Chicago Shakes will live on but the Barbara Gaines Repertory Company, a robustly skilled and perennially jovial group of Chicago players central to this city’s cultural history, is shutting up shop.
The founding artistic director of Chicago Shakespeare Theater might possibly direct a show here or there in retirement, but the production of “The Comedy of Errors” that opened Thursday night on Navy Pier is, in more ways than I had first realized, both Gaines’ last show as artistic director and the end of an era. For that reason, dear reader, you will have to forgive some sentiment from a critic who witnessed most all of this remarkable woman’s trajectory from the Red Lion Pub to a major arts complex. For me, at least, this is not just another “Comedy of Errors.”
Gaines, a populist Bardologist if ever there was one, decided to go out not with some epic tragedy of self-definition but with a good laugh. And that’s what the show delivers, not a whole lot more, certainly no less. It’s actually a remount of a 2008 Gaines production that I remember well. The Second City veteran Ron West wrote a new frame for the Elizabethan comedy of mistaken identity.
“Credit goes to rewrite man” was the headline on my old review, and that pretty much said it all: West imagined a scenario where a bunch of British actors was making a movie of “Comedy of Errors” at Shepperton Studios in wartime England and West didn’t so much create a frame as write a whole funny show of his own, shoehorning in bits of the actual play, allowing it more stage time in Act 2. At the time, I prattled on about the legitimacy of such an act, given that audiences responded more to the West parts than the Shakespearian ones (not a fair contest, perhaps, given the demands of language) and how audiences need time to adjust to Shakespearean cadences and if you keep pulling them in and out, it’s only harder for them.
All of that is still true but there was no reason to give a darn on Thursday night.
Gaines has reunited much of that 2008 cast, most notably Ross Lehman and Kevin Gudahl, the hilarious tweedle dee and dum of bewigged Dromios. Not everyone was available (I just reviewed one 2008 cast member, Sean Allen Krill, in “Parade” on Broadway), but I suspect offers went out to most everyone. That was the point and from my seat, I could see how Gaines had changed the lives of these actors, all regulars over the last decades at the theater company she created. All were having a blast, but you could sense the twinge of sentiment, the feeling that something is coming to an end. Great Chicago actors such as William Dick, Ora Jones, Lillian Castillo, Breon Arzell, Robert Petkoff, Bruce A. Young and Greg Vinkler all are part of Gaines’ history with a theater that has introduced professional Shakespeare to more Chicagoans than any other company. And thanks in no small part to the costumer Mieka Van Der Ploeg and hair guru Richard Jarvie, they all look fabulous. All that and Susan Moniz and Melanie Brezill, too.
Gaines’ legacy is one of accessibility, and, as such, she has added text on numerous occasions over the years, most notoriously even employing Neil LaBute to write a frame around “The Taming of the Shrew.” The less said about that misadventure the better, respect to all involved, but that makes the “Comedy” reprise all the more apt as Gaines’ version of “see ya suckers,” especially since West’s kind of humor is so linked to Second City’s own influence on comedic entertainment. Point of fact, I’d say that particular writer/director was inarguably among the top two or three most influential directors and performers on Wells Street. Gaines, of course, wasn’t so much influential at Chicago Shakes as existential.
I ran into West in the house. “A few tweaks to the script, but nothing significant?” I asked him, trying not to rely on memory. “To you, tweaks,” he said dryly. “To me, significant.”
Funny guy. Generous show. And very apropos of Gaines’ magnificent contribution to this city.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “The Comedy of Errors” (3 stars)
When: Through April 16
Where: Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier
Running time: 2 hours, 30 mins.
Tickets: $35-$92 at 312-595-5600 or chicagoshakes.com
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