1512 West Studebaker Place
Phone: 866-811-4111
Price: $10-$15
brainsurgeontheater.org
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Prop Thtr
- Avondale 3502 N. Elston Ave.
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773-539-7838
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(based on 14 user reviews)
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1512 W. Studebaker Place is in its second week of performances at Prop Theater, on Elston. Written and developed by the Ensable at Brain Surgeon Theater, directed by Liz Ladach-Bark, with original music by Christopher Cole and Gwen Tulin, 1512 W. Studebaker Place portrays the plight of four families, some of them truncated, crowded together in a tenement during the Depression.
Threatened daily with eviction by their smarmy landlady, and trying to put a bright face on things for their children, they handle their desperation differently. Stanley Kelly, brightly performed by Buck Zachery, sees happiness inside every cloud. Pessimistic about finding a regular job, he is full of stories about the disappointments his friends have suffered standing in job lines. For him, rescue will come when he can find a backer for the line of children’s toys he tinkers with constantly, or maybe if he can succeed in breaking open a wall safe belonging to a former tenant. He deflects the escalating but worn anxiety his wife Olivia, played by Katie Canavan, nags him with occasionally, culminating on the edge of hysteria when she tells him she is having another baby.
Mim, played by Amy Gorelow, has retreated from the death of her husband into silence, punctuated occasionally by making music on an upright bass. Mim is courted by Clarence, played movingly by Rob Graboswki, who keeps the families from starving by his daily deliveries of meat, which he claims are leftover from the restaurant and bar he runs. Clarence admits to Mim, “I am not the best looking guy, nor the smartest; but I am a good man.” Mim holds him off, afraid to let anyone break through her shell.
Juliet, played despairingly by Laura Deger, is a lost soul, who confides in one of the children that she had a baby herself once, fathered by a lover who found someone else he liked better. Juliet gave up her baby to a “family who could love her and take care of her,” and spends her time as a bystander to the conflicts swirling through the household, playing the flute and sketching.
Walter Lummet, played by Jacob A. Ware, retreats from reality by writing and shunning his young son, played by 8-year old Ethan Baum. Writing is a “real job,” he says, disdainfully lashing out at Stanley for not being more aggressive in looking for a job, and belitting his foolish occupation with toy design. Ultimately, Lummet can’t stand the noise of the children running through the house, the piano playing by Olivia’s sister, and the noise of Stanley trying to break open the safe.
The various faces of despair reach inside you, and yet the play also evokes a connection with bizarre ways in which the human spirit shows its ultimate strength.
The set is stunning, effectively portraying five or six rooms of a crowded tenement on a very small stage. The period costumes work well. The music makes not only the cast, but also the audience, want to dance, and its themes and lyrics evoke the efforts of the hopeless nevertheless trying to have a few moments of fun.
This is well worth seeing. The first act borders on pedestrian, but it effectively sets things up for a moving and powerful second act.
Hank Perritt
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