KDHX Theatre Review - Chesapeake
Back to the index In the past five years, Lee Blessing's plays Down The Road and Cobb have been produced by HotHouse Theatre and City Players, respectively. It's no surprise, then, that in the first season of HotCity Theatre, the product of a merger of those two companies, St. Louis audiences would be treated to another gem from the pen of this great American playwright. Chesapeake is by turns charming, thoughtful, funny, and poignant, and like all of Mr. Blessing's work that it's been my pleasure to see, it is mature, intelligent, and serious in intent. If only for the virtues of the text alone, this would be worth seeing. Add in the energetic and nuanced performance of Jerry Vogel in this one-actor play, and this becomes a very special kind of theater. Mr. Vogel plays Kerr, a bisexual performance artist from an unspecified district in the Deep South whose representative in Congress is an anti-art homophobe -- a not even thinly disguised conflation of Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms. What Mr. Vogel as Kerr does in this role is far more than simple storytelling: being a performance artist, Kerr easily assumes the voices and body language of the characters he describes in relating his story, not all of whom are male, or even human. And the story itself is highly entertaining. The first act, a story about certain familiar aspects of the relationship between art and politics, though it's plenty interesting in its own right, serves largely as an introduction to the second act, which is both more engaging and completely fantastical. The central story twist is best experienced in the theater, so I will not divulge it here, but even armed with foreknowledge of the outline of the play, I found the revelations in the second act artfully done by both playwright and performer. It's a bit surprising, in fact, that a one-man piece of two full hours' duration can be as engaging as this, but between Mr. Blessing's fertile imagination and Mr. Vogel's highly watchable performance, the time never seemed to drag at all. Mr. Vogel's work and his uniqueness as an actor are long familiar to St. Louis theater audiences, and nothing in this performance or in his creative collaboration with director Jason Cannon will disappoint the high expectations he has come to deserve. This piece is the inaugural production in HotCity's "Greenhouse" series, which is devoted to readings, new plays, and experimental theater. In fact, this play premiered in 1999, so it may be that the form or the novel content qualifies the piece as "experimental," and I have to admit that, as much as I enjoyed it, it's probably not for everyone. But for theatergoes who have any sort of spirit of adventure, this is must-see theater. HotCity Theatre's production of Lee Blessing's Chesapeake continues through March 20 [2005] at the Theatre at St. John's, 5000 Washington Place. For information call 314-482-9125.
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