Reviews for CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC

Kevin Gladish as Tony Horwitz in Confederates

Excerpts from reviews for the show, with links to the full pieces:

RATING: “Heckuva Good Show”

Since seeing Confederates in the Attic on Sunday evening, I’ve written and rewritten this column more times than I care to count, let alone admit to.  In truth, I’m struggling with the material of the show, and more importantly with the questions that the play itself poses.  Which means, I suppose, that this play works remarkably well and does exactly what it sets out to do. . . .

Terry McCabe has adapted Tony Horowitz’s memoir/non-fiction opus Confederates in the Attic into a play that follows a relatively common travelogue model (i.e. protagonist goes on journey and the audience sees a number of vignettes that assemble into some sort of whole). . . . The man making this journey, Tony (played with mild-mannered inquisitiveness by Kevin Gladish) . . .collects the pieces while talking to hardcore reenactors, old men who have lived through the country’s greatest changes, young men who still think the South should have won, a young black man who killed a white redneck for flying the Confederate Flag, a classroom at an African-American school that teaches alienation (if not hate), and many others.   The play is a whirlwind tour of the American South . . .

The play changes locations so frequently that it seems it is a constant parade of newly-changed costumes.  And kudos goes to kClare Kemock for pulling together what must have been a veritable mountain of clothing.  Those outfits were the primary way through which the setting of any given scene was established, and I didn’t become lost on this journey thanks to their guidance.

The acting company was filled with good performances, but a couple of folks stood out.  Peter Goldsmith played Tony’s sometimes-sidekick-sometimes-tour-guide Rob.  Rob is a character whose repeated arrival on the stage is always welcomed.  Goldsmith’s infectious energy makes one almost believe that it would be fun to spend every free weekend out roughing it in a ditch somewhere pretending to be a soldier from the 1860s.

LaRen Vernea also firmly claimed the stage whenever she was on.  She played a number of characters, much like most of the cast (other than Gladish and Goldsmith), and each of hers were clearly drawn and well developed, even when they were only on for a few lines.

McCabe’s staging of the action flowed seamlessly from scene to scene.  The scenery itself was very simple, and because of that the content of the show was more in focus.  Which brings us around to the topic of the questions that are raised by Confederates in the Attic. . .

I can’t really distill the show down to a simple list of questions.  But they are asked of every person who comes in to the audience.  They aren’t always directly posited (though sometimes they are), but through the action of the play one is called upon to look at how we view the events of the Civil War . . . The journey came to a sudden end without a clear conclusion, but I think that makes it better than if it had tried to provide some discovered truth. . . .

 Theatre by Numbers

A kind of volatile but compassionate mix of Deliverance, Killer Angels, and Gone with the Wind:

It looks humorously and non-judgmentally at a war that, at least in the South, never really ended. 

Richly adapted and faithfully staged by City Lit artistic director Terry McCabe, these 130 minutes teem with scary revelations about the unreconstructed territory below the Mason-Dixon Line where "it's still half time" in the War Between the States. . . 

The impressive and well-cast 14-member cast describe the tragedy of Michael Westerman (Christian Isely), a punk white teenager shot by black kids for flying the Confederate flag from his pickup truck.  Horwitz testifies to K.K.K. rallies in Kentucky and hateful white-supremacist incitements to race war to preserve an "Aryan nation." Horwitz talks to African-Americans, like Freddie Morrow (Johnathan Wallace), who shot Westerman for reasons he can't ken. . . .

. . . To his credit, Horwitz does not minimize the unhealed wounds that fester a century and a half later.

    ChicagoTheatre Beat

The show closes May 25.  Here is the all-important link to buy tickets.