Can an entire life be a secret? An estranged brother and sister discover a cryptic journal that appears to be written by their silent father, a famous architect. The journal seems to open a door to the life of the mysterious man, and yet it appears to be written in code. It is just another secret. This beautifully written and probing comedy moves backwards in time and raises the question of parental legacy, and asks us if we can ever really understand the lives of those who came before us. Featuring Rebekah Ward-Hays, Tony Bozzuto and John Henry Roberts.
Praise
“Highly Recommended.”
“Matthew Reeder’s sinewy production for BackStage Theatre finds the wounded heart under Greenberg’s rat-a-tat, astringent wit, and John Henry Roberts is simply marvelous as both voluble Walker and his stuttering dad.”
January 1st, 1970
Like the building at the center of its plot, Richard Greenberg’s 1997 drama is a balancing act between solids and voids–between what a brother and sister believe about their family history and what they’ll never know. In act one we meet Walker and Nan as they try to come to grips with the fact that their famous, newly deceased architect father has bequeathed his greatest achievement, an iconic modernist house, to his partner’s son. In act two, the siblings’ narratives about their parents go completely topsy-turvy. Matthew Reeder’s sinewy production for BackStage Theatre finds the wounded heart under Greenberg’s rat-a-tat, astringent wit, and John Henry Roberts is simply marvelous as both voluble Walker and his stuttering dad.
- Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader
- Kerry Reid, Chicago Reader (Read the full review)
“3 out of 4 stars”
“…this is a trio of very careful and interesting performances that are well worth watching…”
“This [production] is rooted in a space as real as its feelings are honest.”
- Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune
“4 out of 5 stars”
“A thoughtful and spirited production.”
“…unfolds here with slow and humanizing melancholy, a love story focused on the beauty that time and circumstance destroy, not the destruction itself.”
“Director Reeder has a feel for mood and never lets a moment go to waste, while Brandon Wardell’s set and lighting move gracefully between eras. The knockout cast is uniquely dialed into the script and one another, its interplay the highlight of a show that proves the present is prelude to the past.”
January 1st, 1970
Greenberg’s 1997 play is perhaps most famous as the unfortunate vehicle for the 2006 Broadway production, in which Julia Roberts made a wooden attempt at translating her onscreen charm to stage. It’s an indignity that BackStage greatly remedies with the thoughtful and spirited production demanded by Greenberg’s lovely script.
Greenberg’s plot treads well-worn paths of inheritance and identity between generations. Siblings Walker (Roberts) and Nan (Ward-Hays) divide the estate of their late father, Ned, whose 1960s “Janeway House” rocketed him and his partner Theo to stardom as New York architects. When Ned leaves the house to Theo’s son Pip (Bozzuto), it sets off a string of recriminations that lends the first act rapid verbal flow and tense emotional fireworks.
The second act is a structural gamble, flashing back to the early ’60s, where Ned and Theo struggle to hit it big while Ned harbors secret love for Theo’s gal Lina; the cast returns to play the parents. This sort of temporal trick often falls flat, but in a testament to both Greenberg and the talented actors it unfolds here with slow and humanizing melancholy, a love story focused on the beauty that time and circumstance destroy, not the destruction itself.
Director Reeder has a feel for mood and never lets a moment go to waste, while Brandon Wardell’s set and lighting move gracefully between eras. The knockout cast is uniquely dialed into the script and one another, its interplay the highlight of a show that proves the present is prelude to the past.
- Ryan Dolley, Time Out Chicago
- Ryan Dolley, Time Out Chicago (Read the full review)
“Backstage Theatre Company continues to excel in creating memories for theatergoers that are definitely unforgettable.”
January 1st, 1970
We are often fascinated by the story of who our parents were before they had children since it is essentially how we came to exist. It helps us understand the lives of the most influential people in your life, and it guides us in our own quest for love and self definition. This idea played a large role in Backstage Theatre Company’s Memory, their impressive first play of their season. Other times these stories, as is the case in Richard Greenberg’s Three Days of Rain (known to many theatergoers as the play Julia Roberts flatly debuted in on Broadway), can be a great mystery to obsess upon for years. The overriding mystery is what binds six fascinating characters together played by three actors. Artistic Director Matthew Reeder’s direction in this Backstage production is strikingly human, intimate and traipses through these characters’ lives like a lone jazz trumpet traveling through time accompanied by well-suited recordings of Miles Davis doing the real thing.
