The Beats at 16th Street Theater ON THE ROAD AGAIN 16th Street gets the band back together.
Photo: Anthony Aicardi Filmer’s choice to revive The Beats 14 years after its 1997 debut at Writers’ Theatre is beyond wise; the production on the intimate stage at Berwyn’s 16th Street Theater is aurally evocative and whip-smart, propelled by a young cast capable of delivering all the rage, intellect and humor of Kerouac, Ginsberg and their contemporaries. The script is a primer in effective stage adaptation. Writers’ cofounder Campbell crafts the words of the Beats into a light narrative without onerous dramatization. Accompanied by live musicians, the ensemble enthusiastically plays off of one another on a mostly bare stage, with snippets of poems written in gold on the black concrete wall behind them. Filmer’s talent for subtly raising the onstage temperature—so you don’t notice until the house is burning down—is in full effect here. At the first-act close, John Taflan’s reading of Ginsberg’s Howl bluffs an understated delivery before cutting loose fury and remorse as the lights abruptly die. It’s a shock and a thrill. The Beats re-creates the genesis of the cult of counterculture, as performed by its great modern disciples. Remounting it at the apex of the “angelheaded hipster” revival serves both to celebrate America’s first wave of tight-jeaned, cigarette-and-coffee eggheads and to remind us that today’s dissident youths ape the style but not the substance of their forebears. That the show speaks so eloquently to 2011 is a testament to the literature that Beat generation writers produced, but also to the tenacious intractability of the culture that so horrified and enraged them. • More theater reviews • More Theater articles -- http://chicago.timeout.com/articles/theater/91274/the-beats-at-16th-street-theater-theater-review Via InstaFetch -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Sixties-L" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/sixties-l?hl=en.
