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PAST PRODUCTIONS

 

 

 

As we celebrate our inaugural season, we'll share photos and reviews from Blackbird productions.


 

THE ALTRUISTS
 by Nicky Silver
directed by Danielle Holtz
 

An outrageous satire of the trials and tribulations of the average American protester. A gallery of hypocrites, Silver’s characters make a statement about the betrayal of one's ideals and rebelling without a cause.

Click on the photos to the right to view full-size images, and read the reviews below from the Chicago Reader, New CIty Magazine Chicago, and the Chicago Sun Times.

 

 

The Chicago Reader's Jack Helbig: Like his better known work The Food Chain, Nicky Silver's 2000 dark comedy concerns a network of self-obsessed neurotics. This time Silver focuses on a grandiose soap opera star, her painfully needy gay brother, and the fools who surround them. In both plays Silver's message is one of ambivalence: we all need each other, we all drive each other crazy. And here it's complicated by the loathsome characters who think of themselves as enlightened and socially aware. Although not all of the performances in this inaugural production from the Blackbird Theatre Company are equally strong (Ryan Jarosch is great as the needy brother, Helen Manasses sometimes goes over the top as the soap opera diva) the overall production captures Silver's bleak world view.

 

 

New City Magazine, Chicago's William Scott: Nelson Mandela is indeed free. Someone tell the anarchistic do-gooders in the first show of Blackbird Theatre Company's inaugural season, Nicky Silver's "The Altruists." This tongue-in-cheek send-up to a generation of young radicals that care more about fire-bombs and protests than the causes they rally for is an ideal fit for a company that stands behind a mission of critiquing contemporary culture. Jabbing satire is Mr. Silver's weapon of choice and he has crafted a play that is still as relevant as when it premiered in 2000. Director Danielle M. Holtz creates hilarious moments with a strong ensemble that rivals the work of some longer-established theaters in this town. The comic delivery is at times too heavy-handed, but when the cast warms up they click. Helen Manasses Atkins' friendly soap star is deliciously melodramatic and Collin Geraghty's hopped-up hustler is naïve and delicate. Blackbird, keep it up.

 


The Chicago Sun Times' Rory Leahy: All dark comedies are not the same. There's the "laughing at horrible things but at the end of the day still laughing" kind of dark comedy, then there's the vicious, misanthropic dark comedy that's "dark" in the same way a black hole is dark, making you laugh at your own shame to be human. Nicky Silver's "The Altruists," directed by Danielle Holtz for Blackbird Theatre, walks the line between these two, and not always effectively. The characters are three left-wing activists who obsess about bettering the world but, as we are told in numerous none-too-subtle ways, are actually completely narcissistic hypocrites whose activism is motivated by self-righteousness rather than actual righteousness. There's a lot to like here. In the almost universally progressive world of theatre, any play that skewers lefty targets earns some points for refreshing contrarianism at least. Many of the jokes land right on target but there's a smug disingenuousness to the script that surpasses that of the characters. If this play is to believed, the world of social activism has no genuine idealism, no genuine earnestness; it's all hypocrisy and self-delusion. The "political incorrectness" also seems less like courage and more like mean-spiritedness as time goes on; for example, a masculine lesbian character is never seen onstage but still manages to be severely punished for her transgressions. The actors all acquit themselves quite well and manage to demonstrate more complexity than the script wants to give them, which saves the show from total unpleasantness. The denoument nonetheless takes us into the aforementioned "black hole" level of comedy, and Silver's admirable commitment to the darkness of his vision is one of the best things about the play.

 

 
 
 

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