THE GAS HEART
at the Chicago Actors Ensemble
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The Gas Heart is broken into three acts, and during the first intermission all the performers here dance with audience members. During the second intermission, they go out into the lobby and fight. It’s all planned, so I guess really there is no intermission. The Gas Heart is really a nonplay. It’s nonentertainment that begins and ends in a nonway.
The stage lights are turned off except for a single blue light glowing on the table. Everyone leaves the cubbyhole except for David Thibodeaux, as Eye, wearing a big white balloon with a pupil drawn on it attached to his hat. He watches TV for a while. Then he barks out, “Statues!” Pause. “Jewels!” Pause. “Roasts!” This is repeated about three times.
It’s a risky venture, staging 37 poems by women writers. Poems don’t exactly draw crowds, particularly poems by women. One just expects a show like Hot Pink: A Performance of Poetry by Women to fail. But it doesn’t. Hot Pink is a beautiful show. Credit goes to the poets–Margaret Atwood, Erica Jong, Anne Sexton, Joyce Carol Oates, to name only the famous ones–but more credit goes to director Mark Harrison and his talented cast: Genevieve VenJohnson, Denise LaGrassa, Kimberley Furst, and Dado.
