THE JUNGLE
However, in Lookingglass’s current production, an adaptation of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle by company member David Schwimmer, this youthful experimentation ends up subverting the text entirely, turning the focus of the project from the story of the immigrant family Rudkos and their horrifying adventures in Chicago’s industrial jungle to the production itself. It’s as if Schwimmer had lost faith in Sinclair’s message somewhere along the way, but was contractually obligated to keep working on the story. Not content with translating Sinclair’s admittedly flawed work of social realism to the stage, the company has used this production to attempt to create a new hybrid variety of theater, spliced from sources as various as modern dance, camp theater, psychedelic films, Monty Python routines, and German expressionist theater (as revived by John Cusack and his New Criminals in last year’s production of Methusalem).
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The other actors plod competently along, trapped in a world not of their making. A case in point is Andrew White, who does all he can to make his long, tedious speech at the end of the play interesting (and in the process makes himself almost hoarse). The original speech was about socialism, though Schwimmer has chosen to edit out all references to Sinclair’s favorite cause, and the resulting harangue only succeeds in lengthening an already too long second act.
