Goodman Theatre opens the vaults and offers a new chance to see ‘Smokefall.’ Grab it.
In 2013, I fell hard for a new play called “Smokefall” by the Michigan-raised writer Noah Haidle. Staged at the Goodman Theatre and directed by Anne Kauffman, it followed three generations of a divorce-scarred family in Grand Rapids.
And it wrestled with perhaps life’s biggest question: If all love ends in pain, why bother?
Haidle wanted to explore an existential conundrum. He was pointing out that personal cruelty is a common way for relationships to end. Somebody usually walks out on somebody else. And if a couple’s love should survive the risk of the way we all change over time, or our decreasing tolerance for our partners’ inevitable imperfections, that still doesn’t mean love lasts for ever. For the death of one party will surely come calling. Children will lose their parents, sisters their brothers and even, sometimes, parents will lose their children.
We know this, Haidle was saying, but the remarkable thing is that most of us are still are willing to risk our love—to borrow a line from the songwriter Steven Schwartz—in what little time we have. More beautifully than in perhaps any play I’ve seen, Haidle was arguing for this seemingly illogical choice, arguing that it’s the only way for us to find meaning. What made the play so striking and beautiful was the palpable authenticity of the pain in the writing.
“Smokefall,” which starred Guy Massey, Catherine Combs, Eric Slater, Mike Nussbaum and Katherine Keberlein, has popped into my head a couple of times during the emotional whirlpool of the pandemic, a collective experience of loss that we have yet to fully process. So I was delighted to learn in recent days that the Goodman soon will post its archival video of the production online for everyone to see.
“Smokefall” is one of five productions in the new “Encore” series, part of the Goodman’s attempt to fill the programming void between now and its return to live theatrical action in the fall. Each of the shows will have a limited viewing window between March 15 and May 9, a consequence of complex financial arrangement with the various parties and unions involved. But it’s a rare chance to catch up on some of the Chicago theater history you might have missed.
The show actually was staged twice on Dearborn Street, once in the smaller Owen Theatre and the following year in the Albert main stage. There was a subsequent New York production at the MCC Theatre, but the play didn’t catch fire in the way I thought it deserved, probably because Haidle employed so many symbolic flights of fancy that he lost a few people on the way. But I say it was one of the best new plays the Goodman ever produced, and that’s a pretty distinguished list.
If “Smokefall” doesn’t ring your bell, you also can see Robert Falls’ desperately bleak 2013 production of “Measure for Measure,” a nihilistic, last-days-of-disco take on the complex Shakespearean tragedy that caused a bit of a stir at the time because Falls, ever the auteur, decided to give the play a new ending, killing off a major character whom the Bard himself had decided to let live.
What’s not to like about that chutzpah? Especially in a show that also featured the music of the great Donna Summer.
If you’re interested in Falls work over the years, this “Measure” is well worth a look, not least because it’s so emblematic of his portfolio. The cast is fabulous: Jay Whittaker as Angelo, as supported by the great A.C. Smith and John Judd, and matched up by Alejandra Escalante as Isabella.
The third major Goodman show on offer is Christina Anderson’s ”How to Catch Creation,” a complex play set in the Bay Area in the 1960s and set among intellectuals and artists. This show from 2019 also featured a stellar cast: Karen Aldridge, Keith Randolph Smith, Ayanna Bria Bakari, Maya Vinice Prentiss, Bernard Gilbert and Jasmine Bracey. I’m going to watch it again: it wasn’t the easiest piece to track the first time around but there some fascinating explorations of what we mean, exactly, by a word like creativity.
If Haidle was worrying over love, Anderson was taking on the act of creation itself and I was especially juiced by the willingness to probe the tricky dichotomy of creating something for yourself versus creating something that someone actually will want to see. Is one more legitimate than the other?
Fascinating. And I’d apply the same adjective to Deal Orlandersmith’s ”Until the Flood,” a prescient solo piece from 2018 that dealt with the fatal police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. Orlandersmith has a long relationship with the Goodman Theatre and this piece was among her best. As directed by Neal Keller, it felt both unstinting and determined to bring about positive change. In the coming weeks, as a court case unspools in Minneapolis, it will be more important than ever.
Finally, the Goodman has come up with one international collaboration you can view again: Flora Lauten and Raquel Carrío’s staging of Juan Rulfo’s 1955 novel “Pedro Páramo.” This was a complex piece, too, also involving the Goodman artist Henry Godinez. If you don’t know “Pedro Páramo,” it’s about a man who travels to a small town in search of more knowledge of his father, only to discover a ghost town filled with specters.
This kind of global artistic collaboration between the Goodman and Cuba’s renowned Teatro Buendía, so crucial to the creative life of this city, won’t be back this fall, given all the restrictions on international travel. “Pedro Páramo” is a reminder of how important that return will be.
“Encore” titles stream March 15 to May 9; free with reservations at www.goodmantheatre.org/encore
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
