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Dueling Critics on Chicago Public Radio 8/25/06
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Absolutely
see it!
Kelly Kleiman, Chicago Public Radio 8/25/06
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Event
Pick
Recommended
Nina Metz
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There is nothing subtle about this
terrorism-inspired comedy by British playwright James Walker (currently
in a U.S. debut at Actors Workshop Theatre), but subtlety isn't the
point where terrorism is concerned. To that end, Walker certainly gets
his meaning across. Jennings, an upper-middle-class barrister, checks
into the hospital for a heart transplant only to learn that he has an
actual ticker inside his chest--a time bomb wired to go off in less
than an hour. In a style part Marx Brothers, part Monty Python, he is
swiftly accused of being a suicide bomber and his "caregivers"--various
idiotic functionaries of the British government's war-on-terrorism--use
whatever means necessary to extract information. This transpires much
to Jennings' confusion and deepening fear; he doesn't know how the bomb
got there, either. But once the jumper cables get clamped to his
legs--earlier, the cables dangle ominously from under the hospital bed
in a profoundly unsettling image--Jennings is willing to say just about
anything. And absurd as it may seem, in light of recent events, a
surgically implanted bomb is no less fathomable than, say, a shampoo
bomb.
The script itself is difficult and demands whippet-fast delivery and
abrupt changes in tone. That's not easy to pull off, but director G.J.
Cederquist--a friend of the playwright's since their time in the
mid-nineties as students at a British boarding school--has cast the
production with a careful eye for the play's idiosyncrasies. Despite
the obviousness of the play's intent, it works on a number of
levels--not the least of which is that of a visceral horror story. At
one point, Jennings is left to stew in his own panic, strapped to the
bed and blind in the darkness--and very aware that someone is in the
room with him. As disturbing moments go, it's a doozy.
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by Joe Stead, steadstylechicago.com
Critic's
Choice
**** out of ****
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Actors
Workshop Theatre presents the U.S. Premiere of Proving Mr. Jennings by
James Walker.
Would you be willing to harm one innocent person if it were in your
country's national security interest? We are after all living in
a Post-9/11 world and the gloves are off (thank you, George W.
Bush). You may be the most anti-war libertarian among us, but how
would you feel if your own family was threatened or harmed?
English playwright James Walker ponders these questions in his
award-winning play, "Proving Mr. Jennings," but he does it in a
surprisingly humorous and startling manner. "Jennings," which
makes its U.S. debut in a splendidly intimate
and deftly acted production by Actors Workshop Theatre, starts
off as a very black absurdist satire. It is hilarious and equally
suspenseful and reveals a writer at once clever, intelligent and
sardonic.
Proving Mr. Jennings, a play by James WalkerThe title character, a
British attorney, arrives at a hospital for a life-saving operation and
gets quite a lot more than he bargained for. The muslin gown he
is provided is stained, the hygiene of the facility intolerable, and
Nurse Davids is a trainee, a vixen and a complete bubblehead. Mr.
Jennings reluctantly entrusts himself to her care and awakens following
an exploratory surgery to some alarming news. The attending
physician, Doctor Gibbons opened him and found nothing there.
Where there should have been a heart was a time bomb.
Our befuddled patient is instantly branded a suicide bomber and a
terror specialist is brought in to decode any potential links with
Middle Eastern terrorist operatives. "This is the era of
preemptive action," Agent Psmith tells Jennings, and British
Intelligence will resort to any method necessary to procure
information, including electric shock torture. Intelligence, Mr.
Jennings soon begins to ponder, may be "a colossal misnomer" in this
instance, as Agent Psmith's methods grow increasingly cruel and
sadistic.
Jennings has until 2:00 to sign a confession for something he claims he
is innocent of, and make final arrangements with his family before the
explosive is detonated. Colonel Loveday of the Battlefield
Interrogation Field (BIF for short) appears to be a calm and reasonable
force. He apologizes to our "unfortunate victim of a bad apple,"
but neither he nor Jennings' wife Sylvie are capable of reversing
fate. Will reason and sanity prevail before our walking time bomb
literally explodes?
