EL Stories
Directed by Eric Loughlin
Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln (map)
thru November | tickets: $15 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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A train ride with no destination and no redeeming qualities
Waltzing Mechanics presents
EL Stories
Review by Clint May
In the eight years since I’ve moved to Chicago, I’ve gone through a steady progression of “evolution” in regards to public transportation in the city. At first, the odd schizophrenic or shameless flasher was cause for alarm and nervous anxiety. That anxiety gave way to its inevitable progeny: laughter. After that, the strange scenes that played out on buses and trains no longer fazed me and I entered into the final stage of the pure blasé. Those scenes of uniquely urban insanity became no more memorable than the graffiti on the buildings glimpsed from the windows as the train rolls along. Forgotten as soon as foot met platform. It’s not sophistication per sé, just a pathetic sort of blindness to any concept other than getting from point A to B with as little intrusion into my space – something as public as public transportation allows. It is perhaps this attitude that kept me from finding anything amusing or memorable in EL Stories, the fourth installment of the series from Waltzing Mechanics.
A final skit sobers things up a bit, telling the story of yet another middle-class passenger. This time, when her precious iPhone is stolen (oh, the indignity! the hassle!), she unwisely chases the man down and he’s eventually captured (because the CPD have little better to do, apparently). Her little hissy fit ends up capturing the man who shoved a 68 y.o. woman down the stairs to her death at the Fullerton stop. I’m not at all sure why this story was included in a comedy series. Then again, the whole thing would be a study in metropolitan insanity if the zaniness was just tweaked towards tragedy. You wouldn’t need to change a word. Maybe that’s true of most comedy, but this case more than most.
If the mentally-handicapped, homeless or socioeconomically challenged that are derided here ever made their own version of “El Stories”, I wonder if they’d find humor in the dead-eyed stares, the obsession with smartphones, the crippling inability to associate with anyone else no matter how packed in we get. Politically correct comedy is no comedy at all, but this is just a cheap, tawdry exercise in finding humor in the thin veneer of civility so carefully crafted by urbanites and occasionally broken by our social “lessers.” This is only funny if you’re still in that second aforementioned phase, the kind of laughter prompted by a desire to separate yourself from the ‘dregs,’ to ride home in a comfortable train car of the mind—sequestered in supremacy, only bonded to others outside yourself by a thin metal cage and a mutual destination.
Perhaps I’ll take the next train. This one’s overcrowded.
Rating: ★
EL Stories continues thru November (though the entire series is open run) at Greenhouse Theater, 2257 N. Lincoln (map), with performances every Saturday at 11pm. Tickets are $15, and are available by phone (773-404-7336) or online through Tix.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at WaltzingMechanics.org. (Running time: 60 minutes, no intermission)
Photos by Bobby Richards
artists
cast
Bryan Campbell, Nick Chandler, Lance Hill, Barry Irving, Mara Dale, Michael Leon, Sarah Price, Lindsay Stock, Krenée A. Tolson, Noelle Velasco, Charlita Williams, Elizabeth Williams
12-0838
