Nelson Algren: For Keeps and A Single Day
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Company members mentioned in this article: Thomas J Cox and John Musial by Christopher Piatt Four StarsLike many an indispensable 20th-century writer, Nelson Algren gagged on Hollywood. Chicago’s boilerplate poet laureate—among the authentic postwar writers and arguably the most mimicked of America’s white urban street voices—found the dream town of moving pictures a thoroughly appalling place to do business, let alone brood (his default pastime). More than 50 years after his national ascent, the movies are still giving Algren a peck of trouble. In Lookingglass’s gaunt-but-seductive remount of its 2001 success, a multimedia collage of live jazz, poetry recitation and original film footage, it’s just the camera that hands Algren a raw deal. Not having seen the original staging, I feel obligated to warn skeptics (because I was one) about what the show isn’t; blessedly, it’s almost never phony Chicago tough. Using only Cox as Algren and percussionist O’Donnell and bassist Lovecchio as everything else in the city, the 75-minute pastiche is about the theatrical possibility of Algren’s words. A rangy alley cat in rolled shirt sleeves, Cox takes on the poetry with such seeming plainness that he’s an hour in before you even begin to notice the concentrated technique and deliberate cadence he brings to recited verse. He strips already lean stanzas down to their bones and rattles them precisely to Algren’s pounding-typewriter rhythm. And the musicianship of O’Donnell and Lovecchio is equal to David Pavkovic’s moody score. (He’s the real jazz you didn’t hear in Carter’s Way.) Musial’s literal film work, on the other hand, is the opposite of imagination. Algren talks about a bakery, we see loaves of bread. Boyhood reminiscences about baseball? Cue the kids in ball caps. Rarely does Musial demonstrate the confidence to create his own inspired abstractions. Without them, we see the difference between a loving tribute to an essential Chicago—which this is—and a new contribution to essential Chicago, which it might have been. |
