“I am not mentally ill,” the tightly wound Felix Artifex roars midway through Mistakes Were Made, “I am passionate and driven.” On the page, the line loses much of its velocity. Delivered by Michael Shannon in the intimate confines of his beloved Red Orchid Theatre, it has the five-alarm fury of a gale force typhoon slamming through a kiddie pool. And it’s clear that the speaker, a stressed-out, pill-popping, devastatingly lonely producer, is in fact a bit unhinged. As well as passionate and driven.
In Shannon’s fever-pitch performance of Craig Wright’s black-as-a-black-hole comedy, there exists an only-in-Chicago brand of theatrical alchemy. Although to simply say Mistakes Were Made is a thing of twisted magic would discredit the considerable labors of Wright, director Dexter Bullard, Shannon, and Mierka Girten, an actor who makes a luminous mark in the most of less than 30 seconds of actual stage time. Yet there is indeed magic in pairing the right actor with the right script and precisely the right space. And that rough, combustible magic is evident from lights up. Mistakes Were Made is a rip-roaring tale of hilarious woe told by an actor who brings his own private force-field to bear on the production. In the Red Orchid space – a venue so small front row patrons will get sprayed with actor sweat before the evening’s over - the production’s devouring power is played to the hilt.
Shannon is known to most of the world as the filter-free former mental patient in Revolutionary Road, a bit of business that earned him an Oscar nomination. To Chicago theater-goers, he’s the Red Orchid ensemble member who exploded onto the scene with almost inhuman intensity in the mid-1990s, with Tracy Letts’ "Killer Joe." Hollywood has not tamed Shannon’s deranged, wild-eyed fervor. This is an actor who looks like he’s planning a serial killing spree even when he’s just thinking about whether he’s out of toothpaste.
As Felix, a producer who would gnaw off his left gonad in order to see a beloved project green-lit, Shannon brings all his considerable force to bear. He’s more than six feet of damaged, tragic intelligence whirling like a dervish in a shi*t-storm of absurdity.
Technically, this is not a one-man show. Girten, no slouch herself in the acting department, plays Felix’s assistant. But she’s primarily an off-stage voice, leaving Wright’s smart, ferocious creation to his own fascinating devices.
The story unfolds in real time in Felix’s office as he juggles phone calls from obnoxious movie stars, their more obnoxious agents, playwrights with stupidly unrealistic allegiances to artistic purity, demanding costume designers, snooty British directors, a heartless ex-wife and a scary Middle Eastern revolutionary who may or may not be about to blow up a convoy of Italian-American sheep wranglers involved in a revenue-generating project gone horribly, horribly wrong. It’s a harried, breathless roster of miscreants, and each and everyone of them is mercilessly, relentlessly chewing up a small piece of Felix’s increasingly bloodied soul.
Watching Felix’s world collapse around him – from petty concerns about line allotment from Hollywood to unspeakable carnage in some unnamed war-torn nation – is the best kind of watching-a-train-wreck experience. Your eyes pop at the escalating horror. No matter what, you cannot look away.
As a writer for "Six Feet Under," Wright’s brand of twisted, mordant humor is a known, bankable commodity. Here, without having to share a storyline with other scribes, his gift for laughing in the face of the gallows shines.As Felix struggles to get a 50-character, French epic made, Shannon seems age a decade. Adding to the authenticity: Set designer Tom Burch’s rendition of a shabby office where sweat and desperation seem to emanate from the battered file cabinets.
Mistakes Were Made isn’t a play that will change the world. But its depiction of one man’s passion, drive and dubiously stable mental balance is a tour de force for Michael Shannon and a must-see for everybody else .
Mistakes Were Made runs through Oct. 31 at a Red Orchid Theatre,1531 N. Wells. Tickets are $30. For more information, click here call 312/943-8722 or go to www.aredorchidtheatre.org.
Comments