If you go to see “The Yellow Wallpaper” out of a love for the groundbreaking short story about postpartum depression (as I did and suspect many audience members will), at least do yourself a favor and arrive half an hour late during intermission, so that you will miss the warm-up: truly cringe-worthy poetry (by a woman who inexplicably takes off her shoes and plays with her scarf while reading lines like “those were the days of cornbread”) and physical theater (a trash-clad woman offers cookies to audience members out of a garbage can lid while singing “fancy” over and over). That said, the relationship between Chicago Danztheatre’s adaptation and the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story is parasitic at best, and a travesty most of the time. Any sense of narrative coherence is one of the many casualties of this production, which mostly consists of a chorus of young women breathing heavily, rubbing themselves against strips of fabric hanging from the ceiling, and crawling around the stage and aisle in their most feline manners (my baffled neighbor wondered if one woman did so to keep us from being able to escape), while the protagonist goes mad Sideshow-Bob style, but without the funny red hair. Overacting and underperforming all around. Not recommended. (Monica Westin)
At Gorilla Tango Theatre, 1919 N Milwaukee, (773)-598-4549. Through October 12.
If you go to see “The Yellow Wallpaper” out of a love for the groundbreaking short story about postpartum depression (as I did and suspect many audience members will), at least do yourself a favor and arrive half an hour late during intermission, so that you will miss the warm-up: truly cringe-worthy poetry (by a woman who inexplicably takes off her shoes and plays with her scarf while reading lines like “those were the days of cornbread”) and physical theater (a trash-clad woman offers cookies to audience members out of a garbage can lid while singing “fancy” over and over). That said, the relationship between Chicago Danztheatre’s adaptation and the Charlotte Perkins Gilman story is parasitic at best, and a travesty most of the time. Any sense of narrative coherence is one of the many casualties of this production, which mostly consists of a chorus of young women breathing heavily, rubbing themselves against strips of fabric hanging from the ceiling, and crawling around the stage and aisle in their most feline manners (my baffled neighbor wondered if one woman did so to keep us from being able to escape), while the protagonist goes mad Sideshow-Bob style, but without the funny red hair. Overacting and underperforming all around. Not recommended. (Monica Westin)
