Highly Recommended - The Dueling Critics, Chicago Public Radio 8/21/09
"This is spectacular theatre." - Kelly Kleiman
"This is what good Chicago theatre is all about" - Jonathan Abarbanel


Albert Williams, Chicago 8/19/09 - “Edward Albee followed his breakthrough hit Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? with this dramatization of Carson McCullers's novella, set in a dirt-poor Georgia mining community during the Depression. A flop in its 1963 Broadway premiere, the play is seldom revived--so thanks are due to Signal Ensemble Theatre for its riveting production of a haunting, unfairly neglected work. Albee captures the folkloric, even epic, quality of McCullers's tale about a twisted love triangle involving Miss Amelia, the mannish moonshiner who runs the town's cafe; Lymon, a freakish "brokeback" who stirs her affections; and Marvin Macy, the roughneck who falls for Amelia and then vows vengeance when she rejects him. Ronan Marra's well-acted, beautifully designed staging balances gothic grotesquerie, dark comedy, melancholy lyricism, and shocking violence, and live music enhances the atmosphere”


Highly Recommended – Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times 8/12/09
"There is the lover. And there is the beloved."

In those simple, declarative sentences -- notably separate, distinct and fraught with meaning -- writer Carson McCullers cut straight to the root of the problem. Love, as she observed, can be the most solitary emotion, even if it also can be the most transformative. It is this notion that animates the twisted heart of McCullers' strange and haunting 1951 novella, "The Ballad of the Sad Cafe." It also is the anguished message that drives Signal Ensemble Theatre's altogether outstanding revival of Edward Albee's stage adaptation of her story.

The Signal Ensemble production casts its spell from the start, as a young but wonderfully old-timey trio of musicians (Jason Adams, Elizabeth Bagby and Nathan Drackett), sings classic American folk tunes that easily conjure the Depression era, and the Georgia cotton mill town where McCullers' story unfolds. And it is sustained to the bitter end as we hear the final words of the Narrator (Vincent L. Lonergan, who beautifully sets the tone throughout with his pitch-perfect performance).

Director Ronan Marra's production consistently taps into McCullers' dark, crazy humor. And in steering clear of sentimentality, the characters' pain and perversity are only enhanced.

"Ballad" begins on the fateful day when the young Miss Amelia Evans (pretty, enigmatic Simone Roos), a distiller of moonshine and a solitary, tough-minded businesswoman, permits her heart to melt.

The object of her affection is a truly freakish humpback who arrives at her doorstep out of nowhere and announces he is her Cousin Lymon (a terrifically wily Aaron Snook). Lymon is a pathetic creature who unexpectedly touches Amelia, and she takes him in, makes him her pet and even throws open the doors of her general store so it becomes a popular cafe. Yet soon, Lymon begins manipulating Amelia in ways that should set off alarms. But because she is so lonely, so starved for love and family, she doesn't quite see it.

Of course there is a backstory, too. It involves one Marvin Macy (fine work by Philip Winston), a ruffian who fell hard for Amelia, wholly reformed himself, married her in all good faith, and was then rudely rejected. When he returns to town, angry and vengeful, he finds the most unlikely ally to help him punish Amelia.

There are winning performances by Joseph Stearns and the large ensemble. And Melania Lancy's set supplies the ideal rustic atmosphere for this superb production”



‘Ballad of the Sad Café’ needs to pluck a sprightlier tune – Nina Metz, Chicago Tribune 8/12/09 - “According to her autobiography, "Illumination and Night Glare," two of the story's principal characters were inspired by an unusual-looking couple that McCullers spied across a bar: "A woman who was tall and strong as a giantess, and at her heels she had a little hunchback."

Initially published in magazine form in 1943, the novella is one of McCullers' more popular works, though I probably land on the side of the critic who described it as "fabricated primitivistic folkishness."

Two decades after the story appeared, Edward Albee adapted it for the stage, crafting a homespun Depression-era freak show love triangle beset by loneliness and one-sided relationships.

