Sexual Perversity in Chicago
Deborah: Does it frighten you to say that?
Those problems undermined the Wing & Groove Theatre’s attempt at the play in January–a production that launched what amounted to a Mamet minifest this year as theaters from Des Plaines to Pilsen and Wrigleyville to Rogers Park revived a slew of early and midcareer Mamet works (among them Edmond, Glengarry Glen Ross, Speed-the-Plow, and two Oleannas), while Skokie’s Northlight Theatre offered the local premiere of Mamet’s recent The Old Neighborhood. Now, as the 1998-’99 season wraps up, along comes a second Sexual Perversity, presented at the Note nightclub in Wicker Park by a new troupe, the Found Theater Company. Happily, the current production is not only far superior to Wing & Groove’s, it’s the best of several off-Loop renditions of the play I’ve seen over the past few years.
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The Found Theater’s production inhabits an effective middle ground, allowing the story to emerge without belaboring it. Best of all, the cast conveys not only the play’s raunchy, outrageous humor but the aching loneliness beneath it. The actors give consistently honest performances: shaggy-haired, sideburned Jim York as earnest, slightly dim Danny; pert, blond Gina Ciaccio as a strong-willed, sexually eager Deb; dark, statuesque Ann Koons as an externally controlled, internally chaotic Joan; and director Halstead as a sardonic, ever-so-slightly soggy Bernie. Together they create a credible reality crucial to making the play work in a smoky, blue-lit barroom. (Actually, the nightclub setting enhances the didactic cabaret-theater aesthetic Mamet drew from Brecht and Second City.)
