Displaying items by tag: Dinah Berkeley

Shattered Globe’s world premiere of the delightful comedy “Eelpout!” delivers its punches with deceivingly understated skillfulness. Written by Paul W. Kruse, who calls it a fantasia, it is beautifully conceived and directed for the stage at Theater Wit by Jeremy Ohringer, whose “A Devil Comes To Town” at Trap Door has made me a big fan of his stage work.

“Eelpout!” examines the less frequently visited territory of the emotional relationship between two men in this tale of a stag party set in an ice fishing hut in Minnesota. We meet Ole Olsen (Carl Hallberg is terrific)—soon to marry Lena (Lydia Moss’s brief appearance is a knockout)—as he and his best buddy Sven Svensen (Jeff Rodriguez in a nuanced performance) trek across the frozen water in the pre-dawn darkness aiming to fish and drink.

Gradually we gather that Ole is more vested in the manly pursuits like ice fishing, while Sven is a more sensitive reflective soul. Their overlap, the safe area in which male intimacy is expressed, is in spectator sports, and chugging booze. Ritualistic beer and shots action is called upon whenever the conversation veers toward honest male intimacy. Likewise for a terse memetic conversation, almost totemic in its value and repeated throughout the play by multiple characters, runs like this:

You catch that game yesterday?
Nail biter.
Sure was.
Down to the buzzer.

These devices substitute for emotional connection, or defer it, for the men.

As the play opens on icy Lake Mille Lac (a real place), Sven pauses to take in the magnificent starry night and beckons Ole to join him and drink in the beauty. The language they have to express their feelings is terse, constrained by male convention, and even more so by their monosyllabic vernacular, which the playwright wields with amazing versatility. (There is a plethora of unusual nouns that I had to Google, only to find that they are real words, at least in Minnesota.)

SVEN: Ole. Just look!
OLE: Oh
SVEN: Worth it.
OLE: How about that.
SVEN: Prettiest right before the sun comes up.
Ole: Yessir

Sven tells Ole, “You ever think about how looking at the milky way is looking sideways through a pancake of stars?” Perhaps touched by the moment, Ole is moved to share a confidence with Sven: that he and Lena will name their first born after him. Now Ole is disappointed that Sven is less than enthusiastic. "You're supposed to be happy,” complains Ole. Sven deflects. “I wanna fish,” But their true feelings spill out in the course of the play, when Sven predicts to Ole that after he is married to Lena, their friendship will suffer and their offspring will take centerstage.

This conversation comes soon after Sven has an accidental dunk into a frigid spear fishing hole during the starlit walk. There he meets the magical Eelpout (Jesús Barajas is absolutely enchanting), a sentient fish in glistening red sequined body stocking. Eelpout engages Sven, nibbling at him in magical fish-like exploration. Barajas is so good in his role, both fishlike, and an alien personality almost from another dimension. It’s a remarkable performance, so good that even one of his stylish exits earned applause!

I suspect the playwright has given us an altogether new personality type - vaguely, a bit Sheldon Cooper-ish from Big Bang theory, maybe Jake Gyllenhaal in "Buzz Saw," with that dash of a very restrained yet overtly gay sensibility. Eelpout as a type seems a rare but familiar character in real life, but I don’t think I’ve seen it on a stage or film.

A third-wheel character arrives in the shape of Lars (Dina Berkeley) with gender bending affect - just one of the guys, but there’s just something you can’t put your finger on. Lars is a well-intentioned dolt and a schmuck, and also affords the playwright an opportunity to caricature the ungainly social behavior of the male suffering deep-seated insecurity and feelings of inadequacy.

In addition to the fantasia style of this play, conjuring visions of great bodies of swirling, writhing, spawning aggregations of fish, the playwright also incorporates classically funny physical comedy and comedy of errors skits: Ole and Sven in skivvies under a blanket, warding off hypothermia and trying unsuccessfully not to get hard; a mistaken identity in which not one, but two stag party strippers (Taigé Lauren as Heidi and Rebecca Jordan as Holly) appear in the ice hut to shock and humorous surprise. It’s a lot of fun.

Particularly notable are the production values, which use very little to great effect. Kudos to Delena Bradley (costume designer), Sierra Walker (lighting designer), Saskia Bakker (props designer), and particularly Eleanor Kahn (set) for the ice house and platform.

All’s well that ends well in a play like this. “Eelpout!” is a precise evocation of the many styles and languages of the varieties of love that dare not speak their name, or perhaps, may not even have a name. Highly recommended, Shattered Globe’s “Eelpout!” runs through May 30, 2026 at Theater Wit in Chicago.

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com. 

With the mesmerizing hold of a Moth Hour radio story and the visual creativity of the (late, lamented) Redmoon Theatre show, Trap Door Theatre’s production of “A Devil Comes To Town,” is so incredibly good that I urge you to stop reading this review and just get a ticket.

Here’s why.

First: there is the source material., adapted and directed by Jeremy Ohringer from a novel by Italian author Paolo Maurensig from his elegantly crafted 2018 page-turner (from the English translation by Anne Milano Appel). This gripping yarn and its magnetic charm is distilled creatively into Ohringer’s script - maintaining the dramatic tension of the original book, concentrating it into a 60-minute elixir of a story that moves with compelling interest to its satisfying resolution. The promotional thumbnail captures its well: “In a town obsessed with writing, the arrival of a mysterious devilish publisher sets off a sinister chain of events, as literary ambition turns feral.”

Second: The tiny Trap Door Theatre becomes, through ingenious stagecraft, a magical window to one delightful scene after another - sometimes worlds away. Simple practical effects with lighting, puppetry, scale models, and even a shadow lantern delight in their simplicity, pulling our attention despite our surfeit of exposure to perfect CGI recreations in film and gargantuan stage machinery on Broadway. Credit Ohringer in his direction, Karen Wallace for lighting design, Saskia Bakker for puppet design, Finnegan Chu for costumes, and Oskar Westbridge on sound design and as stage manager.

The play, like Maurensig’s novella, is set in Switzerland, opening at a conference in Kusnacht for professional psychologists at which a parish priest, Father Cornelius, delivers a paper on the prevalence of human manifestations of Satan. Afterward he returns to his home village of Dichtersruhe, population 1,000, where indications of an inordinate interest begin to appear among many townsfolk - the butcher, the baker, children, shopkeepers, a senescent cleric - all begin writing manuscripts for publication by major book publishers.

A subplot on a rise of rabid foxes adds zest to the storyline, and a shadowy past for Father Cornelius adds intrigue. The fixation by the townsfolk with being published mirrors in so many ways the passion for TikTok influencer status, while the presentation of the publishing storyline reminds us of the cunning self-publishing hucksters that abound.

In the stage adaptation of the book, Ohringer gives us five actors playing Father Cornelius, with Shail Modi in a stunning performance as the principle one. Ohringer has inventively choreographed the performances of these Father Cornelius characters, at times having them march and prance in lockstep together. The four other Father Cornelius figures (Dina Berkeley, Juliet Kang Huncke, Lydia Moss, and Y’vonne Rose Smith) serve as a kind of chorus that doubles as the author’s omniscient voice and general exposition. These four at various points take on other roles as well, Y’vonne Rose Smith particularly notable as the devilish publisher, Dr. Fuchs, and Lydia Moss as the decrepit cleric Father Christoforo. Dinah Berkeley is a manic delight in several roles.

Indescribably good, really, “A Devil Comes To Town” comes highly recommended and has already had its run extended, playing through December 6 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W Cortland St in Chicago. Don’t miss it.