Chicago audiences have forged a special bond with Greek tragedy in recent seasons with the chaos and fervor of those ancient foundational plays arriving with modern twists that illuminate rather than warp the originals. The latest example of just how brilliantly such an “update” can be realized is on view in The House Theatre of Chicago’s world premiere of Damon Kiely’s searing play with music, “The Revel.”
The show, directed with ritualistic fervor by Leslie Buxbaum Danzig, and performed with powerhouse physicality by a multi-talented cast, is an absolute stunner. Set in an Appalachian town during the Great Depression of the 1930s, Kiely gives us Greek tragedy (via Euripides’s “The Bacchae”) re-worked as a Bible Belt tale that explores the dual drives of human behavior. On one hand there’s the rational, work-oriented impulse essential for daily survival and order. On the other there is the wilder, more spiritually-driven impulse that craves some sense of connection to a higher power and the freedom and ecstasy (as well as the destruction) that can come from that.
Unbound from its Mount Olympus origins, and transplanted to the mines and factories of a town whose women find liberation in the message of a charismatic preacher, “The Revel” unspools as a fascinating lesson in how the pursuit of extremism in any direction can corrupt absolutely.
‘THE REVEL’
Highly recommended
When: Through Oct. 25
Where: The House Theatre of Chicago at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division
Tickets: $30 – $35
Info: (773) 769-3832; www.thehousetheatre.com
Run time: 1 hour and 40 minutes, with no intermission
The show is infused with a haunting, traditionally-rooted original score of hymns and ballads composed by Jess McIntosh (with lyrics by McIntosh and Kiely), and is beautifully sung by the actors — many of whom also play guitars, fiddles and the banjo. Additional fire comes as the chorus of women (in costume designer Izumi Inaba’s evocative homespun dresses) stomp up a storm by way of choreographer Barbara Silverman’s clog dances. The percussive sound of their feet echoes through the wooden boards and mountaintop stairways that form Grant Sabin’s dynamic, movable set. The sense of possession here is completely real.
It all begins with the arrival of Deacon (Andy Lutz, a winning mix of the seductive, the poetic and the dangerous), a young preacher with a Christlike spirit. Deacon finds a willing flock in the women of the town who have been oppressed by their husbands, and by their dreary textile factory jobs that are now in danger of disappearing as bankruptcy looms.
The widowed matriarch of the town, Agatha (Sarah Charipar in a performance of superbly varied emotional shifts), initially resists Deacon, holding fast to the ideas of her “founding family” and her beloved son, Peter (the aptly taut, driven and athletic Chris Mathews), who is hellbent on saving the factory from the banks.
But eventually, along with her daughter, Cadie (the feverish Christine Mayland Perkins), the long-suffering wife (played with searing emotion by Eunice Woods) of the town’s brutal law-and-order Sheriff (Michael E. Smith), and a “chorus” of wronged women (Jeanne T. Arrigo, Bridget Rue, Kamille Dawkins, Courtney Jones and Julia Merchant form an ideal ensemble), she joins these new “believers,” and climbs to a mountain sanctuary to be “reborn.”
That rebirth turns out to deliver only momentary happiness and freedom as the Deacon is arrested, and faith turns into catastrophic fanaticism of epic Biblical (and Greek) proportions.
In many ways a timely cautionary tale about how power (whether religious or political) can go amok, “The Revel” is sure to draw even the most resistant souls into its fearsome grip. And it joins a handful of other hugely impressive productions that have opened in the past couple of weeks that suggest this is going to be banner season for Chicago theater.
