Antistasia
“The poor have only one advantage,” says Ingrid Bergman in the 1956 movie Anastasia. “They know when they are loved for themselves.” Smart but self-indulgent Theater Oobleck challenges audiences to love it for itself. The directorless ensemble’s shows, peppered with in-jokes and arcane allusions, sometimes resemble a onetime performance thrown together at a family reunion by the clan’s cleverest smart alecks. And where most theater companies rack their brains trying to figure out what will please viewers in an ever more competitive marketplace, the invariably witty and inventive Oobleck pulls full houses with its casually anarchic aesthetic.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The legend of Anastasia–the daughter of Czar Nicholas II, the last ruler in Russia’s Romanov dynasty–has fascinated generations. Nicholas and his family were executed by Bolsheviks during the Russian Revolution (in fact, this production commemorates the 80th anniversary of the July 17, 1918, slayings as well as Russia’s controversial reburial of the Romanovs’ remains last weekend). For decades it was believed that the 16-year-old grand duchess Anastasia escaped the slaughter and ended up living in America under the name Anna Anderson. A former mental patient, Anderson insisted until her death that she was Anastasia; posthumous DNA tests have disproved her claim, and it’s now presumed that Anastasia died with her parents. Anderson’s case was dramatized (and heavily distorted) in French playwright Marcelle Maurette’s Anastasia, produced on Broadway in 1954 in Guy Bolton’s English translation. The glossy 1956 screen version, scripted by Arthur Laurents and directed by Anatole Litvak, provided Bergman with an Oscar-winning Hollywood comeback after her scandalous affair with Italian filmmaker Roberto Rossellini, and it is this movie–accurately dubbed “slick, highly theatrical entertainment for the upper classes” by Halliwell’s Film Guide–that provides the core of Oobleck’s decidedly unslick lumpen lampoon.
Indeed, the film can be seen as a grand metaphor for modern theater: Bergman’s Anna is the ultimate Method actress, plumbing her own memories while researching her role until she merges with the character she’s playing, while Yul Brynner’s Bounine is a director who loses control of his show because he falls in love with the leading lady. Thus Anastasia is a perfect target for Oobleck, which loudly proclaims its disdain for directors (“Putting the burden of innovation on the director is like putting the prime minister in charge of the revolution,” a program note declares) while reveling in cheesy acting, off-key singing, rudimentary blocking (actors find their lights only occasionally), and routine disregard for the fourth wall.
Some theaters simply stick to the original scripts of their sources–old horror movies, TV sitcoms, and the like–predictably mocking them with archly “campy” performances and gross-out visual effects. Oobleck pokes fun at its source, but it also transforms the material into something unexpected, establishing a place for itself on the cutting edge of the fringe. And the price is hard to beat: “$7, free if yer broke, more if ya got it.” Such a deal; no wonder Oobleck draws sellout crowds and has continued to flourish long after skeptics like me predicted a short life. Of course, “flourish” is a relative term; when Isaacson as Tevia describes an actor’s life as “work by day, theater by night,” his rueful tone will be familiar to many off-Loop artists. But even if no one’s making any money, Oobleck can take some satisfaction in the full houses its irreverent, idiosyncratic style of theater draws. After all, as Bergman says, at least the poor know they’re loved for themselves.
