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  • Theater

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    Time Out Chicago / Issue 170 : May 29–Jun 4, 2008

    The Other Side of the Elephant

    Curious Theatre Branch at Prop Thtr. By Matthew Wilson, Beau O’ Reilly, Scott T. Barsotti, Shawn Reddy, Jenny Magnus, Jayita Bhattacharya, Matt Rieger, Bryn Magnus, Matt Test. Dirs. Adam Rosenberg, Stefan Brun, Jeffrey Bivens, Megan Larmer, writers and ensemble. With ensemble casts.

    BODY AND SOLO Rosenberg goes at it alone.

    This collection of short works, assembled in honor of the Curious Theatre Branch’s 20th birthday, stacks a totem pole on top of a mile marker; a whopping nine plays by nine writers are showcased over three nights to commemorate two decades of fringe. The pieces run the gamut, from vignette to monologue to performance-art fugue, but share in the exaltation of language as a self-sufficient narrative engine that’s always been this company’s hallmark. Perhaps accidentally, they also speak to one another, echoing the elliptical synergy that’s kept the Curious collective rolling all these years.

    Company founders O’Reilly and the Magnuses are naturally well-represented, their contributions split among the three nights. Of these, O’Reilly’s “One Boppa” is the standout, a supple bit of familial comedy executed with a feather-light touch. (Much credit is also due here to director Rosenberg and superlative “sisters” Kat McJimsey, Kathleen Powers and Teresa Weed.) Bryn Magnus’s domestic scene is slighter but sound, and old pros Guy Massey and Vicki Walden are a pleasure to watch. Jenny Magnus’s riskier, more ambitious piece, a jagged collage circling issues of anatomical transformation, pays the price experimentation sometimes must; never really coming into focus, the play’s shock ending registers only a profound “huh?”

    The remaining pieces loosely represent the subsequent generation of Curious writers. Reddy’s “The Great Galvani,” a glittering historical riff, nestles a new depth of feeling between the heady association and sarcastic fury that are his forte. H.B. Ward is arresting in the title role, but his monologue is just one such performance on hand: Bivens knocks Wilson’s hilarious trifle “Poor Guy” out of the park, and writer-performer Rieger’s pseudo-wigger confessional, “A Part of the Game,” had an inveterate eye-roller at white-boy urban affectation (yours truly) hanging on every word.

    Back on the perf-art front, Barsotti’s (fiercely intelligent) and Bhattacharya’s (fiercely oblique) pieces are more disjointed and less successful. But Test’s “A Minor Loss of Fidelity,” a seamless joining of feverish, gorgeous dialogue, movement and song to high-absurdist blazonry, is a revelation. As designed, directed (by Larmer) and especially performed (by Michelle Dahlenburg, Jess Russell and Walden), Test’s full-throttle reverie is an aesthetic ambush that shoots for absolutely nothing, blindfolded, while roller-skating, and yet somehow scores a bull’s-eye.

    — Brian Nemtusak



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