The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie Firstborn Productions

According to Gregory Gerhard, artistic director of Firstborn Productions, the company name comes from the notion that "the theater event is a sacrificial offering for an audience, for the good of those who witness it." This production of Albert Innaurato's The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie takes itself just that seriously.


8/4/97 - 8/30/97


According to Gregory Gerhard, artistic director of Firstborn Productions, the company name comes from the notion that "the theater event is a sacrificial offering for an audience, for the good of those who witness it."

This production of Albert Innaurato's The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie takes itself just that seriously. The result is a ponderous evening of navel gazing, a heavy-handed cultural horror show that flattens Innaurato's delicate and darkly funny play.


Carol Burbank, Chicago Reader August 15, 1997

The story of Benno Blimpie, a fat boy eating himself to death as he sits in an unappealing puddle of remembered abuse, is a challenging project for a young company. Director Jim Reed and his cast take it so literally that this seems like a hellish TV movie of the week instead of the grotesque and archly surreal play I know from past productions. Firstborn's production is a self-indulgent and tiresome sacrifice that leaves audiences with a whimper, not a bang.


Richard Christiansen, Chicago Tribune August 13, 1997

?For a while, in the '70s, the flame of talent burned brightly in the plays of Albert Innaurato. Along with his fellow Yalie, Christopher Durang, he was an emerging playwright of great promise, having skyrocketed from the off-off-Broadway scene to a Broadway run in 1976 of his best-known work, "Gemini."

Since then, Innaurato has all but fallen off the theater map; but, as the new staging by Firstborn Productions of his 1973 "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie" demonstrates, his writing, flowing in a dark stream of disgust and hilarity, still has the power to haunt and disturb.

The play, lasting a little more than one hour, is, as with most of Innaurato's work, a semi-autobiographical piece, about the life of an unhappy, alienated youth in South Philadelphia.

And what a miserable life it is. His brutish father and his slob mother consider him an obese, pimply-faced embarrassment. His beloved grandfather, a pathetic pedophile, sneaks off to suck the toes of a 13-year-old tease.

It's no wonder that Benno, who has artistic yearnings, soon figures out that nothing makes any difference. After he is beaten and sodomized by a gang of tormenting toughs, he decides that he is going to eat himself to death. At least then, he reasons, he will be beloved by the rats who come to nibble on his fat carcass.

In its early productions, "Benno" featured its title character encased in an immense, suitably surreal "fat" suit.

Firstborn's bare-bones edition, in the basement space of the Chopin Theatre, has no such trimmings. Jason Jones, of average height and weight, as Benno, simply sits on a side platform, surrounded by junk food garbage, and picks away at his popcorn.

From his perch, he introduces and watches in horror scenes from his family history, occasionally moving down to take part in the nightmare.

Fat or not, Jones is an intense, compelling actor who makes one feel Benno's pain; and his young colleagues, although playing roles that are not in their age range, find the right balance of the beautiful and the grotesque in Innaurato's eruption of language.

Allison Cain and Kirk Gillman, their faces painted a ghostly white, are the parents from hell; D. Eric Billingsley is the besotted grandfather; and Andrea Washburn, seducing the audience too, is the evil little temptress who lures him to destruction.?


Lawrence Bommer August 8, 1997

?A grotesque one-act that explores the tortured psyche of a mordantly obese young man, "The Transfiguration of Benno Blimpie" is Albert ("Gemini") Innaurato's dour 1976 look at the unsung passion of Benno, a marginal misfit who refuses to be counted out. Opening on Friday, Jim Reed's revival for Firstborn Productions is yet another example of the brave refusal of several local theaters to offer summer fluff during Chicago's "fun in the sun" months. (Equally brave examples of counterprogramming against the silly season are Circle Theatre's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," Defiant Theatre's "Caligula," Steppenwolf Theatre's "A Fair Country" and LeTraunik Productions' "Black Angel.") Much of Innaurato's semi-autobiographical action consists of acerbic flashbacks to Benno's tormented childhood, scenes that explain Benno's inevitable decision to depart from humanity. Benno's plight testifies to the irreversible damage unleashed by a loveless and cruel environment: This taboo-confronting show is not for the squeamish.?

Author
Albert Innaurato

Director
Jim Reed

Performers
Jason Jones, Alison Cain, Kirk Gillman, D. Eric Billingsley , Andrea Washburn

Tags: Theater, Old Europe, 1997