PicksInSix Review: Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 - Writers Theatre

‘GREAT COMET’— Big, Bright, Beautiful Star!
PicksInSix® Review | Ed Tracy

The Chicago premiere of “Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812” is lighting up the Glencoe sky over Writers Theatre in a soaring production directed and choreographed by Katie Spelman with music direction by Matt Deitchman. Spelman has assembled an exceptional ensemble who deliver a flawless performance of Dave Malloy’s groundbreaking electropop opera that received a dozen 2017 Tony Award nominations.

There is a lot to unpack in this love story derived from a 70-page section of Tolstoy’s War & Peace. The first path of two storylines that are destined to intersect involve the emotional struggles of Natasha (Aurora Penepecker) a free-spirited young woman who is visiting Moscow to meet relatives of her soldier fiancé who is away at war. Natasha becomes wildly tempted by the deceptive Anatole (Joseph Anthony Byrd) whose seductive charms compel her to break her engagement and make plans to elope with Anatole. But there is more to Anatole than meets the eye.

The second path involves the unhappily married Pierre (Evan Tyrone Martin) who is tormented by drink and depression and searching for his own way out of the situation. Pierre’s promiscuous wife Hélène (Bri Sudia) happens to be Anatole’s sister and takes macabre pleasure in helping him lure Natasha’s affection. Pierre is lost in his own obsessions to the point where he publicly confronts one of Hélène’s lovers, Dolokhov (Andrew Mueller), who also happens to be a friend of Anatole, and, in a drunken rage, challenges him to a duel.

Natasha’s host and godmother Marya D (Bethany Thomas), Natasha’s cousin Sonya (Maya Rowe) and Mary (Julia Wheeler Lennon) Andrey’s sister have vastly conflicting interests while, at home, Mary must contend with the eccentric Bolkonsky (Rob Lindley) and keep a watchful eye on Natasha as events unfold. By the time Andrey (Matthew C. Yee) arrives, there is glass all over the floor and only with Pierre’s influence can there be a hopeful solution for both Natasha and for himself.   

This glorious work is sung-through, a highly ambitious undertaking that could only be accomplished with the superb ensemble—including those mentioned with Sophie Grimm, Will Lidke and Jonah D. Winston—steeped in seasoned Chicago talent and showcasing many fine newcomers to Writers, including the luminous Penepacker whose voice and presence as Natasha is intoxicating in a big, bright, beautiful star turn. Rowe is perfect as Sonya, particularly in the memorable “Sonya Alone.” Martin’s brilliant vocal range is on full display as the conflicted Pierre. Winston has the reins well in hand in “Balaga” leading the company on a wild crowd-pleasing ride.

The creative team of scenic designer Courtney O’Neill, costume designer Raquel Adomo, sound designer Eric Backus and lighting designer Yael Lebetzky create a stellar, unified experience, and the magnificent work of Dietchman, conductor/pianist Charlotte Rivard-Hosler and the orchestra shines brightly all night long to deliver Malloy’s complicated and intricate score with elegance and precision. Altogether, it’s a compelling, cosmic adventure that just might be a once-in-a-lifetime event!

PHOTO|Liz Lauren

Writers Theatre
presents
Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812
through October 27

WEBSITE

TICKETS

PROGRAM

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

ARCHIVE

PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC

PicksInSix Review: Lucy and Charlie's Honeymoon - Lookingglass Theatre Company

Talented Ensemble Drives Lookingglass’s Comic “Honeymoon”
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Ronald Keaton

Satire is a much-missed tool in our world these days. We are so afraid, it seems, to examine issues from a humorous standpoint for fear of offending someone. The latest offering at Lookingglass Theatre Company, the world premiere of “Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon,” seeks in no uncertain terms to conquer such fears. With a bold concept to play with – bringing a suggestion of a concert stage to a theatrical narrative – the play’s creator and Lookingglass ensemble member Matthew C. Yee (who plays Charlie and also a pretty mean guitar) has presented to the audience a kind of amalgam of styles and targets. And it works to a point.

Charlie Chan (yes, that’s the name… the last name of five characters in the piece) and his new bride Lucy (played to a powerful hilt by Aurora Adachi-Winter) set off on a kind of crime spree that begins with robbing $250 from a convenience store. As it happens, there’s a video made of the robbery, and the couple becomes minorly Bonnie-and-Clyde famous. As time passes, the road party becomes a recognition of the fact that these two newlyweds don’t really know each other that well, and that what they have in common boils down to societal anarchy.

At one stop they meet a unique couple. Bao, a Chinese immigrant (Harmony Zhang with fine comic timing), is a victim of a sex trafficking crime syndicate that Lucy seems to have deigned in a divine way. Her other half Gabriel (Matt Bittner) is supposed to guard his “prisoner” and eventually take her to Martin (the excellent Doug Pawlik), along with some cash payment. Of course that doesn’t really happen. It can be a bit muddy, but also playful at times.

