Out director Tina Landau has no qualms if Steppenwolf Theatre audiences are only buying tickets to see the American premiere of The Wheel by British playwright Zinnie Harris because it marks the return of Tony Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated actress Joan Allen.
"I think it's a wonderful thing and I think everyone should come see her because she's extraordinary," said Landau in a recent telephone interview.
Like Landau, Allen (Burn This, The Heidi Chronicles, The Contender) is a member of the esteemed Steppenwolf Theatre Ensemble, officially joining in 1977 not long after Steppenwolf was originally founded. Yet Allen hasn't appeared in a full-length play at Steppenwolf since Earthly Possessions in 1991.
Although Allen and Landau knew each other generally, they two realized that they really wanted to work with each other when they participated in recent New York play readings.
"[Landau] was just so exited to be at this reading, you know, on this play that we decided not to do," Allen said in a Steppenwolf promotional video. "I just thought that this is a person I would like to be my boss."
It was ultimately Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey who pushed Landau to direct The Wheel, which Harris originally wrote for the National Theatre of Scotland. Yet Landau initially passed on the play.
"It scared me. It was big and I didn't quite get it stylistically," Landau said, ultimately falling in love with The Wheel on a second read-through. "It contains both the panoramic large-scale canvas as well as the very intimate and personalized one. There is something about the piece that is very theatrical and grows out of magical realism and has a real connectedness and traffics in metaphoric imagery."
In The Wheel, Allen plays the 19th-century Spanish peasant Beatriz, who becomes the unintentional guardian of a young girl when soldiers overrun the house. Beatriz is determined to reunite the girl with her exiled father, but their journey becomes ever more complicated as they pass through a plethora of war zones and different time periods.
"It's not so much about refugees, it's really about how one struggles to and how important it is to keep our sense of humanity and compassion and tenderness and openness and vulnerability and child-like wonder alive in a landscape that grows increasingly violent and cruel," Landau said. She also noted that fans of playwright Bertolt Brecht might see strands from his plays Mother Courage and her Children, The Caucasian Chalk Circle and The Good Person of Szechwan in The Wheel.
Landau has also been shocked by the unexpected relevance The Wheel has had in light of the current Syrian civil war and the images that have been broadcast back from that bloody conflict.
"There's a sequence that I won't give away near the end of the play that we designed four months ago, but I'm turning on the news and it's like, 'Oh my gosh, that's what we have on our stage,'" Landau said. "It's been really startling that the play has been hitting home to realize that this is a story that is also going on right now."
Starring alongside Allen in The Wheel are fellow Steppenwolf Ensemble members Robert Breuler, Tim Hopper, Ora Jones and Yasen Peyankov, who are all part of a company of 17 actors. Some are college-aged, and Landau said they are thrilled to be working at Steppenwolf and learning from artists like Allen.
"One of the other actors in the cast came up to me in the middle of the second week and said, 'You know, I was watching Joan yesterday in her scene work,' and she said, 'For the first time I thought to myself, 'Oh, that's what they mean by Steppenwolf,'" Landau said, trying to counter the simplistic "kitchen-sink violence" perceptions that many people apply in terms of defining a Steppenwolf acting style. "What you realize what it's about is an openness and spontaneity and fearlessness in the acting."
Landau says that she is extremely grateful to have a leading actress like Allen who is also a leader in terms of building an ensemble of actors and musicians to be like storytellers "with many heads."
"I've never seen Joan on stageonly on film," Landau said when asked what it was like to direct Allen.
"I wasn't nervous about it, but I had no idea what she would be like, and she has far, far exceeded my expectations in terms of how brave and open and playful she is in rehearsal and onstage," Landau said. "She just seems like a kind of force in its element at the moment."
The Wheel continues in previews through Friday, Sept. 20, at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1650 N. Halsted St. Regular performances run through Sunday, Nov. 10, and are at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Sunday with 3 p.m. matinees on Saturday and Sunday (7:30 p.m. Sunday performances end Oct. 20 and 2 p.m. Wednesday matinees begin Oct. 23). Tickets are $20-$82. Call 312-335-1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org for more information.