HELLO AND GOODBYE
The Body Politic Theatre has been with us a long time. Founded 20 years ago in Lincoln Park, back when Lincoln Park was a fringey, sort of dangerous, sort of bohemian kind of neighborhood, the Body Politic was in its own way kind of fringey and bohemian. Once willing to take risks with the likes of Paul Sills, Alan Gross, and even David Mamet, the theater has recently fallen into a kind of mediocrity that is made all the more disheartening by the knowledge of its illustrious past.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
There must have been a better way to celebrate the 20th anniversary of a company that participated in the big bang of Chicago’s theater scene than the two productions it mounted: Cowardy Custard and The Importance of Being Earnest. The board has chosen to end the season with a pair of plays (performed, mysteriously, in repertory), neither of which, though more daring than either of the earlier offerings, aspires to much more than providing a nice evening out.
Instead, Fugard focuses squarely on that universal theme–Mom and Dad: how they mess us up and our ambivalent feelings for them. The play concerns a pair of working-class Afrikaners–an emotional wreck of a boy and his long-estranged sister–who are reunited when the sister returns home in search of her meager inheritance. The two spend the play tearing through boxes of clothes, newspapers, and tools, looking for the money that may or may not be hidden therein, and recalling all their repressed memories about how awful childhood was, what a saint their mother was, and how their bastard of a father drove her to an early grave.
This play concerns a working-class English couple from Yorkshire who reminisce about their first trip to the seaside resort town of Blackpool some 40 years earlier. Before you can say “flashback” the two change into their younger selves and proceed to walk us through their first holiday, playing all of the characters they meet along the way (a device Godber uses to better effect in his Teechers). We get to hear all about the memorable car trip: the argument, the traffic jam, the beach, and so on. All of which is perfectly charming, if a little like watching a slide show of someone else’s vacation.
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Jennifer Girard.
