Review: Best Beloved, The Just So Stories (Forks & Hope Ensemble)

By Chicagotheaterbeat @chitheaterbeat

  
  
Best Beloved:
   The Just So Stories

Based on the book by Rudyard Kipling
Directed by Josh Sobel  
at Strawdog’s Hugen Hall, 3829 N. Broadway (map)
thru April 1  |  tickets: $15   |  more info
  
Check for half-price tickets 
  
  
   Read review
  

  

  

A charming, funny and heartbreaking ode
to the power of storytelling

     

  

Fork & Hope Ensemble presents

  

Best Beloved: The Just So Stories

Review by Clint May 

For every great happiness that Rudyard Kipling found in life, it seemed that tragedy stalked close behind. None was greater than the death of his little girl Josephine. Four years after leaving his new home of America and vowing to never return to the land where she had passed, he wrote down her bedtime stories in a cathartic compendium that mingles Ovid’s ambition* with Aesop’s intimacy. Naming them for Josephine’s injunction that he always retell them “just so,” the series of origin fables was an instant hit. Following up last year’s rendition of Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark, Forks & Hope Ensemble takes over Strawdog’s Hugen Hall for their second production. Instead of pure nonsense, this time they are opting for melancholy to explore how storytelling becomes a way to endure the human condition.

A young mother (Alexis Randolph) begins to fitfully pack up a child’s room. It’s clear that something tragic has occurred, though it never is and never needs to be explained. She picks up the eponymous book and begins to read. Suddenly, the stage bursts to life as Kipling’s characters spring out of the walls and surround the mother in whimsical reenactments of three stories that tell how the world took on its present shape. "The Crab That Played with the Sea,” "The Cat That Walked by Himself,” and “How the Elephant Got His Trunk" are recreated with a brio and invention that brings out one’s inner child with ease. Frequently funny, these scenes are equally warm and witty as they utilize only things found in a bedroom as costuming and props. All that energy is quickly re-channeled at scene’s end to dwell again on the poignancy of loss. It can be a breathtaking if not jarring transition to endure so many times in a mere 55 minutes. Kipling himself (Andrew Bailes) steps out of time to help make sense of it all in the end, but it may not prevent the need for tissues when the lights come up. Director Josh Sobel and his technical team certainly know how to tell a story with economy and invention (their crocodile made of a bed, flashlights and several bodies is particularly brilliant). The elements regarding the loss of a child make this a less youth-friendly outing, and it’s not an entirely successful melding. Adults need to grow up eventually, but the stories tap into such a primal joy in storytelling that being wrenched out of it to vicariously endure the loss of a child and by extension innocence is almost too much. Those who enjoyed the featherlight touch of Snark may be surprised at how far Forks and Hope are willing to push the lump up in your throat. Still, I can’t begrudge them too much for wanting to explore more serious territory.

What glows throughout is Kipling’s innate understanding of child-like wonderment that imbues these stories. Exploring the eternal themes of curiosity, stubbornness and independence that inform our early years, the “Just So” stories are a graceful tribute in which to enshrine not just the memory of a daughter, but the memories of all childhood. His paternality never patronizes, and the knowledge that in stories we all gain a semblance of immortality is a bittersweet, beautiful balm indeed.

  

Rating: ★★★

  

* “My soul would sing of metamorphoses.
But since, o gods, you were the source of these
bodies becoming other bodies, breathe
your breath into my book of changes: may
the song I sing be seamless as its way
weaves from the world’s beginning to our day.”

   ― Ovid, Metamorphoses

Best Beloved continues through April 1st at Strawdog’s Hugen Hall, 3829 N. Broadway (map), with performances Sundays at 12pm, Mondays and Tuesdays at 8pm.  Tickets are $15, and are available by phone (866-811-4111) or online through OvationTix.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at Strawdog.org.  (Running time: 55 minutes, no intermission. Note: for ages 8 and up.)

Photos by Tom McGrath 

     

artists

cast

Kelsey Shipley, Errol McLendon, Andrew Bailes, Alexis Randolph, Casey Pilkenton, Christian Stokes, Emily Gann, Suzanna Ziko, Austin Oie

behind the scenes

Josh Sobel (director), Claire Chrzan (lighting design), EL Hohn (costume design), Carmine Grisolia (set design), Aileen McGroddy (movement director), Michelle Maier (stage manager), Nikki Veit (assistant director), Alex Huntsberger, Julia Meese (textual adapters), Mike Mroch (production manager), Anderson Lawfer (Hugen Hall artistic director), Tom McGrath (photos)

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