Like Beckett or Pinter, Chekhov is a tricky business. Characters do not pursue their desires so overtly as in most musicals, nor do they describe their wants as articulately as in most Shakespearean plays; nor even, for that matter, are Chekhov translations as instantly relatable from the text as American classics like Williams or O’Neill (I can’t honestly speak to the original scripts). It is a common pitfall for actors and directors to orchestrate ennui and play mournful states of being, rather than create and display people of frustrated passion forced to reconcile their intense desires with a muddied reality. Unfortunately, 20% Theatre’s production of Jane Martin’s Anton in Show Business is a lesson in this very misfortune: uncertainty and representation trump desire and humanity.
Walking into Zoo Studios May 3rd excited me immediately. Ashley Ann Woods’ minimalist, functional set immediately evoked a rehearsal stage (a wall with an entrance, folding wings, and a couple of yet-to-be-seen flats, all bare bones). The two leads were periodically stretching and performing basic warmups onstage pre-show, and the “Stage Manager” (JaLinda Wilson) strolled about and called time wearing the typical trappings of the stage manager archetype: yet none of these seemed forced or obnoxiously thrown in our faces. The time-calls were legitimate time-calls, and the warmups could very well have been warming the actors up. Sadly, once the show started, all vestiges of sincerity and transparency evaporated.
Jane Martin is largely believed (but not proven, as far as I know) to be the female pen name of Jon Jory. Considering how many of her/his scripts deal superficially with gender and sex, and how many of them typically cast men as the clumsy, clueless stereotypes of 80’s and 90’s television, it would not be surprising to learn that Jory adopted the moniker to lend legitimacy to his cliche-ridden pablum. Regardless, Anton in Show Business is uninspired, (barely) clever-for-its-own-sake, and has little of value to offer. It’s a collection of overt and admitted stereotypes, starring the wide-eyed ingenue and the embittered over-the-hill actress as unlikely friends, cemented by the entitled-and-hedonistic-and-jaded-but-still-with-some-redeemable-qualities-but-still-superficial diva who secures their positions in a production of The Three Sisters. Their journey predictably parallels the play, and a host of other cliches-clad-as-characters help or hinder them through a meandering and largely disinterested quest to mount the famous play. Martin even goes so far as to write in an “audience member” who points out the cliches and helps highlight the similarities to the source material. Whether this is a clumsy apology or an obnoxious attempt to justify a pale imitation of the original is unclear. Maybe something has gone over my head, but I don’t doubt that 20% could find a local playwright more invested in both female-representation in theater (allegedly the point of the play) and more educated in Chekhov to produce an original local work of superior quality (the play’s opening monolog, saddest of all, glorifies New York while ignoring Chicago as an artistic non-entity).
But enough of Jane Martin. We’ve all seen terrible Shakespeare shows, and we’ve all seen awful scripts redeemed by committed performance or courageous staging. Unfortunately, the majority of the cast seems more invested in playing the ennui associated with shallow interpretations of Chekhov, free of motivation or interpersonal connection. Marla Jakob has a strong physical commitment to naive ingenue Lisabette Cartwright, and it’s certainly clear that she wants to do Chekhov (or at least that she wants to convince us that she wants to do Chekhov), but the rest of the cast seems to remain strangers to her, to whom she feels perpetually apologetic and little else. Lindsay Bartlett (as the over-the-hill Casey Mulgraw) excels at deadpan, but offers little else. When the script forces her to express anything, she vacillates between awkward uncertainty and regresses into understatement. Much like the painfully episodic script itself, Bartlett’s talents seem better suited to the screen.
The saving graces of this particular production were the strong physical characterization of Hallie Peterson and the motivated commitment of Rebecca Flores. Flores, who understudied as producer Kate Tdorovskia on May 3rd, put a mask of strained professionalism over a near-constant desire to nudge, prod, and occasionally shove her subordinates-on-paper in the right direction: her pressured restraint and impotent blustering both underscored the powerlessness of her position and provided a beautifully ironic archetype that would have been at home in any well-done Chekhov play. She was somewhat less nuanced and committed as Ben Shipwright, the all-American-country-singer-slash-actor, but it could be argued that Ben’s more limited vocal and physical range were meant to be archetypically male.
Hallie Peterson, meanwhile, is the reason to see this play. She first portrays an almost-irritatingly cliched ivory-tower-English-director, pixie-like in his airy presence and delighted with his superior and inscrutable understanding of the Magic of theater. This particular stereotype could easily have been unbearable, but in Peterson’s hands he was a refreshing change of pace from the awkward uncertainty of the rest of the cast. When this foppish Brit is regrettably dismissed, we are treated in his/her place with Konalvkis Wikewitch (thank you program), a wobbly septuagenarian who knows Chekhov because he (like the orchard of Chekhov’s most famous work) seems to be collapsing right in front of us, over and over again. Although many of Anton’s characters could be called cartoonish caricatures, only Peterson commits with full force and confidence to those cartoons. Despite this over-the-top drive, she still manages to deliver her deadpans with a professional glaze rivaling (and usually topping) anyone else onstage.
Anton in Show Business is a script with little to offer. Not surprisingly, the highlight comes at the very end when the three sisters-of-the-stage recite the closing lines to The Three Sisters: quality writing produces a moment of sincerity and introspection lacking from the rest of the play. The episodic nature and constant breaks that make it impossible to care about any character were perhaps intended as a Brechtian structure, but this play has no argument to make that hasn’t already been decided by its audience long before entering the space. And while even the worst scripts can be at least salvaged by quality acting, the amount of unmotivated floundering leaves me pointing an accusing finger at Melissa Albertario and Charlotte Drover, a pair of directors who don’t seem to have more than an academic understanding of Chekhov, and a shallow one at that.
And please don’t think that I could pass myself off as a Chekhov scholar. I do know good acting when I see it, though, and that comes almost entirely from Hallie Peterson and Rebecca Flores (who will be understudying other roles during the run, and will hopefully bring the same commitment to them as well). It would take a lot for me to tell someone “don’t see this play,” but this production offers little beyond lean academic reflection.
Anton in Show Business is playing at Zoo Studios (4001 N Ravenswood Ave, 2nd Floor) until May 18th.
Thursdays & Fridays @ 8:00
Saturdays @ 4:00 & 8:00
Sundays @ 2:00