REVIEW: TWO MILLENNIA OF TEARS - 'Metamorphoses' at Lookingglass Theatre

Photo: Liz Lauren

Setting a full-length play in a pool of water is risky business. Many will cry out "Gimmick!" disturbed by the uncomfortable lack of a living room couch, kitchen table or, in the case of this particular play, an overabundance of white stone columns. And others will never quite get past the pool's novelty as they cling to their digital cameras, eyes nervously darting to nearby ushers before they snap a blury memento. But one person’s extreme risk is a visionary director’s irrefutable logic.

Never having seen Mary Zimmerman's "Metamorphoses," a play that, in a differently-named incarnation, premiered at Northwestern University in 1996, re-premiered at the old Lookingglass in 1998, played Off-Broadway’s Second Stage Theatre in 2001, rocked Broadway’s Circle In The Square Theatre in 2002, and is a popular staple among high schools and universities, I was, for years, among the doubting. In my mind, the play’s enormously broad appeal stemmed from familiar material being obscured by an infrastructural twist. "Cinderella On Ice!" or "Orpheus In Pool!" Not so, my friends.

In this highly anticipated remount, which opened at Lookingglass Theatre on Saturday night, the director-adaptor has solidly defeated my preconceptions and biases by harnessing an ellusive theatrical rarity – balance. “Metamorphoses” is not solely about its black lagoon of a pool, nor is it necessarily about the Greek myths it so richly and satisfyingly retells. All of the elements – the story, the watery medium, the gifted actors – exist as one fluid being. And, that intangible union, an important facet of any play, is especially paramount here.

MISSED THE BOAT - 'Eastland' at Lookingglass Theatre Company

(Photo by Sean Williams)

There comes a moment in every drama depicting a disaster or grotesque societal injustice when the artists must “go there” – to that frightening, uncomfortable place that the audience collectively dreads in nervous anticipation. Scary, though it may be, that visceral high is an absolute necessity to truthfully relaying the past. In the grand human tradition of telling each other our stories, what’s passed down are deeply felt emotions; not rote facts and figures. To shy away from fear and to, instead, purify the controversial, messy subject matter, dishonors the event, its victims, and its fighters. “Eastland,” a new musical depicting the tragic 1915 sinking of the S.S. Eastland and which opened on Saturday night at Lookingglass Theatre Company, does not go there.

The sole, insurmountable problem facing “Eastland” is its gooey and sentimental, though uniquely structured, script by Lookingglass Artistic Director Andrew White. Written in sing-songy verse evoking T.S. Eliot and Dr. Seuss at their pluckiest, White’s book chooses caustic kindred gentility over the true grit of his circumstance. Just imagine the horror of drowning on a Chicago River cruise. I squirm when I merely catch a glimpse of kayakers on those murky waters, but to have that sooty grime cramming your lungs to unbearable capacity on a mockingly gorgeous summer’s day – with the intense pollution of the early twentieth century, no less – would be unfathomably hellish. It’s the discomfort I felt while writing those words that this altogether pleasant musical is missing entirely.