Damian Arnold's
Jennings is the perfect embodiment of confusion and desperation.
Brian Parry's intensely sinister Agent Psmith and Dan McNamara's
benevolent Colonel Loveday couldn't be better flip sides of a
governmental system in crisis mode and out of control. Julie
Griffith's luscious Nurse Davids and Lauren N. Goode's disarmingly
matter-of-fact wife Sylvie are superb, and Don Swanson's mild-mannered
Doctor Gibbons completes the excellent cast.
Kudos to Director G.J. Cederquist for navigating the tricky orbit of
black comedy and timely drama. The Actors Workshop Theatre really
have a coup in bringing this riveting and quite literally explosive
satire to Chicago. It will make you
laugh and think as it keeps you on the edge of your seat in the best
tradition of suspense. And just when you think you have
the ending figured out, you're in for a surprise.
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ILLINOIS WIRE
Review of 'Proving Mr. Jennings' at the Actors Workshop Theatre
By Dan Zeff, Copley News Service
CHICAGO - "Proving Mr. Jennings" starts out as a talky and over-the-top
political satire and ends up grabbing
the audience by the throat. Picture a
comedy-drama co-written by George Orwell and Franz Kafka and you get
some
idea of how James Walker's play operates.
"Proving Mr. Jennings" opened in London in 2004 and the Actors Workshop
Theatre is giving the work its local premiere in a first-rate production
enhanced by one of
the best and most versatile performances we are likely to
see all season.
Walker taps into the paranoia of the post-Sept. 11 world of terrorism
and
government response, and over-response. The narrative takes place in
what at
first appears to be a normal hospital room. It later acquires a more
sinister sense of place. A lawyer named Charles Jennings has come in
for a
heart transplant. By the end of the play he has encountered a ditsy and
oversexed young nurse, a weird surgeon, a sadistic government agent, a
smooth-talking military officer, and finally, his wife.
We first see Jennings as a normal man anticipating an operation that
will
give him a new lease on life. But gradually he finds himself trapped in
a
nightmare. It seems that Jennings's body encloses a bomb where his heart
should be, and he is accused of being an Islamic terrorist.
The play makes no attempt to cater to political correctness. At first
the
accusation seems comical. But slowly the mysterious outside forces of
the
hospital and the British government conspire, with the aid of torture,
to
force Jennings to admit to the outlandish terrorist charges.
For the first few scenes neither Jennings nor the audience takes the
charges
seriously. But by the time the government interrogator (and torturer)
makes
his appearance, Jennings and the spectators discover that the forces
arrayed
against the man aren't fooling around.
By the end of the play, Jennings has lost everything that matters in his
life, but he still defies a grotesque government that insists that he
is a
national security risk. Without spoiling the ending, I can say that
Jennings's defiance doesn't buy him a thing in terms of restoring his
good
name.
Walker's characters mostly act in a normal, almost jovial manner as they
weave their web around the increasingly distraught Jennings. So along
with
Kafka and Orwell, we can add the name of English playwright Joe Orton to
Walker's possible list of influences. The farcical send-up of abusive
establishment authority was right up Orton's alley.
The broad, sometimes facetious, style of the play does allow for a
serious
debate about how far a government can go in encroaching on individual
liberty in the name of the national good. In the face of terrorist
threats,
should the citizen acquiesce to government erosion of personal freedom?
How
much erosion is too much erosion? It's a discussion that we hear right
now
in the United States and apparently it's a matter of concern in Britain,
too.
Walker's play is basically a series of one-on-one encounters between
Jennings, mostly confined to a hospital bed, and the nurse, doctor,
agent,
military officer, and wife. That tends to restrict physical action, a
problem in the early going before Jennings' accelerating nightmare
raises
the emotional temperature of the action.
The Actors Workshop Theatre performs in a 44-seat theater, with the
playing
area (it's a stretch to call it a stage) at one end of the room. There
is
space for a hospital bed and a door for entrances and exists, and that's
about it. But the intimacy of the theater reinforces the claustrophobic
nature of the story.
