Straight Theater

They had a woman in shaggy clothing, with furry hair, dancing and crawling around the stage. But she didn’t say anything, so it was hard to determine the purpose of this character. She was a coyote.

What say we take a break from the lofty emotions of poetry and music, a step away from opera for a minute, and talk about conventional stage theater in Chicago. It’s not a genre that I have studied, and I can’t remember the last time I attended non-musical theater in the city or suburbs. But that’s my mistake because, let’s see, how many theaters are there in the metro area?

Wow!

“Chicago boasts a vibrant theater scene with more than 250 theaters, including five Tony Award-winning companies and diverse neighborhood theaters.” (AI Overview, Google.)

That’s a lot, and even if you subtract the companies and venues that are trying to press musicals on me, against my will, it is still a big number.

Let’s waste no longer the sizeable resource of theater in the area, and take a look at what’s on offer on the big stage.

Interesting and New, But Incomplete

The Listeners is a catchy story, written originally by Jordan Tannahill, from Toronto and London, and it has been scripted for the stage by Royce Vavrek, also Canadian. (Vavrek in particular has an incredible resume, with song lyrics, opera libretti, and narratives for film and dance.)

Random people in bland suburbia are afflicted with severely irritating, constant sound in their heads, and they find each other and form a support group. One member emerges as the leader, and soon it’s a cult of unreasoning believers, bending to the will and emotional needs of the manipulative boss. Now, they all wear blue, and wave their arms in the air.

Does the cult group help them to reduce, or cope with, the sound in their heads? Not clear. I expected that the group meetings would serve at least as a community, a place of sharing, and thus defeat the pointless loneliness that characterizes each of their lives. In fact, I thought that the emotional isolation, the absence of anyone who could hear and understand, was itself the sound in their heads.

One character has the coyote in her front yard, and that’s bizarre, but she seems to get along better with the coyote than with her husband and daughter. Fine — whatever works for you.

But on stage, the group doesn’t seem to benefit very much from all the togetherness, except when they sing a nicely harmonized song; they are a delightful choir, expressing their hope and solidarity.

Otherwise, they still stand around and talk about the noise, so, what is changing?

The leadership changes. Yes, they get a new leader, after a revolt against the first one, unmasked as a fraud and opportunist. And they change from a sheeplike group all wearing blue, to a similar group that prefers pink/orange. They sing again: a pleasant, melodic song of togetherness.

And that’s the end, everybody claps, but I need a final act, with some resolution, some satisfaction, maybe some explanation. Confusingly, here’s a three-act play where we don’t get to see the finale; we just have to go home now. Weird.

Nail on Some Staging Features

Video cameras again! Not as nicely integrated as in the Paris production of Faust, and serving fewer purposes, but rolling and projecting nevertheless. Now and then, a character pauses to present their soliloquy, and we can see their image big and clear on a screen, because an on-stage camera-man is there for us. Nice, because I was one short of the very back row, and without the projections, I’d miss the facial expressions. (Forgot my binoculars again!)

Group chats! For me, this one is new, and I like it. In The Listeners, there’s a scene where they go all cult-like, and we can see a text exchange in huge print, where we learn that there some of these folks and their families are doubting – just like the audience – whether the benefits of this support group are genuine. Somebody is making fun of the whole concept, and it’s a laugh to see the texting ridicule and undermine the self-important “leader” with the fancy hair.

(He’s Kyle Ketelsen, and I liked him much better as the smug bullfighter in New York’s Carmen. In The Listeners, he’s just a squishy phony. Oh well.)

Profane mockery by the teenagers! Why not? The kids can see what’s going on, and they don’t stand aside and let the weird weaknesses of their elders go by without comment. Who’s got a grip in this neighborhood? The sassy kids, with the red-hot vocabulary. Fun stuff!

The dancing coyote! As I said, I could never figure it out. Is she herself the noise in the head? Is she the solution to the noise? The silent, loyal friend? Comedy extra? Who knows? Not me.

What’s with the Orchestra Up There?

My favorite TV show was Northern Exposure, which had a six-year run in the early 1990’s. Clever, philosophical, well-acted. But the writers got bored, and “jumped the shark” at one point by scripting an episode where everyone in the cast suddenly suffered an odd malady that caused them to sing out their lines, instead of saying them. It was really awful – pasting weird vocalization onto the everyday chitchat of my rustic idols, Joel and Maggie, Shelly and Holling, and even Maurice. Good god. Okay, cancel it, if that’s all you can do with it.

They did it with The Listeners.

While an orchestra played dissonant shrieks, everyone in the cast hooted and howled, bellowed and trilled, intoned and squealed, and that is how we heard the otherwise engaging words of Tannahill and Vavrek. They brought in professional singers (unlike the Northern Exposure effort), but -- what a waste. It was awkward and upsetting.

Remember the two pleasant chorus pieces? Excellent. Outside of that, what the music was expressing – as if we didn’t know already – was anxiety and fear. Again and again. Minor keys, clashing pitches, random jumps and gliss, with no reference, feeling, or art. Every sound that means “discomfort” heaped together in a pile and lasting more than two hours. I would buy lunch for Missy Mazzoli if she would agree to explain her approach to this one, because I’m baffled.

If you had a constant noise in your head, and you couldn’t escape, you’d be scared too, and frustrated, and distracted. You’d probably talk to your family, a doctor, and even a nutty support group – you’d eventually go kind of crazy, just like they did in The Listeners. But unless the pressure was so excruciating that you’d gone completely bonkers, you wouldn’t start singing everything you had to say.

Well, they had the orchestra there, so I guess they had to sing. They even pulled in Enrique Mazzola, the Italian bel canto expert and music director of Chicago’s Lyric Opera, and staged it in the opera house, another wasted expense. Sir, if you choose not to conduct the Puccini this month, don’t feel obligated backfill with this thing. Should have just vacationed in Anchorage, where they’re doing a hot Rossini this month. Sorry, man.

After just one hour, there was a painful and maddening noise in my head while I watched The Listeners, but I knew exactly where it was coming from. It was hurting me enough that I considered solving it not with a support group, but by walking out to Wacker Drive in the cold. Several others did, in fact, and I don’t blame them. But I needed to check this one off my list. Very hard work, indeed, but I managed.

Why didn’t they just let the coyote howl? Now that, I would have wanted to stay for.