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The Well-Appointed Room
By Richard Greenberg
Directed by Terry Kinney
At Steppenwolf Theatre
1650 N. Halsted
Chicago, IL
Call 312-335-1650, tickets $20 - $60
Tuesdays through Fridays at 7:30 PM
Wednesday at 2 PM
Saturdays at 3 & 7:30 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Running time is 2 hours with intermission
Through March 12, 2006
The Well Appointed Room engaging, provocative time study
Steppenwolf Theatre loves Tony Award-winning playwright Richard Greenberg (Take Me Out, The Violet Hour, The Dazzle and Three Days of Rain) offering the world premiere of his The Well Appointed Room. This wordy, intelligent, if somewhat confusing play has the magnificent set depicting a Manhattan condo featuring a large bookcase. Greenberg connects the two one acts, Nostalgia and Prolepsis by placing the two couples occupying the same condo a few years apart.
In Nostalgia, we meet Stewart (Tracey Letts) as a high-strung playwright bent on making omelets for him and his wife on a Sunday morning in NYC in 2000. We see Natalie (Amy Morton) enter with a rolling suit case. The two immediately engage in a verbal dual filled with literary quotes, abstract theoretical dramatic forms and obscure terms both defined and debated with some escalating personal insults throw in. This quick, smart and stinging dialogue reminds me of an Albee play.
The intense debate gets personal when Natalie bluntly states “I hate you!” to Stewart. She goes into detail about why Stewart is a phony as a playwright as she attacks his talent and his neurotic repetition of characters in all his plays. Stewart asks when she first starting hating him and Natalie responds awhile ago. She wanted to see if he would ever notice that she hates him. He didn’t.
What makes this short one act work is the rapid fire emotionally escalating presentation between two tremendous actors. Tracy Letts plays the emotionally fragile playwright with scary intensity while Amy Morton has the cold, methodical hateful female down pat. Only two articulate polished performers could land the barbs and retorts as effectively as Letts and Morton. Greenberg uses Nostalgia to poke fun at playwrights, including himself, as self indulgent and pretentious wanting the world to be as they wish rather than how it actually is. Greenberg overwhelms us with literary references but hits home with his stunning, door-slamming departure by Natalie leaving Stewart wondering what happened.
In Prolepsis, we find Mark (Josh Charles) meeting Gretchen (Kate Arrington) at a bus shelter in a rain storm. The two instantly fall in love and marry in a whirlwind romantic turn. Mark narrates the play speaking directly to the audience promising us a happy ending. This act is divided by 9/11 with the courtship and marriage in the ‘before’ and the move to the well appointed room in the ‘after.’
This seemingly too happy story gets clouded when the now eight month pregnant Gretchen (always a tad quirky) takes a walk by herself and, after a down pour, ends up at a bar and speaks to a grubby looking man, Mitchell (Tracy Letts giving a marvelously difficult monologue). Mitchell’s diatribe worries her about the future and upon her return she goes into “prolepsis”---depicting an uncertain future as if it has already been lived.
She speaks to Mark about Jack (the baby) falling in the play ground, etc. Mark is as puzzled as we are since it is obvious Gretchen hasn’t given birth to her baby. Mark gets upset thinking Gretchen has gone mad. These happenings and Greenberg’s resolution of them strained the plays credibility. The passage of time and our muddled memories begs the question about seeing into the future as Gretchen apparently does. When Gretchen has the baby, she instantly returns to the present without more references to the future. This strange act leaves us thinking about what happened and what it means.
The Well Appointed Room could use some editing and added clarity but ultimately delivers as a provocative exploration of time using the shattering events of 9/11 as the dividing point between a stable secure time and the fearful unpredictable future.
Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
This play is eligible for a C.S.T. Equity Theatre Award.
Talk Theatre in Chicago Radio show
January 25, 2006
Jeff Recommended
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