Season's Greetings
Playwright: Alan Ayckbourn. At: Northlight Theatre, 9501 Skokie Blvd., Skokie. Phone: 847-673-6300; $25-$60. Runs through: Dec. 18
Burning Bluebeard
Playwright: Jay Torrence. At: The Neo-Futurarium, 5153 N. Ashland Ave. Phone: 773-275-5255; $10-$20Runs through: Dec. 30
People often have lofty expectations of happy and joyful times over the holiday season. However, as two current Chicago-area productions show, those hopes aren't always fulfilled and sometimes things can go horribly wrong.
In Alan Aykbourn's dark 1980 comedy Season's Greetings, you may find yourself simultaneously laughing and wincing in recognition at the continual clashes (both big and small) of a British holiday gathering of family and friends. Director BJ Jones has whipped up a hilarious and perfectly timed production of Season's Greetings for Northlight Theatre, making sure that the comical sweet moments get as much play as the unhappy sour ones.
You get to savor seeing the characters get annoyed by petty conflicts, and how misunderstandings can snowball into shocking and risky behavior. Season's Greetings requires a true ensemble effort from the cast, and there really isn't a weak link among the company, which includes great characteristic turns by the likes of Francis Guinan, Rob Riley, Heidi Kettenring, Steve Haggard and Ginger Lee McDermott, among others.
While most everything that could possibly go wrong happens on a fictional family-scale in Season's Greetings, it's much more terrifying to hear how a conflagration of errors proved to be so fatal in the Iroquois Theatre Fire of 1903the real-life Chicago historical disaster that inspired playwright and performer Jay Torrence to create Burning Bluebeard for The Neo-Futurists.
Now the deaths of more than 600 people (mostly women and children) isn't something to be taken lightly, which is why the Neo-Futurists' whimsy-filled and self-aware storytelling approach initially rankles. However, those partially singed storytellers played by Anthony Courser, Dean Evans, Molly Plunk, Leah Urzendowski, Ryan Walters and Torrence gradually pay artistic homage to the event as their characters question the theater folk's culpability in the horrific situation that unfolded.
Director Halena Kays finds powerful ways of incorporating dance movement to insightfully comment on the disastrous events, while sound designer Mike Tutaj truly helps emphasize the sheer terror of the situation near the end.
Lest you think that Burning Bluebeard is all gloom and doom, the cast also finds ways of enlivening the history by critiquing the odd plot and structural deficiencies of Mr. Bluebeard (the show that was playing that fateful matinee of Dec. 30, 1903) and by having the performers question the safety exits of the Neo-Futurarium theater space itself.
With Burning Bluebeard, Torrence and company help bring history to vivid life and will likely prompt audiences to seek out more details surrounding the Iroquois Theatre Fire. (My advice is to read Anthony Hatch's book Tinderbox: The Iroquois Theatre Disaster, 1903.) However, Burning Bluebeard also reveals the unforeseen risks that come when audiences gather together seeking escapist entertainment.