FAKE
At
Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company
(Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company Website)
1650 North Halsted Street
Chicago, Illinois 60614
312.335.1650

Written and Directed by
Eric Simonson

September 10 to November 8, 2009

Martha Lavey: Artistic Director
David Hawkanson: Executive Director

Featuring:
Kate Arrington: Rebecca Eastman/Katarina Meras
Francis Guinan: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle/Jonathan Cole
Alan Wilder: Arthur Woodward/Paul Moody
Coburn Goss: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin/Doug Arnt/Voice of Sherlock Holmes
Larry Yando: Charles Dawson/Henry Billings/Voice of Dr. Watson
and BBC Radio Announcer


Todd Rosenthal: Scenic Design
Karin Kopischke: Costume Design
Joe Appelt: Lighting Design
Barry G. Funder burg: Sound and Music Design
Rebecca Ann Rugg: Dramaturg
CecilieO’Reilly: Dialect Coach
Michelle Medvin: Stage Manager
Kathleen E. Petroziello: Assistant Stage Manager
David Rosenberg: Press Representative

Susan Weinrebe
October 11, 2009

Fake! Such a harsh, yet fitting word when exposing a hoax and pitting science, religion, history and faith against what one thinks. Steppenwolf Theatre’s time-bending production, Fake, opens the 2009-2010 season with this first of five plays centering on belief as their theme.

It is 1914 and we join the assembled cast of five in the castle-like manor home of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Each of the players is loosely connected with one another through their associations with Piltdown Man, a sensational anthropological discovery, supposedly bridging the development of apes and modern man. Much later after the tumult surrounding the find abates, it is revealed to have been an elaborate trick.

Brilliantly conceived, the soaring brick work of Sir Arthur’s library evokes the fustiness of Victoriana. Recall dimly lit halls in natural history museums, each room crammed with the stuffed or skeletonized remains of collected specimens, displayed in ponderous oak-framed cases. Jars of pickled beasts, decanters, candles, weapons, and artifacts litter every possible surface of the set, demonstrating Victorian society’s thirst for exploration, acquisition and ornamentation, not necessarily in that order.

It is against this atmospheric backdrop, which could easily be recycled for a vampire piece, that the host author, two chums, a priest, and an investigative reporter begin to hash out the veracity of the Piltdown discovery. The audience awaits the great “reveal” much like the denouement in many an English mystery when all is duly explained to the assembled suspects. In fact, that’s not too far from what actually happens by play’s end.

In between, the plot slides forward in time to 1953 where, in double-cast roles the actors play out other characters, who are also testing their beliefs and loyalties against scientific facts. The allure of suspending belief and yielding blindly to faith proves to be a seductive hook. Just as a gun introduced early in a mystery will eventually be used, here the same applies to a beautiful woman.

Kate Arrington portrays an investigative reporter, who brashly inserts herself into the midst of the men, who by plan or chance are enmeshed in the Piltdown controversy. Using any wiles that will fit her purpose, she excavates through layers of clues to uncover the perpetrator(s) of the hoax. Unfortunately, some of her dialog, which included what seemed to be completely modern-day swearing, didn’t ring true.

Just shy of caricature, and this is meant in the best possible way, Francis Guinan completely captured the very portrait of the very English Englishman, Conan Doyle, as he had previously, in Kafka on the Shore, embodied the corporate product trademarks of Johnnie Walker and Colonel Sanders. Riveting in his two very different parts, Doyle and the professorial Jonathan Cole, this big actor could gobble up the others on stage, if they were not so perfectly balanced, in their own powers.

Double casting the five actors neatly showed the audience the quality of this ensemble. Quick changes of clothing and even small differences like hair combs let them slip into their other characters and underscore common threads of motives and behavior across time. And as one individual observed in the discussion after the play, this let the audience observe “ten” players testing their beliefs. After all, as Fake demonstrates, it is only when beliefs are tested that real faith can exist.

Francis Guinan with Coburn Goss in
Steppenwolf Theatre Company's "Fake"
Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

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Kate Arrington with Coburn Goss in
Steppenwolf Theatre Company's "Fake"
Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

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Kate Arrington in
Steppenwolf Theatre Company's "Fake"
Courtesy of Michael Brosilow

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For more information, contact Dr. Roberta E. Zlokower at zlokower@bestweb.net