Author Emily Mann’s Having Our Say: The Delany Sisters’ First 100 Years is a two-character series of reminiscences taking place entirely in one home, and in close to real time. Consequently, you might not expect the Timber Lake Playhouse’s latest to boast much in the way of technical showmanship. But the visual effect that occurs 30 minutes into director Chuck Smith’s irrepressibly jubilant production is a true stunner, and would no doubt stand as the show’s most magical element if the play were presented wholly free of actors.
Playwright Dan LeFranc's The Big Meal deserves every superlative I can, and will, use to praise it. The forward progression of his plot about the life of a couple from first meeting to final resting place is extraordinary, and Timber Lake Playhouse's production does it justice. This is a presentation that tickles the funny bone, pulls the heartstrings, and turns on the waterworks. It is, quite frankly, emotionally stunning.
Prior to last Thursday, I had seen 40 productions at Mt. Carroll's Timber Lake Playhouse, and somehow, during all those visits, I had never been there when it rained. Yet rain it did on Thursday, and it rained hard, and I couldn't imagine more fitting weather for the venue's opening-night performance of An Inspector Calls, an eerie, succulent psycho-drama (with laughs) that made the literal storm clouds a spectacular match for the figurative ones on-stage.
Based on the justly celebrated 1974 nonfiction by Studs Terkel, the musical Working is a two-act series of vignettes on the joys and frustrations of professional life, and the search for satisfaction in even the most mundane of careers. It's somewhat ironic, then, that in the Timber Lake Playhouse's current, wholly engaging, superbly performed production of the show, the most effective segment in it concerns a man who actually doesn't work for a living.
Peppy, cheeky, and somewhat unsatisfying - though in ways that are rarely the fault of its current Timber Lake Playhouse presentation - Flight of the Lawnchair Man boasts a friendly spirit, a number of witty and weird diversions, and a brisk running time, clocking in (with the intermission) at a mere 105 minutes. Yet for all of its strengths, and unlike its determined hero, this musical comedy never really takes off. Director Chuck Smith's production is ingeniously designed and energetically performed, but the show itself is a little bit You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown, a little bit The Wedding Singer, and a little bit Bat Boy, and about as stylistically awkward as that description implies.
There are nights during the run of a happily manic, door-slamming farce when everything seems to go magically right: The actors hit their marks exactly on cue, the dialogue lands with almost inhuman accuracy, and the set's many doors open and shut with razor-sharp precision. The audience, meanwhile, barely has time in between laughs to catch its collective breath.
