THE CAFE WITH NO NAME
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
I used to agree wholeheartedly, but in recent years a number of Chicago’s smaller, younger theaters have created perfectly respectable shows influenced by both theatrical traditions and television conventions. For example, the Neo-Futurists play on their audience’s expectation that whatever they’re watching will be interrupted in a minute or two by something completely different by structuring their late-night show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind as a series of short sketches–many no longer than a television commercial–performed in no predetermined order.
An even more obvious fusing of television and theater is Metraform’s The Real Live TV Night, which pairs a game show with a parodic homage to The Brady Bunch, and sprinkles the result with real commercials purchased by local merchants and performed by the cast.
Second, and more troubling, the show’s repeating characters are not very clearly delineated. They all have been given names and occupations, but after seeing several episodes and having read the scripts for the first six shows, I really couldn’t tell you what makes Chris, “a writer,” substantially different from Daniel, “an actor,” or Steve, “the MC.” This is doubly true of the women, whose personalities run together into one bland male projection of what women are supposed to be like. On paper they all talk and act alike, despite the fact that Lynda is supposed to be “a writer,” Alice “a waitress,” Sam and Erin a thoroughly modern lesbian couple, and Carter a combination “ditz, slut, little girl, and bitch.” Part of this is the direction, but only part. After all, actors can only give their roles so many quirks and foibles before they start denying the authors’ intentions.
