- Chicago RedEye -

"Leave your alter ego at home; space is limited"

"Doing site-specific works can be a gimmick. But in Sandbox Theatre Project's hands, this play performed in a Lakeview bar about three twentysomethings hanging out in, yep, a bar is effervescent and true, inventive and fun. Playwrights Cliff Chamberlain, Chelsea Cutler, and Justin D.M. Palmer aim to explore, if not exactly the road not taken, then how slight variations in personality can translate into different paths: nine actors portray three versions of the three friends. The result never winds up making intellectual sense, but it doesn't have to. Under Palmer's startlingly good direction, the ensemble--which also includes two actors playing two additional characters--brings to life 11 people who give us a great night at the bar." --Jennifer Vanasco

ON THE FRINGE: NEW REVIEWS OF CHICAGO'S DIVERSE THEATER SCENE
`Bottle' and `Water' make for a round of well-located shows

By Nina Metz
Special to the Tribune
Published October 21, 2005

All the world's a stage, particularly when the world in question is found within the tight, hermetic confines of your local watering hole--where the lights are low and the clientele lower. A couple of site-specific shows in Lakeview lean heavily on this axiom, with results as bracing and welcome as the first sip of a cold beer.

The appeal lies in that each show is performed in an actual working bar. Do not underestimate the importance of this; it's plenty nice to get out of the theater, especially if--and let's just be frank about it--your inclination is to go to a bar, anyway.

Monday nights at Matilda, with its eclectic-chic decor, Sandbox Theatre Project presents "Bottle Can Draft," a scripted comedy about three pals who meet for drinks after work. They are archetypes and deliberately so: a besuited young ad exec, his disgruntled female co-worker, and a friend, back after a year abroad teaching English as a second language.

But it's not quite so straightforward. There are, in fact, three versions of each character, each dressed identically to his or her doppelganger in a nice riff on alcohol's seeing-triple effects. Their names, too, are variations on a theme: the ad execs are Richard, Rich and Dick.

Created by ensemble members Cliff Chamberlain and Chelsea Cutler (who also perform in the show) and director Justin D. M. Palmer, the play is not so much a narrative as an elliptical mediation on barroom anthropology, twentysomething style. Anyone familiar with the habits of boozing will recognize Dick's last drunken declaration for carbs before he is yanked out of the bar and stuffed in a cab: "I want a small, a small chocolate shake!"

The milieu is clearly home for most of the cast, and they are remarkably loose and entertaining in their mocking of it. In bit of art imitating life, actor Calvin Marty, who works the bar at Matilda, plays the bartender here. An actor who's a bartender--what are the odds?

Through Nov. 7 at Matilda, 3101 N. Sheffield Ave. Tickets are $15 (suggested donation); 773-456-2329.

Over at Town Hall Pub, a decidedly more downscale kind of place with a pleasantly cavelike atmosphere and cheap drinks (can't beat the $3.50 vodka lemonade), a group of Boston-bred improvisers, operating under the auspices of Wicked Good Productions, convene on Friday nights for "Dirty Water."

Set in a South Boston bar--sorry, South Bahston bah--that plays host to the kind of chumps ready to step in if they ever make a sequel to "Good Will Hunting," the entirely improvised show is a case study of excremental discourse. And I mean that as high praise.

"What's the one trip you just have to take?" prompts a digression about the Egyptian pyramids, which elicits, "I would not go anywhere in Egypt without Brendan Fraser," and the absurdly right-on-the-money observation that "the Mayan pyramids are the Knott's Berry Farm of pyramids."

This is a low-key show that translates into high-intensity eavesdropping for the audience. And though the cast is more than capable of keeping the conversation going past the one-hour mark, wisely they don't.

By the way, the Town Hall Pub, which is something of an unofficial hangout among improv performers, is not a bad place to watch the Sox. Kudos to the staff who kept the TVs on (though muted) during the show.

Through Nov. 4 at Town Hall Pub, 3340 N. Halsted St. Tickets are $5; 773-243-6983.

- chicagoist.com -

Bottle Can Draft: Where *You* Know Everyone's Name

Site specific theater? Whatever do you mean? Bottle Can Draft is the latest offering from the Sandbox Theatre Project , and it brings together the elements of actors, audience and space in a way that breaks out of the constraints of the way we normally see theater.

The idea of site-specific theater is to bring the audience to the actual location of the play. Where does the play take place? Take the audience there. The company has done a play in an actual apartment (Where We Live), and is now bringing the audience to the local bar (Matilda/Baby Atlas).

Chicagoist went to the see Bottle Can Draft on opening night and was immediately caught up in the buzz of the room. The bar was closed to the public, but was filled with what would soon be the audience and the cast. Drinks were being served, and we arrived just in time to order something off Matilda's very high-class bar menu (a chicken-mushroom-wine sauce pasta dish which was DELISH). People were talking and mingling and there was no real difference between a bar open for business on a Monday night and this pre-show, except for there were lots more people and there was excitement in the air, rather than the doldrums that would have settled on the three or four people that would have been settled on their stools, drinking away the effects of a Monday.

It was interesting to watch various members of the audience start to notice that there were people in the crowd that were dressed alike and hear them puzzle aloud as to what that might mean. As the bartender yelled out "last call for drinks before the show," Chicagoist was immediately thrown back to many late nights of drinking where last call was bellowed and many negotiations had to be settled. Tabs. Phone numbers. One last dash for a drink.

Set in an actual neighborhood bar, the play takes a look at three characters in their mid-20s and their very real-life worries, struggles and frustrations -- jobs that are unfulfilling, trying to find someone to be with, worries that they aren't being with/who they really want to be. There are three sets of actors playing the same set of people, all with different twists. All who weave in and out of each other's lives and within the same space -- the bar in which the audience is sitting -- at high tables, at couches, at the actual bar.

As the action started, we were served our pasta, the jukebox roared to life and we were given another drink. Lines of dialogue were not spoken for at least two whole songs, so it was interesting to watch audience members go from "at attention" to "has the play started?" and start to talk amongst themselves. The bar atmosphere started to return, with people eyeing the 'stage' area, but starting to engage in conversations. I started singing along with the music at one point, much like I have done on many occasions in many bars.

There were some outstanding performances by Cliff Chamberlain (Dick), Andy Carey (Mikey), and Anne Adams (Suz), all who transcended the world of acting and made me believe that they were really existing in the world they had created for themselves. Calvin Marty, actor and real-life bartender at Matilda's, gave one of the night's most classic and unrehearsed moments when he told a woman that the bar was closed as she walked back through the scene after going to the bathroom. It was clearly an improvised line, but it was completely within the bounds of what was happening in the play, and he stayed completely in character. The audience was right with him.

Chicagoist sat down with Justin D.M. Palmer, the Artistic Director of the Sandbox Theatre Project, for a few hours this weekend and discussed how this show came together and how Sandbox collaborates to write, perform and direct site-specific theater (as well as get people to hook them up with apartments and bars). Look for the interview in the next few days.link