The End of The Tour

[Ted]

  There is a terrific play now playing at Berwyn's 16th street theatre (6420 W. 16th Street) called "The End of the Tour". I saw it last night and it was great.

 It is playing every Thursday, Friday and Saturday from now until March 6. The starting time on Thursday and Friday are 7:30 PM; on Saturday, the starting times are 5 PM and 8 PM. Tickets are $16.

 "The End of the Tour" is a play about the matriarch of dysfunctional family who is in a nursing home being cared for by a daughter who is leaving her husband. The matriarch receives a visit from her gay son whom she had rejected and thrown out of the house when he was 16 years old.

The acting and direction are terrific. The play is part of the 16th street's theatre "What is home" series.

The dates and times are:

Saturday, February 6, 5 PM
Saturday, February 6, 8 PM

Thursday, February 11, 7:30 PM
Friday,     February 12, 7:30 PM
Saturday, February 13, 5 PM
Saturday, February 13, 8 PM

Thursday, February 18, 7:30 PM
Friday,     February 19, 7:30 PM
Saturday, February 20, 5 PM
Saturday, February 20, 8 PM

Thursday, February 25, 7:30 PM
Friday,     February 26, 7:30 PM
Saturday, February 27, 5 PM
Saturday, February 27, 8 PM

Thursday, March 4, 7:30 PM
Friday,     March 5, 7:30 PM
Saturday, March 6, 5 PM
Saturday, March 6, 8 PM

[Ted]

  In my best David Letterman fashion, here are my top 10 reasons to see "The End of the Tour"

10. Ronald Reagan - his speeches, his home town and his former girlfriends (sort of).

9. The 16th Street Theatre - its intimate setting allows the play to grab you by the throat.

8. Tommy - the stereotypical Sox fan - dressing sloppy, guzzling beer and conjecturing about menopause and love.

7. Silence - the silent acting in the "off-screen" scenes that play out in darkness next to the "on-screen" main scene.

6. Chuck - the husband whose world is falling apart, walking around with a dying cat in a cardboard box,

5. Coldness - the coldness of Jan toward her husband Chuck and Andrew toward his partner David.

4. Andrew - Andrew is HOT!, especially in the opening scene in his pajamas and tank top t-shirt  - think older version of Patrick Kane with a more well defined body.

3. Mae, the Drama Queen - .Mae, the elderly matriarch of a dysfunctional family, entertaining her fellow senior citizens in a nursing home by singing the Johnny Cash song "I Walk the Line".

2. Mothers - Mae, the mother who can't give up her small town thinking; David, the ultimate Jewish mother; and Jan, the woman who has become a mother to her husband Chuck.

1. Hugs -
  - the frantic hug between Jan and Mae at the nursing home when Jan tells Mae she's moving away;
  - the tearful hug between Andrew and David after Andrew is once again rejected by his mother Mae;
  - the non-hug between Tommy and Chuck after Jan tells Chuck she doesn't love him any more;
  - the awkward hug between Jan and Ronald Reagan's old girlfriend at the nursing home
  - the warm hug between siblings Andrew and Jan at the end of the play.

[peacemaker]

We got our tickets and will see this play tomorrow. Happy to see the talented Kevin Mayes is blessing Berwyn with his presence in this production! His quartet performed at a Christmas program I helped organize on the south side a few years ago. AMAZING talent!

[Ted]

We got our tickets and will see this play tomorrow. Happy to see the talented Kevin Mayes is blessing Berwyn with his presence in this production! His quartet performed at a Christmas program I helped organize on the south side a few years ago. AMAZING talent!

Kevin Mayes is the actor who played Andrew, the prodigal son who comes back to his home town of Dixon, Illinois to visit his mother in a nursing home.

[Ted]

 The End of the Tour received a so-so review in this week's Chicago Free Press:

Theater: "The End of the Tour"

By Web Behrens
Published: February 24, 2010
Posted in: FreeStyle, Theater

Written by: Joel Drake Johnson
Showing: Berwyn Cultural Center,
6420 16th St. (Berwyn) thru Mar. 6
Tickets: $16
Contact: 708-795-6704
www.16thstreettheater.org

Simple hand holding between a gay couple in a small town becomes an emotional minefield in "The End of the Tour"—a scenario surely familiar to plenty of big-city 'mos who "de-gay" themselves while around family. In Joel Drake Johnson's uncomfortable drama, currently showcased by Berwyn's 16th Street Theater, prissy Andrew takes his partner on an unexpected emotional journey when a trip home uncovers buried memories of bullying.

In this case, "home" has extra allegorical heft: It is Dixon, the Illinois hamlet that produced Ronald Reagan. The late president remains revered by conservatives, but his hokey patriotic rhetoric (used in snippets throughout the play) reveals a huge disconnect between words and actions—particularly his callous refusal to address the burgeoning AIDS epidemic in the 1980s. Reagan becomes a symbol of the disconnect Andrew feels between alleged family values and the anti-gay reality.

Indeed, Johnson turns a hard eye on multiple versions of emotional violence within families. Andrew's mother (a fierce, compelling Roslyn Alexander) turns out to be a gorgon of the first degree, at turns charming, confused and unforgivingly cruel. Kathleen Powers infuses sister Jan with a reserved grace, while H.B. Ward gives a gripping portrayal of her estranged husband. Kevin Mayes' warts-and-all Andrew is believable, though the love Madrid St. Angelo depicts for the petulant Andrew feels unearned, since we never see the couple in earlier happy times.

Despite strong performances, the production never gels. Director Cecilie Keenan's awkward blocking distracts, as does Rick Paul's ugly set, with its abstract colored lines and bizarre giant triangles that function as walls. If his aim was to recall the horrid design aesthetic of the Reagan era, Paul nailed it.