Dance Dance Revolution

American Revolution – Theater Unspeakable

Premiering last week at the Greenhouse Theater Center, Theater Unspeakable’s American Revolution is show that uses seven actors on a raised 3′ x 7′ platform, using movement and body shapes to tell the story of the American Revolution. The show was originally produced in Chicago in 2014 and returns after tours in numerous regional and children’s theaters, though this production is not being market as specifically for kids. The seven actors use only their bodies and voices and movements to simulate actions and locations. Actors bend and join arms to form the desk that Washington’s commander dispatches orders from. One actor’s torso and another’s legs form the infantile, but curiously flexible, King George III. The most impressive elements for me were the slow-motion coordinated body movements and sounds (also made exclusively by the cast) to simulate battle sequences. That all said, the first question I had when I walked into the show is whether the small raised platform would end up feeling like a gimmick. I think it cleared that bar, but not by a lot. Anytime a story is adapted to a new medium or mode of storytelling, what I really look for is how the story not just uses, but takes advantage of the new medium. I don’t think the show does so here. A few of the tableau created by the cast impressed me or made me chuckle, but overall, I just didn’t think the choice of movement as medium was really joined to the story, rather than just happening next to it.

The story itself is also pretty thin. The show bills itself as a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ look at the American Revolution. The story we get is a pretty rote run down of the major events of the American Revolution. There are a few moments, like Washington’s role in the French and Indian War and it’s domino effect on colonial politics, and a few mentions of the Iroquois position on the war that may not be immediately known to the average theatergoer, but it doesn’t stay in any of those moments long enough to give them any depth. The bulk of the show is spent rapidly ticking the boxes between the Boston Tea Party and Yorktown. The problem inherent in that approach is that most people know some, if not most, of those events, and telling the audience you are going down the list just makes the audience expect the items on the list before they get there. I’ll say it this way: I found myself checking my watch more often in this fifty minute show than I have in two and a half hour plus shows.

The show even had an opportunity to portray a character normally omitted from retellings of the revolution, even from Hamilton: Baron von Steuben, the German general credited with turning the ragtag group of citizen soldiers into a real fighting force. The show goes for the standard shouty, Teutonic taskmaster in its portrayal, skipping over the fact that, apparently, von Steuben was an unrepentant homosexual. In the 1770s. (A delightful primer can be found here.) I suppose the family friendly fare would exclude stories about Von Steuben hosting naked cocktail parties for his recruits, but for a show that is billing itself as a deeper cut on a piece of American history, it felt like a pulled punch.

The show also attempts to add some moral complexity by having the actor portraying Washington transition at points to one of his slaves, asking for freedom in exchange for his service. It’s certainly valid to point out the rhetorical hypocrisy at the core of our nation’s founding, but the show doesn’t do more than that. The show even gives Washington a kind of absolution by deeming Washington, and the nation, ‘imperfect, but good.’ It acknowledges the contradiction at the core of America’s self-image, but doesn’t do more than acknowledge its mere existence. It’s another pulled punch.

I’m ultimately giving this show a Not Recommended, but I do feel a little bad about that. In the end, the cast is talented and funny. They are clearly committed to this performance, but in the end, I remain uncertain as to who this performance is for. The take on the story doesn’t really go as deep as it thinks it does and the mode of presentation, while novel and well realized for what it is, it never quite surmounts the hurdle of “Why?” Nothing in the story really required or benefited from the movement aspect or the constraint of the small stage. The short run time and topic support its popularity with family theater, but with a ticket price almost double its 2014 run at Adventure Stage Chicago, it’s appeal as family fare is a little blunted. This is a very talented group, and I think this style of storytelling has a lot of potential. I just think it would be better served in a new story that needed this medium, rather than a story that is incidentally joined to it.

Not Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

 

Presented October 17-November 11 by Theater Unspeakable at Greenhouse Theater Center, at 2257 N. Lincoln, Chicago.

Tickets are available at the box office, by calling 773-404-7336 or by going to www.greenhousetheater.org.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found at www.theatreinchicago.com.