TimeLine Theater Company of Chicago Bubbles
Mastering the Art of...Everything with Bravado
By: Susan Hall - Dec 12, 2010
To Master the Art
by William Brown and Doug Frew
Karen Janes Woditsch, Julia Child
Craig Spidle, Paul Child
William Brown, Director
Keith Pitts, Scenic Design
Rachel Anne Healy, Costume Design
Julia Eberhardt, Original music and sound design
TimeLine Theater
Chicago, Illinois
World Premier
October 30-December 19, 2010
Chicago is theater central and its high profile success stories, Goodman and Steppenwolf, are often incubators for excellent new theater throughout the country. Sprouting up inside the Chicago city lines are smaller theater groups also committed to excellence, deploying the Chicago insight that ensemble groups build great theater. Often the smaller groups thrive by choosing a narrow, but exciting focus.
One such group is TimeLine, formed in 1997, with the idea of presenting plays inspired by history that also connect to today's social and political issues. Over the past decade and a half, TimeLine has won 37 Non-Equity Jeff Awards and, in 2009, its first season producing under Actors Equity contracts, the company led all Chicago theaters with five Equity Jeff Awards. Watching Mastering the Art it is not hard to understand why.
At the same time TimeLine rakes in awards for production and acting, this company over and over again is honored for its managerial excellence. It was the first arts organization to receive the Alford-Axelson Award for non-profit managerial excellence of a small company and has won numerous strategic planning awards. This unusual two-pronged approach of mounting wonderful productions while minding the shop has worked spectacularly well for TimeLine.
TimeLine’s commitment is to dramas based on history so often the stories they tell are well known. Julia Child’s introduction of French cooking to America is no exception. We have the underlying book of recipes – the joy of French cooking the acquiring editor called the book – echoing the Rombauer’s classic American cookbook.
Julia fell in love with French food when her husband was posted in Paris with the State Department. She did not set out to liberate newly ‘servantless’ American women from casseroles and TV dinners. Yet the end result of her studies at the Cordon Blue and her collaboration with two French women who cooked haute cuisine was just this.
Julia’s PBS shows still give pleasure. The recent Julia and Julia feature film was a mixed bag, but of course Meryl Streep is always a treat. The film ended where this play begins: with butter. If there was anything Julia loved and French cooking celebrates it is butter.
Wafting through the theater before the play begins is the smell of butter bubbling in a big iron pan (one imagines). My neighbor asked, “Where is that coming from?” “Why, they’re cooking,” I laughed. And so they were.
This is the first play TimeLine has commissioned that has received a full production. Full here means rich, multi-faceted, without being in the least pedantic as well as delightful sets, costumes and lighting.
The play is thick without being unctuous or sanctimonious. How could Julia created properly possibly be anything other than an elegant American aristocrat of unrestrained enthusiasm?
It is 1948. Paris. Paul and Julia Child, an American couple, had come by boat for a stint in the Foreign Service, and their first lunch is an ah-ha moment. "I couldn't get over it," said Julia. "I'd never had such food in my life."
Performances by Karen Janes Woditsch as Julia and Craig Spidle as Paul are balanced and intriguing. Julia's passion for Paul is quickly exposed when she watches the maitresse d’ of his favorite restaurant greet him -- a touch too effusively for Julia’s sense of marital decorum. Woditsch captures Julia’s forthright manner and hearty humor. A fresh, breezy approach to daunting recipes is her nature and worked to encourage home cooks to try what often seemed difficult dishes – like soufflés and foie gras.
Paul’s interest in art and his lack of interest in anti-communist politics helped him jump in as Julia’s manager. Craig Spidle is engaging as this gentle but lively man.
Jeannie Affelder, Ian Paul Custer, Amy Dunlap, Terry Hamilton, Juliet Hart, Joel Gross, Ethan Saks and Ann Wakefield each bring delightful cameos to their supporting roles, and can be wrapped in one sentence only because they work as a team. Each is special in his/her distinct style.
Captured on stage are the sense of relief in post-war Europe, of Americans being squeezed at home by fear and McCarthyism, a marriage in which the parts at first don't seem like a fit -- she is four inches taller than he is! One year Julia and Paul sent out Valentine's cards with a photograph of them together in the bathtub in Paris.
Much is mastered during the course of this delightful evening. Mastery spawned by joy is the subject – in food, in friendships, in marriage. Mastery is also only possible when you are willing to make mistakes and Julia teaches this lesson with aplomb and humor. The frenzy of cooking and relaxed chatter are also part of mastery.
What began simply as love at first bite turned into a lifelong affair with French cooking and French food. Americans were encouraged to move beyond casseroles and TV dinners.
The playwrights William Brown and Doug Frew weave together Americans in Paris, the essence of French food, the post war American state department and a brilliant book editor who could see a different approach to the Joy of Cooking. Joy would become we the way Americans who read and watched Julia related to food. Now we would call it joie.
This is a play about joy arising from complex issues and complex times. That Julia is very much herself and can take her unadulterated enthusiasm for French food and launch a ‘brand’ based on pleasure is captured on stage. An authentic launch is cleverly and movingly staged in this delightful and provocative play.
Be sure to add TimeLine to your list of Chicago venues when you head west instead of east to London! Bon appetit!
The TimeLine season continues with In Darfur January 22-March 20, 2011 and The Front Page April 16-June 12, 2011. timelinetheater.com