The real strength onstage lies in the ensemble work. Director Amanda Dehnert has worked with Mr. Yee to find performers who can play musical instruments, a not uncommon tact in casting these days. Mr. Yee composed the music, of course, and he leads his players with a mean and fun country approach on his guitar. Mr. Pawlik is a fine guitarist and bassist as well. Cast members alternate their efforts on drums and percussion. On the story’s front, two members of law enforcement – Feinberg (Mary Williamson), who happens to love karaoke music, and Peter (Rammel Chan), Charlie’s pretty straight-laced deputy brother – are working with the FBI to crack the case. Fun work from both actors.

Daniel Lee Smith offers Jeff as an almost Cheech-and-Chong homage. Jeff lives with Grandma (Wai Ching Ho, who steals every scene she has in a shining comic performance), whose wisdom as the matriarch of the Chan clan guides all to a reunion at the family cabin in the mountains. Suddenly Martin, gun in hand, shows up with Bao and… well, the ending should remain a surprise for audience members. All of it sits on a visually entertaining set, designed by Yu Shibagaki, that reminds one of the kitsch side of America – truck stops, flea markets and the like.

Now for the satire. It admittedly becomes a little campy at times, but to Mr. Yee’s credit, few stones are left unturned. There is commentary on the Asian immigrant experience, personal responsibility and ethnicity, and traditions. There are looks at gun ownership and family dynamic, as well as a realization of modern life and the difficulty to assimilate in our country these days. It’s a wide-ranging, often hilarious, attempt to satirize and in its own way, the Yee script certainly makes a definitive point or two. All in all, it’s unique and unconventional storytelling with a dramatic narrative unfolding in a high-energy pseudo-concert venue, not unlike Million Dollar Quartet and Pump Boys and Dinettes, with an artful fusion of country western music and Asian culture.

GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | RONALD KEATON received an Equity Jeff Award for the performance of his one-man show CHURCHILL. www.solochicagotheatre.com  Coming soon, his new solo play “Echo Holler.” www.echoholler.com

PHOTO|Liz Lauren

LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY
presents
WORLD PREMIERE
LUCY AND CHARLIE’S HONEYMOON
through July 11, 2023

Tickets

312.337.0665

Website

Program

Health and Safety

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

ARCHIVE

PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC

Lucy and Charlie's Honeymoon - Matthew C. Yee

Spend a little time speaking with Matthew C. Yee these days and you come away with a feeling that the thoughtful, passionate and committed artist is in the middle of telling one of the most important cultural stories of his life. Not that his debut musical “Lucy and Charlie's Honeymoon,” currently in previews at Lookingglass Theatre, is really his life story but, it is a very unique take on his own Asian heritage. And, as you will hear, one of the characters in the show is based on his grandmother.

The central theme of the show came from a short 2012 on-camera scene in college about an Asian American couple who argue outside of a convenience store that they are about to rob. The dramatic relationship between the two and their aspirations – an alternative take on the American Dream with a country western musical twist – compelled Yee to write the first draft of the show a few years later. That work then attracted creative artists and friends who helped move the project along to the point where the opportunity for a production at Lookingglass materialized.

Chicago audiences have surely seen the multi-talented Yee over the last decade plying his craft at Steppenwolf, Writer’s Theater and Paramount, among others, in a developing career that led to a role in the Broadway production of “Almost Famous” last year. Along the way, he has been collaborating on the show with a wide range of artists in Chicago’s rich creative community.

Aurora Adachi-Winter and Yee star as Lucy and Charlie in the show about two first generation Asian Americans who meet, fall in love and then decide to start a life of crime together. Yee termed the genre of music “Countrypolitan” – a mix of the “Nashville Sound” of artists from the 40s through the 70s that he was drawn to in his youth – and credits the diverse cast who both sing and play instruments throughout for broadening the overall vision for the production.

“Lucy and Charlie’s Honeymoon” is directed by Amanda Dehnert and features: Matt Bittner, Wai Ching Ho, Rammel Chan, Harmony Zhang, Doug Pawlik, Daniel Lee Smith and Mary Williamson.

There is much more about the show in our conversation with Matthew C. Yee, whose passion to realize the exact intersection of storytelling, music and theater is playing on stage now at Lookingglass. PODCAST

The development process: “I started working on this story in 2012. … a little scene for an on-camera class that I was taking in college about a couple arguing outside of a convenience store about how they were going to rob the convenience store. I sat on that for a long time and it was always just ruminating… these two characters who were in love with each other, but very, very bad for each other. They sort of battled each other in a lot of different ways and I wanted to expand that into something bigger.”

