Nina O’Keefe and Kathleen Akerley/Photo: Jonathan L. Green
RECOMMENDED
Theater as a whole is starting to come around on sci-fi and fantasy. And while that might put it about twenty years behind the cultural zeitgeist (can’t wait for that three-part Avengers musical in the 2035 Broadway season), it’s also about dang time. There are new stories to tell, new worlds to conquer. And, besides, there have been so many plays set in the American living room that I’m afraid the furniture’s starting to prolapse.
Earlier this season there was the epic Kentucky-fried-Tolkien grandeur of The House Theatre’s “Hammer Trinity” and now Sideshow Theatre Company has brought us Walt McGough’s “Chalk” directed by Megan A. Smith. “Chalk” is the opposite of “The Hammer Trinity” in terms of scale—instead of dragon on zeppelin melees we are given two women in a dilapidated barn—but is its partner in spirit. The fantastical is on hand to illuminate the mundane. A play about an alien invasion is also a play about everyday alienation.
The play lifts elements from Brecht’s “Caucasian Chalk Circle,” though it could hardly be called a “reboot.” There is the titular circle made of chalk. There is a country at war. And there is a mother (Kathleen Akerley) and her child (Nina O’Keefe) who may or may not really be her child. But “Chalk” is very much its own play: a thrilling two-woman tete-a-tete. American plays might be full of mother-daughter showdowns, but very few feature a daughter who wants to literally eat her mother alive.
Akerley grounds the story with a tough, no-nonsense realism. When it’s revealed that her character’s a school teacher, there’s a knowing laugh of acknowledgement. O’Keefe’s performance, on the other hand, is a full-bodied spectacle. She convulses and bleats and scurries and lunges with frightening athleticism. Were the play much longer than its sixty-five-minute run-time it would need an intermission solely so that she could rest and hydrate. She brings real danger to a story that requires it but also subtle psychological shading. The character is at war with herself, and O’Keefe makes sure it’s a war being fought on every front. (Alex Huntsberger)
Sideshow Theatre at Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 North Lincoln, (773)871-3000, victorygardens.org. $20-$30. Through June 28.
Related Stories
Let "X" Equal... : A Review of X at Sideshow Theatre Company In space, no one knows what time it is.- State of Mind: A Review of You for Me for You at Sideshow Theatre Company Mia Chung's new play at Sideshow Theatre Company is an inventive and imaginative contrast of totalitarian nightmare and democratic indulgence.
- Tilly and the Whale: A Review of Tilikum at Sideshow Theatre Company Drawn in clear and cutting language, Kristiana Rae Colón's latest receives its must-see world premiere at Sideshow Theatre Company.
- Great Expectation: A Review of The Ridiculous Darkness at Sideshow Theatre Company This aesthetically adventurous adaptation follows many tributaries before arriving at its destination.
- Life During Peacetime: A Review of truth and reconciliation at Sideshow Theatre Company At sixty minutes and featuring twenty-two actors, Debbie Tucker Green's "truth and reconciliation" is what you might call a big small work. Its US premiere indicates that Green's drama, which more often alludes to truth rather than speak it out loud and does not offer much in the way of hope for reconciliation, is in more or less its final form and…
- The Stuff We’re Made Of: A Review of HeLa at Sideshow Theatre & Greenhouse Productions A co-production with Sideshow Theatre and Greenhouse Productions, J. Nicole Brooks' world premiere goes from cells to stars and back again.