In present day downtown Manhattan (or maybe more so the mid-90’s if you really do the math on years referenced) we meet Walker (John Henry Roberts) in ppa sparse spacious apartment. He is intellectual, searching and a narcissist. After disappearing in Italy his family had thought him dead. More specifically, his sister Nan (Rebekah Ward-Hays) and his old friend Pip (Tony Bozzuto) thought so. Upon finding his recently deceased father’s journal, Walker attempts to decipher the cryptic seemingly commonplace entries. Walker believes that his parents “married because by 1960 they had reached a certain age and they were the last ones left in the room.” Nan struggles with Walker’s return and his obsession with their father’s journal. Pip, a soap-opera star, has history with Nan, and Walker was – or still is – in love with him, causing interesting tension when any combination of the three of them is on stage.
Walker and Nan’s father Ned (also played by Roberts) was a great architect, or at least built one impressive house. Pip is the son of their father’s partner, Theo. In the second act Bozzuto, Roberts and Ward-Hays all take on the roles of their parents in the 1960’s. Greenberg’s writing is smart in how it takes certain words or phrases you hear in the first act and sprinkles them in the second act, showing you the roots of these ultimately poetic characters in linguistic parallels. We bear witness to all that Walker, Nan and Pip could not possibly know even if the stories were retold or handed down. They would have changed as all stories do through the course of history. Nevertheless, a few small words which Ned (Walker and Nan’s father) writes down carries all the weight in the world for each character involved in this play. Even if the meaning of those words died with Ned, they still have impacted the lives of these people profoundly whether the truth is known or not.
The performances of these six difficult characters to play are worthy. The hurdle is portraying two different characters that are clueless to what the other knows and yet finding the connection between them. John Henry Roberts was stiff at times on opening night and hit an occasional false note as Walker at first, but he eventually relaxed into the role and became fascinating during the ritual that ends the act. As Walker’s father, Ned, he brings a very different character to the stage that is vivacious and electric to watch. Ward-Hays is magnificent in her balance of anger and love as Nan, and then in her dreamier and more sexually charged performance as Lina. Bozzuto is dynamic displaying an exciting capability for detailed physical choices.
Reeder makes a brilliant choice opening the second act by allowing the characters of Theo and Ned to spend the first couple minutes transforming the space in front of our eyes, bringing life into the abandoned apartment and turning it into an invigorating Manhattan architectural workspace of the 1960’s. It’s the same apartment as in the first act, but the makeover of the room is akin to time travel. Brandon Wardell’s set fills the Viaduct space perfectly, and his lighting on the windows does wonders to create the ambiance of the physical and emotional setting.
Greenberg’s non-linear storytelling is thought-provoking as only we, the audience, know the true gravitas of the words, “Three days of rain,” which Ned enters into his journal. However, perhaps this is the nature of history; it can never be retold exactly, nor needs to be. Walker and Nan come to their own necessary closure with their parents’ ambiguous history, and their father took his memories to the grave. What’s clear is that Backstage Theatre Company continues to excel in creating memories for theatergoers that are definitely unforgettable.
- Jason Rost, Chicago Theatre Blog
- Jason Rost, Chicago Theatre Blog (Read the full review)
Cast & Crew
Matthew Reeder
Director
Matthew is the Artistic Director of BackStage Theatre Company. Directing credits include Jeff Recommended productions Memory, Aunt Dan and Lemon, The Play About The Baby and Jeff Nominated On An Average Day. Matthew’s credits also include the critically acclaimed production of Paula Vogel’s How I Learned To Drive, also Jeff Recommended. Matthew has directed Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Metropolis Performing Arts Center. Matthew is also a regular at Adventure Stage Chicago, where he directed the wildly popular theatrical adaptation of Louis Sachar’s Holes, as well as The Shakespeare Stealer, and Still Life with Iris. Other selected directing credits include Accomplice for Noble Fool Theatricals, The Glass Menagerie for Illinois Repertory Theatre, A Tempest by Aime Cesar for the Playing French Festival at Chicago Shakespeare Theatre, The Woman in Black for Blue Ridge Theatre Festival. Matthew’s production of David Ives All in the Timing and English Made Simple was featured at the 1999 Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Sibiu, Romania. Matthew holds an M.F.A in Directing from Virginia Commonwealth University, and a B.S. in Musical Theater from Ball State University.
