DANCING WITH THE PAST, Factory Theater Company, and FACTORY MATCH GAME ’99, Factory Theater Company. The Factory Theater’s first productions since taking control of the space formerly known as Footsteps are very different–one is a serious play about three sisters coping with their mother’s death, the other a camp homage to a daytime TV show.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Of the two, Dancing With the Past is the more ambitious. Playwright Patricia Sutherland, who also directs, displays considerable sensitivity as she sketches out the relations between the sisters–a homemaker, an academic, and an international gadabout–as they divide up their mother’s things. The play faintly echoes Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig–much of the drama depends on the tension that develops when siblings who love each other deeply but want to maintain their individuality spend time together–though Sutherland has neither Wasserstein’s theatrical craft nor her gifts as a storyteller. Even in its best moments the play feels like a first draft, and it runs out of gas about two-thirds of the way through, after which Sutherland depends on a series of faintly melodramatic surprises to keep the story going.
Factory plays the game straight–this production is more plagiarism than homage–the only twist being that six Factory regulars impersonate the celebs who populated the show. These impersonations range from not particularly convincing to pretty good, though only Matt O’Neill fully enters into the spirit of things with a spot-on imitation of Richard Dawson. This funny show is marred by one’s sense that it was thrown together to fill an empty slot in the Factory schedule.
