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May 15--Veteran National Public Radio newscaster Carl Kassell narrates the cool short movie that opens the House Theatre of Chicago's pulpy but typically creative and original new show, a hipster yarn called "The Boy Detective Fails." And a pre-show announcement Saturday night -- delivered to whoops and hollers -- congratulated the assistant stage manager for graduating from college that very day.
That juxtaposition is an apt metaphor for the historical moment in which the one Chicago theater that understands an audience's need to party finds itself.
In part, this remains an immature but prodigiously talented group of post-collegiates dedicated to warm celebration but whose best work is still ahead. The House kids -- who now routinely get a couple of hundred people a night -- are no longer either a secret or the next hot thing. The temperature has already risen. Significant resources are now at their disposal. In show business, youth is a vital asset that doesn't last so long. Carpe diem, House.
Here's how: First, learn to cut. "Boy Detective," based on a forthcoming novel by a smart and savvy young fiction writer called Joe Meno, clocks in at over 2 1/2 hours. The excessive length -- due mostly to ill-disciplined actors -- threatens to bring the whole fabulously inventive enterprise down. This needs to be a rip-roaring but post-modern tale of a former boy detective fighting his way back to his former glories after the suicide of his sister leads to the kind of adult depression unsolvable with a magnifying glass.
The other danger House faces is becoming the National Theatre of the Comic Book. The troupe is sticking to its niche-populist, smart, eclectic original material precisely like "Boy Detective" -- part a Nancy Drew mystery for the trendy set and part a sad meditation on how even the greatest boy detective cannot solve the sad, existential mysteries of the adult life.
This is just the kind of primary-colored material -- written with intelligence and stylistic verve but also significantly fresher than the narrative material most theaters use -- that House could take to New York and find Gotham fame and fortune ... if the problems are fixed.
For while House can dance on the knife-edge of the overindulgent, it can't fall into a pit bereft of subtlety.
As in all the troupe's past shows, the best (and great they are) moments in Nathan Allen's production of "Boy Detective" are the vulnerable ones -- such as the powerful scene between Shawn Pfaustch (as the B.D.) and Justin D. M. Palmer (as a former assistant who never recovered adolescent glory days).
Paige Hoffman, who plays the suicidal sis, has some haunting moments. So does Lauren Viz as the B.D.'s nerdy love interest. And there's a sweet scene between Pfautsch and the lost cop, played by Michael E. Smith. Another asset here is the live chamber ensemble of harpsichord and strings, offering just the right kind of anti-intuitive soundtrack. The show has enough pieces of wondrous stagecraft that past fans of this company should show up. They'll enjoy themselves.
But at other irritating times, this show gets stuck in circles of its own making, at the expense of truth and storytelling. The overwrought character of the Professor makes no clear sense. Some scenes just have so much darn air in them, you want to shove this show together like an over-extended concertina and let it step up and lead the band.
"The Boy Detective Fails"
When: Through July 1
Where: Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $15-19 at 773-251-2195.
cjones@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
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