SR Notebook: In praise of the cheap seats
William Anthony Sebastian Rose II in Broken Nose Theatre’s Labyrinth, flanked by fellow cast members and the audience. Photograph: Austin D. Oie
I was in New York a couple of weeks ago and got to see Hadestown—which, highly recommended. (I’ll save a full review for the national tour, which I strongly suspect will visit Chicago as early as this fall, possibly even launching here, but that’s strictly a hunch.)
When I say “got to see,” I should clarify, I mean that my partner generously paid for a pair of the cheapest seats available on StubHub after the show’s press agency politely laughed in my face when I inquired about the possibility of comps for a visiting critic from Chicago. (Luckily Joe loved the show as much as I did.)
And when I say “cheap seats” in the headline above, I should further clarify that I’m using the term to denote our location, in the literal top row of the upper balcony, as far from the stage as it was possible to be. And yet the actual tickets cost more than our airfare to New York. See my preshow photo here for some sense of the perspective:
I’m not kidding when I say that we were frequently looking down onto the (glorious) top of André de Shields’s (blesséd) head. We had to lean forward to see the lip of the stage, and couldn’t get a full picture of the rear of the set.
Suffice it to say, it was quite a contrast to the privileged perspective I’m used to at, say, Broadway in Chicago openings, where I may not always get an aisle seat like Chris Jones, but at least I’m always in a good row in the orchestra. The last time I had a bird’s-eye view quite like this was around this time 20 years ago, when I was in New York for URTA auditions and got a single ticket at TKTS to see Cabaret at Studio 54. There I was also in the back row of the top balcony, and in a much larger house; as much as I enjoyed seeing Michael C. Hall as the Emcee, I might have enjoyed it more if I’d had opera glasses.
Yet at Hadestown I found myself really appreciating the different view in a way I wouldn’t have expected. Rachel Hauck’s set design, much like David Korins’s design for Hamilton, has among its bag of tricks a set of concentric turntables in the stage floor. Watching from essentially two-and-a-half stories up, I wound up paying close attention to Rachel Chavkin’s blocking, and the way the traffic of the actors moved across, against, or in tandem with the movement and speed of those turntables, thinking about it in a way I might not have been able to if I’d been seated at stage level.
And that got me further thinking about directing for space and for every seat in the house—how the recent tour of Once on This Island disappointed me in its failure to adjust in scale and focus from Broadway’s in-the-round Circle in the Square Theatre to big proscenium houses like the Cadillac Palace. It can be done, as evidenced by Fun Home, which I saw both at Circle in the Square and on tour at the James M. Nederlander Theatre—but it can require serious rethinking.
Maybe this seems like it doesn’t apply as much in Chicago theater. Even the largest of our homegrown theaters’ spaces, like the Goodman’s Albert Theatre or the Yard at Chicago Shakes, are comparable in capacity to the smallest Broadway houses, and are generally better designed for sightlines and comfort. And directors on the city’s storefront scene from which this newsletter takes its name hardly have to worry about the views of audience members two stories up.
But the more I think about it, the more I believe storefront directors and designers have to put as much if not more thought into spatial relationships as those working in a traditional proscenium house.
Cast members—and audience members—of The Boys in the Band at Windy City Playhouse. Photograph: Michael Brosilow
Just look at the varied configurations of some of the shows I’ve seen since the beginning of this year alone: the two-row-deep in-the-round designs of About Face’s The Gulf and Broken Nose’s Labyrinth; the wide-but-shallow dimensions of Raven’s East Theatre, where A Doll’s House is playing through March 22; the V-shaped seating banks facing the multilevel set of the House’s Verböten; the sprawling, immersive apartment created for Windy City Playhouse’s The Boys in the Band.
I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve spoken with over the last 15 years who’ve told me, like actor Bri Sudia did last year, that before discovering Chicago’s storefront scene, they never thought that professional theater could be anything other than big houses with a proscenium, a thousand seats facing the same direction toward the stage, and an imagined fourth wall in between.
So much of my favorite theater here doesn’t just break the fourth wall, it doesn’t assume there needs to be a first, second and third. Instead it offers, as Bri said, “watching actors give the performance of a lifetime five feet from me.”
Directors and designers who come up here consider every possible angle and don’t take any of the old rules for granted. And the cheap seats here? They’re genuinely cheap.
Reviews and other views
From left: Dyllan Rodrigues-Miller, Karen Rodriguez and Harrison Weger in I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter. Photograph: Michael Brosilow
Last week for the Chicago Sun-Times, I reviewed Steppenwolf for Young Adults’ I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter, adapted by Isaac Gómez from the novel by Erika L. Sánchez. Read the three-star review here.
Maria Dizzia in What the Constitution Means to Me. Photograph: Joan Marcus
This week, paid subscribers to this newsletter have received two reviews in their inboxes. the touring production of Heidi Schreck’s phenomenal Pulitzer finalist What the Constitution Means to Me, and Congo Square Theatre’s revival of Douglas Turner Ward’s “satirical fantasy” Day of Absence. Check them out if you missed them.
Over at Chicago magazine, I’ve had a pair of brief interviews up in the last couple of weeks: playwright and director J. Nicole Brooks on her new play Her Honor Jane Byrne at Lookingglass, and director Brian Balcom of Theater Wit’s Teenage Dick.
Kris’s current recommendations
Brandon Rivera and Victor Maraña in The Leopard Play. Photograph: Gregg Gilman
The Leopard Play, or sad songs for lost boys Steep Theatre Company, through March 15
Bug Steppenwolf Theatre Company, through March 15
Sheepdog Shattered Globe Theatre Company at Theater Wit, through March 15
A Doll’s House Raven Theatre, through March 22
Day of Absence Congo Square Theatre Company at Victory Gardens Theater, through March 22
Verböten The House Theatre of Chicago at Chopin Theatre, through March 29
I Am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter Steppenwolf Theatre Company, through April 5
What the Constitution Means to Me Broadway Playhouse at Water Tower Place, through April 12
Thanks for reading! This is the free edition of Storefront Rebellion, a newsletter about Chicago theater by Kris Vire. Send tips and feedback to kris@krisvire.com, and if you know someone you think would enjoy this newsletter, feel free to forward this to a friend.