No fan of chain luxury hotels, this sometimes travel writer will now always channel memories of playwright Amelia Roper’s ZÜRICH the minute we open another hotel room door .
You watch all the action in ZÜRICH from the other side of what is imagined so expertly by Scenic Designer Jeffrey D. Kmiec as a window wall on a high rise. If you’ve traveled a lot you too will likely turn to ask your fellow traveler and theater-goer whether it is most like that hotel you stayed at in Hong Kong, or was it just that budget one in Chillicothe, Ohio. More vanilla than vanilla, it totally lacks a sense of place, despite the play name. Kmiec even found the most non-descript blah of abstract wall art in hues of tans and gray to hang over the bed, that seems to say “If you want personality, go some place else.”
On the other side of the glass are hotel guests living out their story in these identical bland designed sterile rooms. Actually, it’s the same room, just different people in scene changes effected with Guantanamo-style disorienting flashing lights, (Lighting Designer: Becca Jeffords). For the entire play you watch the action from the other side of the glass, as if the stage is an aquarium and the actors are fish of different stripes.
This aquarium though, has made the mistake of mixing the killer fish in with the less predatory ones—something you learn never to do in Pet Store 101 fish buying lessons. There’s some kind of convention going on in this hotel where nefarious happenings are bubbling not so far below the surface. We hear of arms dealers there who are called defense contractors in the same way that garbage men are now called sanitation engineers. Some of the hotel guests we meet are there for this convention and somehow linked to this unnamed evil. Others are out to stop it. This fish bowl is perhaps a microcosm of our world. One woman does help place the action in the real Switzerland because she is the granddaughter of Holocaust victims trying to wrest the family fortune from history’s robbery. And, a few of the characters we meet could be anywhere—especially the children who are bored out of their gourd and whose imaginative ways of licking the window walls or stacking bottles from the mini-bar into sculptures help remind us of the hotel setting in laugh-evoking gestures (Director: Brad DeFabo Akin).
Expect the Superlative Acting of the Steep Theatre Standard
In this reviewer’s opinion, these young actors—Maya Lou Hlava, Cole Keriazakos and Julia Dale—give excellent performances. They, like the young actors in the currently running production of Caroline, or Change, truly astound with their budding talent. Longtime Chicago theater goers who used to make allowances for child actors whom we often celebrated simply if they could remember their lines should pinch themselves at our current good fortune.
The entire cast is excellent, as this writer and many expect of any Steep production. Here though, some of the actors inhabit characters drawn by Roper’s pen that are likely unlike anyone you have known before and they pull it off masterfully. One of the beauties of this script is in seamlessly mingling these totally quirky offbeat characters with everyday ones.
And, like many a Steep production, detailing the plot turns is totally the stuff of spoilers that this reviewer will not include. Suffice it to say that the surprise starts the moment of de facto curtain rise when the lights come on in this fish bowl and the acts so foul begin to unfold.
RECOMMENDED
Note: This is now added to the Picture this Post round up of BEST PLAYS IN CHICAGO, where it will remain until the end of the run. Click here to read — Top Picks for Theater in Chicago NOW – Chicago Plays PICTURE THIS POST Loves.
Playwright: Amelia Roper
CAST:
Debo Balogun
Julia Dale
Valerie Gorman
Maya Lou Hlava
Paula Hlava
Cole Keriazakos
Jeff Kurysz
Cindy Marker*
Brandon Rivera*
Sasha Smith*
Elizabeth Wigley
When:
Thru November 10
Thrsday, Friday, and Saturday nights at 8pm
Sunday matinees at 3pm on October 14, 21, and 28
The performance on Saturday, November 3 will be at 3:00pm
Where:
Steep Theatre
1115 West Berwyn Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Director – Brad DeFabo Akin*
Stage Manager – Lauren Lassus*
Set Designer – Jeff Kmiec
Lighting Designer – Becca Jeffords
Sound Designer – Thomas Dixon*
Costume Designer – Izumi Inaba
Props Designer – Kevin Rolfs
Dialect Coach – Adam Goldstein
Intimacy Director – Sarah Scanlon
Fight Director and Assistant Intimacy Director – Gaby Labotka
Production Manager – Catherine Allen**
Assistant Director – AJ Schwartz
Assistant Stage Manager – Serena Dully
Tickets:
$27+ (Discounts for Students, artists and more available)
For tickets call 773) 649-3186 or visit the Steep Theatre website.
Photos: Gregg Gilman and Lee Miller
Note: Picture This Post reviews are excerpted by Theatre in Chicago
About the Author: Amy Munice
Amy Munice is Editor-in-Chief and Co-Publisher of Picture This Post. She covers books, dance, film, theater, music, museums and travel. Prior to founding Picture This Post, Amy was a freelance writer and global PR specialist for decades—writing and ghostwriting thousands of articles and promotional communications on a wide range of technical and not-so-technical topics.
