Leaving on a Jet Plane

2 Unfortunate 2 Travel – Prop Thtr

Seeking to escape the outcome of the Election that Shall Not Be Named, Jack takes off on a tour of the world. Returning with a diary full of his journeys, he turns the portrayal of his travels over a group of six women to bring the stories to life.

The show is not a linear story in the traditional sense. Instead, it is a mix of stories and scenes, mixed in with some games with audience members – some willing, some less so. The travelogue is a common story, both on and off stage, and the thread that binds these stories together is an exploration of the presumptions built into those kind of stories. What does it mean to have the resources to travel? Where is the line between learning about a new place and reducing it to a cliche, only there to be a stop on your “Eat, Pray, Love” journey? Judging a show like this can be a little challenging. The show functions as something closer to performance art than traditional theater. On the one hand, judging by the same rules as a traditional play isn’t really fair. But on the other, the whole show still has to find a way to hang together as a piece of entertainment.

In the plus column, the six women making up the storytellers are fantastic. In the mix of games with the audience, monologues, and performance pieces, all of the members of this ‘chorus’ sparkle. They handle a mix of story styles with ease, veering from monologue to 70s game show to a fairly complicated puppet show. My only issue is not with the cast members, but on their behalf. Without unduly spoiling anything, the cast doesn’t get bows. It may seem like a small thing, but this cast deserved applause to their faces.

My main complaint, and my main difficulty in reviewing this show is that while most of the individual pieces were very interesting and very well performed, there wasn’t really any connective tissue between the stories. There was no broader story the smaller ones contributed to. There was a broader point the show was trying to make, but by the end, it literally just reciting what that point was. I enjoyed the individual elements of the show, and I agree with it’s broader themes and its stated thesis, but the combined product fell flat for me. I appreciate that this is something closer to performance art than traditional theater, but that didn’t get me all the way to enjoying myself as much as I hoped I would. It’s not that theater can’t or shouldn’t be political, or be so aggressively. One of the things theater does best is hold a challenging mirror up to the society it is in. That said, I think theater does that job best when the dramatic and narrative elements are interwoven to help guide the audience to the point. Here, the narrative and the message feel like they are merely happening next to each other.

The self-stated point of the show is to explore the problem of people appointing themselves allies of marginalized groups and speaking over them as a result. Framing the show the way it does, though, the show ends up doing exactly that, by keeping the very talented cast anchored to Jack’s stories, and never really breaking free into their own. I understand the show is trying to skewer that narrative, but in practice, even if you are doing a thing to mock it, you are still doing that thing. A story that let this talented cast develop their own stories would have been more effective for me. That said, whatever my concerns about how the pieces fit together, the pieces themselves, and the cast performing them, are charming and talented. They alone are worth your time.

Recommended

Reviewed by Kevin Curran

Presented March 8 – April 15 at Prop Theater, 3502 N. Elston, Chicago.

Tickets are available at www.propthtr.org.

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