Review by Paige Listerud | Chicago Theatre Blog

A little miracle is taking place at the Greenhouse Theatre Center - Eclipse Theatre is brilliantly executing a late and oft misunderstood play by Arthur Miller . Don't be deceived by the primitive set, the rather flat proscenium space or relatively low production values. Director Nathaniel Swift's vision for Miller's only satire works around all these shortcomings. Even the monochromatic set design (Steph Charaska ), whose cheesy faux rocks look like they came off the set of the original Star Trek, become imbued with a kind of poetry, as do the silent, dancing Cuentistas (Jazmin Corona, N. K. Gutierrez, and Lizbeth Silva) who pull double-duty pushing the set pieces between scenes.

With the exception of Jesus geeks, so much about Resurrection Blues could be lost upon the audience—as its 2006 premier in London demonstrates, review after review. By all accounts its unveiling at the Old Vic, under the artistic direction of Kevin Spacey and its director, Robert Altman, was an epic fail. What a difference a great or even good production makes for a play's reception. Michael Billington, critic at The Guardian, who had seen a 2002 production in Minneapolis, calls Resurrection Blues "sparky and neo-Shavian," sighting predominant problems with Altman's direction.

However, Paul Taylor of The Independent, upon seeing the same production, surmises that "Miller did not have a natural gift for freewheeling satire;" Kate Bassett, in an earlier Independent review calls Miller's satire "embarrassingly feeble;" and Jeremy Austin of The Stage calls Resurrection Blues a "lumbering, rambling half-finished effort," speculating that the man problems of one character represents "Miller's own impotence in the final years of his life."

Well, they can all sit down to a big plate of crow. Impotent? Feeble? Lumbering? No. This is an American master at the top of his game. Of course, it is not The Crucible. Arthur Miller wrote The Crucible 50 years before; he didn't need to write another. Resurrection Blues is a satire that shares similar themes on religious zealotry, the political or social desperation that leads to either scapegoating or revolution or suicide. Mixed with a soupcon of rampant, hypocritical commercialism; magnified exponentially by reality-show culture; put on steroids; shaken, not stirred - that's' precisely how Swift and his cast play it.

Indeed, there were moments when I questioned whether I could keep up with Miller's tenaciously mercurial wit or Eclipse's exactingly fast pace. For those feeling up to it, this show will make them feel the burn—and maybe just a little glow afterwards.

No review could possibly do all the performances justice. Let's just say Nina O'Keefe as Jeanine, the wheelchair-bound, disillusioned Marxist, starts everyone off with an incredible warm-up. "I failed as a revolutionary and as a dope addict," she says. She also fails at suicide–although that actually turns out to be a good thing. If fact, maybe even her attempt at suicide wasn't such a bad thing either—especially since, after leaping from her window, Jeanine starts living each passing moment with passionate intensity. At the pavement she meets with the mysterious healing stranger at the heart of Resurrection Blues. He is nothing less than a spiritual revolutionary, whose mystical powers generate more political upset than any Uzi-packing militia.

Attempted suicide as religious experience - that's only the beginning of Miller's tasty treats. O'Keefe knows very well the poetic power of Miller's dialogue. Her concentration never relents.

Want another little taste? There's Henri Schulz (Ron Butts), Jeanine's philosopher father, a Hamlet-like intellectual if ever there was. Butts plays a man too overeducated for his poor country's good . . . or his family's good . . . or his own good. He portrays Schulz with just the right balance of pompous erudition and guilty, compromised, liberal befuddlement. Especially in his homeland, an anonymous third world country, all he can be is compromised. His extreme privilege, philosophical bent, and vacillating social consciousness reduce him to being the ultimate fish out of water. He returns home only to repair his relationship with his daughter, the suicidal revolutionary. So he tells his cousin, the country's frenetic dictator, General Felix Barriaux (Matt Welton)—the character with the man problem.

As for impotence, it's not just in generalissimo's dick, but also in his administration. Nothing much can be done, not even ruthlessly, in an impossible country, where even good plans go to rot with corruption, betrayal and backwardness far before their completion. Welton plays Barriaux with all the manic chagrin and desperation of a tyrant who will bring order by any means necessary, even when he admits it probably won't stop their downward slide in the face of globalization.

