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.

City Lit's press release for CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC

CONFEDERATES IN THE ATTIC,WORLD PREMIERE ADAPTATION OF ACCLAIMED BEST-SELLER,

CLOSES CITY LIT’S 34^TH SEASON,

FOUR SHOWS IN SERIAL REPERTORY

          Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horwitz, in a world premiere adaptation by City Lit artistic director Terry McCabe, will begin previews at City Lit on Friday, April 25, 2014 and open for the press on Tuesday, April 29. It is the fourth and final production of City Lit Theater’s 34th season, four productions playing in serial repertory, each show’s scheduled run overlapping that of the one opening before and/or after it in daisy-chain fashion through the season.  Confederates in the Attic, directed by McCabe, runs through Saturday, June 7, 2014.

          Confederates in the Attic, called “the best book that has been written on the Civil War in modern culture” by the Richmond Times-Dispatch and “the freshest book about divisiveness in America that I have read in some time” by the New York Times, is a memoir by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Tony Horwitz.  When he leaves the battlefields of Bosnia and the Middle East for a peaceful corner of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he thinks he's put war zones behind him. But awakened one morning by the crackle of musket fire, Horwitz starts filing front-line dispatches again, this time from the unfinished Civil War.

          Horwitz embarks on a search for places and people still held in thrall by America's greatest conflict. The result is an adventure into the soul of the unvanquished South, where the ghosts of the Lost Cause are resurrected through ritual and remembrance.  In Virginia, Horwitz joins a band of 'hardcore' re-enactors who crash-diet to achieve the hollow-eyed look of starved Confederates; in Kentucky, he witnesses Klan rallies and hears calls for race war sparked by the killing of a white man who brandished a rebel flag; and he takes a marathon trek through the War’s eastern theatre in the company of Robert Lee Hodge, an eccentric pilgrim who dubs their odyssey the 'Civil Wargasm.'

Confederates in the Attic is the fourth show in City Lit’s Civil War Sesquicentennial Project, a series of productions—most of them world premieres—that explore the war’s legacy.  The Project’s shows so far have been 2011’s The Copperhead, 2012’s Opus 1861, and 2013’s Comrades Mine, all Jeff-recommended.  The Project concludes in 2015 with the world premiere of Kristine Thatcher’s The Bloodhound Law.

In City Lit’s world premiere adaptation of Confederates in the Attic, a cast of fourteen plays 106 characters.  When the show begins previews on April 25, it will run in rotating repertory with The Haunting of Hill House, the already-opened third show of City Lit’s season; the two shows will run in rep through Hill House’s closing on May 11.  (A full season schedule is available at www.citylit.org.)

          Tony Horwitz won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting for his stories about working conditions in low-wage America published in the Wall Street Journal. He also wrote for the Journal as a foreign correspondent covering wars in Africa, Europe, and the Middle East.  His most recent book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid That Sparked the Civil War, won the William Henry Seward Award for Excellence in Civil War Biography.

          Terry McCabe has been City Lit’s artistic director since 2005.  He has directed plays professionally in Chicago since 1981.  His City Lit adaptations of Holmes and Watson, Gidget,  (co-adapted with Marissa McKown),The Hound of the Baskervilles, Scoundrel Time, and Opus 1861(co-adapted with Elizabeth Margolius) were Jeff-nominated.  He won two Jeff Citations for directing at the old Stormfield Theatre and has been thrice nominated for the Jeff Award for Best Director, for shows at Court Theatre, Wisdom Bridge, and Victory Gardens.  His book Mis-Directing the Play has

been denounced at length in American Theatre magazine and from the podium at the national convention of The Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas, but is nonetheless used in directing courses on three continents and is now in paperback. 

          The cast for Confederates in the Attic is Nick Ferrin, Kevin Gladish, Peter Goldsmith, Varris Holmes, Christian Isely, Elizabeth Krane, Adrienne Matzen, Christopher McMorris, Charles Schoenherr, Megan Skord, La’ren Vernea, Evan Voboril, Johnathan Wallace, and Freddy Lynn Wilson.    