“I started working on an expanded version in 2016-17. We did a read of it at the Steppenwolf’s Front Bar and from there I turned it into a full-length play. It was still very, very rough… we had a reading of it with some friends and our costume designer, Sully Ratke, an artistic associate at Lookingglass, who passed it along to Heidi Stillman, the artistic director. Heidi contacted me and she's like, “I want to do a reading of this. We should get a cast together. I want to hear this out loud.” And so we did that in 2019… then Phil Smith and Heidi said they want to do a full production. … We were going open in the spring of 2020 and that didn't happen, for obvious reasons. And then we kept working on it… doing workshops when we could. …a zoom version we shared on the internet. And then we were going to do it in the spring of 2022 and “Almost Famous” on Broadway happened. And so we pushed again and then here we are.”

The story: “Without giving too much away… this couple, Lucy and Charlie, who are first generation Asian Americans, fall in love at a time in their life when they are trying to figure out who they are and how they fit into American culture. And they're having trouble. And Charlie especially is having a lot of trouble figuring out what it means to be an Asian American, especially a male Asian American. There is a lot of baggage that can come along with being a male Asian American. They fall in love and they get married after knowing each other for two weeks. And they have this brilliant idea that they are going to start a life of crime together because nothing else has worked. And they think that this is going to be a really beautiful, romantic sort of American outlaw cowboy story, that they are going to go out west and live this outlaw life together. They end up meeting a woman along the way who has come from China to help her sister, who months before also had come to America in search of her American Dream. They start to suspect that something bad has happened and they try to rescue this woman and things don't go well because she doesn't want to be rescued. She doesn't think that she needs to be helped by these people. And they all also don't know what the hell they are doing. They become this trio and go on this adventure together. And from there, you should come see it because a lot of other crazy stuff happens.”

The music: “I wrote the music in the style of mid-century, Americana country western folk expanding from the 1940s to the 1970s. I got really interested in something that people call “Nashville Sound” or sometimes it's called “Countrypolitan”… country music mixed with pop music and Americana… It's a style that can feel very insular because a lot of us think that it belongs to a specific group of Americans. I wanted to change that perception. I was really excited to have a cast of Asian Americans playing this music because it is the music that I grew up with and I've loved for a long time… so I wanted to take the feeling that I had as a kid that it was weird that I liked this style of music and I wanted to bring that on onto the stage.”

Bao’s Song: “Our character Bao, who is the woman who has come from China, has this dream of reuniting with her sister, moving out west and living in the mountains together. She talks about seeing an old movie in China, an American western… cowboys who stole gold and went to live in the mountains together. And she loved that idea and she wanted to live that adventure. So, “Bao’s Song” is very much the ‘This is what I want song” that tells you all about who she is as a person, where she's come from and what she wants out of life.” (Editor’s Note: Listen to a featured performance by Yee of “Bao’s Song” on the podcast.)

On Collaboration: “One of the benefits of having all of these people that I've worked with for a long time in the room and who have worked on this project for a long time is that they know what the vision is, they know what's inside my head, and they're able to help guide me in ways that we just wouldn't be able to do if these were new people we had just cast. They understand me and what I'm trying to get at and they understand that no matter what state the text is in, it's going to get to a place that it's going be the best version that it can be. So, there's a lot of trust that they put in me, and there's a lot of trust that I put in them that we're going to figure out what this is together.” PODCAST

Comments have been edited for length and clarity.

REHEARSAL PHOTO| Sarah Elizabeth Larson
PRODUCTION PHOTOS|Liz Lauren

LOOKINGGLASS THEATRE COMPANY
presents
WORLD PREMIERE
LUCY AND CHARLIE’S HONEYMOON
In previews
Opens June 3 - July 11, 2023

Tickets

312.337.0665

Website

Program

Health and Safety

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

ARCHIVE

PicksInSix® is a registered trademark of Roxbury Road Creative, LLC

PicksInSix Theater Review: "Twelfth Night" Writers Theatre

A WONDERFUL EXPERIENCE ON ANY NIGHT!
by Jonathan Bourne

Say “what you will,” you will love the exuberant production of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” now playing at the Writers Theatre in Glencoe through December 16th.  

The play opens to the aftermath of a shipwreck on the shores of Illyria. Twins, Sebastian (Luce Metrius) and Viola (Jennifer Latimore), each believe the other has drowned. Viola is so distraught she decides to dress up as a man in order to secure employment with the local duke, Orsino (Matthew C. Yee). The Duke is in love with Olivia (Andrea San Miguel) and he sends his new manservant, Cesario/Viola, to plead his case.  Olivia, however, is having none of it because she has also just lost a brother and wishes to remain cloistered for seven years of mourning.  Everything backfires when Olivia becomes enamored with Cesario/Viola and Cesario/Viola falls in love with Orsino!

