By Elizabeth Harper

Content Warnings and Capitalism—
Elizabeth Goes to the Theater

American Psycho: The Musical
Household Spirits
Revolution

American Psycho: The Musical
Chopin Theatre
Closes November 26

Kokandy Productions
Direction by Derek Van Barham
Book by Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Music and Lyrics by Duncan Sheik
Based on the Novel by Bret Easton Ellis

I read American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis when it first came out in 1991. It’s one of my all time favorite books. At some point I saw the movie which came out in 2000. I’m also a fan of Duncan Sheik’s 1996 hit “Barely Breathing.” When I saw that American Psycho: The Musical was playing in Chicago, I made it a priority to go.

Before I went downstairs to the lower level of The Chopin Theatre in Wicker Park, I was warned about the sex, violence, and lighting effects. “Awesome,” I said, and went down to get a cocktail and entered the theater to find my seat.

The stage was in the middle of the space, a long runway-like raised platform, surrounded by seating, and there was white plastic sheeting hanging down all around. Snippets from 1980s movies, commercials, TV shows, news shows, etc. flashed rapidly on the white sheeting as loud 1980s pop music played—the pre-show before the official start when the main character Patrick Bateman and his many accoutrements are introduced, to be followed by a stunning array of song and dance numbers.

The music and dancing are magnificent. Such young beautiful people gyrating—they weren’t alive in the ‘80s or even the ‘90s. So the familiar music of my high school days is most likely retro for them, or what their parents played. Songs include remixed versions of “Don’t You Want Me” (The Human League) and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” (Tears for Fears), among others.

The songs and dialogue are sardonic, making fun of the characters, their callousness, and their time period. The goriest parts are presented tastefully with the tossing of red paper confetti to represent the blood spurting out of Patrick Bateman’s victims. I really can’t praise the choreography for both the dance numbers and the torture and murder scenes enough. The performers are mesmerizing.

I have an appreciation of this play, this time period, this angst, as an older Gen X-er. Indeed, I found myself the only one laughing loud, raucous guffaws at lines like, “you can get dyslexia from pussy,” taken right from the book, by the way, which I was eager to reread after seeing the musical.

Beyond the striking visual spectacle are the blistering social critique and Bateman’s alienation and elaborate fantasies of homicide, a solipsistic schizophrenia … or is it autism, or bipolar, or narcissism, or… . Folks love to diagnose the main character, homicidal Patrick Bateman, as I found out when I wondered if it occurred to anyone else that Patrick Bateman might be autistic (the answer is yes) and googled it. Even before Google, before the internet and knowledge at your fingertips, Patrick Bateman has a seemingly encyclopedic knowledge of various fashion brands, restaurant reviews, consumer electronics, current events, and more, which he loves to recite to himself. When he shares this information with other people, they give him weird looks and oblivious reactions. Thus people easily ignore him when he tells them of his detailed fantasies of torture and murder, or maybe it’s just that they’re all self-absorbed in their own ambitious, consumer selves.

The musical gets the tone of the book, the atmosphere right—the endless diatribes about consumer brand names and gratuitous spending on superficial luxuries against the background of a litany of sociopolitical, global ills.

Those ills include: apartheid (in South Africa); the arms race (remember the Cold War, anybody?); AIDS (when it was scary and people were dying and not enough resources were dedicated to prevention and treatment); homelessness (remember when homeless people were scattered annoyances to people like Patrick Bateman and his associates, rather than entire tent cities?); problems in the Middle East (currently too timely and close to home, and no, after all these decades, they haven’t figured it out and it seems to get only worse); world hunger (remember the song “We Are The World”?). These are listed in the “Oh, Sri Lanka” lyrics, and in even more detail in Ellis’ book. Indeed, the references to the current events of the 1980s serve as a history lesson refresher and a foreboding foreshadowing of the world’s current ills, now exacerbated and even more dystopian and apocalyptic. With all this going on, no wonder Patrick Bateman and his ilk wanted to focus on consumer brands. Now we have Instagram influencers hawking products amidst suspect takes on the news in our social media feeds.

