Last night (Friday, Jan 23rd), Brown Paper Box debuted their production of Theresa Rebeck’s Spike Heels, playing through February 8th at the Raven Theatre (6157 N Clark St.). A treat for anyone with a genuine interest in acting, the performances are the reason to see this rendition of a 25-year-old light comedy that has surprisingly grown better and deeper with age.
Spike Heels is Rebeck’s retelling of and commentary on the Pygmalion story. I first saw this show in 2009 (I think): I found it amusing with some good monologs (Rebeck is known principally for her good monologs), but ultimately pretty inconsequential. Yet seeing it again in 2015, it seems wholly transformed by recent changes in the dialog regarding women’s rights. It’s not that Rebeck has lucked out thanks to cultural changes, but rather (I think) she was incredibly ahead of her time. The zeitgeist of 1990 forced her and her lead character to speak of agency, relationships, and even sexual assault with a lightness that already seems thankfully alien in modern urban culture, but the words themselves form a deliberately inarticulate yet very human picture of the disenfranchised fifty-percent.
If this all seems too vague, go see the play. There’s no reason not to.
Director Stephanie Rohr chose to highlight the 90s setting, not to excuse any outdated references, but most likely to throw this pre-YesAllWomen mentality into sharp relief. This is smartly accented by Sara Heymann’s set and Liz Hoffman’s costumes (more on this later).
But principally, it’s the acting that makes this show a success. Jillian Weingart’s Georgie is energetically diverse and committed to strong transformations, rather than the tedious emotional transitions we see on television (more on her later). Jesse Dornan gives a solid embodiment of Andrew, Rebeck’s modern Henry Higgins: a combination of pompous tutor and presumptuous knight-in-shining-armor, with enough self-assurance to smooth over the condescension inherent in these archetypes.
Charles Askenaizer plays Edward, the prototypical slimy, suave seducer. When Askenaizer first stepped onstage, I wanted to hate him. We hate Edward by reputation long before he first appears, and his lines are so glibly self-serving, I wanted to believe that Askenaizer could not be charming enough to counterbalance this. It wasn’t long, though, before he won me over. He was the strongest at eliciting and receiving natural impulses from others, and the man really comes alive with props in his hands: he knows his way around a gesture.
Whitney Morse rounds out the cast as Lydia, Andrew’s fiancee and the act-two complication. Morse brings a strong presence and is (necessarily) more grounded than Weingart’s frenetic Georgie. However I also found her the most two-dimensional, playing one note through each beat. She seemed the most negatively impacted by an overdone rehearsal style.
The first twenty minutes or so of this play is just Georgie and Andrew, and while their clearly defined archetypes were entertaining, I quickly noticed a lack of interpersonal engagement, risk, or tension. The whole thing seemed over-blocked, more choreographed than acted. Rohr’s BFA in musical theater would seem to corroborate this suspicion. To be fair, she also holds an MA in classical acting, but then classical acting is not known for spontaneity and risk either (though I think it should be). All four of these actors had great strengths, but they appeared continually hobbled and disconnected by choreography. They were running through a game-plan, rather than discovering things. Everyone knew where and how everything was going to happen, and (aside from one or two entirely forgivable line flubs), nothing new or surprising happened to the actors. They were frequently blocked into uselessly awkward stances, and monologs often required dissolution of what little connection had been accomplished. It’s a real shame because, again, the actors showed great strength. Rebeck writes great monologs, and every actor delivered beautifully when they were allowed to work independently. But when engaged together, it was just so much throwing runny eggs at a brick wall: one actor throwing energy at someone, and all that energy running down to the floor. They seemed the most comfortable and natural during silent physical quirks, a common result of over-blocking or over-rehearsing. But when actors are at their most comfortable in silences, in a play about language and communication (and which is 95% talking), some disservice is being done to those actors.
Fortunately, each actor is strong enough to shine on their own, and this is exemplified by the lead, Georgie. While each other actor seems, to some extent, trapped by the archetype they are portraying, Weingart embodies physically diverse personas and visually compelling sentiments. Although these changes seem more motivated by rehearsal than the other actors, they are exciting to watch, and she commits to them powerfully. She presents a little less diversity vocally, but two-or-three levels is still better than one, and I cannot say enough that transformation is more interesting than transition. Weingart’s giant dynamism is complimented nicely by Askenaizer, whose slimy Edward is ironically the most nuanced of the play. His subtleties seem better suited for the screen than stage, but the Raven’s space is intimate enough for him to succeed where others might fail.
Heymann’s set makes great use of limited resources, both monetarily and scripturally. It is the curse of ‘box-set’ plays that they allow little in the way of creativity, but Heymann uses the 90s motif to make one or two informed nods to inter-sex relationships. Simple changes contrast Andrew’s and Georgie’s apartments well, the crowning achievement being Georgie’s Pretty Woman poster: an overt commentary on the culture of the play itself, and hey! the movie came out the same year Spike Heels was written.
Now seems as good a time as any to praise the oft-neglected dramaturg: Michelle Kritselis in this case. It’s often difficult to sense the dramaturg’s hand in any production, but Spike Heels is a strong and well-informed presentation of outdated gender-roles that are perhaps not as outdated as we wish they were.
This is further enhanced by Hoffman’s costumes. Andrew spends much of the play in blues, typically the color of heroes. It’s not just Andrew’s lines that seek to present him as the misunderstood hero, rather than the presumptuous manipulator he is; the fact that he is never outright exposed as a self-righteous pedagog is a compliment on the subtlety of the play, and Hoffman’s costuming mirrors this. Georgie’s variegated color-scheme and wild hair contrasts beautifully with everyone, especially the straight-lined, black-and-white Lydia, and again serves to highlight Georgie’s “fish out of water” story. The design’s one weakness is Edward: the slick, wealthy lawyer should presumably be the best-dressed, but instead Askenaizer swims in an oversized shirt and pants. This was no doubt a result of budgetary restraints, though, and it certainly doesn’t ruin the play. Ultimately, Hoffman makes excellent use of color and lines and textures throughout.
Theresa Rebeck has written many fairly successful plays, but most of them appear to be little more than some entertaining pithiness with one or two moments of “huh… interesting.” Maybe they are all as ahead-of-their-time as Spike Heels turned out to be, just waiting for culture to move forward and let neanderthals like me look back and say something more than “huh… interesting.” This production does suffer from over-cooking: there’s more than a little awkward choreography, and entirely too much walking-out-then-turning-back-at-the-last-minute; although that could be Rebeck’s fault, I honestly can’t remember. Yet in spite of this, the play’s cast present committed, intelligent, and articulated performances, coupled with reflective and insightful design, highlighting a script that’s only getting better as time goes by.
Spike Heels runs January 24, 25, 29, 30, & 31, and February 1, 5, 6, 7, & 8. Thursday – Saturday shows start at 8:00pm. Sunday shows start at 3:00pm. The Raven Theatre is at 6157 N Clark St. Tickets are $20 a pop.
So, ya know… check it out.