The Importance of Being Earnest

Although translating a classic play into a new context can be as uninspired as a game of dress-up, Tipping Point Theatre’s exceptional take on The Importance of Being Earnest is no such production. Quite possibly the most famous play by timeless wit Oscar Wilde, this intentionally frivolous love story is made comic by its tangled introduction of pseudonym and mischief. As directed by Julia Glander, the current production is transported into another era in an interpretation that simultaneously honors the playwright’s purpose and exceeds the viewer’s expectations.

This incarnation is refashioned from the late nineteenth century text into a Roaring ‘20s splash of sublime excess and frippery, a choice that plugs directly into the play’s obsession with triviality. From scenic designer Monika Essen’s ornate art deco details to Quintessa Gallinat’s perpetually peppy sound design to the beautiful lines and smart seasonal coordination of Christianne Meyers’s costumes, the look and sound is pure Jazz Age decadence. The production is presented in two acts with a single intermission, and although the words are Wilde’s, the unique perspective is Glander’s. Her bold vision has the characters routinely shattering the fourth wall — in actuality, every wall, as the production is staged in the round — and directly engaging with the audience, providing a multitude of unexpected line readings and hilarious creative moments. Characters move dynamically on and around the circular playing area, a lighting challenge ably met by designer Joel Klain, and properties by Beth Duey broadcast opulence while maintaining a clean sparseness that suits the free-wheeling staging. The story of assumed identities and their attendant mixups sails through this fully realized filter, but the storytelling itself is no less deserving of attention here.

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The Mystery of Irma Vep

The conceit of The Mystery of Irma Vep is also its main selling point: two performers do the work of at least six, exiting the stage as one character and emerging moments later as another. At face value, the Tipping Point Theatre production directed by James R. Kuhl is a cavalcade of wild and often otherworldly scenarios engineered for maximum far-reaching parody and meta jokes. The drawback of playwright Charles Ludlam’s script is that it doesn’t aspire to anything deeper — the purpose of this sprinting two-act comedy seems to be sleight of hand for its own sake; yet without anything to mask, the effect is of an extended parlor trick, however amusing or adept.

The preeminent draw of this production is the duo of Brian P. Sage and Kevin Young, who collectively portray all half-dozen or so characters. With all the boisterousness of a door-slamming farce, the pair evokes the feel of a busy household amid a circus of quick changes — it’s telling that the run crew (Caitlyn Macuga, Natividad Salgado, and Katie Terpstra) is larger than the cast. Consistently at the fore of the production is gentle mockery of the restrictions and conventions of live theater as well as the monster-thriller genre, but Young and Sage double down with extravagant character work and playful give and take. Both have fun in male roles, Sage as the masculine hunter-adventurer and Young as a lecherous stable grunt, but they really shine with inelegant female characterizations — Sage’s housekeeper Jane plots and orchestrates with madly imperious resentment, and Young’s tittering Lady Enid is an encyclopedia of physical tics deployed with a kind of secret precision. Exhausting staging works best in a cavalcade of little flourishes outside the text, both self-referential and blindingly oblivious.

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Crimes of the Heart

Theater doesn’t always have to be challenging and demanding of its audience; sometimes, mere enjoyment will do. However, not all enjoyable plays are created equal: some wallow in baseness, no more than fluff, whereas others can be transcendent if given the right attention. Tipping Point Theatre demonstrates the artistic potential of the mainstream play in its splendid production of Beth Henley’s Crimes of the Heart. Here, Kate Peckham's meticulous direction and three knockout lead performances combine in a flawless tale of Southern sisterhood.

The Magrath sisters reunite in their granddaddy’s house in Hazlehurst, Mississippi, and seem determined to make the connection restorative, even in the face of dubious circumstances. Specifically, the occasion marks youngest sister Babe’s release from prison after admittedly wounding her state-senator husband via gunshot to the belly. In her role as the fragile but generous Babe, Maggie Meyer is deceptively aloof with her honesty and deftly unveils the real, worrisome troubles looming within the character. The news also summons home the furthest-flung of the sisters, Meg (Inga R. Wilson), an aspiring starlet whose magic singing voice proved to have more traction at home than in Hollywood. Here, Wilson revels in returning to this small pond a triumphant — albeit deceitful — big fish; unable to resist the temptation of past happiness, she perpetuates a vicious cycle of compensating for prior bad decisions by making new ones. But for all these choices blow up in their faces, Meg and Babe still feel like they’re better off than Lenny (Hallie B. Bard), who has assumed the mantle of caretaker to her ailing grandfather, wears her barrenness like an anvil, and can't seem to believe she deserves anything better. Bard takes this frumpy old-maid character, who asks little of others and expects even less, and gives her an active stake in the sisters’ relationship; the viewer is less inclined to pity her than to root for her strengthening backbone as Lenny draws purpose and fortitude from the unlikely source of her siblings.

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The Cocktail Hour

Tipping Point Theatre’s staging of The Cocktail Hour is a measured and refined take on playwright A.R. Gurney’s complex text. As directed by James R. Kuhl, this production is both skewering and self-effacing, its comically gifted cast seizing numerous opportunities for both laughter and introspection all under the umbrella of a uniquely autobiographical structure.

The play’s framework is deliberately, cleverly self-referential. John (Brian Sage) is a playwright who has written a play about his family, and he feels duty bound to get his father’s blessing before the script is produced. The play, John explains while standing in his parents’ living room, is about a playwright returning to his parents’ house to ask his father’s permission to produce the play he’s written about the family. In case the parallels weren’t easy enough to draw, the fictional play — constantly referenced, but sparingly read — is also entitled The Cocktail Hour. Gurney fully commits to the premise: every allusion to John’s play, from character motivations to huffy exits, is eventually borne out onstage.

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Proof

David Auburn’s Proof concerns math and mathematicians, but is better described as a play about the complexities of passion and unfathomable intelligence. Here, math may stand in for any pursuit that's demanding and precise and beautifully rewarding for those who pursue it enough. The play is also, in no small part, about human interaction, obligation, ownership, and mental illness. Director Suzi Regan helms a production well worthy of this dense, masterfully efficient script in a hard-hitting two hours at Tipping Point Theatre.

Fittingly, the story begins with guarded Catherine (Kate Peckham) and her father, storied math legend and University of Chicago professor Robert (Hugh Maguire), gingerly talking about the trappings of sanity. The conversation heaps on layers of context when the characters quickly reveal that Robert has recently died, having grappled with career-ending insanity for years under Catherine’s watchful care; the questions this interaction raises about her own mental state are not lost on either of them. Also within Catherine’s orbit are the alive and present Hal (Chris Korte), a young member of the math faculty warily permitted to scour Robert’s notebooks, and Claire (Kelly Komlen), her take-charge, put-together sister who swoops in from New York to remove Catherine from the dilapidated house of their childhood. The first act progresses in a linear fashion, before and then after the funeral, exposition spread thick in this slice-of-life approach that begins to twine the three living characters’ lives together. It’s all building toward a reveal changes the game entirely with one jaw-dropping utterance.

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