The Autumn Garden
By Brian Kirst, Chicago Free Press
Sometimes it is pure theatrical bliss to sit back and allow a masterful writer to tell you a story - even if it isn't a flawless creation. Such is the case with Eclipse Theater's current, immaculate presentation of one of Lillian Hellman's infrequently performed works "The Autumn Garden". The kick-off of the 2008 - 2009 season's Lillian Hellman Festival (including upcoming productions from Shattered Globe and City Lit Theater), "The Autumn Garden" is an emotional, seemingly personal work from Hellman.
Hellman, the memoirist/playwright best known for "Little Foxes" (which featured both Bette Davis and Elizabeth Taylor in its lead role) and "The Children's Hour" (an early study of closeted lesbianism), spent half of her growing years in a boarding house run by her aunts in New Orleans. Thus the character of Sophie, a French ward taken in by her aunt, seems to represent not only Hellman's youth, but Sophie's universal acceptance of life's more risqué notions appears to reflect the seasoned, well lived Hellman's views on life, as well.
Plot wise, "The Autumn Garden" concentrates on the emotional valleys of the formerly well off Constance , reduced to taking in guests at her family's summer home. When Constance welcomes in a former beau, a manipulative artist, she and her regular guests soon find themselves surrounded by their own quickly crumbling realities. Consequently, Hellman daringly (particularly for 1951 when the work was conceived) dives into the worlds of unhappy marriage, homosexuality, unrealized dreams and the moral strangleholds of the societal classes. (In retrospect, Constance 's watchful neighborhood can even be seen as a parallel to The House of Un-American Activities Committee - even though the eventually blacklisted Hellman didn't tangle with them until a year after "Garden" was produced.)
Hellman's monologue heavy confrontations and wordy resolutions frequently strain the dramatic confines of the dainty summer home's walls, but her work is always beautifully detailed and rich in character. Meanwhile, director Nathaniel Swift works with a precision that allows Hellman's multiple storylines clear focus and he helps achieve detailed and precise work from all of the performers. Courtney O'Neill's exquisite set practically breathes with a life of its own and Elisa Hiltner's costumes enhance every moment of the action, as well.
Every cast member, from Millicent Hurley's heart worn but hopeful Constance to Raymond Jacquet who illuminates his brief stage time as Leon with humor and skill, are exemplarily. Nora Fiffer's Sophie connects with simple forthrightness while Dawn Alden seduces with a childish wisdom and manipulative hurt as Rose. John Fenner Mays is both charming and sympathetically hopeless as the roguish painter Nick and Julie Daley's grace and beauty as Nina, Nick's all giving wife, is a true equal to this production's lovely timeworn quality as a whole.
The Autumn Garden
November 19, 2008
By Venus Zarris, Chicago Stage Review & Gay Chicago Magazine
Eclipse Theatre Company delivers a simply beautiful treat with their ambitious rendition of Lillian Hellman's rarely produced The Autumn Garden. The details of Hellman's eccentrically flawed and complicated characters are rendered with exceptional strength by a captivating cast.
When old friends vacation in a summer boarding house to relax and reconnect they are haunted by the choices of their past that still affect their present lives.
Nathaniel Swift directs his talented cast with restraint when needed yet allows for occasional unbridled idiosyncrasy when called for. The result is a balanced production that serves the dramatic builds and explosions as well as the delicate intimacies. Hellman's delightful dialogue and poignant power plays are wonderfully realized in this outstanding offering. This is a long and detailed script and Eclipse sustains it well with charm, humor and emotional connection.
This ensemble is superb with brilliant performances delivered by Dawn Alden, as the frenetically narcissistic Rose, Julie Daley, as Nina; the long suffering wife to a self-absorbed half-rate painter, and Judith Hoppe, as the wealthy, wise and wry matriarch, Mrs. Ellis. Nora Fiffer steals the show with her magnificent portrayal of Sophie. Her performance sneaks up on you and then gently knocks you over. Her subtlety is deceptively powerful and her honesty is remarkably profound.
The extraordinary design team creates one of the loveliest settings seen this year, accented by Elsa Hiltner's gorgeous costume design and Cecil Averett's beguiling musical composition. His evocative music makes you long for more.
To a Yankee, these are some eccentrically entertaining characters. To a Southerner, this is a family reunion. My girlfriend, a displaced Texan, commented that one character was her aunt, while another was her grandmother and warned me that in the south, any man wearing kaki pants is bound to be trouble. (In this play she was right on the money with that prediction.)
You don't have to take a trip south of the Mason-Dixon Line to experience intriguing Southern discomfort and dysfunction. Simply head over to The Greenhouse Theater Center (formerly known as Victory Garden's Greenhouse) and enjoy this lush and lovely Autumn Garden.
