PicksInSix Review: Catch as Catch Can - Steppenwolf Theatre Company
Diabolically Clever “Catch” Turns On Dime
PicksInSix® Review | Guest Contributor | Ronald Keaton
What a challenging piece of theatre this is. Three actors play six different characters in Mia Chung's diabolically clever play “Catch as Catch Can,” now playing at Steppenwolf's Downstairs Theatre through July 12. In director Amy Morton’s eloquent staging, the solid trio of actors play two characters each. They offer an adult child and a parent—a son to the mother or a daughter to the father. We jump genders and ages, even while standing alone.
There are two families, close friends and all, the Phelans and the Lavecchias. They welcome home a kind of prodigal son, setting off an evolving crisis that reshapes their lives and, as we discover, the play itself. In Mia Chung’s play, three actors perform across race, gender, and generation—a family drama that doubles as a theatrical tour-de-force. It's a fascinating stew of six disparate personalities who are a lot of fun to observe—until they cease to be.
A startling shift kicks into gear midway into this trip through a history of the families, when Tim shares an unnerving revelation about his fiancée Mingjin with Daniela that changes everything. It shades the play toward a much more sobering, sad realization. The family dynamics here intertwine and are as changeable as the weather. But as we discover the secret, we also witness this man's hellbent personal self-destruction and mental illness. It's uncomfortable to observe and hard to follow. The mental, emotional breakdown throws the entire story askew, and we are asked to live now in a different kind of reality.
What seems at first like a family comedy takes a sharp turn that rips apart not only the person who suffers from it, but the fabric of the play itself. The sudden, emotional separation from the comedic turns is damned scary and often disorienting. Confusion does indeed reign, as the work of communicating a sense of chaos only makes blurry the lines of the dual identities the actors are asked to do. And that double-casting, as utilized here, aspires to be more than a gimmick. It is, in fact, central to what the show wants to share about what people do or do not get from family.
When all is said and done, we wonder why. This is indeed challenging material that few theatres in existence would try so fully. There are three of the best onstage, too—Gary Cole, Tim Hopper and Audrey Francis. The stagecraft, the acting, the technical aspects, all of these are up to Steppenwolf's expected brilliance. Director Morton is a veritable genius in helping her actors delineate character, often in the same body playing two different people.
But the play itself—and from one of our great, innovative playwrights in the theatre—trips over such cleverness and innovation. “Catch as Catch Can” is well worth seeing. But what one takes from it might be as strange and difficult as the situation itself. Then again, maybe that's the point. Humanity is, after all, often a chaotic condition, which would then make such creativity here worthwhile.
GUEST CONTRIBUTOR | RONALD KEATON received an Equity Jeff Award for the performance of his one-man show CHURCHILL. www.solochicagotheatre.com. Coming soon, his new solo play about Ben Franklin, THE FIRST EMBASSY.
PHOTO|Michael Brosilow
Steppenwolf Theatre Company
presents
Catch as Catch Can
Downstairs Theater
1650 N. Halsted St.
through July 12
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