peteg's blog - noise - theatre - 2014 09 24 TheNightAlive

Steppenwolf Theatre: The Night Alive

/noise/theatre | Link

The Steppenwolf Theatre is something like the Belvoir of Chicago; way off anywhere one might think of as Broadway, independent and expensive. I don't yet know if they do anything good, however. I paid $23.60 for a Goldstar ticket, who took $6, which I think was steep. Apparently it was Australian-ladies-in-Chicago night out as a tribe of them, twenty or more, settled on the balcony in the rows in front of me. I happened to be wearing my Pixies, Sydney 2007 shirt but got away with it. The whole place was packed.

Before the gig I had dinner at the Chinese on Wells/Ohio, which was not great. The ride up Wells and Clybourn was pleasant as the streets are wide and presently quite clean. I also bought a Revolution Porter from the upstairs bar in a can inscribed with "serve cold". It was better than that would suggest. The play itself is a middle-of-the-road crowd pleaser with some familiar, clichéd humour. By Conor McPherson, it's Irish and the accent work was fine, the acting solid. The set was ornate. I just didn't get into the tepidly reheated theme of rescuing fallen lassies and grafting a living from shifting dodgy artifacts (err, been there, doing that?). The building is a bit of a bland big-box theatre, not so different from the strip-mall cinema. While waiting for it to start the girl sitting at the end of the row pulled out her old (film) box camera and prepared to sneak photos; she got sprung and soon moved up the back. I wonder if she succeeded.