Ask a few actors about their childhoods and you start to notice patterns. “My siblings and I made costumes and put on silly plays for our parents,” is a common origin story. Rarely, however, in their careers do performers expand on those early experiences and explore the possibilities of complete absurdity. Where are our great American clowns? Or mimes? The cult of believability, especially in American theater, is a powerful force; it too often stamps out the wily adolescent attention-seeking behavior that birthed “the bug” in the first place.
The Conspirators, a Chicago theater company that traffics in a neo-Commedia form innocuously called The Style, proves what absurdity can accomplish when it’s honed by adult professionals. Their new immorality play COMMEDIA DIVINA: It’s Worse Than That, written by Sid Feldman and directed by Wm. Bullion, performed at Otherworld Theatre, is a bizarre clown-fueled satirical fever dream told through exaggerated emotion and accented gesticulation. It’s also some of the most fun I've had in a theater all year.
It’s 2019. The play begins with Georgia suburban business heiress Malady Traitor Greene, played confidently with fierce obnoxiousness by Christine Watt, telling pious Father Virgil, played by Alex George, that, “God has sent visions! Visions so disturbing can barely breathe!” Greene speaks of a future American hellscape revealed in nine premonitions. Like Dante’s Nine Circles of Hell. Get it?
This gives the play its setup. Nine visions mean nine sections or skits, nine unique opportunities for the fantastic cast to showcase their clownish prowess. Each section explores a different way the U.S. has become a worse place since 2019. From conspiracy fringe groups like QAnon to a hypocritical Republican leadership, from COVID-19 to Karens, the show has many targets, and it usually hits the bullseye.
But of course the real star isn’t the plot or even the characters. It’s The Style’s . . . well . . . style. Everyone is done up in white-and-black makeup that amplifies facial features to a cartoonish degree. The look lives somewhere between porcelain dolls and Gene Simmons. All expressions are pronounced and goofy, all movements are brash and balletic. A live percussionist, alternating between Trace Davidson and Hayden Marshall, sits at a drumkit Down Stage Left and punctuates every slap, every step, every nod with an appropriate sound. It’s excellent.
A downside, however, of the show’s nine vision format is it becomes easy to rate scenes against each other. Some sections, admittedly, are stronger than others. There’s a videography section that doesn’t quite work. In the second vision the Women’s Club of Karensworth, an organization comprising people all named Karen à la The Barbie Movie, come together to discuss pressing topics of the day, like if it’s classist to talk about skiing. It’s with these large group scenes that the show loses steam. Everything great about Worse Than That is fast and punchy. The production lives and dies on its momentum. When there’s a collection of people waiting to stand and contribute their bit to the show, it feels awkward and forced, a little high school. At times I felt compelled to quicken the actors by snapping my fingers. Go, please, go.
The production really sings when fewer actors are on stage. The third vision features one of the show’s more bizarre creations Clovidia, played with tapdancing glee by Julia Hope Budd, as she seduces and infects her lover, played with infectious energy by Devin Sugerik. This effective sequence includes some of the show’s silliest faces, some of the wildest movements. The uninhibited romance onstage is one of the most traditionally Commedia moments of the production, and also one of the funniest.
The show’s highlight is the Fifth Circle, a parody of RuPaul’s Drag Race called Rand Paul’s Drag Race. In it members of the GOP leadership judge contestants based on their “style, swagger, attitude, and wit but also their sins before God!” The Mitch McConnell character, played by Travis Barnhart, was outstanding. Walking slowly like a geriatric dinosaur, making faces like a weakened turtle, Barnhart presents some of the best tongue acting I have ever seen on the Chicago stage. His performance is worth the ticket alone.
There’s some real magic at Otherworld Theatre these days. With productions this silly the number one criterion is that the actors, to borrow common improvisation advice, commit to the bit. I'm happy to report the Conspirators put everything they have on the stage, and the result is a rollicking good time.
COMMEDIA DIVINA: It’s Worse Than That by The Conspirators runs only two weekends. It continues at Otherworld Theatre at 3914 N. Clark St., thru November 19. Running time is 80 minutes without an intermission. Tickets are $25 with student and senior discounts available.
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