View fullsize

The subplot involves Olivia’s servant, Malvolio (Sean Fortunato) who is indignant about the boisterous and besotted antics of Olivia’s household, which includes her uncle, Sir Toby Belch (Kevin Gudahl), Sir Andrew Aguecheek (Scott Parkinson) and others. Malvolio, however, is such a priggish killjoy that they decide to play a cruel practical joke on him. Suffice it to say that it involves forged letters, unrequited love, yellow stockings and crossed garters.

Deftly directed by Michael Halberstam, the performances are all first-rate. Nevertheless, Sean Fortunato as the Puritanical Malvolio and Scott Parkinson as benighted Aguecheek merit special mention.

Visually, the production was entirely captivating. The set by William Boles looked like some sort of sunny Adriatic Brigadoon rising out of the Illyrian sea.  The costumes by Mara Blumenfeld were an explosion of bright floral prints and all worked perfectly. 

Quite simply, “Twelfth Night” is delightful. A wonderful experience on any night! Don’t miss it!

PHOTOS|Michael Brosilow

WRITERS THEATRE
Presents
TWELFTH NIGHT, OR WHAT YOU WILL
through December 16th
325 Tudor Court
Glencoe
(847) 242-6000

WEBSITE

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

ARCHIVE

PICKSINSIX Review: VIETGONE

RAUCOUS COMIC RENDERING OF IMMIGRANT EXPERIENCE

Parent’s love story… Qui Nguyen’s “Vietgone” now playing at Writers Theatre in Glencoe, is first and foremost his parent’s love story set primarily in a refugee camp at Fort Chaffee, Arkansas in July 1975 following the fall of Saigon. As directed by Lavina Jadhwani, the true story, and the hauntingly real events surrounding the traumatic separation from their homeland and loved ones, unfolds as a raucous comic rendering of the immigrant experience. It all comes together extremely well. When this one is over, it will stay with you.

View fullsize

Facts first… The very serious reality of the story is that during this period, the U. S. established and coordinated a Vietnamese resettlement system that aided over 130,000 evacuees. It’s facts first for Nguyen who pulls no punches in establishing how this tale will be told and the range of hopelessness in his parent’s individual perspectives — one desperately seeking to recapture what has been lost and the other struggling to cope with grief and move on. With immigration and family separation issues front and center, “Vietgone” is a piece that has clearly found its time. It is a remarkably touching show that is rapping down the highway at breakneck speed with an imaginative, modern-day voice spewing no-holds-barred language that is very, very funny.

Yes, there are ninjas… Quang (Matthew C. Yee), a helicopter pilot with a wife and two young children he barely knows, is separated from his family following an evacuation flight from Saigon with his wingman, Nhan (Rammel Chan). The strong-willed Tong (Aurora Adachi-Winter) escapes with her mother, Huong (Emjoy Gavino) leaving her brother behind.  Quang is determined to reunite with his family as Tong accepts that her future is in America which results in one of the most moving and powerful rap anthems in the show, “I’ll Make It Home.” Quang’s cross-country journey on a motorcycle with Nhan provides both the through line and light-hearted comic road trip moments. Along the way, the story is playing out ninja-style in flashbacks with assorted characters from Vietnam and Fort Chaffee where eventually Tong is courted by Bobby (Ian Michael Minh) who envisions a prosperous, but ultimately ill-fated, future for the couple. And, yes, there are ninjas.

Industrial shell… Jadhwani and the creative team including scenic designer Yu Shibagaki, costume designer Melissa Ng, lighting designer Sarah Hughey with projections and sound by Rasean Davonte Johnson and Kevin O’Donnell and Tommy Rapley's choreography, all utilize a stark, industrial shell that is ingeniously transformed with color, eye-popping graphics and fluid, minimalist scenic elements to effectively stage a variety of locales from Saigon to the refugee camp and the open road.

The takeaway… Understanding the interaction of all cultures and languages is at the heart of this work, embodied in the central Asian American characters and the inspired, table-turning device that results in English being the “othered” language. There are fine performances throughout and several storylines to explore, which explains why Nguyen is already well in development on two sequels based on his family’s immigrant experience.

Lots to discuss… A superb overview of the era is authored by production dramaturg, Carol Ann Tan and the program is abundantly filled with relevant commentary and interviews. Writers has also scheduled two audience engagement events, the first with artists and experts on the Gabriel Ruiz music on September 10th and a pre-show discussion with historians as part of the Sunday Spotlight series on September 16th, in addition to regularly scheduled post-performance talkbacks. There will be lots to discuss.

PHOTOS|Michael Brosilow

Writers Theatre
presents
VIETGONE
Written by Qui Nguyen
Directed by Lavina Jadhwani
through September 23rd
325 Tudor Court|Glencoe
(847)242-6000

WEBSITE
WT VIETGONE PROGRAM 

For more reviews, visit: Theatre In Chicago

ARCHIVE