Sartre’s hell of “other people” and the hell we make ourselves present their similar and unique challenges in Wild Women Writing’s production of playwright Don Nigro’s The Chaplin Plays: A Double Feature that opened Thursday at Short North Stage. This production, directed by Katherine Burkman, of Tramp on Tightrope With Monkeys and Charlie and the Siberian Monkey Goddess, might disappoint those of us looking for more literal monkey action, but not other theatre fans.
The night opens with a taut 25-minute monologue, Tramp on Tightrope With Monkeys, featuring John Hawk as Chaplin in full tramp outfit in a purgatory – he alludes to Kennedy dying which happened when Chaplin was 74, but looks far too young to be in the last 13 years of his life – that looks remarkably like backstage. The lovable tramp pleads his case, tracing a path through razor-sharp self-knowledge and willful blindness. Hawk’s virtuosic portrayal dances, sometimes literally, through Chaplin’s self-loathing and misanthropic tendencies, past his martyrdom, while always maintaining the twinkle in his eye and the lithe physical grace we know him for. This combination of confession and revelation of hard, typical feelings that feed into enduring art – his dissection of the voices he tried when sound came to moving pictures is heartbreaking and perfect – is given both weight and flight through the way Hawk seems to sag and tumble from one to the next.
The longer Charlie and the Siberian Monkey Goddess features Ellen Nickles as “Charlie,” an aging woman in a mental institution who refuses to relinquish the Chaplin mask she’s sunk into and Christy Brothers as “Anastasia,” the case worker growing more and more frustrated. Opening with the famous dinner rolls sequence, what makes this second piece work is its tendency to rope-a-dope. It begins slow, almost banal, shuffling through two characters we’ve seen a million times. As Burkman’s production finds its rhythm, gaining weight and depth like a Sisyphean snowball, interesting parallels emerge to Chaplin’s modernist masterpieces City Lights and The Little Dictator. The audience’s identification shifts almost entirely as Brothers’ physical performance strips off the mask of civility and reveals the full, seductive power of fascism and Nickles breaks your heart as she crumbles.
Both of these plays understand Chaplin symbolically, but they also know the human cost of making art and the devastating human cost of daring to let ourselves be loved. They also understand that every physical comedian is a dancer and the symbiosis of Edward Carignan’s choreography and Burkman’s use of the stage is a dazzling wonder that cuts down to the bone. 2017 starts strong with these testaments to belief – they speak to believing anyway, even when we all know it won’t save us.
The Chaplin Plays run through January 15 with performances at 8:00 pm Thursday through Saturday and 2:00 pm Sunday. For tickets and more info, please visit shortnorthstage.org.