Aunt Dan and Lemon
Backstage Theatre Company

"if you’ve never seen “Aunt Dan,” and you prefer some intellectual bang for your theatergoing buck, you’ll surely be compelled down here by an impressionable young woman, the dangerous stories she gets told, and the horrific end result" - Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 12/3/09


11/20/09 - 12/20/09

730p Thu-Sat; 3p Sun


'Aunt Dan and Lemon' by Backstage Theatre: Beware childhood influences
Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune 12/3/09

Sit anywhere except that one couch and the bed,” are the instructions issued to anyone entering the basement of the Chopin Theatre for the Backstage Theatre Company production of Wallace Shawn’s “Aunt Dan and Lemon.” That leaves you with plenty of cushiony options in a space kitted out as a creepy boudoir, where a frail and genteel young woman named Lemon (Rebekah Ward-Hays) sips her little health drinks, spins memories of her English childhood, and talks intimately and gently of Nazis and fascism.

I hadn’t seen this fascinating play since I caught the London original at the Royal Court Theatre in 1985, starring Linda Hunt as Aunt Dan. (Steppenwolf Theatre also famously produced this play in 1987, starring Martha Lavey). “Aunt Dan and Lemon” is a delicate, smart, tricky and perennially controversial little play that here receives just the kind of carefully ambivalent, yet wholly immersive, handling it needs from director Matthew Reeder and a very shrewdly cast group of Chicago actors.

“Aunt Dan” makes all sides of the political spectrum uneasy. Conservatives won’t be fond of its specific linking of Henry Kissinger with violent immortality. Liberals will be queasy about the way Shawn makes such a careful case for the necessary horrors done in a nation’s name. In many ways, the character of Aunt Dan (here played by Brenda Barrie) is not unlike Col. Jessep in “A Few Good Men.” She argues that we can only able to be nice because men like Kissinger are out there doing essential things that aren’t nice at all. It’s just that we don’t like to handle that particular truth.

But real essence of “Aunt Dan” is its focus on the influence wrought by those with whom we are intimate when we are young. Aunt Dan was one of Lemon’s Anglo-American parents’ best friends during their Oxford days. Lemon and Aunt Dan have many chats. One could think of this play as a cautionary tale, reminding you to be careful about who gets to say what to your children.

Backstage certainly doesn’t shrink from the play’s scenes of sexual play, its probing of the line where free love becomes just another youth-poisoning transaction. Caitlin Emmons is fearless as Mindy, essentially an upscale hooker not unlike the one that took down Eliot Spitzer. And Anita Deely is quite moving as Lemon’s mother, a woman who lacks the force of personality to compete with the amoral but enigmatic Aunt Dan.

Barrie is hardly the usual type for Dan. But she has a very compelling (and shrewdly chilly) take on this dangerous character, and we surely believe that Ward-Hays is powerless in her grasp. Mostly notably, the tick-tock intimacy of Reeder’s domestic-like staging only enhances the power of the play.

I’d argue that Barrie could be yet tougher. And I think Ward-Hays could go more for the jugular in the crucial final monologue — when we really don’t need to be let off the hook. And a few of the actors slip, on occasions, into the realm of the overly broad. But if you’ve never seen “Aunt Dan,” and you prefer some intellectual bang for your theatergoing buck, you’ll surely be compelled down here by an impressionable young woman, the dangerous stories she gets told, and the horrific end result.


"A brainy Wallace Shawn at the Chopin" - Caitlin Montanye Parrish, TimeOut Chicago 11/25/09

“A courteous, comely young woman named Lemon (Ward-Hays) sits rotting in a well-to-do sitting room. She passes the time reading about the crimes at Treblinka and weaving disturbingly charming arguments for the Nazis as “refreshing.” Peeling back the layers of a childhood that could create such a lovely monster, Aunt Dan asks a cold and subtle question: Are we just less honest about our complicity in the world’s horrors than Lemon?

Lemon’s memories are populated with brilliant creatures spewing articulate hatred. Even as you recoil from Dan’s worship of Henry Kissinger, you can’t dismiss her arguments entirely. Barrie, exquisite as always, presents this Svengali with a disarming sensuousness; a mix of faith and pent-up sex, she could be an escaped nun from Black Narcissus.

Written nearly 25 years ago by Shawn, trafficker in unpleasant truths, Aunt Dan boasts a prescient assessment of neoconservatism taken to an extreme, but it refuses to dismiss the far right as stupid. Sounds gloomy, but it’s filled with sick laughs. The ensemble is an excellent pack of beasts, from Ron Kuzava as Lemon’s frothing American father to Caitlin Emmons’s amoral call girl, stalking the stage for prey. It’s rarely such fun to hate everyone onstage.

