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World Premiere
The Well-Appointed Room
At
Steppenwolf Theatre
(Steppenwolf Theatre Website)
1650 North Halsted Street
Chicago, Illinois 60614
312.335.1650
Martha Lavey: Artistic Director
David Hawkanson: Executive Director
By: Richard Greenberg
Starring:
Kate Arrington, Josh Charles, Tracy Letts, Amy Morton
Director: Terry Kinney
Scenic Design: Robert Brill
Costume Design: Laura Bauer
Lighting Design: James F. Ingalls
Composition and Sound Design: Rob Milburn & Michael Bodeen
Projection Design: Sage Marie Carter
Stage Manager: Robert H. Satterlee
Assistant Stage Manager: Michelle Medvin
Public Relations: William Nedved
Public Relations Associate: Jay Geneske
Susan Weinrebe
January 24, 2006
Tricky play this. The world premiere of Richard Greenberg’s two-act play, make that double play of single acts, slides back and forth in time, pitting reality against wishfulness. Placed in the pre, during, and post-September 11 framework, it is a disturbing parable with multi-layered meanings that leaves one with lots to discuss after the lights have gone down.
With usual Steppenwolf panache, the mid-century modern set creates the perfect milieu for the 50-something couple, Stewart and Natalie. He is an award-winning playwright and she is coolly blond and dressed to blend with the décor’s monochromatic color scheme.
Act I opens on a bright Sunday morning such as should be spent with omelets and mimosas in their clean, well-lit New York apartment. But something’s rotten in Eden. Natalie enters, wheeling a small black suitcase, and parks it center stage, like a smudge juxtaposed against the pristine flokati rug and creamy Eames chair. My eye kept returning to the baggage, abandoned but not entirely forgotten. It was the end point of a conflagratory color line leading to the window: first the bag, then an orange throw, on to an orange chair, and beyond the room to the Manhattan skyline. Or, maybe it was the other way around.
Was the ratio of orange juice to champagne off kilter? Before one could say “bagel,” Natalie and Stewart were leveling acid-tinged, rapid-fire repartee at each other, not really softened by a “Sweetie” after an ego-busting volley. The floor to ceiling wall of books and the literary allusions reminded us what a bright and heady couple this was. Like Albee’s George and Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, words were their weapons of choice.
At first, the audience laughed at the point, counter point of insulting remarks, maybe lulled by the civilized setting. But a wife telling her husband he’s irrelevant is a shot over the bow. She’s going for the soft vulnerable bits. And when Stewart tells her, “You’re a bad audience, Natalie, a second rate listener,” well, nothing good can come of that! As they say, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye – or a heart breaks.
Slouching toward a revealing climax, but no resolution, the audience was left to muse on the hard-wired gender differences between the sexes. Surely the playwright was not simply getting one over on men. Oh, that’s the reason they have a “y” chromosome, ‘cause they’re always asking, “Why?”
As a sleeper jolted awake from a lovely dream, Stewart is forced to confront the rose-colored nostalgia that so long had passed for his reality.
Act Two began, set against a projected New York night skyline. Mark and Gretchen meet at a bus shelter where they harbor from the rain. They are young and adorable. With joyous believability, Josh Charles and Kate Arrington play the part of a couple falling in love.
Through direct address, however, Mark warns, “...the story might be disturbing, but be assured, has a happy ending.” Uh oh. Wiving and thriving, Mark marries Gretchen, their fortunes and plans bloom, and, as fate and Greenberg have it, they move into the apartment we’d seen in the previous act.
It is a husk, empty and denuded of vitality, a place permeated by the ill fortunes of the previous tenants. As Gretchen peers out the window, she sees nothing where the Twin Towers would have stood. Walking into the night of the city, “…to make sure it’s still there,” Gretchen is like a haunt in a graveyard, seeking what? Her wanderings prove to be a portal to a world where time morphs into what one will.
Tracy Letts returns as a spoiler of happiness, the Devil, Mark says. Amy Morton reappears in the role of an old lady who wasted 50 years of her life in fearful reclusiveness. As Greenberg gives us these bitter witnesses, he manipulates the characters’ perceptions of time and challenges their thresholds for pain and recollection.
As with the artful play of lighting on the set, Greenberg has modulated the relativity of memory and happiness. For his characters, as for America, there is a demarcation between before and after. Where that line falls for each, however is the brilliance of The Well-Appointed Room.
As usual following a play, Steppenwolf Theatre invites the audience to take part in stimulating discussions with actors or staff. It is an opportunity to “go behind the scenes” and make the pleasure of a good night’s theater last just a bit longer
Josh Charles and Kate Arrington in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
Ensemble members Tracy Letts and Amy Morton in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
Ensemble member Amy Morton in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
Josh Charles in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
Josh Charles, Kate Arrington and ensemble member Tracy Letts in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
Kate Arrington and ensemble member Tracy Letts in "The Well-Appointed Room," by Richard Greenberg, directed by Steppenwolf co-founder Terry Kinney.
Photo courtesy of Michael Brosilow
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