Here are some lyric snippets from the song “This is Not an Exit” ending the show:

“Maybe this schism is just a symptom/ Of late capitalism”

“I am all alone here/ I am a solipsist”

In a capitalist dystopia with no escape in sight, maybe the only freedom and control is in individual acts or fantasies of violence, reducing people to the physical mounds of gore that they are. I’m reminded of Kathy Acker, another favorite author I discovered in the 1980s. Accused of obscenity and pornography, she explained the real violence, the real obscenity, was in all the terrible things we don’t talk about, don’t address, all the things you’re not supposed to talk about in polite company. I’m paraphrasing from memory. I’ve been searching for the exact quote, and then realized maybe it wasn’t something I read, but rather something I heard in a live in-person interview when I’d seen her in Chicago sometime in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s when she visited UIC (University of Illinois Chicago) and SAIC (School of the Art Institute of Chicago).

I highly recommend going to see American Psycho: The Musical if you’re a fan of the book, 1980s music, and attractive “hardbodies” dancing around. Also, go see it if you want your feelings of alienation and never-ending horror confirmed.

Household Spirits
Theater Wit
Closes November 11

Directed by Eileen Tull
Written by Mia McCullough

I went to see Household Spirits because I know the director Eileen Tull from seeing her at live lit / storytelling events over the years. And also I saw that it had a doll in it, and I am so totally a doll person. On the other hand, I was somewhat hesitant because I don’t believe in ghosts and also I really hate any AA, 12-step program junk rhetoric. But friends, dolls, and local theater in a neighborhood I could get to won out as determining factors.

This show had a content warning accessible by QR code displayed by the entrance to the theater, but I had already turned my phone off when I saw it, so I scanned it only after the play was over. I get why this play would merit content warnings. As for this review, here’s another content warning: spoilers abound.

The main plot point, and what struck me as the most interesting, is that the ghost of the schizophrenic, dead by suicide, mother wants to find the best way for her potentially schizophrenic son to kill himself. She had tried to kill him too when she killed herself (by hanging), but he was discovered and saved by his father, now remarried and also watchful for signs of schizophrenia in his now teenage son.

The setting for the play is a very pretty kitchen, with a much used pantry closet decorated with child’s drawings and filled with coffee, crackers, cereal, etc. There are burn holes, due to a fire started by Clara which led to Philip removing all the candles from the house. And throughout the play, the ghost of the mother, Clara, played by the impish and agile Ilyssa Fradin, retreats into that space as her fortress, guarded by a child’s painting of a dragon.

The play starts out with Clara’s head in the oven, and Erik sitting on a kitchen stool with headphones and a device. Clara is so petite that, looking at the legs protruding from the oven, I thought she might be a doll. But she was trying the oven out for Erik, ultimately deciding he wouldn’t like it because he wouldn’t like the feel of metal against his face.

The son Erik, played by a very watchable Nathan Hile with a stunning mop of blond curls, is actually one of the more emotionally competent characters in the play. He had to pick up his father Phillip, played by an also very attractive Doug MacKechnie, when Phillip got arrested for a DUI. Phillip now has to attend court-ordered AA meetings and is becoming convinced that he actually is an alcoholic, His wife, Evelyn, stylishly played by Jennifer Jelsemo, is skeptical of this cult of so-called alcoholics, questioning the aptness of her husband’s inclusion in their ranks.

Evelyn’s daughter Rox, played by the bewitching Téa Baum, is unexpectedly home from college for the holidays after a fight with a boyfriend derailed her plans to be with him in Aspen. At first there is some antipathy between step-siblings Erik and Rox, but they end up developing some camaraderie as the play progresses.

Angela, movingly played by Cindy Gold, is the housekeeper, who is aware of Clara’s presence and talks to her. She is motherly towards Erik, demonstrating genuine fondness and care.

The large, soft cloth doll, named Julia, is a heirloom from a holocaust escape, with orifices for hiding things. Evelyn brings her back from a visit with her declining ex-mother-in-law, Rox’s paternal grandmother. The doll’s thoughts can be heard via voice-over from Suzanne Petri. Julia can communicate with Clara in whispers unheard by the audience or the rest of the family. While Clara can’t be seen, but can interact with objects in the real world (opening closet doors, knocking things over) but not people, Julia can be seen, but is the passive recipient of objects and actions imposed upon her by people.

Families are emotionally unsatisfying. Thus the usefulness of dolls.

Rox’s father, comically played by Robert Koon, who has been imprisoned for fraud and is now out, tries to sneak into the house by various ruses including pretending to be interested in buying the house and also as Phillip’s faux AA sponsor.

