts which is confusing unless you just accept it.]) 

Geoff Button directed this play as well as he could…which was actually really, really, really well.  He did an awesome job with it.  He spots Roberts and Ewing’s verbal calisthenics when they’re at the polysyllabic pull-up bar and holds their feet when they’re doing emotional sit ups.

Alright.  Let’s get down to brass tacks here.  No more smarming around.

There’s no need for a plot summary, just go see the play and know that what makes it so damn interesting is it’s assertion that the drive to obtain and ultimately possess power is, in fact, less dangerous than the desire men and women have to believe in those who pursue that power.  Oh, and it’s also about sugar.

A

-John Taflan

Woyzeck (The Hypocrites)

I don’t mean to sound dumb or anything, but what is going on with The Hypocrites’ Woyzeck? I mean, I get it and all but like, what’s up with it? These are questions that are asked with Sean Graney’s super quirky adaptation of Woyzeck, presented by The Hypocrites, now playing at the Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park.

Now, I’m a little biased because I did this show at B.U.—I played the second male lead, the Drum Major—and I like to think I know it pretty well. It is seriously one of the most important pieces of theatre that has ever been written. It’s about this soldier, Woyzeck, who—in our version, at least—is driven to murder his girlfriend, Marie, when she cheats on him with (you guessed it) the Drum Major. Of course, other things happen too, but that’s the main one.

Like I said, Sean’s show is super super quirky. And, the murder does happen in it, but it’s just different. It reminded me of Donnie Darko in some parts, Full Metal Jacket in others, and other times like those weirder movies that are out there sometimes. I don’t know. There are definitely certain things that characters do where you’re just like, what is going on here? But, they’re smart. I think it was really cool how they slapped the money when they got it. It shows you that the money is important, but also that it’s bad, too. Because, why would you hit something that you like? And Marie carries this rock around because she’s kind of crazy. She calls it her “baby” but I don’t think anyone was buying it. I know when we did this show at B.U. we had an actual fake baby that cried and that was really cool. (Actually, the money slapping thing was kind of offensive. We’re in a recession right now and I don’t think it’s right to show money—which some people don’t have—being treated like that. But that’s just me.)

Anyway, the set was really cool. And the costumes were really, really cool. But, I don’t know… I don’t want to come off as stupid or anything, but doesn’t Woyzeck take place in the 1800s? I mean, don’t get me wrong, the show is really cool, but like why was Woyzeck dressed in modern clothes? And, I’m sorry, the Drum Major didn’t even look like a drum major. Where was his hat? Where was his baton? I honestly didn’t even know he was the drum major until he was having sex with Marie (which only kind of happened). I mean, I get it, but I don’t know. And it sounded like they were using a different translation than we used when I did the show at B.U.

I liked Geoff Button a lot as Woyzeck, though. He reminded me of like, a really sad Ross from Friends. Especially, in that one episode where he gets in a fight with Rachel, and cheats on her but it’s not really cheating because they’re on a break. Lindsey Gavel is awesome as Marie, who isn’t really like Rachel all that much, actually. She’s kind of like, like Katherine Heigl in Knocked Up, but a little scarier. I mean, she’s really good. They’re both really good. In fact, everybody does great in this show:

Ryan Bollettino is so blonde and funny as the doctor. Erin Barlow is really funny as Marie’s friend and as the doctor’s girl. Ryan Bourque as Woyzeck’s friend, Andres, is really funny, too. Sean Patrick Fawcett is funny in a really great way as the Captain. Zeke Sulkes is not as funny as everyone else, but he doesn’t have to be because he’s supposed to be super scary, which he is! Walter Briggs definitely played the Drum Major differently than I did…but he was great and really funny.

I mean, I would definitely recommend being in a production of Woyzeck if you can, but this version was really cool and I would definitely go see it.

Woyzeck: A

-John Taflan

One Possible Solution to the Hazard, NE Mystery (guest detective Geoff Button)

Please see our PREVIOUS blog entry!

Okay. Case closed.

The Richard Marx song and video for Hazard are about the shared bond between two societal outcasts, our narrator (Marx) and a woman named Mary. The two have an incredibly close connection, based largely on their mutual preoccupation with two things: leaving the town of Hazard and walking the edge of a river.

I am ready to posit that the river mentioned so frequently in the song is a metaphor for death, and that the confines of the town of Hazard stand in for the existential ache of modern life. Both Mary and the narrator long desperately to leave their lives in Hazard, and it is this despair that brings them over and over again to the shore of the great divide between this world and the next.

It is important to understand that the song and video for Hazard both function independently of each other. The lyrics of the song are spare and simple, and exclusively revolve around the pair’s shared obsession with death as a form of escape. The video takes the themes of the song and extrapolates them into a complex narrative whodunit involving an obsessive Sheriff trying to pin Mary’s murder on Marx. But while the video has a great deal more content than the song, I would argue that both ultimately explore the same themes.

The first image in the video is of Marx cutting his long mane of lustrous hair on the riverbank. He gazes across and sees Mary on the other shore. We then cut to a nearly identical image of a young Marx, presumably at a funeral, looking across the river to see his mother on the opposite side.

Next is a montage of Marx meeting and cavorting with Mary on the edge of the river. Yet it is important to note that Marx and Mary are never seen in any explicit moment of sexual intimacy. Later in the video, when Marx tells the Sheriff that he and Mary weren’t dating, I believe he is telling the truth. The end of “Hazard Part 2” only corroborates this belief, when Mary tells him that she doesn’t know what she’d do if she lost him “as a friend”. Yet all the while Mary has been taking comfort in the knowledge that Richard Marx will be right there, waiting for her.

The video goes to great pains to track the white scarf that Marx is seen wearing. On the night of Mary’s disappearance he sees her coupling with someone in a car, and turns away in despair. A mortified Mary notices him and buries her head in shame on her lover’s shoulder. Marx is then seen running away, leaving his scarf behind. Next we see Mary walking the bank of the river wearing her best friend’s scarf. When she is discovered at the bottom of the river this scarf is tied neatly around her neck, not to strangle her, but carefully, lovingly. In “Hazard Part 2” she is actually seen wearing the scarf, wading into the water of her own volition.

Many of the misunderstandings and misinterpretations associated with the Hazard video involve the subplot of Marx’s traumatic childhood. In flashback we see Marx and his mother abandoned by his soldier father, and watch as Marx walks in on his mother finding comfort in the arms of a man with hair even more lustrous than that of the adult Marx. The unstable and angry child sets fire to the family home and runs away, presumably leaving his mother and her lover to burn to death. This subplot serves to richen and enliven the plot by explaining Marx’s status as a pariah in the community of Hazard, his unstable reaction to Mary’s betrayal, and Mary’s subsequent overreaction. It also opens a psychological window onto his relationship to his own hair: both to his Oedipal compulsion to grow it long and on his cathartic self-shearing in the end.

I believe the video illustrates that Marx loved Mary unrequitedly, and explains that when she realized she had broken his heart she was driven to drown herself in the river that had imprisoned them both. Marx, faced with the loss of his true love and only friend, though cleared of complicity in her death is still driven by his grief to the edge of the river, where he contemplates his own suicide.

This interpretation lends great poignancy to his ultimate decision not to plunge into its murky depths, but to instead start fresh by cutting his hair, turning his back on the river, and leaving Hazard city limits. As Marx sings yearningly of his need to “leave this old Nebraska town”, viewers can take solace in knowing that unlike Mary, Marx won’t take the easy way out of town. Instead he’ll find the strength to escape the hard way. By putting one foot in front of the other.

-Chief Inspector Geoff Button