Review: "autobahn", Village Theatre Guild, Glen Ellyn

Full disclosure:  I received a complimentary ticket for this production.


A few years ago, there was some buzz about Chicago establishing car pool lanes on local highways.  For those who don’t know, car pool lanes are usually on the left, move faster than normal rush-hour traffic and are only to be used by cars having more than one person.  In fact, you can get a ticket for driving in the lane if you don’t have a passenger.  The thinking is that it will lessen gridlock because three people in a car equals two less cars in traffic.  I saw them in Los Angeles.  Didn’t seem to help.

I’m not sure why car pool lanes never appeared in Chicago; although, if you’ve seen how badly the bike-lane laws are observed and enforced, you can guess why.  And, after seeing autobahn at Village Theatre Guild in Glen Ellyn, I was left thinking that if carpool lanes become a reality, I will buy a blow-up doll, put it in the passenger seat and be on my merry way.  Why?  Because dolls are silent and there would be no chance of me having to listen to the tedious droning I experienced with this production.

To be fair, while I like the writings and films of Neil LaBute (In The Company Of Men is one of my favorite films), this is my least favorite of his plays.  I find it self-indulgent.  I think he fell in love with his author’s voice, and forced it on his characters to share with the world.  The seven short plays of this cycle are vanity pieces.  Still, the flaw can be overcome by good direction and dynamic acting.  Unfortunately, the lackluster performance I witnessed exacerbated the play's failings.

If you don’t know the show, it’s a cycle of 7 short plays, each of which take place in an automobile.  They are typical LaBute and each piece is similarly structured in the "peel away the layers of an onion" format to get to a revelation, which means that after the first few pieces, the rhythms become predictable.  The pieces are not related to each other, except that each has a moment when concerns about language, syntax, meanings or grammar are part of the text.  There are four monologues and three duets, but this show chose to do only three of each.


The first piece of this production was called funny, a monologue from a girl (Nora Laidman) returning from rehab speaking to the driver: her mother (Candace Snapp).  Sadly, Laidman just didn't seem to connect with the material.  Her approach was stiff and she lacked a sense of naturalness on stage.  There were no levels to her characterization which was steeped in sameness.  And about 2/3 of the way through, she started running out of gas.  The underbelly of bitterness needed to sell this piece was missing, as was the layer of caustic sarcasm. When she hisses to her mother, "Who's gonna believe you?", we need to see the venom dripping from her character.  That would at least enhance the arc.  As it was, monologue became synonymous with monotone and monotonous.  I don't think she's a bad actor.  She just needed some direction and coaching.


Next is bench seat, which enters mid-conversation and features Lisa Donics as girl and Greg Dvorak as boy.  It concerns a couple who have stopped at some location that is either where you go to make-out or break-up.  There were a few funny moments, but they needed to mine the nuggets of humor.  When Dolnics starts in about her lips being too thin, all she does is look in the rear-view mirror.  How about doing something with the lips, changing up from puckering to smiling to frowning just to add a bit of physical humor?  She just needed to add a level of involvement and commitment to make her character more believable.  I had the feeling that they just didn't really get what they were saying.  The director should have explained it.  As for the guy, it's best summed up by my only note on his character:  "He's boring."  This is more a function of the writing.


The next scene, merge, also starts mid-conversation.  It was the best of the scenes.  Husband (Vince Scalone) has just picked-up his wife (Candance Snapp) at the airport and play question and answer concerning her behavior during her business trip.  I won't reveal more because that's the fun of the scene.  Snapp was delightful in the way she avoided his questions, using her face to speak volumes of what wasn't being said, and Scalone did a wonderful job displaying the right amount of confusion, hesitance and disbelief in what he was actually hearing from her.


Scalone also appears in the next scene as the passenger in long division.  The driver is played by Robert Richardson.  The scene felt like a bad SNL segment.  It concerns a trip to recover a Nintendo 64 system from the ex-girlfriend of the passenger.  It's the driver's monologue.  Both characters are drunk.  I think playing drunk is one of the harder acting exercises, because it always seems phony.  Richardson appeared to have been given a list of stereotypical "raging drunk stuff" to incorporate into his performance.  Slurred speech?  Check.  Loss of visual focus?  Check. Wild gestures?  Check.  Got them all.  Still seemed phony.  Where was the director?


Laidman returns in road trip opposite Jason Taylor.  Again, there is a revelation in this scene that I won't discuss, except that it should be creepy and icky.  It played as "eh, who cares."  She needed to play-up the bright-eyed innocence, and he had to build to a predatory creepiness.  When he gets angry, he needed to really get angry - Taylor needed to let go.  In fact, that was the basic problem with the show.  People just needed to let go and not hide behind the facade of acting.


