"Guinea Pig
Solo"
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Times Review There was a deep, stunned silence as the lights faded on the Collaboraction production of Brett C. Leonard's "Guinea Pig Solo" this week. Then there was thunderous applause. It was the only possible response to this altogether haunting and harrowing play -- a work that debuted last year in a co-production of New York's Public Theater and the very hot LAByrinth company, and is now in a truly blistering Midwest premiere. Leonard's work -- about the slow, painful, psychic self-immolation of a young Hispanic-American soldier who has recently returned from combat in Iraq and cannot come to peace with the society he has re-entered -- bears the marks of a passionately engaged writer with a poetic soul, a gift for bristling dialogue, a pitch-black comic sensibility and an almost Orwellian view of the world. It is based on "Woyzeck," a classic of early 19th century drama (and 20th century opera) by the shockingly modern German dramatist Georg Buchner. But it's utterly contemporary in its reworking. And director Anthony Moseley, in collaboration with Sam Porretta and Eric Gelehrter (sets and video), Jacqueline Reid (lights), Kevin O'Donnell and Mikhail Fiksel (music and sound), has crafted a brilliantly cinematic production driven by superb acting. Jose Solo (Dale Rivera, phenomenal in a grueling performance that is a true career breakout) is back on the mean streets of New York. He is profoundly troubled by his tattered marriage to Vivian (Sandra Delgado in a performance so vivid it almost burns an outline on the stage), his disturbed child, his failing attempts to make a living as a hot dog vendor and barber, and the daily assaults that face the underclass. He holds on, but is increasingly at the breaking point -- fed up with the trivial pursuits of his pal, Gary (a sharply comic Micah Smyth), saved but abandoned by an empathetic cop (Len Bajenski), force-fed moral pablum by his therapist (Ed Westfall), and finally driven over the edge by his estranged wife's affair with a cop (the solid Sal Velez Jr.). In a just world, our government would send this production to every military base where veterans of the current war congregate. In its blazing honesty, it would provide the kind of primal catharsis rarely found on the stage. Critic's Choice "It's a scary time," says Jose Solo, the anguished Iraq war veteran at the heart of Brett C. Leonard's intensely disturbing play "Guinea Pig Solo." "You can't see the world for what it is." And in Anthony Moseley's searing, superbly acted production for Collaboraction — one of the best Chicago shows of the year so far — the perils of the moment get articulated with emotional force. Stubbornly unsubtle, relentlessly kinetic and perfectly willing to overstate in service of shock, this genuinely startling piece of theater lodges under the skin like a needy parasite. And thanks in no small measure to a blistering lead performance from Dale Rivera, it burrows away long after the final curtain. Poor Solo is not talking about the lethal road to the Baghdad Airport. He's talking about the urban jungle of Manhattan, where a vet from Spanish Harlem can't count on respect and gratitude, but sure can count on tickets from Mayor Bloomberg, racist cops, an alienated son, an unfaithful wife and a lousy VA medical system with no timely provision for mental health. Deservedly a big hit in New York in 2004, "Guinea Pig Solo" partly is an angry expose of the veteran's perennial lot; partly an embittered apologia for why urban men on the cusp of middle age can get so violently angry; and partly a look at the horrors of urban isolation. None of these themes is original — the piece intermittently recalls David Mamet's "Edmond," Stephen Adly Guirgis' "Jesus Hopped the A Train" and Emily Mann's "Still Life." And it's an intentional attempt to update Georg Buchner's 1836 drama "Woyczek," a proto-naturalist work depicting the gradual degradation of a man trapped by heredity and environment. But you don't need to know Buchner to appreciate "Guinea Pig Solo." This play also explores the perilous boundaries between vulnerable idealism and arming cynicism. "It's a Louis Armstrong world," insists the cop who simultaneously helps and destroys Jose (he calls him Joe, because he's "in America now"). But in actuality, the cop has no aching soul, which is how he survives. Jose is not so lucky. Mosley's work often features splashy multimedia staging, and this one has some of those elements. But it's not the video tricks that dominate here; it's the way this savvy show divides the characters into isolating boxes. Sam Porretta's set design is more innovative than one initially appreciates. At this budgetary level, it is brilliant work. We see Solo trying to run off his anger on treadmills actual and metaphorical, even as his wife, Vivian (the superb Sandra Delgado), flounces about lost, and his little boy (the haunting Ricky Ramirez) sits silently, endlessly throwing a ball against the wall. It's that image of the abused kid — who will surely make an angry adult — that makes this piece so tough to take at times. Indeed, its wrenching climax is tough to sit through in silence — most of the opening-night audience screeched in one way or another. But this willingness to disturb is also what makes it feel so vital and so apt to the moment. Collaboraction tends to disappear for long periods, but it also tends to produce a show only when it has something to say. With "Guinea Pig Solo," that's demonstrably the case. It's not to be missed by those who like theater to hit the back of the gut. Critic's Choice GUINEA PIG SOLO Brett C. Leonard's visceral, far-reaching update of Woyzeck--Georg Büchner's 1837 unfinished masterpiece about a troubled soldier who kills his lover--is far from a one-note antiwar polemic. This tale of an isolated and enraged Puerto Rican combat vet of the Iraq war, separated from his wife and son and further marginalized by class and ethnicity, also focuses on the unrealistic romantic expectations fostered by pop culture. Dale Rivera delivers a gut-wrenching performance in Anthony Moseley's inspired staging for Collaboraction (a local premiere), and the entire ensemble is well attuned to the cinematic rapid cuts and blackouts of Leonard's script. Guinea Pig Solo--one of the most emotionally effective productions I've seen this year--provides a timely and disturbing meditation on what happens when the war comes home. Through 4/2: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM. Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 312-226-9633. $18-$25; industry nights Sun; dinner packages available. --Kerry Reid |
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