Six Characters in Search of an Author

"Pirandellian" isn't officially an adjective to describe a strange blending of fact and fiction, but good drama students should get the reference if they've ever studied Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's massively influential 1920s drama Six Characters in Search of an Author.

And if any of those drama students failed to grasp exactly what Pirandello's suspenseful and disturbing play meant on the page, then they (and any other open-minded theatergoer) should rush to see The Hypocrites' wonderful new world-premiere adaptation by Steve Moulds.

Six Characters… is famous as a mind-bending play within a play to challenge an audience's perception of what is real and re-enacted and how dreamed-up characters can become frighteningly real and achieve a sense of immortality. What's wonderful with Mould's adaptation is how he brings it so cleverly up to date and customizes his script to fit the demands and character of The Hypocrites as a scrappy and critically-admired Chicago theater troupe.

Set amid leftover elements from The Hypocrites' acclaimed revival of The Pirates of Penzance, Six Characters… ostensibly begins as a "put-in rehearsal" demonstration to show invited supporters (you, the audience) how the company goes about its artistic business. Actors like John Taflan and Laura McKenzie are late or not fully memorized, while the authority of replacement director Brennan Buhl and his stage manager Ryan Walter frequently get tested.
Into this disorganized demonstration arrive six ghostly characters from a blended family (Ted Evans, Stevi Baston, Michael Molito, Samantha Gleisten, Ada Grey and Larry Garner) with some demanding help from an author to dramatize their conflicting stories of woe. Once you get past their lengthy exposition, the six bickering and unsettlingly quiet family members offer riveting accounts of what brought so much shame and ruin to their unhappy family.

Hypocrites artistic director Halena Kays handles the comic and dramatic shifts in tone marvelously in an environmental staging cleverly designed by Lizzie Bracken around the remnants of Tom Burch's zany Pirates of Penzance set of partial wooden piers, round picnic tables and a plastic swimming pool.

Adding immeasurably to the creepiness of the piece is Maggie Fullilove-Nugent's initially harsh and then ghostly lighting design mixed with Kevin O'Donnell's sound design that turns up the tension. Costumer Alison Heryer also has fun with the hip young actors before going nearly black and white for the distressed family.

With Mould's Six Characters…, The Hypocrites has once again taken a theater classic and reinterpreted it to make it dramatically fresh and insightfully new. Six Characters… will make you laugh up-front, but later haunt you into thinking about the thin barriers of facts and re-created fiction.