Chicago Theatre Review
An Instrument of Liberation
safronia
A world premiere written and composed by Chicago’s ground-breaking inaugural poet laureate avery r. young, safronia is a uniquely American opera, told through America’s classical music: blues, gospel, and funk. Commissioned and produced by the Lyric Opera of Chicago, young’s safronia explores the unfinished history of our country and the meaning of returning home through sonic language rooted in Black expressive tradition, and girded with humor, strength, and righteous determination.
The significance of safronia is impossible to overstate. This new work is a seismic shift in opera; challenging what opera has been, and transforming what opera can be. As noted by Antonio C Cyler, “safronia does not situate itself within a ‘classic’ presentation of opera. Instead, through Black music and vernacular, young has designed an operatic experience unapologetically about, by, for, and near Black people. . .” Stage Director and Dramaturg Timothy Douglas calls safronia “the embodiment of structural transformation.”
avery r. young is a celebrated interdisciplinary artist whose work encompassess film, curation, written and performance works in national and international arenas. young is Co-director of Floating Museum, and a Walder’s Foundation Platform awardee who has produced two albums and scored others’ works.
young’s creation together with the inspired direction of Douglas, delivers safronia as a living entity that bends time and moves the spirit. The approach is “listening as civic practice, history as breath, and music as ancestral way-showers.” The opera hall becomes the chapel, the audience the congregation, and young the voice in the wilderness.
In simple, safronia is the semi-autobiographical story of the Booker family’s forced journey from the Deep South small town to Chicago, and their righteous return. Patriarch baar booker has just achieved his dream of paying off the land for his distillery when all is ripped from him and his family. In the Bookers we witness one thread of the Great Migration, driven from the land of their birth to seek asylum within a northern city of their own country. But Chicago is not the Promised Land; instead of ‘colored’ signs there are redlines, and grown men are still called ‘boy’. The struggles of the city wear on safronia and her father, baar jacob, who drink to numb the wounds of their daily life and the loss of the family Land. But the ancestors are always present, and the Bookers refuse to believe that heaven is the only place they get relief. When the Bookers decide to return and reclaim their box on the earth, they must overcome the evil men who threatened their lives.
But safronia is so much more than the story. It is prayer from the ancestors. It is testimony for the lord. It is the fireworks of celebration and it is an abyss of mourning. It is kicking open the door to preach survival by any means necessary in a call-and-response holy-rolling exaltation. It claims everything. And it uncrooks the spine and sets the back straight.
In one particularly transcendent moment the exiled Booker family comes together, circling and stomping, clapping and chanting. Together they surround baar jacob, exhorting him to ‘lift yourself out of this bad time’ in a spiritual healing that is at once charismatic service, ring shouts of enslavement, and ancient ancestral practice. There is scarcely a scene that doesn’t transport the audience/congregation – whether in conflict, in celebration, or in reclaiming stolen birthright.
The voices in all the primary roles are potent instruments wielded by skilled performers, and the ensembles’ talents provide flawless support.
avery r. young is a powerhouse as baar jacob, the booker family patriarch and center of his own world. young is an incredible performer, with a supernova energy that lifts all those around him. Whether he is funkadelic direct to the audience, or preaching it out to the congregation, young is fire. And he is just as compelling in baar’s deep internal moments – of despair, or defiance, or in divine retribution. At his zenith, young’s baar is magnificent, ten feet tall in triumph with a hard-fought future in his grasp. But baar is too sure of his footing, cannot suffer another indignity, and then we witness in horror the destruction barreling towards him, young’s presence making us will the blow not to land. After years of exile young shows us baar’s spiky husk, empty of dreams but still spitting fire.
Meaghan McNeal is a force to be reckoned with as safronia booker, the indomitable but hard-drinking daughter who rages against the injustice to her family, and the suffocating humiliation of her father, baar jacob. McNeal’s voice is sublime, floating in the upper reaches as she wails her losses even while physically collapsing in her lover’s arms. She rules funk and gospel equally, transfixing the audience with her presence and power.
There can be no more soulful and grounded persona than that of Maiesha McQueen as magnolia booker, the matriarch who is determined to hold on to her family and the joy she makes with them. McQueen’s magnolia is has an unmatched breadth and complexity, whether she is celebrating or battling baar or safronia, or standing as realist and protector of the Booker tribe. When McQueen relates and relives the massacre of the town, her mourning is devastating and her voice exquisite. We can hear the weight of history in McQueen’s magnolia.
As King Willie Tate, Lorenzo Rush, Jr. lives a raw mix of proud defiance and fierce longing to break free from the constraints of Black life in the Deep South. When Rush sings about King’s future we see him reaching for the promise of his name. As he woos safronia, there is an innocent earnestness to his un-jaded hope. In later scenes Rush delivers unexpected but natural comic moments with impeccable phrasing and expression.
In deep thunderous tones Zachary James’ cholly is the imposing personification of white oppression, vindictively shredding baar’s hard-won achievement. With a weaselly falsetto, Jeff Parker’s bossman is an emasculated simp for cholly, betraying baar and denying his role in the family’s loss.