By now I should have learned that the size of a theater has no
correlation
to the quality of acting. I've seen some pretty amazing performances in
theaters a lot grungier than the tiny but comfortable Actors Workshop. Few
acting jobs have
been better than Damian Arnold's work as Charles Jennings.
Arnold runs the
gamut of emotions from puzzlement to outrage to panic to
defiance to
resignation. He is onstage the entire play, usually flat on his
back on the hospital bed. Throughout the evening Arnold makes a far-fetched
play come alive
with his credible rendering of an average man caught in an
appalling and irrational situation that allows him no defense or escape.
Terrific stuff!
Arnold is surrounded by an admirable ensemble,
each man and woman with
English accent securely in place, a claim that sometimes can't be made
for
more high-profile Chicagoland theaters. The supporting cast consists of
Julie Griffith as
the nurse, Don Swanson as the doctor, Brian Parry as the
agent (especially
good in a comical-chilling performance), Dan McNamara as
the military man (a
calm man of outward good will who ends up making the
viewer's flesh
crawl), and finally Lauren Goode as Jennings' wife.
The play has been deftly directed by
G. J. Cederquist, who has a shrewd eye
for the script's humorous and terrifying qualities. Sean McIntosh
designed
the set, Victoria DeIorio the sound, Jennifer M. Hawk the costumes, and
John
Kohn III the lighting. And a special salute to
Martin Aistrope as the
dialect coach.
The show gets a rating of 3 1/2 stars.
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Recommended
Tom Williams,
chicagocritic.com
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Wry
British satire pokes fun at our responses to the terrorism threat.
Young playwright James Walker sure has the British sensibilities on
writing biting politically-incorrect
satire. He leaves no holds barred and takes no prisoners with
his hilarious cautionary tale of government hysteria gone amuck. In the
US Premiere, Proving Mr. Jennings (King’s Cross New Writing Award,
2004) is a dark comedy that satirizes the nature of governmental
responses to the threat of terrorism. We find Mr. Jennings (Damian
Arnold) checking into a British hospital for a heart transplant. He is
seduced by the voluptuous Nurse Davids (Julie Griffith) who wants to
test his organs before the surgeons. These scenes are a hoot.
Jennings wakes up from his surgery to find himself accused of being a
suicide bomber since the doctors found a time bomb in his chest instead
of a heart. In a series of interrogations, interviews and tortures,
Jennings starts to wonder what’s happening to him. Agent Psmith (Brian
Parry in exquisite comic form) is the bumbling ant-terrorist
intelligence agent who uses every means, including electric shock
treatment to get Jennings to confess. Military leader, Colonel Loveday
(Dan McNamara) uses the ‘good-guy’ technique to coax Jennings into
signing a confession. He is the stuffy British professional soldier
bent on good manners.
Through splendidly
wicked dialogue filled with a mixture of outrageously funny
situations and bureaucratic blindness, Proving Mr. Jennings is, indeed,
an over-the-top satire but all too possible in this post-modern age of
high anxiety. Once the bureaucracy accepts a truth, it sticks to it no
matter what the facts are. Jennings must be guilty because he has a
bomb inside him. Period. The investigators look for facts to agree with
their premise. He must be guilty, he has to be guilty. The hysteria and
the need to be ‘right’ allow the government investigators little choice.
Playwright James Walker finds a workable balance between wicked
lampoonery and paranoia to expose the possible injustice of terrorist
investigations. The play unfolds as a funny mystery where we just know
that eventually Jennings will prevail. Or will he? Damian Arnold does
fine work going from indignation to hysteria as the frustrated British
gentleman facing possible death from a time bomb. Nice work here.
Playwright Walker offers a splendid scene near the end when Sylvie
(Lauren N. Goode), the matter-of-fact wife who offers little comfort to
Jennings in his plight. She coldly accepts Jennings’ demise. This
sharply stinging play is funny in a sick sort of way since it
highlights possible governmental intrusion that threatens our
liberties. The suspense adds to the humor and the ending is hilarious
and surprising. James Walker is a writer worth noting. Proving Mr.
Jennings is a late summer treat.
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