BURNING DOWN THE HOUSE
What is theatre? This was the question that popped into my head as I took my seat in the tiny TUTA Theatre space in Chicago’s Ravenswood Manor neighborhood, ready to take in their production of Celine Song’s Tom & Eliza: a two-hander that traces the path of a relationship over several decades from its inception to its demise.
What’s most interesting about this performance isn’t necessarily the subject matter of the play (which Song has explored in multiple other scripts, including her Oscar-nominated Past Lives) but its structure and the production choices (a hat-tip to director Aileen Wen McGroddy).
Tom and Eliza spend the entire play enclosed in a life-sized shadow box, perched on stools, literally separated from the audience by a see-through membrane. This remarkable set design by Tatiana Kahvegian makes them seem larger than life and doll-like at the same time. The two actors are claustrophobically close, getting closer still as they open, after a brief prologue from Tom, in a staggered recitation of their first encounter.
It’s a clever conceit with which to start. Lock-synced on the surface at the beginning, as their relationship progresses, their words diverge: a third of the way in, both characters and the audience are wondering what it is that is keeping these two people together. The parallelism of the meet-cute has all but vanished; it occasionally pops up when Tom and Eliza are desperately trying to prove to each other (and themselves) that what they have is real.
As Eliza, Seoyoung Park is a coquettish marvel, fully inhabiting a character who is supremely confident in who she is and what she wants, right off the bat. She’s also perfectly attuned to the rhythms of Song’s dialog, the cadences of her rapid-fire delivery achieving a delightful musicality as her book-burning hobby expands into an all-encompassing obsession. Her glee comes through to the audience even as it increasingly shuts Tom out of her life.
As Tom, Clifton Frei has a rougher go of it at the beginning. It doesn’t help that his is a somewhat underwritten part and that he’s saddled with a terrible metaphor that Song insists on repeatedly revisiting (“he’s an oyster!”). I had to hold back a snort at the inevitable appearance of the ‘pearl’—but as the play progresses, Frei leans into his characterization, creating an all-enveloping cloud of sadness around Tom, a man who has built his entire identity on a role he is expected to play, realizing only too late that he’s been miscast. Eliza’s blossoming, as her manic crusade to burn books expands beyond herself to swallow everything and everyone she knows in its path, contrasts beautifully with Tom’s descent into isolation and depression, and Frei by this point is superb without qualification.
It’s a good thing too because without this sadness, the incredible last fifteen minutes of the play would not have coalesced. Set into motion when one of the characters steps off the stool for the first time (I will not spoil the loveliness of the moment but will add that it produced audible gasps from the audience), the hitherto seemingly workmanlike lighting design by Keith Parham shifts into stunning focus, the set reveals a crucial detail hidden in plain sight, and in keeping with these changes, the characters shift as well. What follows is a kaleidoscope of words, voice, movement, sound, and light: a symphony of performance that concludes with a single gesture that is as heartbreaking as it is perfect. I was enraptured.
So what is theatre then? The word is frequently used outside of performance to connote spectacle or outsized emotions; within, it calls to mind production numbers with huge casts, lavish sets, and so on. And that’s not a bad thing, or entirely untrue even, but it sets expectations that are unfair. Tom & Eliza isn’t a flawless script (Song has an unfortunate tendency to go for the obvious metaphor), there are a few jitters from the actors, a few missteps here and there, but sitting in that comically tiny theatre (spare a thought for the performers in their even tinier enclosed box), all of these minor nits are rendered unimportant as performer and spectator are drawn together—by comprehension, by empathy, by recognition—into one indistinguishable whole. That connection between performer and audience is, to me, what defines theatre—and Tom & Eliza is an exemplar of it.
photos by Logan Connor–Oomphotography
Tom & Eliza
plays in rep with White Rabbit, Red Rabbit
TUTA Theatre, 4670 N. Manor Avenue
for tickets, ($20-$60), visit TUTA
for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago
