FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, A SAVAGE JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF THE AMERICAN DREAM
ETA Creative Arts Foundation
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
To their credit, this is also the company that has spent the last three years developing a loud, outrageous, in-your-face performing style, which they never tire of telling us is “a variation of the classic Italian Commedia Dell’Arte,” as the program says. This performing style would seem a natural asset for anyone trying to bring to the stage the craziness of Thompson’s writings, not to mention Ralph Steadman’s rage-filled, ink-splattered illustrations for the book.
Overall, however, New Crime’s production is an artless mess. Nearly three hours long including one intermission, the show is as exhausting to watch as it must be to perform. (The actors looked completely spent by the end of the evening.) The production lacks any sort of focus or artistic discrimination. The first act valiantly attempts to crowd in every word, comma, and ellipsis from the first half of Thompson’s book, with the result that the audience suffers both sensory overload and narrative deprivation.
Length is not a problem with David L. Crowder’s Dirt, currently playing at ETA Creative Arts Foundation; it runs a little less than two hours, counting intermission. But unfortunately Crowder couldn’t seem to decide whether he was writing “Council Wars” or Father Knows Best, and so created a work in two opposing styles–one bitter and satiric, the other sweet and sincere. The two styles cancel each other out, and the production never realizes its full dramatic potential.