Jen Poulin
Stage Manager
Jen Poulin is thrilled to serve BackStage Theatre Company as Associate Artistic Director. Her journey began with a magical experience stage managing Aunt Dan and Lemon in 2009. She has also stage managed A Number, Three Days of Rain, and Memory. This season, Jen directed the first two installments of The Listening Series, BackStage's new off-night adventure. Other projects for 2012 include stage managing The Cripple of Inishmaan at Redtwist Theatre, and directing Savage Land for the 2012 Dionysis Cup Festival of New Plays, hosted by Polarity Ensemble Theatre. She has had the pleasure of working with many fine Chicago companies, including Strawdog Theatre Company, WildClaw Theatre, Serendipity Theatre Collective, Steep Theatre Company, Mary Arrchie Theatre Company, and Silk Road Theatre Project. Jen holds a BFA in Theatre Studies from University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign. Love and thanks to our excellent production team and cast, family and friends, and The Boy.
Tony Bozzuto
Pip/Theo
He was last seen in the Jeff Recommended Memory and Orange Flower Water, and in On An Average Day. For about seven years, Tony has been honored to work his way around the Chicago theatre scene with such talented companies as Lifeline Theatre, Next Theatre, Metropolis PAC, and, of course, BackStage Theatre Co. Whether on stage, television or film, Tony credits much of his skills and successes to his studies at the incomparable Hilberry Theatre in Detroit, MI, where he received his MFA.
John Henry Roberts
Walker/Ned
John Henry Roberts is thrilled to be working with the incredibly smart and talented people of BackStage for the first time. He is an member of the ensemble at Strawdog Theatre Company, where his credits include Shade Murray’s productions of The Good Soul of Szechuan and Detective Story (Non-Equity Jeff Award, Ensemble), Kimberly Senior’s productions of Cherry Orchard and Three Sisters (After Dark Award, Outstanding Ensemble), and Rick Snyder’s production of Aristocrats (Non-Equity Jeff nomination, Actor in a Supporting Role). Other credits include The Moonstone and Wuthering Heights at Lifeline Theatre, Wilson Wants It All with The House Theatre, Leaving Iowa at The Royal George, and To the Green Fields Beyond at Writers’ Theatre (Jeff Award nomination, Ensemble).
Angela Campos
Props Designer
Heath Hays
Sound Design
Heath is a BackStage Ensemble member, where he has designed set for On An Average Day, The Memory of Water, Beauty on the Vine, Bloody Bess and Zombies from the Beyond as well as the Jeff-recommended shows Waiting for Lefty and Medea. He also designed sound for BackStage's The Ruling Class and Seanachi Theatre's drama Whistle in the Dark. He designed set for Infamous Conmmonwealth Theatre's Keely and Du, GreyZelda's Jeff-recommended production of A View From The Bridge as well as their Desire Under the Elms, and Hell in a Handbag's Caged Dames. Heath has also worked for Grounded Theatre, Arena Dinner Theatre, and Village Players.
Jessica Kuehnau
Costume Design
Recent Backstage Theatre include co-scenic design for Orange Flower Water, and costume design for On An Average Day last spring. As a recent graduate of Northwestern University, Jessica received her MFA in both set and costume design. Her Chicago credits include Rivendell Theatre (Jeff recommended These Shining Lives), Building Stage (Dracula), Pegasus Players (Ten Square, Jitney), and Steep Theatre (Parlour Song). She has also designed several productions with Adventure Stage Chicago (ensemble member), Griffin Theatre, Lifeline Theatre, MPAACT, and Metropolis Performing Arts Center. Jessica is currently the resident set designer and design professor at North Park University and full time teaching faculty at Northeastern Illinois University.
Sean Sullivan
Technical Supervisor
Sean hails from Ohio where he earned a BA in theatre from The Ohio State University. Sean has been an ensemble member with BackStage Theatre Company since his appearance as Roald Amundsen in Terra Nova (Jeff Recommended). Since then, he has performed as Henry Antrobus in The Skin of Our Teeth (Jeff Award Winning), and as McKyle, the God of Electricity, in The Ruling Class. Sean was also the master carpenter for The Skin of Our Teeth and scenic designer/carpenter for Anton in Showbusiness (Jeff Recommended), Denise Druckzewski’s Inferno (Jeff Recommended), and The Ruling Class. Sean freelances as a carpenter and stagehand in theatre and television for companies such as Chicago Scenic Studios, Inc. and Harpo Studios, Inc. Away from BackStage, Sean has appeared on stage with Timeline Theatre in The General from America (Jeff Recommended), as Floyd in Fiorello! (Jeff Award Winning), and as Joe in The Children’s Hour (Jeff Recommended). Sean was then cast as M’Ling in Lifeline Theatre’s The Island of Dr. Moreau (Jeff Award Winning). In 2008, Sean was the title character, Harlan ‘Mountain’ McClintock in Shattered Globe’s production of Requiem for a Heavyweight (Equity Jeff Award Winning) and garnered an Equity Jeff Award nomination for Outstanding Actor in a Principle Role for his portrayal. Sean is represented by Stewart Talent Agency and is a member of Actor’s Equity. He is currently starring as Johnny Cash in the Chicago cast of the Tony Award Winning musical, Million Dollar Quartet, now in its third year at the Apollo Theatre. Sean takes the most pride in having met and married fellow ensemble member and best friend, Megan (Frei) Sullivan.
