Review: Feathers and Teeth (Goodman Theatre)

  
  
Feathers and Teeth 

Written by Charise Castro Smith
Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn (map)
thru Oct 18 | tix: $10-$40  | more info
  
Check for half-price tickets  
  

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A quirkfest with little at stake

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Goodman Theatre presents

Feathers and Teeth

Review by Lawrence Bommer

The Owen Theatre seems to be under a curse in 2015: First The Upstairs Concierge, then stop. reset., and now the lamentable world premiere of Feathers and Teeth. In baseball they’d be out. Ostensibly a family horror story a la 1970s terror flicks, this unengrossing and unenlightened 90-minute one-act aims to shock. It’s a tiny goal at which it misses miserably. Instead we get an enervatingly familiar look at family dysfunction disguised as demonology, a quirkfest that dumbs an audience down as they realize how little’s at stake. Henry Godinez’ dogged staging tries to make fun of this nasty mess. But one should never try to carve a rotten pumpkin.

The locale is a rust-belt factory town in the Midwest, the time 1978, and the supposed source of the mainly psychological menace is sullen, petulant, 13-year-old Chris (Olivia Cygan, in a permanent snit full of shrill overkill). Carol manically misses her dead mother Ellie (Ali Burch as an imaginary silhouette from the grave) and badly resents Carol (Christina Hall) for daring to replace her as a future stepmom. Chris’ dumbass dad Arthur (Eric Slater) just wants a happy home. Carol’s supposedly pregnant, though, according to Chris, the engaged couple have only been together for less than a week. Go figure.

Instead Chris brings in a rotten pot filled with gremlin-like creatures who, relegated to the crawlspace, proceed to cause homicidal mayhem by-the-numbers. Chris is convinced that nurse Carol murdered her mom and persuades her imbecilic would-be boyfriend Hugo (Jordan Brodess), the dweeb next door, to help her wreak her vengeance. Not a smart move, as if any other is possible here.

 

Essentially, Playwright Charise Castro Smith forces a supernatural solution out of a very ordinary psychological problem–a teenager’s unprocessed mourning for a mom she can’t imagine abandoned her (so she must have been murdered). But there’s neither logic, equivalency, nor predictive passion linking the unfrightening special effects (the Foley sounds add next to nothing) to this uninteresting domestic crisis. This so-called “thrilledy” (presumably a clumsy comedy trying to have it both ways) is stylized, stupid and mostly mean.

Rating: ★½

Feathers and Teeth continues through Date at Goodman’s Owen Theatre,  170 N. Dearborn (map), with performances Wednesday and Thursdays 7:30pm, Fridays 8pm, Saturdays 2pm & 8pm, Sundays 2pm.  Tickets are $10-$40, and are available by phone (773-443-3800) or online through their website (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at GoodmanTheatre.org.  (Running time: 90 minutes without intermission)

Photos by Liz Lauren

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artists

cast

Olivia Cygan (Chris), Eric Slater (Arthur), Ali Burch (Ellie), Christina Hall (Carol), Jordan Brodess (Hugo), Carolyn Hoerdemann (Foley Artist)

behind the scenes

Henry Godinez (director), Kevin Depinet (set design), Mikhail Fiksel (sound design), Jesse Klug (lighting design), Christine Pascual (costume design). Kimberly Osgood (production stage manager), Tanya Palmer (dramaturg), Adam Belcuore, Erica Sartini-Combs (casting), Liz Lauren (photos)

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