The many styles of music, and the complex, changing moods are well-matched by the skills of Conductor and Orchestrator Paul Byssainthe, Jr. and Choreographer Kia Smith. Byssainthe Jr has served as music director, associate music director and conductor for houses across the country. He received a Helen Hayes Award nomination for best music direction for his work on American Prophet at Arena Stage. Smith is the Founder of South Chicago Dance Theatre, and a prolific choreographer. Among her accolades, Smith was an Ann & Weston Hicks Choreographic Fellow at the renowned Jacob’s Pillow festival, and the first fellow to be presented by the festival.
Costume Designer Jessica Jahn’s shirtdresses, shifts and trousers sculpt the silhouette of the times. All in white, the characters pop from the dark surroundings, and provide the perfect canvas for the artistry of Lighting Designer Jason Lynch. With warm multidirectional lighting the focal performer becomes somehow more than three-dimensional. With a shift, the momentarily silent members of the Booker Family are transformed into tones of grey, a living old-time black and white photo on stage. Among them, baar jacob’s coat of many colors is a vestment passed eventually to the favorite child.
Vam Studio designed video projections for the massive screens to the rear and sides of the stage that effectively translated emotional and psychological messages into a varied immersive environment. Sound Designer Stephanie Farina fills out the worlds of safronia to auditory completeness.
One can only hope that young’s extraordinary work is recognized for the ground-breaking musical experience that it is. Our world needs many future productions, to shake opera free of restrictive expectations and allow safronia to continue as an artwork that serves as an instrument of liberation.
Highly Recommended
Reviewed by Soleil Rodrigue
safronia presented by avery r. young commissioned by Lyric Opera of Chicago ran only two nights, April 17 and 18, at the Lyric Opera House. For current productions visit www.lyricopera.org/shows/upcoming
Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com
A Most Unique Comedy
Eelpout!
Are you in the mood for a most unique comedy—a funny, fast-paced farce especially made for smart, very liberal theatergoers? How about a surreal story peppered with bizarre characters, unexpected events and filled with non-sequiturs and homely homilies offered by mild-mannered Minnesotans? Have you been hankering for a camp entertainment in which friends become lovers, fish can talk and the sweet mysteries of life can be found at the bottom of a deep, frozen lake? Well then, have I got a play for you!
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If the title of this glittery, glitzy, jazzy musical sounds familiar, it may be because you’re experiencing flashbacks to your high school English class. For many members of the audience, their first encounter with this American literary masterpiece was as part of their school curricula. A highly readable and entertaining novel, American author F. Scott Fitzgerald set his story during the Roaring Twenties on Long Island, New York. The Great Gatsby is a tragically romantic story of the Jazz Age that’s almost autobiographical. It tells the tale of a man with a dream. When Jay Gatsby was younger he fell in love with a beautiful and wealthy debutante named Daisy Fay. However, since Gatsby wasn’t a member of the elite, wealthy class, the girl’s father forbade their marriage. So Jay enlisted in the Army and heroically went off to fight in WWI, hoping to be killed.
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A Chicago father has lost his child after a clash with the police. It’s not the first time, either. Earlier, he lost his son and the ghost of young Marcus continues to haunt and taunt him. Then three different strangers, all of whom look suspiciously alike, but in different clothes and with different accents, show up at his door. Each woman arrives offering advice and a huge cash settlement for Henri Mano’s loss. The city wants Mr. Mano to simply put aside his grief, take the check and then relocate somewhere else. If Henri chooses to remain in his home all the memories of his two children will continue to haunt him. In addition, the world that Eli, his young activist child, was trying hard to protect for future generations, will always be a reminder of the cash offer he shunned. This tense story about gender, money and resistance turns into a fierce battle between activism and capitalism.
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Hello friends. Are you tired, rundown, listless? Do you poop out at parties? Are you unpopular? The answer to all your problems is in this delightful two-act farce. Paraphrasing the familiar opening words of that hilarious Vitameatavegamin commercial sketch from “I Love Lucy” seems apropos. It brings to mind the special kind of gleeful, gut-busting romantic comedy that actor and playwright, Paul Slade Smith, incorporates into his latest side-splitting, screwball comedy, THE ANGEL NEXT DOOR. Like “I Love Lucy,” the play is a fast-paced entertainment that takes theatergoers away from their personal problems, as well as today’s taxing, troublesome world, and provides a witty, very funny story about theatre people.
Read MoreThere are more than two sides to every story in BOTH
Teatro Vista, Chicago’s largest professional Latine theater company, has premiered its first production as part of its new residency at Steppenwolf Theatre Company and they have come out swinging. Artistic Director Wendy Mateo and Executive Director Lorena Diza have taken Teatro Vista’s 35-year history of radical abundance and expanded it into this new residency at Steppenwolf, as well as an explosion of new works spanning multiple mediums and platforms including short films, podcasts, digital novels and video media. Part of that new production includes several short “prequels” to the play that can be watched on YouTube, which add to and deepen the tone and the world of the story.