Eclipse Theatre's revival of 'Plaza' is worth checking out
July 22, 2008
by Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times
First comes a surprisingly dark tale of a middle-class marriage that has sadly gone sour in the most predictable ways. Next is a comic tale of celebrity worship that now, four decades after it first appeared onstage, seems like a harbinger of a phenomenon to come. And finally, there is a classic case of pre-wedding panic that unfolds in pure farcical style.
Put them all together -- unified by the fact that each successive scenario unspools in Room 719 of the Plaza, one of New York's most fabled luxury hotels -- and you've got Neil Simon's popular triptych "Plaza Suite," which debuted on Broadway in 1968, was turned into a film three years later and is now receiving a spirited revival by Eclipse Theatre. And if you initially groan at the very thought of revisiting Simon's unquestionably mid-20th century, pre-feminist musings on midlife crises and marital (and extra-marital) meanderings, this production suggests there are still some laughs to be had, and that there is some behavior that doesn't change in any appreciable way.
On Broadway, actors George C. Scott and Maureen Stapleton played each of the play's three different couples. In the film version, Walter Matthau played all the male leads but was paired with Stapleton, Lee Grant and Barbara Harris. At Eclipse, director Steve Scott has cast each scenario separately, with only the hotel bellhop (a fleet and whimsically efficient J.P. Pierson) doing triple duty. In the process, he has made some ingenious choices in actors.
In "Visitor From Mamaroneck" (a wealthy New York suburb), we meet the devoted if dippy Karen Nash (expertly played by CeCe Klinger). She is a slightly frumpy but energetic woman desperately attempting to rekindle the romance in her marriage to her dyspeptic, calorie-counting businessman husband, Sam (Ted Hoerl, a perfect pill). Sam has been having an affair with his young, capable, attractive secretary (Nora Fiffer). Karen would be far better off without Sam, but that thought is only beginning to dawn on her.
In "Visitor From Forest Hills" (a well-to-do neighborhood in Queens), a plump and ever-bickering couple -- Norma (Cheri Chenoweth) and her husband, Roy (Jon Steinhagen) -- go into a tailspin when their daughter locks herself in the bathroom minutes before her hugely expensive wedding. She refuses to tie the knot, terrified that she and her groom might morph into a couple like her parents.
But it is the "Visitor From Hollywood" that elicits the most laughs. The premise is simple: Seventeen years after they dated in high school, Jesse (a too-youthful Nathaniel Swift, decked out in shaggy hair and love beads) has become a famous Hollywood producer made cynical by three failed marriages, while Muriel (Frances Wilkerson), remains a seemingly unspoiled wife and mother of three still living in New Jersey. On a visit to New York, Jesse, a Peter Bogdanovich type, tries to rekindle old times. Muriel, who has slavishly followed his career and is enthralled by his connection to celebrities, appears to be untouchable (she even wears pert cotton gloves), but after she downs a few vodka stingers she is ready for more than she lets on.
In a deliciously understated hoot of a comic performance, Wilkerson (who would never have been cast in this role in the 1960s, simply because she is black) nails every line and is a perfect mix of prim reticence and moxie minx.
Eclipse's 'Plaza Suite' poignant, unsettling
July 23, 2008
by Barbara Vitello, Daily Herald
Neil Simon's plays may lack the razor-sharp wit of a wordsmith like David Ives, but the hit-maker responsible for "Barefoot in the Park," "The Odd Couple" and the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Lost in Yonkers" certainly knows his way around a punchline. And he never makes audiences wait too long for the next joke.
Populist and prolific, Simon delivers the kind of middlebrow comedies whose mass appeal translates to commercial success and frequent revivals. The latest comes courtesy of Eclipse Theatre Company, which revives Simon's 1968 Broadway hit "Plaza Suite" as part of its 10th anniversary commemoration of its one playwright/one season initiative. The company last staged the play in 2003 as part of its Neil Simon season.
A sometimes chilly comic examination of marital discord, "Plaza Suite" centers on a trio of less-than-happily wedded, middle-aged, upper-middle class couples whose precarious unions and strained relationships play out in vignettes that unfold in the same timelessly elegant suite of New York City's Plaza Hotel. But look beyond the wisecracks and you'll find pathos, which director Steve Scott illuminates quite effectively in this sure-handed, well-cast production. Balancing the play's quietly aching moments with some uproarious slapstick, Scott ably negotiates its shifting moods: the poignant, unsettling tone of the first scene depicting the beginning of the end of a marriage; the amusing and awkward tryst between a woman who craves more and a man who wants less and the farcical conclusion involving a couple who want nothing more than for their daughter to go through with the expensive wedding they've given her.
