Editor’s Note: Read the related story, “Stage 773 News: Preview of TALL BOY, a Timely Child Refugee Story"
How we speak English – our accent and vocabulary– depends heavily on how and when we learned it. THE TALL BOY, a solo show adapted by Simon Bent from Kay Boyle’s The Lost, examines this in an unlikely setting: a displaced children’s orphanage in post-World War II Germany.
Jeff Landsman & Artistic New Directions produced THE TALL BOY. Actor Tandy Cronyn, who commissioned the piece from Bent, takes on the accents and vocabularies of various English speakers. Through the lens of the orphanage’s American matron, we meet three boys from different European countries. Besides losing their families in the war, the boys have something else in common. Each was adopted as a mascot by GIs and traveled for several years in the U.S. soldiers’ respective infantry units. In the show’s brief run at Stage 773, Cronyn evokes this obscure aftermath of World War II.
Tandy Cronyn shifts characters, ages and accents
Cronyn plays the matron, known only as Missus, as a no-nonsense administrator but also as a childless woman bewildered by problems for which she has no experience. For example, the facility has boots for Polish girls who arrive without decent footwear. But what good does that do when the girls’ feet are in such bad shape that they can’t wear them?
What confounds the matron more are the boys who show up in cut-down U.S. military uniforms that they don’t want to exchange for fresh clothing. They cling just as stubbornly to their acquired identities as American soldiers, speaking English with accents that reflect the GIs who took them under their wings,rather than their native tongues. Cronyn shifts from the Czech 15-year-old who learned English from a black Southerner, to a 14-year-old Pole who speaks like a Damon Runyan New Yorker, to a 12-year-old from Anzio, Italy who’s still a child at heart.
THE TALL BOY’s yearning for reunion
For this viewer, THE TALL BOY doesn’t take shape until halfway through its 65-minute length. The script doesn’t specify much about Missus beyond her role at the orphanage and Cronyn’s characterization conveys little about her interior life. What finally infuses the show with urgency is the Czech boy’s overwhelming desire to reunite with Charlie, the black GI who taught him auto mechanics. Finally, when Missus explains that the white refugee can’t live with Charlie in his Southern hometown because of America’s “color question,” the small stage fills with emotion. Racism, as well as language, depends on how and when we learned it.
SOMEWHAT RECOMMENDED
Cast:
Tandy Cronyn
Production:
Simon Bent (Playwright), David Hammond (Director), Ian Felker (Lights & Sound), Kathryn Rohe (Costumer Design), Sarah West (Stage Manager)
When:
Now December 15, 2019
Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.
Fridays at 8 p.m.
Saturdays at 3 and 8 p.m. and
Sundays at 3 p.m.
Where:
Stage 773
1225 W. Belmont Ave.
Tickets:
$35+
For full price tickets and information, go to Stage773 website or call 773.327.5252
Check for Half-Price Deals from Hot Tix:
Photos by Trix Rosen and Justin Curtin
Note: Picture This Post reviews are excerpted by Theatre in Chicago
About the Author
Susan Lieberman is a Jeff-winning playwright, journalist, teacher and script consultant who commits most of her waking hours to Chicago theatre. Her radio drama In the Shadows aired on BBC Radio 4 last season.
Editor's Note: Click here to find more Picture This Post reviews by Susan Lieberman