Brandon Wardell
Scenic and Lighting Design
Brandon Wardell is a freelance Lighting and Scenic Designer in Chicago. He earned his MFA from Northwestern University, teaches at several Universities, and is an Ensemble Member at Adventure Stage Chicago. Recent lighting credits include Mrs. Caliban (LifeLine) Aunt Dan and Lemon (BSTC), The Hollow Lands (Steep), On An Average Day (BSTC), The Arab-Israeli Cookbook (Theatre Mir), John & Jen (Appletree), and The Robber Bridegroom (Griffin Theatre). Scenic Designs include Orange Flower Water (BSTC), Maria’s Field (TUTA), In Arabia We’d All Be Kings (Steep Theatre), Holes (Adventure Stage), Dracula (The Building Stage), and Be More Chill (Griffin Theatre). Teaching credits include Northwestern University, Columbia College Chicago, The University of Chicago, Illinois Wesleyan University, and North Park University. www.brandonwardelldesign.com
Rebekah Ward - Nan/Lina
Angela Campos - Props Designer
Three Days of Rain – raised questions about the historical validity of the characters, since the house and architects do and did exist. Is the story purely fiction or is there research involved? From my own family history, I can attest to generational misunderstandings between parents and children – but those portrayed in this play were exponential! Also, John Henry’s total personality change was amazing to watch, from Walker to Ned. AND, was Walker named to personify the nomadic character that Ned dreamed of being? Great show, Matt and All.
Shirley–
Thank you so much for starting the conversation!
The story is pure fiction. Edmund Janeway, Theodore Wexler and the Janeway House are all figments of Richard Greenberg’s astonishing imagination. But, it was very important for us as a production team to make sure that the audience felt as if they knew Edmund Janeway and were familiar with the “Janeway House.” The house is such a overpowering presence in both acts, it is essentially a seventh character in the play. We took a very long time to carefully select the house we would “cast” as The Janeway House (really Casa Son Vida in Spain). The house needed to connect itself in some way to the modernist trends of the 1960′s and then explode them, turning Ned’s house into something that the 1960′s world had never seen before. The Casa Son Vida House is actually a massive 2009 renovation and re-imagining of a 1960′s villa, so the “bones” of the place are composed of exactly the same kinds of things that Ned and Theo’s contemporaries would have been working with.
As far as Walker’s name: the cast and production crew all agree that Ned gave Walker his namesake based on his romantic notion of the “Flaneur.” But, like so many of the other puzzle pieces in this wonderful play, Greenberg never really confirms it, he simply leaves it up to you. In one of the more complex and moving confessions of Act Two, Ned admits to Lina that the life of the Flaneur is what “he would wish for someone better than myself.” Based on the information we have from Act One, we know that Ned gives his son the hopeful name of Walker. This “hope” and even the love that is inherent in that hope is completely lost on the grown-up Walker, and that irony and conflict is heartbreaking.
Thanks of the comment, Shirley!
Lovely show. I’m exploring my own mother’s journals so it’s especially interesting in that light. Performances were deep and rich, a complement to Greenberg’s wonderful text.
One difference of opinion. I’m not sure the “hope and love” bestowed in the name Walker is “completely lost,” though the disconnect is indeed heartbreaking. Walker has miles to go before he sleeps, and it’s a huge leap to say that small, almoset inarticulate gestures of hope and love are ever completely lost. Perhaps Pip knows more than he’s saying, for example.
loved it.
I go to a good deal of Chicago theater and this was the best production I’ve seen in some time. Congrats to all involved in this moving experience. The performances were brilliant, uncanny, totally convincing. The play, in my humble opinion, is an unsung (or undersung) masterpiece. Like Shirley, I was fooled — I thought that these must be real people. The “casting” of the house was very shrewd and had the intended effect. (Thanks for the clarification, by the way, because I was perplexed by my lack of results when I later Googled “Janeway House.”) The situations and characters are not ordinary, but they spoke so clearly to universal themes, and I guess that’s what it’s all about. Thanks!