Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double Theatre Oobleck

EXTENDED 3/12/17 -  8p Th-Sa; 3p Su

"..heady with allusion... opening passages are hilarious and the closing ones terrifying, thanks in large part to Colm O'Reilly and Brian Shaw..Maher is as good a playwright as any working in America today. He does small, smart, and edgy, though, so who knows if he'll get the acknowledgment he deserves" - Chicago Reader.


Top 5 For February - " ..odd, hilarious and ominous tumble down the rabbit hole." - NewCity Stage

 

"..plenty of stimulating material to chew on .. with an endearing mix of intellectual and goofy" - TimeOutChicago.com

 

Tickets: $15, more if you've got it, free if you're broke. More info: 773.897.5089 or oobleck@theateroobleck.com

 

buy tickets

01/20/17 - 2/19/17

Thu-Sat 8p; Sun 3p. Industry: Mon 2/13, 8p


What does Chicago playwright Mickle Maher got against Jim Lehrer?: Maher's new Theater Oobleck show goes gothic on the former PBS anchor, Tony Adler, Chicago Reader 1/25/17. - ""A violent and concentrated action is a kind of lyricism: it summons up supernatural images, a bloodstream of images, a bleeding spurt of images in the poet's head and in the spectator's as well." -Antonin Artaud in The Theater and Its Double

"What rough beast . . . ?" -W.B. Yeats

Poor Jim Lehrer. Like those hapless souls in horror movies who somehow catch Satan's eye, the distinguished former PBS news anchor has stumbled into Mickle Maher's sights. A decade ago, in The Strangerer, Maher presented Lehrer as the moderator of a presidential debate between George Bush and John Kerry, only to have Bush try to kill him-"On the air," Reader critic Albert Williams noted, "several times, using a knife, a handgun, a pillow, a bottle of cyanide, even a Balinese kris."


Now 82 and retired, Lehrer still isn't safe. Maher's ingenious, eccentric, quietly devastating new play-produced by Theater Oobleck and titled Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double, obviously with an eye to big-time merchandising possibilities-portrays Lehrer as a useless if impeccably dressed codger, shuffling around his stately old residence, keeping up morale by pretending to anchor reports about his daily life. ("Good evening, from the small sitting room just off the foyer at the entrance of my spacious and casually furnished D.C. suburban home . . . ") He even swivels in his chair every so often to face a nonexistent second camera as he tries to tease a few minutes of never-to-air time out of a questionnaire he's received in anticipation of the local village council election.

Maher's Lehrer comes across at first as the quintessence of loneliness. But he's not completely solitary. Before long he's joined by his housemate and amiable doppelganger, Jim Lehrer II-apparently not an imaginary construct but a flesh-and-blood person. Lehrer II certainly bleeds, anyway, making his entrance with a cut on his head, a torn suit, and a red-stained shirt. A playwright who's just attended the premiere of his first staged script, this second Lehrer explains that he had to fight his way free of audience members bent on tearing him to bits in a fit of bacchic frenzy. Not exactly what Artaud meant by the Theater of Cruelty, but not so far off either.

Having tracked down the wandering Lehrer I and reminded him that they're roomies, Lehrer II tries to help with the questionnaire-which has turned out to be an ethical minefield. But he's still spooked. He can't reason out what went wrong at the theater. He worries that some obsessed patron of the arts managed to follow him home, even though he covered his tracks by fleeing down a creek like the Tim Robbins character in The Shawshank Redemption. Lehrer II jumps at every noise. And sure enough . . .

But let's not spoil it. Jim Lehrer and is as much a goof on gothic horror as anything else. Something does go bump in the night at the Lehrer manse.

That something, when it arrives, has nothing to do with, say, a homicidal orangutan. Yet it's not entirely unlike a heart beating beneath floorboards. Think of it as the heart beating beneath the floorboards of our present political moment. Beneath the floorboards of homes and businesses, state houses and campaign headquarters and inaugural platforms all over the United States. Why does Maher have to go and pick on good-hearted, fair-minded, rational, scrupulous, courtly Jim Lehrer? Precisely because of his public virtues. Lehrer embodies that Enlightenment liberalism, that ideal of informed civic responsibility that's supposed to make American democracy possible. Doddering now, broadcasting only to himself, he doesn't hear the heartbeat. As someone in the play says, "New monsters have come. From under the mirror." What we're seeing here is less the treason of the intellectuals than their confused senescence. They look in Maher's mirror and see a double they don't recognize.

Even at 70 minutes, Jim Lehrer and has its longueurs as Maher-who's scrupulous, like Lehrer-works out the implications of his conceit. It's also heady with allusion. But the opening passages are hilarious and the closing ones terrifying, thanks in large part to Colm O'Reilly and Brian Shaw, two extraordinary actors who have a long history of working with Maher. Maher himself is as good a playwright as any working in America today. He does small, smart, and edgy, though, so who knows if he'll get the acknowledgment he deserves. Then again, we may need him in the near future, to identify those thump-thump beats we keep hearing".


Double Double, Jims in Trouble A Review of Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double at Theater Oobleck, Alex Huntsberger, NewCity Chicago 1/25/17. - "If you saw Mickle Maher's "The Strangerer" a decade ago then you certainly must see that play's (loose) sequel, "Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double." But even if you didn't see "The Strangerer"-this critic, for instance, has only read the script-that is still no excuse for you to miss out on this odd, hilarious and ominous tumble down the rabbit hole.
A brief recap before we continue: "The Strangerer" took place during the first of the 2004 presidential debates in Coral Gables, Florida. Inspired by the famous novel by Albert Camus, the candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry debate exactly how and when the two of them would murder the debate's moderator, PBS NewsHour anchor Jim Lehrer.

