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Six Characters In Search of an Author
By Luigi Pirandello
Translated by Carl R. Mueller
Directed by Joe Feliciano
Produced by Promethean Theatre Ensemble
At city Lit Theater
1020 W. Bryn Mawr
Chicago, IL
Call 773-305-2897 (www.prometheantheatre.org )
Tickets $20
Thursday thru Saturday at 8 pm
Sunday at 2 pm
Running time is 2 hours with intermission
Through July 12, 2008
“This is a central point - this belief we are one person. We are not. We are many people. We're one way with somebody, an entirely different way for somebody else. Yet we go on believing, in everything we do, that we are just being ourselves, the same person we always are. It is not true!” -- Father from “Six Characters In Search of an Author”
Ambitious production of Pirandello’s classic delivers
Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 play, “Six Characters In Search of an Author,” caused riots when first mounted in Rome. It has gone on the enchant audiences worldwide with its bold take on theatre. Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production, under the direction of Joe Feliciano, carries some of the intended impact.
The play opens with a rehearsal just beginning. The actors, the stage manager and the director are on the stage ready to start mounting a silly comedy when six black clothed people enter the stage demanding to be heard. They insist that they are characters in a play who have been abandoned by their author. They seek help in telling their story that they were designed to tell. After much initial resistance and philosophical debate between the director (Ed Rutherford) and the Father (Jack McCabe), the director decides to scrap the original play and help the Six mount their story.
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The director first rehearses the six characters to flush out the story than he wants his professional actors to play their characters. The Six resist because they are determined to play out the roles given to them. The line and levels between illusion and reality become blurred. “The Tragedy of a Character” drives the six to find an author who will give them the full literary life denied them by their original author. They claim to be much more “real” than the actors who try to play them.
This surreal plot stretches the boundaries of what constants theatre and reality. Are these folks real people or are they live stage characters? The play has elements of theatre of the absurd as the line between the stage and life gets blurred. The story these six characters must play out is gruesome, eerie and possible. The play pokes fun at the artificiality of the stage. This complex story is well staged and contains several compelling performances. Ed Rutherford, as the director, was terrific as was Jack McCabe, as the Father. Michelle Zlatanovski, as the stepdaughter and Susan Veronika Adler, as the Mother, were emotionally strong.
This play suffers from the early wordy philosophical debate about character, reality versus illusion and the nature of theatre. It could be Carl R. Mueller’s translation? But once the thematic structure is in place, the play develops its dramatic arch nicely as it proceeds to its shocking resolution. To say much more would spoil the story. The Promethean Theatre Ensemble’s production delivers enough to be a worthy evening of theatre.
Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: June 23, 2008
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