But he still has one small trick up his sleeve: the capture and crucifixion of Jeanine's mysteriously powerful and dangerously inspiring stranger. And he has sold the exclusive television rights to it to an American network. Millions can be gained, for sorely needed development, at the cost of one spiritually endowed freak. For the sake of the nation, this Jesus must die.

Here's where the "Miller-can't-do-satire" thing gets exposed for what it is. Miller guides a character down one road; the character turns tail and runs down another. Just when you think you've got the play figured out, it turns into another sort of play. It may all be too much to keep up with, but you'd better keep up or you'll miss the laughs.

Some of the best laughs occur at the expense of the facile and fecklessness Americans who arrive to shoot the crucifixion. Chief among savaged American prototypes is Skip Cheeseboro (Joe McCauley), the TV producer. His business school mentality can't be bothered with Schulz's philosophical quandaries over going through with it. Yet, he's sharp enough to wield every ounce of industry doublespeak and faux multicultural appreciation in the service of securing the gruesome spectacle for his network. "But, realistically," says Skip to his startled director, Emily Shapiro (Rebecca Prescott), who presumes that she came to shoot a commercial, "who am I to be disgusted?" McCauley's cold and slippery performance make us doubt that he ever could be.

At least there's lots of warmth and play in Prescott's slightly ditzy director, Emily, whose distaste for the crucifixion gamely leads her to attempt seduction of the smitten General Barriaux. JP Pierson shows us some good, old, hippy practicality in his portrayal of Stanley. Stanley's interrogation by General Barriaux shapes up to being an odd couple encounter of the oddest kind.

Stanley's the BFF of the present-day Messiah, a miraculous, sensitive misfit who goes by the name of Ralph or Charlie or whatever he's feeling that day. In fact Pierson's performance holds a critical center in the last 15 minutes of the last scene of the play. On the industry night when I saw Resurrection Blues, this was the moment when the cast's prodigious pace, maintained with accuracy and aplomb throughout, began to drag and lose momentum. It's a bear of a closing scene, in which each character reveals the hypocrisy or authenticity of their motives for wanting Ralph, or Charlie, to stay and be crucified or to freely go. It has to be artificial enough to maintain the even feel of Miller's satire, but also natural enough to evoke the spontaneity with which each character addresses their uncertain savior. Such things can be worked out in the middle of production, yet still exact crucial tests on a cast's concentration.

Miller's morality tale gets to have it all–worldly cynicism and the possibility of real love, truth told to power and power confessing its own grasping frailties, rage unleashed against stupefying oppression and holy relief from desiccating anger, overwhelming doubt and unyielding faith, and miracles, miracles in the most impossible places–especially in the most impossible places. Would that Miller had lived 50 years more to write comedies of this quality for every tragedy he gave us. We need him now more than ever.

Link: http://chicagotheaterblog.com/2010/04/09/review-resurrection-blues-eclipse-theatre/

"Resurrection Blues" was Arthur Miller's next-to-last play before his death in 2005 and, reportedly, the playwright had been tinkering with it right up until the end. I can believe that.

Miller's contemporary tale is set in an unnamed Latin American republic in which political insurgency is brewing, thanks largely to a sermon-spouting figure (here amusingly christened Ralph) whom the locals swear can walk through walls and light up like a giant Christmas tree. (We, the audience, never see Ralph, but are, along with the characters in the play, periodically subject to his incandescent glory, a stage effect warmly evoked by Chris Corwin's dramatic lighting design.) The ruler of this republic, a dictator suffering from erectile dysfunction ("resurrection" blues, get it?), thinks he can squash the uprising by crucifying (literally) this mettlesome messiah. And when an American pharmaceutical conglomerate pays $75 million for the exclusive rights to broadcast the crucifixion, within which it will plug "dignified" advertising spots for everything from athlete's foot to underarm deodorant, the general dreams of the financial boon to his third-world country that will underwrite everything from plumbing to clean drinking water to accessible dentistry for the nation's hard-working prostitutes.

