Steppenwolf in Chicago

I was in Chicago two weeks ago for my brother’s graduation, and while I was there, made a side trip to see some theater in town. The Chicago theater scene is excellent, with companies large and small presenting some really fantastic work. Steppenwolf has been in the news lately: its production of Tracy Lett’s play August: Osage County, which I saw in February and really enjoyed, transferred to Broadway and won a whole bunch of major awards including the Tony and Pulitzer Prize. His new play, Superior Donuts, began performances in Chicago on June 19 at the Steppenwolf. The way my schedule worked out, I ended up going to the very first preview performance. I won't say too much about it, since it was the first preview and I'm sure they are still working on it. But it’s a decent enough play, certainly not as epic as August, nor as funny or insightful. There were plenty of rough edges that should be worked over by press night. It’ll be interesting to see what the professional critics think of it when the reviews come out.

After the show, Steppenwolf offered an audience discussion, moderated by one of the theater’s artistic staff. I stayed behind to observe, partly to see if anything interesting would be said, but also out of curiosity to see how Steppenwolf’s discussions function compared to others that I have been too. It wasn’t all that fun - the discussion was for the audience members to say what was on their mind with minimal moderation from the discussion leader. And as lovely as the concept of audience interaction is, sometimes people say odd things. The conversation wound around in bizarre directions, a lot of which had very little relevance to the play and production, despite the audience member’s insistence that it was the most brilliant thought ever. It was like in school, where one person in the discussion harps on something irrelevant, but the teacher is too nice to stop the person’s misguided thought train. I’m sure some people enjoyed it, but the whole thing was too school-like for me.

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The months of May and June were insanely busy for me, so I really didn't end up seeing very many shows, nor did I have time to write anything about them. I'll get around to posting some very delayed thoughts about San Francisco Ballet's New Works Festival eventually, but I'm looking forward to a relaxing summer before I move out to the East Coast in August. Looking forward to some new adventures.