This new play borrows its basic plot structure from the dread-soaked horror of Edgar Allan Poe. It begins with a now-retired Lehrer, played by Colm O'Reilly, sitting in the room of his suburban townhouse, trying to fill out a poll for the local village election, talking to himself as though it were a newscast (O'Reilly's impersonation is impeccable). Once Lehrer leaves in search of a snack, another Jim Lehrer, this one played by Brian Shaw (both O'Reilly and Shaw played Lehrer during "The Strangerer"'s initial run), enters the sitting room, his clothes torn and bloody. He is returning from the premiere of a play that he wrote-a premiere that ended with the audience chasing him from the theater and attempting to murder him. Former theater majors will recognize that the title is a goof on "The Theatre and its Double" by Antonin Artaud.

Like "The Strangerer," one of Maher's concerns here is the nature of theatrical artifice and its relation to reality. Without the war in Iraq as a worthy target, "Jim Lehrer" can sometimes get too insular and esoteric. It isn't until its final moments that the play turns its gaze back outward toward the nation's present political calamity and reminds us that even our darkest reflections cast shadows-ones that are even darker still."



Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double, Kris Vire, TimeOutChicago.com 2/5/17 - "Mickle Maher doubles down on his Jim Lehrer character in an esoteric sequel to ‘The Strangerer.'Like
many of playwright Mickle Maher's works, Jim Lehrer.... begins with an idea as high-concept as it is silly. In this case, it's reviving the character of Jim Lehrer-Maher's fictionalized version of the PBS newsman and debate moderator, as used in 2008's The Strangerer-and, with  a nod to theatrical theoretician Antonin Artaud, literally doubling him. We meet Jim Lehrer Colm O'Reilly), retired and lonely, narrating the miniscule news of his day to non-existent
cameras while puzzling over a local voters' poll that's been dropped off at his door. He's soon joined by Jim Lehrer (Brian Shaw), would-be playwright, who returns home from the opening night of his new work bloodied and bruised by a frenzied audience.

Maher is playing with Poe as much as Artaud here; Lehrer II's mysterious stage work seems to have unloosed something primal and hungry into the world in a more literal sense than Artaud's noted essay "The Theatre and Its Double" would suggest. The piece drifts toward inscrutability for about a third of its length, as the two Lehrers quibble over their shared existence and the nature of the threat they face-it's less clear here than in the fascinating Strangerer, which took the 2004 Bush-Kerry presidential debate off the rails, what Lehrer has to say about our current political moment. At 75 minutes, the play feels a good 20 minutes too long; this feels like a case where Theater Oobleck's famously director-free aesthetic could have used some outside guidance. But there's still plenty of stimulating material to chew on here, with an endearing mix of intellectual and goofy. O'Reilly's deadpan mastery of the real Lehrer's no-nonsense news voice is nearly worth the whole endeavor."



From Theatre Oobleck - In this sequel to Theater Oobleck's 2007 hit The Strangerer, Jim Lehrer, the legendary news anchor and Presidential debate moderator, is now retired and sitting alone of a gloomy evening in his cavernous DC suburban home, when his double, Jim Lehrer the unsuccessful playwright, arrives home from the opening night of his first produced play.

The premiere of that play did not go well, and Jim Lehrer II fled the theater, chased across dark fields and streams by a violent audience strangely angered by the staging of his script. He now must convince his twin their lives are in danger, and to lock and barricade the front door to stem the imminent invasion. But something-or someone-keeps making odd noises from deep within the house.

A comic-gothic horror tale that relates the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Antonin Artaud to the politics and theater of our day, Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double is a play unlike any other.



Theater Oobleck to premiere new Mickle Maher play on Inauguration Day - Kris Vire, TimeOutChicago.com 12/12/16 - "Playwright Mickle Maher is once again using newsman Jim Lehrer as a character onstage. Twice again, actually. Maher's new play, Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double, will premiere in a Theater Oobleck production on Inauguration Day, January 20, featuring both Colm O'Reilly and  Brian Shaw as versions of Lehrer-one the retired PBS NewsHour anchor, the other a failed playwright, and both in imminent danger in what Oobleck describes as "a comic-gothic horror tale that relates the writings of Edgar Allan Poe and Antonin Artaud to the politics and theater of our day."


Both O'Reilly and Shaw played Lehrer-though not at the same time-in Oobleck's 2007 production of Maher's The Strangerer, which recast the 2004 presidential debate moderated by Lehrer between George W. Bush and John Kerry with an absurdist twist of Albert Camus. Jim Lehrer and the Theater and Its Double and Jim Lehrer's Double will run at the Chopin Theatre from January 20 to February 19. Advance tickets are on sale now ($15 suggested donation); some pay-what-you-wish tickets will be available at the door for each performance."




About Theater Oobleck - is an artistic collective dedicated to producing and performing original works of theater for the benefit of, and at low or no cost to, the members of the Chicago community and beyond. All our works are created and developed by members of the Oobleck ensemble, working in concert to create a collaborative vision without an overseeing director. We have produced about seventy world-premiere productions over the past twenty-seven years, as well as eighteen remounts of earlier productions

Author
Antonin Artaud in The Theater and Its Double

Director
Mickle Maher

Performers
Colm O’Reilly and Brian Shaw

Production
Mickle Maher (Set design); Martha Bayne (Light Design); Chris Schoen (Sound Design); Cecilie O'Reilly (Vocal Coach); Zoe Sapienza (Stage Mgr); Jen Moniz (Production Mgr)

Tags: Theater, American, 2017