Displaying items by tag: Scott Duff

Backstage comedies and dramas are a beloved genre – David Mamet’s Main Street, Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser, Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, Mel Brooks The Producers– known for sending up actors, directors, and show business.

Michael Frayn’s Noises Off – the phrase is basically British for “Quiet on the Set” - is widely regarded as among the best of these. And in its current production at Windy City Playhouse Frayn’s script is given its due. From the opening scene, we see we are witnessing a masterwork of comedy, operating on multiple levels – parody, farce, and pure physical hijinks. (Among Frayn’s works are Copenhagen, After Life, The Two of Us and Clouds.) Director Scott Weinstein and this very high-energy, hard-working cast had the audience roiling with laughter.

And it’s no wonder. It tells of a British troupe that has taken a farce, “Nothing On,” on a long road show with limited time for rehearsal. The cast members are already exhausted before opening night, with little time to learn lines, blocking, or plumb into character motivation. These players are a mixed bag of talent, either past their prime or unlikely to reach it. One example: the towering senior Shakespearean actor, Seldson Mowbray (played wonderfully by Will Casey), an inveterate drunk, and impossibly hard of hearing.

Part of the magic of Frayn’s work is that each actor must play two characters - their role in Noises Off, and their secondary role in the farce, Nothing On. And another part of the magic is that they as they squabble, feud, or fall in and out of love, everything is expressed indirectly, within the language of the plays they are performing.

It gets uproarious when the play is live upfront, and the audience is taken backstage to see the battling conducted “noises off,” through pantomime fighting and fisticuffs. Here Frayn challenges the actors to split-second timing in bumping and crashing into each other, handing off props, etc., and they acquit themselves well (Max Fabian s Fight Choreographer). Two other productions I have seen used a turntable set, rotating to perform the second act. Windy City Players has the audience move to the rear of the house, creating an immersive experience that is even more convincing.

As the show opens we meet the actress Dotty Otley (a delicious performance by Amy J. Carle), who, in “Nothing On,” plays a housekeeper, Mrs. Clackett. Otley struggles to remember her lines, her blocking, and what to do with three props she handles: a plate of sardines, a newspaper, and a telephone receiver – always taking the wrong one off stage at the end of the scene. Otley is oozing self-pity, and the other performers crowd around her in sympathy.

Soon enough, from on high over a speaker, we get the sardonic voice of director Lloyd Dallas, world weary and certainly tired of this group. As the rest of the actors appear on stage, Dallas discovers they do not quite realize it is not a technical or even dress rehearsal, but the final rehearsal before opening night. And they do not nearly have their lines down.

“I’m starting to know what God felt like when he sat out there in the darkness creating the world,” says Lloyd as the dress rehearsal implodes. “What did he feel like, Lloyd,” an actor asks. “Very pleased he’d taken his Valium.”

Frayn also seems to be working a bit of an author’s enmity toward actors – largely bringing us venal people who are filled with inchoate emotion, but have no lines of their own to express themselves. When they are “Noises Off,” they don’t even have the lines. To press it even further Frayn shows us how ineptly the actors contend with the rising chaos on stage, adlibbing pathetically – at one point following a missed entrance by her Frederick Fellows (Scott Duff), his wife finds Belinda Blair (Amy Rubenstein is very funny) using a mop as his stand-in.

There is so much excellence in this show, including a pretty successful adoption of British accents (Kathy Logelin is dialect coach), but I particularly enjoyed Ryan McBride as matinee idol Garry Lejeune (and Roger Tramplemaine in Nothing On) – a character who emotes, but doesn’t seem to have any nouns at his disposal. Also charming was his floozy paramour, Brooke Ashton (Rochelle Therrien) playing an impossibly bad actress who is unable to deviate from her memorized positioning and blocking – even if it means she faces away from Lejeune when speaking to him.

Noise Off comes highly recommended. It runs through March 31 at the Windy City Playhouse on Irving Park Road in Chicago. #noisesoffchi

*Extended through ay 12th

In 2002, About Face Theater company debuted Doug Wright's play "I Am My Own Wife." It opened on Broadway in 2004, and won both the Pulitzer Prize as well as the Tony award for Best New Play. About Face Theater and director Andrew Volkoff revisit the play twelve years later in an eerily relevant political climate. In it, Wright tells the story of the time he spent in Berlin with Charlotte von Mahlsdorf during the early '90s.

Mahlsdorf was the subject of international fame after publishing her autobiography and being awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz by the German government. Charlotte von Mahlsdorf established The Grunderzeit museum, it housed her collection of historical items spanning decades of German history. Her most unique attribute is that she was a transvestite and managed to survive the nazis and the communists.

Playwright Doug Wright turned his interview notes into a mostly one-woman show. His character is played here by Scott Duff and functions as the narrator. Charlotte is portrayed by real life transgender actress Delia Kropp. In little stories about the antiques in her museum, Charlotte reveals more about herself. During both authoritarian regimes, gay people were persecuted. Each item is in some way connected to preserving the history of Germany's lgbt community.

Volkoff's production is sleek and well dressed. The lighting design by John Kelly adds a nice dimension to this otherwise minimal staging. Delia Kropp gives a fascinating performance. Charlotte labeled herself as a transvestite and never opted for sexual reassignment surgery. Delia portrays her with soft androgyny. Kropp's authenticity in voice and mannerism is striking. Her lengthy passages of monologue illuminate the imagination.

It's by no accident About Face selected "I Am My Own Wife" for their season. As the political tides turn, some lgbt communities are worried their legitimacy may be less certain. Doug Wright's play about Charlotte von Mahlsdorf is a reassuring testament to everyday heros. As his character says in the play, "I need to believe this."

Through December 10th at Theater Wit - 1229 W Belmont. 773-975-8150.