Up (The SOB Review)
Up (The SOB Review) – Downstairs Theatre, Steppenwolf, Chicago, Illinois***1/2 (out of ****)
Maybe it’s that the title is exactly the same as the current Disney/Pixar hit.
You know the one. The film out a pie-in-the-sky dreamer who yearns to be lifted from an ordinary life and uses balloons to take flight from the comfort of his own surroundings. Oh wait, that also neatly summarizes Bridget Carpenter’s stirring and tender Up as well. Funny though how dissimilar these two takes on the same essential theme can be.
After being lulled into a false sense that the only way is up during the first act, Carpenter’s emotionally satisfying play about a wide-eyed visionary named Walter Griffin (a remarkable Ian Barford) really takes off, even if against any predictable prevailing winds.
With Anna D. Shapiro’s marvelous direction providing appropriately measured ballast and pitch, Up is nothing short of a lofty, ambitious play about hope and capacity for discovery, including those of a decidedly introspective nature. And it works.
Years after Walter has succeeded in raising his personal stature by floating three miles high on his own lawn chair, he continues -- perhaps vainly -- in pursuit of the next big thing. He remains undaunted, even as others beat him to the punch.
But there’s a cost to these ongoing pipedreams. Patience is wearing thin at home.
His desperate non-house wife Helen (a beautifully raw Lauren Katz) is tiring of being the lone family breadwinner and implores Walter to go out and find a real job, even if it means giving up on his dreams. Their emotionally awkward high school son Mikey (a brilliant Jake Cohen) believes so strongly in his father that he lacks any faith in his own capabilities.
That is, until he meets Maria, a chatty pregnant classmate (the tremendously talented Rachel Brosnahan), who not becomes his first real friend, but also provides him with an introduction to a new self-awareness wakened by her free-spirited Aunt Chris (Martha Lavey in one of her two deliciously funny roles from each end of an amazingly wide spectrum).
There is so much to recommend this heartfelt production. However, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that the penultimate scene was what ultimately had my trio of friends and I arguing long and hard afterward about what had just transpired and all it symbolized.
Far be it from me to even allude to what we discussed, but our strikingly disparate conclusions and our eagerness to vociferously debate points to the true genius in Carpenter’s brilliant writing. There aren’t many shows I experience where I’m passionately discussing it long after.
But Carpenter’s work, inspired by true events, is nothing short of inspirational.
This is Steve On Broadway (SOB).
Labels: Anna D Shapiro, Bridget Carpenter, Chicago, Ian Barford, Jake Cohen, Lauren Katz, Martha Lavey, Play, Rachel Bresnahan, Steppenwolf, The SOB Review, Up
posted by Steve On Broadway (SOB) @ Friday, July 03, 2009
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