Simon's 'Suite' starts out somberly, with a couple who find themselves at a crossroads on the eve of their 22nd anniversary (23rd depending on which spouse is counting). The expressive Cece Klinger brings a restless energy and earnestness to Karen, a suburban matron with a sense of whimsy and keen intuition, who tries to rekindle the romance with her husband Sam. Klinger keeps Karen's pain close to the surface. And as the lights come down, she conveys with her stricken expression exactly what her unsuccessful interlude with Sam has cost.
Ted Hoerl brings a measured ambivalence and condescension to the role of Sam, a man whose midlife crisis has turned him into a work-obsessed, health nut and sent him into the arms of his secretary. The subtle tension between Hoerl and Klinger suggest a couple who know the end is near. The more lighthearted second sketch concerns a Hollywood producer (played with practiced self-absorption by Nathaniel Swift, whose shaggy, hair, love beads and rose-tinted glasses suggest a young Peter Fonda) trying to seduce his high school sweetheart (the funny, endearingly prudish Frances Wilkerson sporting the classic 1960s "flip"), a star-struck New Jersey housewife more receptive to his proposition than she cares to admit.
The nimbly paced, perfectly executed final scene (the flat-out funniest of the three) features superb comedic performances from Jon Steinhagen (who earns laughs with an arched eyebrow and fixed glare) and Cheri Chenoweth (fluttery nervousness never gets old) as the increasingly anxious and incessantly bickering parents of a skittish bride who has locked herself in the bathroom minutes before her very expensive wedding fearing that she and her fiance will become her parents. Given the bleak picture Simon paints, she has good reason to be afraid.
Rounding out the cast is J.P. Pierson as the accommodating bellhop and the take-charge groom and Nora Fiffer as the accommodating secretary and the reluctant bride.
The sharply observed "Plaza Suite" may conclude with a farce, but it has substance. And if Simon sends his audience home chuckling, it's only after he's demonstrated in no uncertain terms that marriage doesn't guarantee happily ever after.
A sweet revival
40-year-old Neil Simon comedy shines brightly in Eclipse production
July 25, 2008
by Betty Mohr, Southtown Star
A bubbly confection, "Plaza Suite" is a laugh riot well-timed for summer.
Overflowing with gags, jokes, one-liners and laughable human frailties, Eclipse Theatre's revival of Neil Simon's 1968 comedy is a sparkling gem.
Because audiences were so receptive to "Plaza Suite" when it first opened in 1968, Simon wrote two follow-up, hotel-situated comedies, "California Suite" (1976) and "London Suite" (1995), none of which are as funny as "Plaza Suite."
A blend of bittersweet comedy and riotous farce, "Plaza Suite" unfolds in three separate acts, all of which take place in room 719, a luxury suite in the Plaza Hotel in New York.
Although the Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theater main stage isn't as large as a hotel suite, Mike Winkelman comes through with a convincing set design that evokes the feeling of a glamorous hotel accommodation.
Comedy is the most difficult of all theater to pull off, but Steve Scott's perfect-timed, golden-touch direction and an ensemble of performers who play their roles straight keeps the show on a continuous crescendo of laughter.
In the first scene of the three-act presentation, Karen (CeCe Klinger) prepares for a romantic evening to celebrate the anniversary of her 20-something marriage (she's not sure whether it's 22 or 23 years) to Sam (Ted Hoerl).
Trouble is that her 51-year-old husband is going through a mid-life crisis.
He watches his weight, health and looks with fanatic care, which, of course, can only mean that he is having an affair with his young secretary.
While that act tugs at one's heartstrings, the second act is a hilarious hoot.
Here we have Jesse Kiplinger (subtle Nathaniel Swift) as a smarmy, womanizing Hollywood film producer trying to bed his old girlfriend, Muriel (a show-stopping performance by Frances Wilkerson).
The seduction scene, in which Muriel is increasingly excited over the Hollywood stars Jesse knows, is a riotous howler.
The final act also is a jaw-breaker.
This act takes place on the wedding day of Mimsey (Nora Fiffer, who also portrays the young secretary), a nervous bride who has locked herself in the bathroom.
Her mother, Norma (a wonderful Cheri Chenoweth), and her father, Roy (a superb Jon Steinhagen), are at their wits end trying to get Mimsey out of the john.
If Mimsey doesn't go through with the marriage, her parents stand to lose the fortune they have paid for the food, the flowers, the photographer and the hotel.
The ending of this act is so funny that I won't ruin the surprise by divulging it.
A crowd-pleasing, slice-of-life comedy, this sweet "Suite" is a delicious treat.