The Autumn Garden

Nathaniel Swift directs The Autumn Garden, opens this weekend at the Victory Gardens Greenhouse, and this is a theatrical opportunity that cannot -- CANNOT -- be missed.

Nearly every professional actor started out in a high-school drama department. And those drama departments tended to do large, complex scripts written in the thirties and forties because there were a lot of roles for the kids to play and the family closet provided plenty of costumes. I know that as an actor, I cut my teeth on those scripts.

But in the 1950's the political and economic climate began to change for the American theatre. Musicals began to generate more box-office revenue, and dramas started to shrink. By the 1970's and 80's, two- or three-character plays done on a black-box set were the norm, and in the Chicago store-front theatre, it was/is almost physically (not to mention financially) impossible to mount a script with more than four characters and two costume changes. Throughout the 1980's and 90's, whether from budgetary restrictions or artistic tastes, the scripts that I worked on in high school, and the playwrights who created them, were regarded as passe. At least by me, if no one else.

And still today, Tracy Letts notwithstanding, large, complex dramas aren't common on the Chicago stage. Even Shakespeare gets paired down to accommodate the 10x6 dressing rooms, and fifty-seat house. Therefore it's a real treat to see The Autumn Garden. Trite, but true, they simply don't make them like this anymore. In preparing for my shoot with Eclipse, I read the script twice and watched a late run thru. I've edited maybe twenty pictures from the two shoots, and even as I cropped the last shot, a new detail about the play sprang to mind and I was in awe all over again. And my friends, I'm not easily awed.

This play is not a theatrical hors d'oeurves. Going to see this production is a full, Mame-Dennis theatrical banquet. You won't realize just what you're missing from the theatre until you see this show. Magic!

Directed by Nathaniel Swift. Cast: Julie Daley, Seven Fedoruk, Dawn Alden, Stephen Dale, Geraldine Dulex, John Fenner Mays, Nora Fiffer, Judith Hoppe, Millicent Hurley, Raymond Jacquet, Julie Partyka, Chuck Spencer