Heath Hays’s set design extends the sumptuous feel of the Chopin’s basement lobby directly into the playing area, as though Lemon and the audience are having a drink together. It’s a comfortable place. Luckily, the play isn’t”.

 

Aunt Dan & Lemon -Tony Adler, Chicago Reader  11/26/09

"Wallace Shawn seems to enjoy inviting audiences into comfortable, intimate spaces, and then alienating the hell out of them. He and others have made a point, for example, of performing his monologue The Fever--about the corrupt sources of American affluence--in the living rooms of affluent Americans. Aunt Dan and Lemon is generally seen in theaters, but it's calculated to have the same discomfiting effect. Shawn's 1985 script is essentially a monologue, with acted flashbacks, in which Leonora--nicknamed Lemon--remembers her relationship with an Ayn Rand-esque friend of the family, Aunt Dan. One hopes for a heartwarming mentorship. One gets something else--something much creepier, at both the personal and political levels. Matthew Reeder's production for Back Stage Theatre makes competent use of six good actors. It doesn't quite work, though, because Brenda Barrie is merely good and not overwhelming as Aunt Dan--a character whose charismatic fucked-upness must seduce us as it does Lemon".

 

"Highly Recommended" - Aunt Dan & Lemon - Mary Shen Barnridge, Windy City Times 12/2/09

"Our narrator is Leonora, nicknamed in childhood "Lemon"—a cheerfully neurasthenic invalid who freely admits to a past restricted by a likewise sickly youth, obliging her to entertain us with memoirs of her acquaintances. These include her blustery father, her submissive mother, and an eccentric family friend named Danielle—the "Aunt Dan" of the title—who fascinated a pre-adolescent Lemon as adults not one's own kin often do. Among Dan's adventures are a tale of her brief affair with a gold-digging gamine ( who cold-bloodedly murders the policeman harassing her protector ) , and later, an impassioned defense of Henry Kissinger—moments etched so indelibly in Leonora's memory that years later, her recollections will lead her to some rather disturbing assessments of her society.

Yes, we are right in the thick of Wallace Shawn territory now, replete with long monologues, stories-within-stories and a line of argument as convoluted as its conclusions are perverse. A realm where, if we are to follow the playwright's logic, we must not only listen carefully to every word, but devise our own rebuttals to his characters' outrageous assertions—for our play's agenda includes no comforting raisonneur to guide us toward dissenting views.

This BackStage Theatre production focuses our attention by casting us as, literally, flies on Leonora's parlor walls. We are seated on furniture not unlike that which she occupies ( flanked by an array of the fruit and vegetable juices that comprise her sole diet ) , arranged as if decorating the room in which she receives visitors—an illusion heightened by the absence of boundaries, physical or imagined, dividing lobby from auditorium in the Chopin's basement space. Also keeping Shawn's words—and there are a lot of them—progressing at a brisk pace are an assembly of actors whose elocutionary skills have been honed to razor sharpness, creating immediately engaging individuals of palpable originality. And when nothing but bodies-in-motion will do, Dan's account of naughty Mindy's erotically charged homicide is replicated with a vivid sensuality that set several opening-night playgoers to muttering in dismay.

Indeed, it's a brave audience who can allow itself to be gulled as our author demands—first seduced by a bevy of alluring personalities (led by stars-in-rise Brenda Barrie and Rebekah Ward-Hays as the title personnel) , then confronted by the monstrosity of their opinions. But if we are to circumvent the atrocities that beguile our introspective hostess, we should welcome Shawn's challenge to our complacency".


www.steadstyle.com - "I have seen the basement of the Chopin Theatre configured in many different ways over the years, but the current arrangement for Backstage Theatre Company's "Aunt Dan and Lemon" is truly novel.  The lobby and adjoining theatre space, once separated by an iron door, are neatly opened up with a curtained alcove that remains open through the nearly two intermission-less hour performance.  There are no traditional theatre seats but rather an eclectic selection of old sofas, cast-off chairs, a bed and table that make you feel like you've walked into a second hand basement rummage sale.  The concept of the "found" space is brilliant, and Director Matthew Reeder places his actors throughout the space, often delivering their lines from seated positions amongst the audience.  This most untraditional presentation form may be the best way to approach Wallace Shawn's controversial and decidedly unconventional script as it sets us off guard and open to whatever possibilities unfold.