BOTH, a new play by Paloma Nozicka and directed by Georgette Verdin is a sly, creepy and thoroughly entertaining take on grief, belonging, human connection, and truth. Don’t let those serious words fool you though, it’s also a ripping good yarn. Nozicka stars as Xochi, a woman staring down several catastrophic changes to her life: she’s pregnant with her boyfriend of only a year, has lost her twin brother Sebastian (Yona Moises Olivares) and is as disappointed in her family as they are in her. In an attempt to heal the family rift, she invites everyone to a private baby shower at her pristine lake house, the site of her brother’s disappearance. It doesn’t go as planned, in part because Sebastian shows up, after having been thought dead for over a year. The play bounces back and forth between two periods in time, both right before and sometime after Sebastian’s disappearance, giving Olivares and Nozicka the opportunity to play their characters at two very distinct stages in their lives.
Seeing Teatro Vista spread out and breathe in the resources that this new residency at Steppenwolf offers was a truly exciting experience. The set of BOTH, designed by Sotirios Livaditis, is a serene vacation home – draped in muted beiges and blues, with warm and inviting textures that make it feel like the audience is somehow looking through the fourth wall and into a private sanctuary. Costume designer Johan H. Gallardo used the same palette for the actors, creating a leisurely, elegant vibe that very clearly told the audience what the characters wanted to be feeling. That is, except for Nozicka’s Xochi, who, despite her blooming pregnancy, is clad in stark black, perhaps symbolizing the devasting truths that the other characters are all hiding from. Or perhaps, she took a page from Chekov’s Masha – she is mourning for her life – darkly funny, given how hugely pregnant she is. The pristine set and costumes juxtapose perfectly with the saturated, vibrant light design by Grano De Oro and the chilling sound design by Satya Chávez. While the set never changes, the light and sound create a cinematic effect, indicating by color which time the story is in – the past is a glowing gold, the transitional trauma is infused with nightmarish blues and reds and the present is a muted echo of both.
Nozicka’s Xochi is a sardonic, intelligent woman who has spent her life insisting on an adherence to the truth as a form of righteousness – after all, it’s been said to set you free. Her family are less committed to that freedom. In fact, the play is in many ways a narrative exploration of the question: Do you want to be happy? Or do you want to be right? This leads to the next question; can you make the ones you love happy by denying your own truth? In a classic “wise fool” moment, it is the steamrolled, well-intentioned Cynthia who suggests that truth can be a thing that we make, if we can only wish it into being hard enough.
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Highly Recommended
Reviewed by Alina C. Hevia
BOTH can be seen at Steppenwolf 1700 Theater, located at 1700 N. Halsted St.
June 4 – 29, April 11 – May 10. Wednesdays through Saturdays 7:30 p.m.; Sundays 3:00pm. Wednesdays – Pay-What-You-Will, all other days, $47.
Box Office: www.steppenwolf.org or call 312-335-1650
Email boxoffice@teatrovista.org for tickets
Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.
Shake, Rattle and Roll
Heartbreak Hotel
A form of theatre called the jukebox musical continues its popularity in America with two very different variations. There are the musicals that cobble together an original story around the songbook of a famous singer or pop/rock group. Think of AMERICAN IDIOT, with its score by the rock group, Green Day; or the mega popular ABBA musical, MAMMA MIA! Then there are the biographical jukebox musicals that weave songs from a pop, rock, soul or country/western group or star into a show, whose life the musical depicts. Examples include JERSEY BOYS (about the rise of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons), RING OF FIRE (detailing the life and career of Johnny Cash), AIN’T TOO PROUD (about the popularity of the Temptations) or BEAUTIFUL: THE CAROLE KING MUSICAL. These jukebox entertainments focus on the personal and professional struggles of the artists.
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Father of the Bride
The 1950’s has been called The Golden Age of television. Many of those black & white TV programs form the fond memories from my childhood. Besides some variety shows, the airwaves were dominated by situation comedies. All of these half-hour programs were G-rated stories, and each of them championed traditional family values, suburban life and strong community support. A few of them featured silly slapstick comedy, like the broad schtick once found in vaudeville. But the best-loved most humorous and heartwarming television programs included classics like “I Love Lucy,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,” “The Real McCoys,” “December Bride” and the quintessential family comedy, “Father Knows Best.”
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Private Lives
English playwright Noel Coward is best known for his finely fabricated craftsmanship. Coward’s sparkling, witty dialogue, his eccentric and memorable characters and his biting satire of the upper class elite is a pure delight. In this delicious theatrical confection, particularly as directed by Jeffrey Cass, the Artistic Director of BrightSide Theatre, PRIVATE LIVES is an elegant, delightfully droll and very sophisticated comedy. The story focuses on Elyot and Amanda, a divorced couple, who unexpectedly meet again in the south of France. The problem is that they’re each with their new spouses and on their honeymoons. Upon surprisingly confronting each other in the adjoining balconies of their hotel, Elyot and Amanda discover that they are still in love with each other. So naturally they do what anyone would do in this situation: they abandon their new partners and run off together to Paris.
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