LUDIC LOG

Friday found me at A Red Orchid Theatre for a production of Mr. Kolpert. That Chicago is one of the best, if not the best, cities in America for live theatre is one of its selling points when I big up my city, but never having had any particular passion for the medium, I don't get to plays as often as I should. Indeed, tonight was no exception: I was there because a friend of a friend was one of the leads. However, the experience served to remind me of how much I'm missing.

The plot of Mr. Kolpert is simplicity itself; the one-acter, set in the dining room of a small city flat, concerns itself with a bored couple who invite a co-worker and her wife over for an evening's entertainment. They almost immediately reveal that they've murdered a Mr. Kolpert, from the accounting department, and a bizarre cat-and-mouse game begins, with the evening degenerating ever further. It's a German play, originally by David Gieselmann -- very German indeed, one could say. Many of the reviews have compared its murderous baiting and fiendish cleverness to Hitchcock's Rope, but in fact it recalls nothing so much as Peter Handke and the other German existentialists: at its core is the basic template of Handke's despairing genius, the story of a bored and untethered individual who turns to random senseless murder in an access of emotion, in an attempt to feel.

The translation, however, is by Davind Tushingham, and is uncharacteristic of Handke-esque German existentialism by dint of its nasty sense of humor: the script is extraordinarily witty and sharp, and despite the subject matter, is never blanketed in the empty despair that one would find in an equatable European product. How much it was altered in the translation I have no idea, but whatever the source of the subtle black comedy, the viewer is glad for it: no matter how awful things get on stage (and they get quite awful indeed; following Tom Stoppard's dictate that "things have gone as far as they can possibly go when they have gotten as bad as they can possibly get", the end of the play sees as many dead people on stage as live ones), it never loses its sharp wit and clever interplay of dialogue.

Assisting this enormously is a talented cast who seem quite at home with the material; Michael Shannon, in the lead role, is tremendous, subtle and scornful with just the proper amount of world-weary amusement, and Jane Baxter-Miller, as his girlfriend, teeters nicely on the edge of hysteria, a sort of controlled, polite insanity evident through her whole performance. Also excellent is Lawrence Grimm as the prudish, angry, moralistic and rage-filled Bastien Mole, whose character evinces the nice irony of displaying the most emotion (albeit negative ones like paranoia, wrath and fear), which leaves him in the odd position of serving as the somewhat pathetic voice of reason when the killing starts.

The production and direction, while not stellar, does fine work with the set and makes clever use of the cramped space; and, best of all, the players are keenly receptive to their audience and seemingly genuinely appreciative of the material they're working with. This leads to a smooth though savage ride all the way to the inexorable conclusion of the play -- a seemingly abrupt and gratuitous ending that nonetheless leaves the viewer unable to think of any alternative as to how it might have been different. In the end, the bleak German existentialism combined with the razor-sharp English dialogue of the play is best thought of in terms of the deadly game of Botticelli that serves as Mr. Kolpert's centerpiece: a foolish game with simple rules and lethal consequences.