The last scene is the titular autobahn.  It has to do with a wife (Tracy Powers) talking to her husband (Paul Mapes) about having to return a child to Social Services because they failed in foster care.  How they failed is the reveal.  It's the wife's monologue.  In this case, it was a disappointing effort by Powers. She lacked energy, levels, and honesty.  I was seeing the work, not the result of the work.  If felt stiff and forced, and suffered also from monotony in rhythm and voice.  A director would have fixed it.


Much of this, as you may have gathered, is the result of a lack of effort from the director, Bill Burghardt.  He had to have seen what was lacking in the scenes.  And if he didn't, he needs to rethink his approach to directing.


Is it worth the price of admission:  Sadly, no.  It would be a hefty toll to pay for this road trip.


For more information, like tickets and all, visit the VTG web site.

Extreme mini-reviews

I'm keeping this brief.  Those who follow me on Twitter already know how I felt about these shows.  But my heart is not in it to write reviews of two shows that I didn't care for and one that I enjoyed.  I did, however, get press tickets to all three, so I have to do something.  Right now, I'm thinking I'll just send them money in the mail.


The shows are, in order of seeing them, Bonhoeffer's Cost presented by Provision Theater (click here for info), Incorruptible at Wheaton Drama Inc (clickety-click)., and How The Other Half Loves, produced by Independent Players in Elgin.


Bonhoeffer's Cost is based on the true story of a minister who was involved in two assassination plots against Hitler.  It is told through a series of flashbacks after his imprisonment and it's another interesting human story about WWII.  Bonhoeffer must balance out his Christianity with his participation in acts that would end a human life.  He struggles.  And struggles.  And struggles some more, until the show becomes an endless series of scenes about his struggling until he is put to death.  And that is not a spoiler I just threw at you, because his death is discussed in the director's notes in the program.  Oh sure, there were a few comic moments with the prison guard who is played so callow and shallow that he kept reminding me of Sgt. Schultz from Hogan's Heroes and a Nazi interrogator that lacked any menace because he was played with stereotypical lip-snarling menace.  He actually utters the line, "Nobody kills themselves on my watch."  Those Nazis certainly had a way with modern lingo.  Sadly, the show needs to decide what it's going to be, because they threw everything into this 165 minute presentation.


It comes down to this:  the show is too damn long and could easily be cut down to 2 hours with intermission.  It's the world premier of the play, co-written by director Timothy Gregory and screen writer Mary Ruth Clarke.  It needs some serious cutting.  Had this been a film, it would be all over the editing room floor, and many scenes would be in montage.  They have the makings of something here, but they are going to have to search through the extraneous to get to the core.


Incorruptible also suffers from a case of not knowing what it wants to be.  Is it a comedy or a morality parable?  It tried to be both and they play against themselves.  I will say upfront that I am not a fan of the script.   Not because of the subject matter, which is based on a real feud between a couple of French monasteries and the scandalous practice making "relics" out of nothing.  It has to do with how the script goes about it.  I didn't find it all that amusing.  I thought it tried too hard to be funny, while at the same time making sure it was covering its backside with heavy layers of piety and moral sermonizing.  Much of this can be overcome.  The cast had adequate acting chops to pull it off, but I thought director Tom Walker didn't strike the necessary balance between silly and serious.  The comedy must support the message rather then the message being tacked onto the comedy.  Those who still wander about aimlessly looking to relive the glory days of 70s collegiate speech competitions will recognize the concept of "serious point" in comedy.  Point is not locus;  it is focus.  And they say Latin is dead.


How The Other Half Loves is playing at Elgin Arts Showcase.  It was directed by Larry Boller and is the single ray of light that made being an audience member an enjoyable experience.  It held my interest, made me laugh and entertained.  I never checked the clock in anticipation of the end.  Yes, it could tighten up the cues and pick-up the pace a few times.  Still, it's engaging.  The staging is creative as it intertwines the story of two couples, who are intertwined personally.  It has all the trappings of British farce beautifully executed.  It's not Ray Cooney.  These are all good things.  So is the cast.  The best part was the performance of Doug Orlyk, who is totally immersed in his character.  He has all the right nuance and skill to bring this character to life.  See it for that alone.


OK, the slate is clear for now. Looking over it, I was too nice to the first two shows, and I have short changed the last one.  It deserves more.  It's a good show.