Matt Crowle

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder – Porchlight Music Theater – February 2, 2019

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It seems to me that A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love & Murder could have been titled How to Succeed in Murder Without Really Trying. I easily could envision a young J. Pierrepont Finch (spoiler alert) rising to the top of the D’Ysquith family, to become the Ninth Earl of Highhurst, through cunning, good fortune, and the cool clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth.

As with last year’s Memphis, I preferred Porchlight’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to the Broadway in Chicago version I saw a few years ago, due, in large part, I suspect, to the intimacy of the venue, which is, nevertheless large enough to provide the set designer the creative liberty to forge a functional and entertaining backdrop to the action.

As with Porchlight’s Gypsy, I was fortunate enough to see the first table reading of A Gentleman’s Guide, which, in this case, afforded me the opportunity to observe Matt Crowle working on the voices he would use for the nine different characters he portrays. And, while that was playful and interesting, it could not have prepared me for the way in which he distinctly inhabits all of them once he’s in costume and afforded the chance to add physicality to the roles. There are many famous death scenes in the theater. For my money, Crowle’s turn as Reverend Lord Ezekial D’Ysquith may be the most entertaining.

That said, I guess I need to see a production of The Complete Deaths (74 of them from the Bard of Avon’s works), which I missed at ChicagoShakespeare Theater in 2016. Hopefully, the play itself will rise from the ashes so that l’ll have another chance.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to be satisfied with a website I found chronicling 100 of the most memorable on screen movie deaths, led, coincidentally, by Alan Rickman, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who gained his greatest fame in America, without really trying, as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.

Santaland Diaries – Goodman Theater – December 18, 2018

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Santaland Diaries, David Sedaris’s 1992 essay about working as an elf at Macy’s during the Christmas season, is supposed to be a comedy. Perhaps it was in 1992, but not anymore. The Goodman Theater would be better off just shutting down for the holidays. Its 2016 production, in concert with Second City, of Twist Your Dickens, was unwatchable. Santaland Diaries isn’t that bad, but it’s boring and out of step with the times. Even its mystifyingly good reviews admit that.

The Chicago Reader review of the 2006 Stage 773 production of the Santaland Diaries said “some of the script’s pop-culture references are beginning to show their age” and gave the show a “somewhat recommended”. Yet, interestingly, twelve years later, the Reader gave the Goodman production a “highly recommended”, even while acknowledging that “a few lines in the script have unintentionally traded their comedic weight for dramatic over the years. One antiquated reference to mentally handicapped people, for instance, landed like the proverbial turd in an otherwise tasty punchbowl; it was 15 minutes before [Matt] Crowle regained the trust of the audience.”

Fifteen minutes, out of a 65-minute performance! How can that be a description of a highly recommended show? I don’t know Macy’s return policy, but perhaps this dinosaur can be relegated to Jurassic World. Jokes about cash registers really don’t register anymore. The best line in the show was Crowle’s put down of an unruly audience member.

None of this is meant as a knock on Crowle, soon to star in Porchlight Music Theater’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (where he’ll play eight characters), and whom I’ve seen in other productions around town. He does a fine job. Most memorably for me, his Billie Holiday impression, which obviously transcends the written script, was terrific.  Maybe next year the Goodman should do a Holiday show instead of a holiday show.