Both Clara and Phillip long for their son, who is now grown and separate from them. They want to control him to the point of literally destroying him.

Mom Evelyn ignores/interrupts her daughter Rox when she starts to tell her about the professor holding her A grade hostage for a blowjob, saying something like, “Better not to rock the boat” or some such status seeking/preserving nonsense.

When working so hard to keep up appearances, is it possible for anyone to feel really seen?

Once Erik becomes aware of Clara’s machinations to get him to kill himself, he fights back in a dramatic climax, shooting at her ghost instead of himself.

In a final scene, Erik is throwing balloons filled with fake blood at CEOs running a marathon for a charity fundraising event.

This is a long play, uncomfortable to sit through, but I think the disturbing aspects are pointing to, or at least grappling with, important issues, such as how parents’ efforts to protect and hold on to their children can be destructive, along with all the trappings of quantifiable success people are supposed to be striving for, even though they don’t provide any guarantee of happiness or even survival.

Revolution
A Red Orchid Theatre
Closed November 5

Directed by Travis A. Knight
Written by Brett Neveu

The program for Revolution includes content warnings and a land acknowledgement. The content warning has two parts:

Sensory:

Prop weapon

Emotive:

Onstage depictions of:
Drug use, alcohol consumption, panic attack

Verbal references to:
Depression, anxiety, drug use.

Some may find land acknowledgements, um, … unsatisfying. My feeling is, well, they’re better than nothing—better than reducing American Indians to cartoons, mascots, relicts of the past, rather than seeing them as integral, active participants in our past, present, and future.

In contrast to the elaborate settings of the other two plays previously discussed, Revolution takes place in the alley behind Revolution Cuts hair salon, which we learn from the dialogue is part of a shopping mall complex that also includes a Ross and a Rainforest Cafe. Plus there’s a nearby liquor store that sells gifts and candy.

The play has just three characters: Puff, played by Stephanie Shum; Jame, played by Taylor Blim; and Georgia, played by Natalie West, who is familiar because she played Crystal on the Roseanne television show.

Jame and Puff work at the salon where Puff has just been promoted to manager. Jame wants to celebrate Puff’s birthday, but even this much of a decision seems to cause panic and angst in Puff, who says she likes organizing but not planning. They decide that Jame will go to the liquor store and they can drink beers in the alley, and maybe consider going to Rainforest Cafe.

Along comes Georgia, older than Puff and Jame, and they strike up a spontaneous friendship for their party in the alley. Georgia, who just finished her shift at Ross, contributes a party platter with ham and feta hors d’oeuvres originally meant for her husband’s church (Puff is really excited about ham) and some money for Jame to buy cider, beer, and candy at the liquor store.

Nothing much happens in this play. The rest of the audience was laughing a lot more than I was. It was watching other people have relationships, form connections, which I guess is what plays are, but usually with more drama or tension. True connection is spontaneous and ephemeral, filled with conversations that are enjoyable while they’re happening, but you’re likely to forget most of them later, except for some particularly choice bon mots or faux pas..

They share a lot about their feelings of anxiety, anger, and awkwardness. Jame talks about her days as a angry young woman and her admiration and fondness for Puff. Georgia talks about her annoying husband who spends a lot of time at church. Puff has a lot to say about old Warner Brothers cartoons characters, especially Marvin the Martian. And Jame actually gets her a soft, huggable Marvin the Martian doll from the liquor store.

After the show I googled Marvin the Martian and found out he is an autistic hero to some, though others might think he’s just delusional. Even though the words autistic or neurodivergent are never explicitly used, it’s quite possible we’re supposed to infer that something like that is going on with Puff, given her agitation, interests, and the calming exercises her friend Jame encourages her to use. At one point, a gun comes out of Georgia‘s purse, but Jame calmly takes it away and unloads it. Georgia is offered the desk receptionist job at the salon and eagerly accepts. In the end, all three happily make their way to Rainforest Cafe to celebrate.

The characters demonstrate genuine care for each other, in ways not motivated by competitiveness and ambition.

Thus, after seeing this play, I’m left with the following conclusions:

Making the best of whatever situation you find yourself in, with whatever people you find yourself with, is the only revolution you’re going to get.

Also, eating candy and drinking alcohol are awesome.