None of it makes much sense, but the pain and interpersonal miscues resonate. "I am warm and dreamy," goes a line in the play, notable because it refers to the effects of liquor gurgling around in the gullet. When it comes to love, everyone in this small town seems to feel something quite the opposite.

Alas, aside from some fine performances and an evocative wood-plank set from Melania Lancy, Signal Ensemble's revival takes itself too seriously to be anything but a pleasantly boring curiosity.

Ronan Marra's somnolent direction would be the culprit. The show needs some giddyap, but boy, oh boy, this production takes its time and moseys at it own pace; every moment has another moment of its own. Reverential awe tends to suck the life out of anything, and in this case Marra comes awfully close to losing the goodwill of his audience”



The Ballad of the Sad Café – Kris Vire, Timeout Chicago 8/13/09

As his follow-up to Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, Albee chose in 1963 to adapt Southern Gothicist McCullers’s 1951 novella about an unrequited love triangle. Signal’s revival is infused with mournful inevitability. It’s also missing a sense of dramatic satisfaction that’s tough to attribute, but the fault seems to lie with the playwright.

In a tiny Georgia town in the 1930s, Miss Amelia runs her general store and moonshinery with an iron hand. Change is set in motion with the arrival of Lymon, a socially inept hunchback who claims to be her kin. Amelia takes a liking and takes him in; the resultant shift in her disposition serves to transform her store into the titular gathering place. But the return of the revenge-seeking husband she spurned years ago threatens to upend the happy arrangement.

Marra’s assured direction serves the text well. Scenic designer Melania Lancy once again proves adept at solving the puzzle of the Chopin basement with a handsomely rendered general store, and a live three-piece band backs a very capable cast led by Simone Roos’s dynamic, nuanced Amelia. Aaron Snook as Cousin Lymon delivers a physically impressive performance, though his vocal affectations cause some of his lines to be lost (a problem shared, to a lesser extent, by much of the cast). But Snook’s role also illustrates Albee’s failings: There’s no textual motivation for Lyman’s turning on Amelia; nor can we guess why Amelia married a man she didn’t love. McCullers herself might ascribe it to the caprice of the human heart, but on stage, we need a little more to go on.



The Ballad of the Sad Café – Lisa Buscani, NewCity Chicago 8/13/09

Southern novelist Carson McCullers was known for her unblinking portraits of flawed characters’ ignorance and selfishness. Her literary tradition continues as small-town longings spin out of control in Edward Albee’s adaption of her novella “The Ballad of the Sad Café.”

Miss Amelia (Simone Roos) is an entrepreneur/tyrant who is feared by the locals. Cousin Lyman (Aaron Snook), a hunchback dwarf, arrives and she takes him in, much to the townspeoples’ surprise. They live happily together until Amelia’s husband Marvin (Philip Winston) is released from prison, upsetting their home forever.

Signal’s production sweetly captures the sad nostalgia of squandered love. Director Ronan Marra keeps the pacing gentle and languid, but never boring. Snook makes his role’s physical demands look both painful and effortless; Vincent Lonergan’s narration is graciously regretful. Jason Adams, Elizabeth Bagby and Nathan Drackett’s traditional accompaniment flavors the show with a mournful simplicity that resonates long after the show ends.



Lawrence Bommer, Free Press 8/12/09 - “In her bittersweet 1940 novella “Ballad of the Sad Cafe,” Carson McCullers betrays a worthy weakness, a keen but wary sympathy for life’s misfits. Combine that with a contagious loathing for the smaller souls—slanderous and stunted—who infest this self-shrinking Georgia hamlet.

Though featuring a narrator who announces events with melodramatic foreboding, Edward Albee’s 1963 adaptation honors the book’s leisurely pace and frustrated characters. This Southern Gothic saga simmers with misread and unshared passions.