The design team is Devin Carroll (lighting), kClare Kemock (costumes), and Dustin Pettegrew (set).  The dialect coach is Catherine Gillespie.

          Confederates in the Attic will play twenty-one performances from

April 25 through June 7.  The full schedule follows:

Friday, April 25              7:30            First preview

Saturday, April 26         3:00            Second preview

Sunday, April 27            6:30            Final preview

Tuesday, April 29         7:00            Press opening

Friday, May 2                 7:30

Saturday, May 3            3:00

Sunday, May 4               6:30

Friday, May 9                 7:30

Saturday, May 10           3:00

Sunday, May 11             6:30

Friday, May 16               7:30           

Saturday, May 17           7:30           

Sunday, May 18             2:00           

Friday, May 23               7:30

Saturday, May 24           7:30

Sunday, May 25             2:00

Friday, May 30               7:30           

Saturday, May 31          7:30           

Sunday, June 1             2:00

Friday, June 6               7:30           

Saturday, June 7           7:30            Closing performance

          Ticket prices are $22.00 for previews and $29.00 after opening. A limited number of $25.00 general admission tickets ($18.00 for previews) are available for each performance through the City Lit website.

          Discounts are available for telephone orders by seniors, students, members of the military, and groups of ten or more. Tickets can be reserved by going to www.citylit.org or by calling (773) 293-3682.

          City Lit receives funding from the Alphawood Foundation, the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation, the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, the MacArthur Fund for Arts and Culture at the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, the Illinois Arts Council (a state agency), and The Saints. Its outreach program is sponsored in part by A.R.T. League.

          City Lit specializes in literate theatre, including stage adaptations of literary material. It is located in the historic Edgewater Presbyterian Church building at 1020 West Bryn Mawr Avenue, one block west of Sheridan Road and a block and a half east of the Bryn Mawr Red Line L stop. The 84 Peterson bus, the 147 Lake Shore Express bus, and the 151 Sheridan bus all stop near City Lit. Valet parking is available for theatre customers at Francesca’s Bryn Mawr restaurant across the street from City Lit. Discounted parking is available for theatre customers, with validation from the Edgewater Beach Café, in the Edgewater Beach Apartments’ underground parking lot one block east of the theatre.  A limited amount of free parking is available for theatre customers who dine at That Little Mexican Café one block west of the theatre.

                                                    -30-

Note:  Some of'this press release's biographical information on Tony Horwitz and description of the book was taken from tonyhorwitz.com.  The photograph at top is copyright 2012 by John Murden Jr. and used by permission.

Juggling our final two Civil War plays

Confederates in the Attic opens this April.
Photo (c) 2012 John Murden Jr. Used by permission.

When we announced the five shows that make up our Civil War Sesquicentennial Project back in 2011, only one of the scripts actually existed--Augustus Thomas's 1918 play The Copperhead, which as far as we could find out hadn't been produced in maybe 70 years when we opened the Project with it in 2011.  (And which is not related to the recent Ron Maxwell film Copperhead.)  The others were little more than general ideas for shows, but with dates assigned for their world premieres in 2012, '13, '14, and '15.  I suppose it  was inevitable that that there would at some point need to be an adjustment to these plans, and here it is.

We're flipping the final two shows of the Project.  The Bloodhound Law by Kristine Thatcher (original working title:  Fugitive Slave) was scheduled to open in April 2014, but she and I have agreed to delay it until 2015.  So Confederates in the Attic, my adaptation of Tony Horwitz's bestseller, which was scheduled for 2015, is being moved up a year.

The Bloodhound Law will open in April 2015.

The original inspiration for The Bloodhound Law was an 1850 series of meetings of the Chicago Common Council dealing with its repudiation of the Fugitive Slave Act and Senator Stephen Douglas's rebuttal of that repudiation, as a way of examining the effect of the Act on strongly abolitionist Chicago and its thriving community of free black families.  The tale has grown in the telling, as Professor Tolkien said about a different story, and Kristine is now wrestling with it in a broader context, starting with the murder of Elijah Lovejoy in downstate Alton in 1837 leading us to the Council's actions thirteen years later.  As a result, the play is taking longer to write than we imagined it would, so it will go up in 2015 instead.