If this sounds like an enjoyable acid-tongued critique of the media and consumerism, that's because it is. If it sounds like a modern-day parable concerned with religion, faith, politics and morality, that's because it's also that. Not surprisingly then, the tone of the piece fluctuates—oftentimes erratically—between the extremes of satire and melodrama, its characters presenting themselves one moment as intellectual philosophers propounding the kinds of big ideas for which Miller is famous, and the next as comic buffoons cracking a lame joke that wouldn't be out of place on a television sitcom. If you know Miller's broad output, it's as if the author here is stylistically struggling to reconcile his younger and older self - the allegorical and dogged social activist younger Miller of "The Crucible," "Death of a Salesman" and "All My Sons" versus the experimental and morally equivocal older Miller of "Mr. Peters' Connections" and "The Ride Down Mt. Morgan." Eclipse Theatre Company, which is presenting this Chicago premiere under the direction of artistic director Nathaniel Swift, follows the mission of "one playwright—one season," and it's my bet that the immersion into a single writer's canon has helped them realize where "Resurrection Blues" lands on that trajectory, how it thematically revisits many of the issues Miller had been dealing with all of his life, and therefore why it's jam-packed with so many seemingly contradictory ideas and ambiguities.

Ultimately, the most admirable (and to some, maddening) aspect of "Resurrection Blues" is that it can be read as pro- or anti-religion. It may be taken as a celebration or a condemnation of capitalism. Or as a justification for, or indictment of, the morally questionable sacrifices made at the expense of the individual for the sake of the greater whole. The play never makes clear what the Messiah-as-human-Christmas-tree visual phenomenon is, if it's anything at all (A vision of Christ? A trick of the imagination? A sunset on the horizon?). There's a post-9/11 indictment against countries rushing to war under false pretenses. There's the chance some viewers may recognize the small case to be made for foreign intervention as a catalyst for something better. This will inevitably annoy and confound those audience members who want answers from their plays and who wish to leave the theater with a tidy message, and yet this is exactly what makes Millers penultimate play so playfully engaging and yet intellectually stimulating.

Swift recognizes this. So do his smart and hard-working actors. They commit themselves with abandon to whatever playing style the scene calls for, and yet seem to have an overall understanding of the many ideas that crowd "Resurrection Blues." To be fair, I think the actors are at their best with the play's naturalistic aspect—there are some scenes that really pack an emotional and intellectual wallop. But they'll need a few more performances before hopefully nailing the play's satirical demands. Nonetheless, this is a focused, funny and intellectually engaging staging content to remain as ambiguous in its meaning(s) as Miller's script is, and one that thankfully doesn't sully the author's well-earned and posthumous reputation.

Link: http://newcitystage.com/2010/04/05/resurrection-blueseclipse-theatre-company/

Chicago premiere of Arthur Miller's "tragic farce" is not the Miller you might expect.

Kudos to Nathaniel Swift and the folks at Eclipse Theatre for the determination to present Arthur Miller's extreme tragic farce, Resurrection Blues. They battled the Miller estate for the Chicago rights and they finally were able to mount this most un-Miller like work. Miller's 2002 penultimate play brilliantly satirizes modern politics and faith in a media-obsessed society. This is whacked-out satire that contains both Miller's wonderful dialogue and apt speeches and, a rarely used farcical satirical style each used to hone in to make Miller's duality– "hope and disgust, high amusement and despair. It's all packed into one play."

Featuring a buffoon dictator, General Felix Barriaux (the delightfully zany Matt Welton) and his cousin/philosopher Henri Schultz (the droll Ron Butts in a standout performance), Resurrection Blues is the satirical farce about modern politics, faith and contemporary media-obsessed society. Miller's work blends wacky, over-the-top performances ( especially by Welton's Flex) and biting satire with emotional resonance together with thickly complicated observations on ideas and social philosophy.

Miller's scathing attack on the media and his assessment of the power of religious symbols work to mirror contemporary trends. Miller lands his themes and commentary with colorful characters and absurd situations. The cast featured fine work from Rebecca Prescott (Emily Sharpiro), JP Pierson (Stanley) and Joe McCauley (Skip L. Cheeseboro) in addition to the terrific work from Welton and Butts.

Resurrection Blues is a treat for Arthur Miller enthusiasts as well as lovers of social satire comedies. Miller's ideas about the effects of faith are scary. This rarely produced tragic farce is another triumph for Eclipse Theatre in their season of Arthur Miller. Be prepared to see another side of the legendary American playwright.

Recommended

Link: http://chicagocritic.com/resurrection-blues/