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Chicago Tribune
5 days ago
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: Powerful play ‘Memorabilia' explores the hope and limits of memory through the eyes of a clown
Jean Claudio, a formidable Chicago-based talent who lives on Instagram as @el_clown, can dance, juggle, tumble, perform handstands and unleash a variety of -style clowning, a function of having a remarkably pliant and supple body and having trained in circus and physical theater in Buenos Aries and at the Actors Gymnasium in Evanston. Claudio is not an actor who moves. He's a legitimate circus professional with an uncommon facility for generating empathy. And in 'Memorabilia,' a very enjoyable solo show now at the Filament Theatre in Portage Park, Claudio sets about extending his skills and engaging persona into a bigger narrative, one that explores the limits of memory and the possibility of its reawakening. The show is produced by Teatro Vista, and if I add that the Alzheimer's Association is one of the show's sponsors, you probably have a sense of the world that Claudio is inhabiting here. But it's far from conventional or based on just one of life's travails. Claudio is, after all, a clown. And the 80-minute show, which is perfectly fine for family audiences, is a mostly joyful experience as an inventor named Salvador interacts physically and comedically with a whole bunch of stuff from his prior life (a plate, a piece of fabric, a coffee pot, a song, a body, a love), the significance of which he often struggles to remember (or is it to face?). But on designer Lauren Nichols' set, Salvador has a Rube Goldberg contraption to aid him in his quest to recall what matters most. It's a sculpture made up of old televisions and monitors, drawers filled with objects, maybe a toaster oven to gobble up life's cues. In its best moments, which are fantastic, Claudio dives deep into the unsettling nature of memory loss and denial but also into our incredible ability to recall and survive things from long ago. It's an affirmative piece that really challenges the notion that 'I can't remember' has to be a permanent state. If your family (as was mine) was or is touched by Alzheimer's, you'll know that one of the main challenges faced by those with the condition is to sort out what is significant (a loved one, say), and what can and should be discarded to the sands of time. After all, the ability to forget is the only way we can manage to stay content; if we recalled every past slight and example of unfair treatment, we'd spend our days in a stew of resentment. It's to his great credit that Claudio's show brings all of this up. Like a lot of clowns trained in South and Central America, Claudio has developed an expertise in what is known as crowd work, the name given to audience interaction. This, too, here, is about prompting memory, mostly through a very extensive accompanying sound design from Satya Chávez that really becomes a second character in the show. I think 'Memorabilia' still needs some work: its potentially potent emotional trajectory, its arc of feeling, sometimes get pushed aside as Claudio gets too involved with all of his stuff on stage and the thread gets lost. Ironically, given the subject, the show has some ways yet to go when it comes to signaling what is and is not the most important and, although the conclusion is inspiring, it would be yet more powerful if it were allowed more room to breathe. It's mostly a question of finding the right focus and pairing down what does not get used, and I thought those issues most acute in the less cohesive second part of the evening. If Claudio could focus as much on the audience's journey of feeling as he does on trying to make us laugh, he'd really have something here. That said, 'Memorabilia' is still a very rewarding and unusual show and a piece of new work with formidable potential. As I watched, I kept thinking about how great it would be for a child with grandparents struggling with memory to see this piece with someone who could explain what it was trying to say, but then the same would apply for an adult with a forgetful parent or, indeed, to persons themselves working mightily to remember, in all the complexity of that word. Memory is a wonderful theme for el_clown to explore because he is so vulnerable and empathetic. All he has to do now is ask himself what in his show matters the most. Review: 'Memorabilia' (3 stars) When: Through June 29 Where: Teatro Vista at Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes Tickets: $20-$55 at
Chicago Tribune
23-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Chicago Tribune
Review: ‘Cygnus' at Gift Theatre is a ‘Succession' writer's powerful evocation of trauma and recovery
A dynamic, multi-layered and courageous central performance from Angela Morris is just one reason to head up Milwaukee Avenue to Gift Theatre for the world premiere of 'Cygnus,' a challenging but exceptionally rich new play from Susan Soon He Stanton, an Emmy-winning writer for HBO's 'Succession.' Not that 'Cygnus,' a surreal voyage inside the recovering psyche of a traumatized young woman, is anything like that satirical chronicle of a Murdoch-like family. Unsurprisingly. I've found that when writers have big TV successes, they are emboldened to be as adventurous as possible when they return to the live theater, especially if working in Chicago at a company with a long history of fearless experimentation. 'Cygnus' certainly makes some nods to Tony Kushner's 'Angels in America' with its main character, Cydney (Morris), believing she has a guardian angel, wings and all. But in searching for helpful comparatives for fans of new American drama, I came up with Noah Haidle's 2013 play 'Smokefall,' which I also very much like. Both these plays combine elements of American realism — much of 'Cygnus' is set in a living room and the three-character play deals with Cydney's relationship with her Mama (Rengin Altay) and her (possible) boyfriend Jason (Jeff Rodriguez) — while at the same time departing from that format, testing what an audience will be willing to believe as logical in that setting. And both explore physical manifestations of psychological trauma. At times, fans of the British writer Sarah Kane might also see some similarities. The central character's name is, perhaps, revealing in the lexicographic sense. Stanton, I think, here wants to explore the aftermath of an awful experience, or experiences, and explore the human body and mind's tactics for healing and, being as none of us are solo operators, the concurrent impact of that journey on those in the person's orbit. Families being as they are, of course, love and culpability, or perceived culpability, often are linked and that's surely the case here. Director Brittany Burch has forged a production very much in the Gift Theatre tradition of immersive daring, although that company's bigger current home at Filament Theatre allows for more expansive experimentation. Here, Burch and her set designer, Joonhee Park, create two distinct staging environments as Cydney's heart and corpus flow between them. Morris gets very solid support from the rest of this small cast, but this is her show and her performance pulses with life and unpredictability. As you might guess from 'Succession,' Stanton is a verbose kind of writer and Morris spits out this rich and poetic language with pace and fortitude and yet enough vulnerability that you don't just believe in the character she is playing, you pull for her and her goofy friend, too. The production has a lot of recorded sound and this has its issues; some of the language therein is inaudible, which is a shame, albeit something easily corrected. There are also a few dips and let-ups in the show's vital energy. But otherwise, 'Cygnus' is one of the most sophisticated small shows of the Chicago year so far and represents off-Loop theater otherwise firing on all cylinders. There is much wisdom in here on how mothers and daughters communicate, or miscommunicate, but also a driving sense of hope. Especially with a starring role this attractive to performers, there's no question this play will have a future. I doubt any subsequent production will feature a performance exceeding this one in Chicago right now. Chris Jones is a Tribune critic. When: Through March 16 Where: Gift Theatre at the Filament Theatre, 4041 N. Milwaukee Ave. Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
