Theater Simple at Capitol Hill Arts Cooperative
Through Nov 23.
The best thing about Theater Simple's adaptation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's rather overrated novella Notes from Underground is that it isn't bad. The main reason for this is actor Andrew Litzky, who manages to successfully kidnap the unpleasant narrator of the book and transform him into something utterly different.
In my mind, the nameless narrator of Dostoevsky's book appears as a kind of William H. Macy-ish loser: ugly, and incapable of winning anyone's sympathy or forgiveness. The Underground Man is a pest, an insect, a William H. Macy. But in Litzky's revision, the mouse-man is handsome, energetic, and articulate, and the audience sympathizes with his profound psychological despair.
The people Litzky's chest-poundingly healthy Underground Man spends a good portion of the play denouncing--the men of action, those with comfortable jobs who never think about things like death or the meaning of life--appear as total shits. We agree with the Underground Man's outrage at their smugness as Litzky shouts and stamps about the small stage. But so convincing is Litzky's contempt that his quieter moments of self-loathing inspire feelings of pity rather than ridicule.
The only thing that bothered me about Theater Simple's adaptation is that it didn't start with the novella's opening line, which is one of the greatest in all of literature: "I'm a sick man." Litzky instead says the famous line almost midway through the play, consequently robbing it of its force.
Theater Simple's Notes from Underground is unfaithful to Old Dusty (as Nabokov once called the Russian author), but its unfaithfulness is not an abomination. So don't see this show because you're a fan of Old Dusty; see it because it's funny, loud, well acted, and short. CHARLES MUDEDE
Gilgamesh, Iowa
Union Garage Performance Center
Through Nov 23.
No matter what the medium, "allegorical drama" usually means bad news. In theater, however, it can be a recipe for sheer disaster, the basest degradation of all that is human and beautiful for the sake of a few manipulatively jerked tears. Overwrought metaphors, ham-handed symbolism, and luridly melodramatic plots dealing with "issues" and "struggles"--the eyes roll, the mind reels, the stomach turns.
Imagine, if you will, Scot Augustson's Gilgamesh, Iowa. Two boyhood friends from small-town USA meet after years apart. One fled for the city, one stayed behind. The predictable dichotomies unfold: urbane vs. rural, fulfilled vs. frustrated, experienced vs. naive, gay vs. straight. The friends wrestle with the past and the future, facing change, identity, mortality. Now imagine this: Contrary to all above indications, Augustson's play is deft, touching, gutsy, and deeply funny.
Jay (Tim Gouran) and Ken (luminously played by Jonah Von Spreecken) negotiate the aforementioned dualities via Gilgamesh, a fantastic cardboard-cutout city they played with as children (kudos to Jeffrey Cook for building a tiny town even the most jaded kids would love to romp through). Diving into bygone make-believe games with a newfound adult sophistication, they play at monkeys, spaghetti Westerns, Irish gravediggers, teenage zombies, and a galaxy of other characters, each more hilariously freakish than the last.
In its real-life moments, when the characters speak explicitly about their crises, Gilgamesh slips dangerously close to the woefully melodramatic. Augustson, however, jerks the reins just in time and plunges us back into his characters' sublimated world, in which play codes very real, very adult difficulties.
Gilgamesh, Iowa is a happy surprise on several fronts, shouldering burdens which, in the hands of lesser writers, would become cheeseballs of Sisyphean proportions, and whipping them into that rarest of dramatic creatures--an intelligent, comedic allegorical drama. BRENDAN KILEY
The Education of Randy Newman
A Contemporary Theatre
Through Dec 1.
Disclosure: I left at intermission.
Full disclosure: I left at intermission because I couldn't stand another moment of this affront of a show, which takes a huge body of songs from one of the rock era's most fascinating, prolific, underappreciated songwriters, strips them of all their soul, distills their lyrical complexity into a vague dramatic thread, and robs them of everything that makes them great.
Part of the problem is a murky conception. The show is part revue, part light opera, part showbiz pantomime. Taking lyrical cues from over 40 Newman songs (two of which were written specifically for the show), a loose narrative follows a fictitious Randy Newman (Daniel Jenkins) from childhood in New Orleans--where he encounters wonder ("Dixie Flyer"), Southern chauvinism ("New Orleans Wins the War"), racism ("Rednecks," "Sail Away"), political corruption ("Kingfish," "Roll with the Punches"), and other stimuli--to his adult life as a cynical songwriter in Los Angeles. Hardly a terrible idea, given the richness of characterization and subtle shades of meaning in the songs. But in foisting a structure on them, the show overliteralizes and undermines the lyrics. Most egregious is the treatment of "Sail Away," Newman's audacious, in-character advertisement for slavery. The show turns the song's act of subversion into just the kind of moist reverie the original recording mocks so savagely. It's not a question of interpretation, but of tone. The all-pro cast is made up of skilled performers, who sing and move quite competently. The trouble is that they're speaking a completely different language than the songs they're singing.
Which brings us to the main problem: musical theater itself, which is the opposite of rock 'n' roll, which is exactly what Newman's songs are, even if they don't always sound like it. They're carefully crafted to puncture false sincerity, so tarting them up with big phony smiles and corny choreography is a travesty that no amount of good intention can rescue. I left at intermission because I'm a devout Randy Newman fan, and this show is the worst thing to happen to Randy Newman fans since "I Love L.A." became a hit. SEAN NELSON
