REVIEW: Marble, with The Gift Theatre.
For much of the 2000s and 2010s, The Gift Theatre resided in a 50-seat storefront in Jefferson Park, their ever-growing ensemble packing into taught quarters to craft sprawling dreams and visceral realities. This enigmatic troupe of Equity performers put themselves on the map with singular dissections of canonized classics (Monty Cole's surrealist sandbox retelling of Hamlet remains one of my favorite shows I've seen in the city) alongside new experiments in more contemporary dramatic writing from the likes of Melissa Ross, David Rabe, Stacy Osei-Kuffour, and Leah Nanako Winkler. Even in productions that I've found less successful (including the very first show I ever reviewed in a professional capacity!), I've always been thrilled to be in the company of the Gift, a company whose intimacy and immediacy feels intrinsic to the spirit of Chicago's theatre scene.
While they're no longer in their previous jewel-box performance space, operating as an itinerant company hopping from venue to venue for the past few years, they're finally back in their home neighborhood, now at the Copernicus Center, a massive event hall that initially may seem counter to the Gift's small-scale expertise. The show itself, though, is thankfully not attempting to be staged in the Copernicus' massive proscenium space, but rather it's tucked away inside the "Kings Hall" space on the venue's third floor. It's something of a disorienting experience to get there, climbing up three flights of stairs (an elevator is available, don't worry) to emerge in a miniature loft that might be otherwise used for equipment storage, where seventy-ish seats have been arranged in a three-quarter thrust orientation towards a central space filled with sparse furniture. How, then, may we all dream together up here?
This bizarre introductory context perhaps put me in the ideal headspace for Marble, Irish playwright Marina Carr's wistful and splendid work of relationship drama, where a quartet of miserable, middle-class married folk trade drinks, barbs, and deep, mystical yearning. Director Kay Martinovich is no stranger to Carr's work, having previously The Mai and By the Bog of Cats, and the ease with which this staging innately understands Carr's mission as a writer is a joy to watch unfold. I was largely unfamiliar with Carr's work, her prolific output sadly not receiving as much attention here in the U.S. as some of her male contemporaries like Conor McPherson and Martin McDonagh, but her work deserves as much attention, if not more so; there's a remarkable desire to explore all that makes us grounded and human, but to do so in ways that skirt with the ephemeral and mystical. Her scenarios recall the interpersonal worlds of Harold Pinter, though with far more lyrical dialogue and humanist touches ("I don't have the energy for honesty anymore," a character exhaustedly utters at one point).
Marble wastes no time in launching right into its sticky premise, when Art (Paul D'Addario) and Ben (John Gawlik), two friends and work colleagues, gather for drinks and cigars where a bizarre event unfolds; Art, happily married to Anne (Cyd Blakewell) has had a dream where he was making love to Ben's wife, Catherine (Brittany Burch). Ben comes to find that Catherine had the exact same dream as Art, and the fallout from this hidden space of desires within slumber makes up the dramatic meat of Carr's work.
The ambiguity between reality and dream life informs Martinovich's staging in ways both intellectually and emotionally satisfying; scenes will primarily consist of two actors in conversation navigating the tension of a particular moment, while the other two actors will often find themselves existing in the same space at the same time, pinned down to the furniture or to the stage, the aftermath of the previous scene weighing their bodies down in so much anguish that they themselves become theatrical architecture. This more atmospheric style of staging bleeds into the performance styles too, with D'Addario, Gawlik, Blakewell, and Burch each respectively accessing their own wells of emotional distress with great success, the four of them defining love and stability and success in their own competing fashions with an electric flair throughout the evening.
Carr has said that Marble was partly inspired by Giorgio De Chirico’s painting ‘Melancholy and Mystery of a Street,' noting that within the artwork she sees "the near absence of people, the dream shadows, yet full of vibrant colour and intrigue." This staging of Marble effortlessly captures these feelings, and even more so, delightfully proves the malleability and persistence of this storied theater company. Truly, what a gift.
Marble runs an estimated 2 hours, including a 10-minute intermission, and performs at The Kings Hall in The Copernicus Center (5216 W. Lawrence) through August 30th 2026. Tickets are available HERE.