We're in the midst of auditions for Confederates in the Attic now.  We need fourteen actors to play 106 characters who sweep across the modern-day South:  Civil War re-enactors, Klan recruiters, national park rangers, teachers, students, and dozens of others.  Andrea Dymond is directing.  It begins performances April 25.

First post: Welcome to our Civil War Sesquicentennial blog

 

The novelist Walker Percy called the Civil War the American Iliad, the epic struggle from which has emerged our sense of who we are.  The point of our Civil War Sesquicentennial project is to produce a show each season that pursues that idea.  One of the virtues of being a not-for-profit resident theatre is that we can undertake a project whose development and execution will span years (though we don’t know of another theatre that has undertaken a similar project). 

This blog is officially about City Lit’s Civil War project, but I intend to also write about other Civil War-related topics.   The central idea of our project, after all, is that the Civil War is still with us, and that means politically and culturally as much as anything.  The sesquicentennial provides a theatre company with a specific opportunity that will not come again in our lifetime: to explore the most transformational event in American history during these important anniversary years.   A blog provides a complementary opportunity.

The first production of the series was last season’s The Copperhead by Augustus Thomas, which opened on April 12, the precise anniversary of the attack on Fort Sumter.  Written in 1918, The Copperhead tells the story of an Illinois man who demonstrates Southern sympathies during the war, even in the face of his son's enlistment in the Union army and death at Vicksburg.  The play hadn’t been done anywhere since, oh, maybe the ‘40s.  Augustus Thomas was once upon a time a big-time popular playwright, but he and his work are pretty much forgotten these days.  Not many people came to see our production until the reviews came out and said it was something special; after that, we did quite good business.

The second show of the series, scheduled to start performances this coming April 13, is Opus 1861: the Civil War in Symphony, a world premiere music theatre piece devised by Elizabeth Margolius and me, to be directed by Elizabeth.  Set in present-day Afghanistan, Opus 1861 focuses on a group of American soldiers who find strength and solace in songs of the Civil War.   The evening will include approximately 20 songs, including many familiar to all, such as “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” and “John Brown's Body,” as well as such lesser known songs as “When This Cruel War Is Over” and “Give Us a Flag.”   Rather than structure the show like a conventional revue—song, applause, song, applause, and so on—Elizabeth came up with the great idea of making it one continuous piece of symphonically structured music.  So the evening will have four movements corresponding to a classical symphony’s structure, as we watch the characters accompany themselves on instruments in a bombed out Afghan location.

One of the richest bodies of literature to emerge from the Civil War is its songs.  We want to connect that material to today and not be trapped into a standard historical music revue, which is why our characters are U. S. soldiers today, stationed in Afghanistan.  It reminds us of the political--not just the historical--context of songs like ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home.’ 

               

The third, planned for April in our 2012-2013 season, is the world premiere of Comrades Mine:  Emma Edmonds of the Union Army by Maureen Gallagher, based on the true story of the only woman to receive a U.S. Army pension for military service undertaken while disguised as a man.  Edmonds enlisted as Frank Thompson and served for two years.  She deserted when needed medical attention would have revealed her sex, and in the 1880s fought to have the U.S. Senate clear her record and authorize her pension. 

The fourth, planned for April in our 2013-2014 season, is the world premiere of Fugitive Slave by Kristine Thatcher, City Lit's associate director.  This play will explore Chicago's role as a haven for blacks escaping slavery in the years before the war.    Fugitive Slave will focus on the night black and white abolitionist Chicagoans descended in a fury on the Chicago Commons Council meeting to protest Senator Stephen Douglas's—and the Council's—support for the Fugitive Slave Act. 

The final production in the series, planned for April of our 2014-2015 season, will be my world premiere adaptation of Tony Horwitz's hilarious and frequently jaw-dropping Confederates in the Attic, in which the author tours the old Confederacy and examines the Civil War's lingering impact through a series of personal encounters with the likes of Civil War re-enactors, a Scarlett O’Hara impersonator, and quite a few unreconstructed rebels.