A crusty, tough-as-nails storekeeper resented for her predatory litigation, Miss Amelia unbends when her hunchbacked cousin Lymon arrives. Brimming with childlike neediness, he seems a person to care for who won’t hurt back. Inspired by his impish socializing, Miss Amelia opens the title cafe and, with it, her heart. But her trust in Lymon founders when Marvin, Amelia’s ex-con husband, reclaims the “wife” who threw him out after a disastrous 10-day union. Lymon’s fascination with Marvin completes the unrequited trio and sets up the glum catastrophe.

Capturing McCuller’s alternately brooding and sleepy atmosphere, Ronan Marra’s music-rich revival fully conveys the claustrophobia that throws these loners together and ultimately forces them apart. Despite some lackadaisical pacing as torpid as if Dixie’s humidity weighed it down, McCuller’s grasp of the mystery of love creates a very pensive plot. Invigorating it throughout, Vincent R. Lonergan, a fervent narrator, seems fascinated by his talespinning, as if he can’t wait to know what’s next.

Though young for Miss Amelia, Simone Roos suggests the self-defeating wariness that keeps her from risking love. She does, however, with Aaron Snook’s Dixie Quasimodo, as twisted within as without. Philip Winston gives vengeful Martin some major motivations, enough to make the sad café as depressing as Albee imagined.


Catey Sullivan, Windy City Times 8/19/09 - “Heat and silence: They define the dusty, somnambulant Deep South of Carson McCullers' compelling novella The Ballad of the Sad Café as it unfolds in a world where humidity-wilted handkerchiefs are as prevalent as drawls, and moonshine so strong and smooth it makes your gizzard glow.

In adapting McCullers' work for the stage, Edward Albee keeps key events intact but edits their context with a rusty carving knife—which is to say, there are crucial pieces missing in Signal Theatre's production. Given the production values and directorial smarts Signal invests in the piece, the adaptation's flaws stand out in stark relief.

You get a certain, instant sense of mood and place, thanks to Melania Lancy's weathered wood set and a three-piece string band of Elizabeth Bagby ( guitar ) , Jason Adams ( washtub bass ) and Nathan Drackett ( mandolin ) . Through songs including "Barbara Ann", "Erie Canal," "You Are My Sunshine" and "I'll Fly Away," the trio captures the ache of the Great Depression and the beautiful, rough relief such simple instruments and simple tunes could provide in a time of such profound sadness. ( Do check out Adams' washtub bass if you have a post-show moment. It is an extraordinary instrument. )

But there's more to McCullers' piece than atmosphere, and that's where Albee comes in—or doesn't. Core characters are in place, but not necessarily intact. There are two pivotal actions that define the action in McCullers' story, both involving Amelia, the proprietor of the Sad Café. Albee's presents them minus emotional background. So it is that Amelia's marriage and her decision to take in a "brokeback" stranger who claims to be a cousin make about as much sense as if the brokeback decided to fly to the moon in the final scene.

In the novella, McCullers provides a rich, emotional backdrop to Amelia and the men who figure so prominently in her story. But when Amelia marries in Albee's adaptation, it seems to be the act of somebody who is bored and just looking for something to do on a Saturday afternoon. When she chases her husband off with a shotgun rather than sleep with him, it's just, well, weird. Granted, rural single girls could be a naïve lot back in the 1930s, but to get married without understanding that you're expected to share a bed with your spouse? That's just inexplicably bizarre—even more so because Amelia is nobody's fool.

In the novella, McCullers paints a whole tapestry of motives to explain why Amelia—gruff, unfriendly and deeply private—takes in Cousin Lymon and begins coddling him like a long-lost beloved child. Here that tapestry is absent, making Amelia's sudden, slavish devotion to a stranger utterly inexplicable.

The supporting cast here is mostly solid—although, as Merlie, Bries Vannon's reliance on a one-note depiction of somebody at the shallow end of the gene pool gets old quickly. The first time he chortles that Miss Amelia killed someone, it's mildly amusing. The second time it's done. The third time it's overdone, and time to find a new schtick.