This is a dark and troubling work that will no doubt count as many fans as foes.  Did Shawn really mean to equate Jews with cockroaches?  Probably not, although it's a pretty startling way of taking an argument praising the Nazis and the Holocaust to its most logical absurd extreme.  Do all people secretly enjoy killing, or is murder just a necessary tactic when one's way of life is threatened?  Shawn rejects all pretense of the well-made script and other theatrical niceties to confront audiences with some of their most secret vile and evil thoughts.

We meet a sickly recluse whose given name was Leonora, but who's better known by the nickname Lemon given to her by her beloved Aunt Dan.  Dan isn't really her aunt, but a close family friend, an American who came to London to study at Oxford.  As Lemon welcomes us, her dear little audience, into her troubled imagination, she reveals a fascination with the Nazis, the subject of a book she is reading.  She finds it refreshing that the Nazis were largely successful in their plot to exterminate Jews and other cultural pests to achieve the kind of twisted social utopia they envisioned.  Such thinking no doubt was influenced by her "evening talks" with the offbeat, free-thinking Aunt Dan, whose own hero Henry Kissinger is described as "a simple, warm, affectionate man".

We see the impressionable 11-year-old Lemon retreating from her parents' unhappy marriage into the frank stories and conversations she shares with the supposedly colorful and eccentric Aunt Dan.  It is these childhood memories that keep the frail and infirmed (from what we have no idea) Lemon alert as she spends most of her time alone in her room staring into space.  She describes her father as a kind of caged animal and her mother as a compassionate saint.  Lemon finds little use for compassion, which she believes is based on a lie.  Human nature is bloody and animalistic, she explains, as we watch a scene in which a prostitute murders a client for simple pleasure.

I am convinced actress Rebekah Ward-Hays would be riveting left alone onstage to read a phone book, and so she is here.  To watch her incandescent smile, the way her eyes twinkle as if she has just been handed a naughty secret or a juicy little nugget of wisdom is a joy and an art to behold.  She single-handedly commands our attention with a character that is more pitiful than empathetic, more deluded than interesting.  It's hard to see in this production why Lemon would become so fascinated and captivated by the seamy world of Aunt Dan, as Brenda Barrie offers a competent performance that is not terribly exciting.  In fact, with a few salacious exceptions, Shawn's work is fairly boring and uneventful.  Reeder's clever staging, Heath Hays' comfortably cluttered set and Rebekah Ward-Hays' illuminating acting hold one's attention even when Shawn's script does not".

 

www.chicagocritic.com - "Aunt Dan & Lemon" - Provocative storytelling works due to a couple of terrific performances.

I’m not sure what to make of Wallace Shawn’s Aunt Dan and Lemon, now in a riveting production by Backstage Theatre Company in the intimate basement studio at Chopin Theatre.  Aunt Dan is a dark cautionary tale, a black comedy and a mordant  tale about the chilling subversive nature of influence.  This is a play that demands sharp listening skills as it contains several long monologues about geopolitics, the nature of societal survival, and the roots of  the urge to  kill to preserve order in society.
Playwright Shawn has much to say that will infuriate both liberals and conservatives as Lemon (Rebekah Ward-Hays in an impressively effective performance) tells her story from memories of growing up under the strong influence of Aunt Dan (Brenda Barrie in a coldly chilling turn). With an undertone of gay sexuality, we see how the family friend, Aunt Dan moves from friend of Lemon’s parents to her personal confident that began when Lemon was eleven years old.

At first I thought this work was a weird coming-of-age memory play but after listening to Aunt Dan’s rambling monologue about her hero, Henry Kissinger, I realized that playwright Shawn uses Dan and later Lemon to voice his political and philosophical views of society.  We eventually see how Aunt Dan’s teaches Lemon about free sexuality as well as controversial social philosophy.  There is a raw bondage sex scene and gay innuendo as part of Dan’s education of Lemon. We see how Dan’s striking influence under the power of friendship and intimacy shapes the warped world view that Lemon expounds in her last speech.  She makes a chilling case for a government’s purpose being to take whatever murderous measures it must to protect our standard of living as she tries to explain away the Nazi’s murder of six million Jews.

Aunt Dan and Lemon is one of those plays that offers a mixture of intoxicating performances, provocative ideas and eerie treatment on the power of influence.  This is a well acted cautionary tale that begs to be seen.

Author
Wallace Shawn

Director
Matthew Reeder

Performers
Brenda Barrie; Anita Deely; Caitlin Emmons; Ron Kuzava; Eric Paskey; Michael Reyes and Rebekah Ward-Hays

Production
Scenic Design - Heath Hays; Ligh Design - Brandon Wardell; Sound Design - Tom Haigh; Costume Design - Joanna Melville; Props Design - Megan E. Frei; Stage Manager - Jen Poulin

Tags: Theater, American, 2009