“Green Corridors” Two reviews Al Bresloff and Jacob Davis

****  I have been covering theater in the “greater Chicago” area for around 30 years. I thought I knew every company in town, but realized that there is one that I have truly missed. That company is Trap Door Theatre. As it turns out, I did not miss them, my reviewer , Jacob Davis, has been covering them all these years, so while they have been ON my website, for the most part, they have never been talked about in depth on the radio show because Jacob was the reviewer. Well, guess what? Although Jacob will be seeing the current production, “Green Corridors” tomorrow night, with Jane out of town and this being a subject matter that would appeal to Reklama ( a Ukrainian weekly I write for), I took the ride to the city.

Trap Door is located at 1655 West Cortland ( just West of Ashland Avenue). I drove past the theater twice, not knowing that it is in a building behind an empty house/whatever that is empty, making me think I was in the wrong place. I thought perhaps that I might need a code to get in ( sort of like Hernando’s Hideaway” in “The Pajama Game”) but once I opened the door, I found that I was in the right place. Trap Door is a smaller venue, quite intimate with seating on two sides, one area with two rows of seats, the other with four. Some people have said that Trap Door is known for “Theater of the Absurd” As I settled in my seat, I watched intently as five of the actors moved about the small stage. Four of them were walking in door frames, the fifth, sitting in a corner, folding her laundry and packing the items in a duffel bag. This might have appeared to some as absurd, but I knew that this was prep for us to learn more about these characters and what they might be fleeing from. ( they all had suitcases as well).

“Green Corridors” is written by Natalka Vorozhbyt (translated by John Freedman with Natalia Bratus), who is a leading Ukrainian playwright, screenwriter and director with many of her works exploring the human cost of war and displacement. That is the thrust of this particular piece as it takes us through actual stories blended with the filming of a story that tells the same story as the characters we are watching are experiencing. Director Kay Martinovich uses the before action to get your thought process working. I did find myself discussing the action with the person sitting next to me ( not someone I came with).

If you are Russian or Ukrainian, or have family of either, this might hit you hard. As someone who knows a little about what is happening, after watching this cleverly directed (Kay Martinovich) 90 minutes of story telling, I walked away feeling that  as much as we think we are being told about the Russia/Ukraine situation, there is far more involved that we are not being told. I am sure that Jacob will add a great deal more to what I am saying, but I must tell you that I walked into the theater not knowing anything about them with the exception of Jacob’s reviews and after watching this production know that I want to see more of their work!

The cast of 8 are pretty much on the stage for the entire production ( and five of them for 20 minutes prior to the play starting). Watch them closely as you enter the theater. If you do, you might get a hint of their stories, as each one has their own reason for leaving. The actors are Marzena Bukowska ( the cat lover) Dan Cobbler, Jen O’Connor, Nicole Garneau ( who shows us many ways to die and is an actress with a story to tell), Emma Mansfield ( who looked to be less involved, but turned out to have a story that will make your hair curl), Manuela Rentea( the Housewife, who has a very sexual scene as well as one where she prepares Borscht for the other ladies), Gus Thomas and James Wheeler. There were many scenes where they moved parts of the set, and in a few instances changed characters- they were all terrific!

On the tech side, there is a simple set (Merje Veski), lighting (Richard Norwood) that sets mood after mood, sound and music (Dan Poppen) that swayed the moods as well and costumes ( Rachel Sypniewski) that fit the need. I am quite impressed with what I saw and the content of the play gives us plenty to think about! We all know the expression “Green Pastures” relative to finding a new and better life. I truly believe that Vorozhbyt had that in mind!

 “Green Corridors” will continue Thru – Feb 21st with performances as follows:

Thursdays 8:00pm

Fridays      8:00pm

Saturdays  8:00pm

Sundays    7:00pm

Show Type: Comedy/Drama

Box Office: 773-384-0494

www.trapdoortheatre.com

The Theater is located at 1655 West Cortland- Lots of street parking and easily reached by public transportation

boxofficetrapdoor@gmail.com

***** How do you tell a story about refugees that meets the current moment? It’s impossible for any single depiction to represent everyone of course, and the people in the audience are likely to feel helpless. However, many Eastern European plays have the advantage of being written by political exiles and have developed a rich system of archetypes and devices for exploring complicated ideas. Trap Door Theatre, which often produces highly political Eastern European drama, is now performing Green Corridors, a recent play by Ukrainian author Natalka Vorozhbyt, in translation by John Freedman and Natalia Bratus. Directed by Kay Martinovich, Green Corridors is a cerebral, darkly funny, and deeply empathetic representation of four Ukrainian women who fled to other parts of Europe following Russia’s 2022 invasion, each of whom had very different lives and ways of contextualizing what has happened to them.
I quite enjoyed the play and recommend it, but you don’t have to take my word for it. Al Bresloff wrote his own review of the opening night performance. I attended on the night of January 17, and here’s what I can report:
We meet our main characters as they wait in line to be granted passage from Ukraine to Poland. They are the Cat Lover (Marzena Bukowska), who is still using a Soviet-issued passport and had to choose which of her cats to bring, the Housewife (Manuela Rentea), whose husband has gone to fight, but insisted she leave the country with their children, the Manicurist (Emma Mansfield), a young mother with visible injuries who has clearly been through something horrible, and the Actress (Nicole Garneau), who proclaims that she is not fleeing, but has been offered the opportunity to tell Ukraine’s story to the world. They will get to know each other very well waiting in various lines in Poland, Austria, Hungary, and Germany. But during their first encounter, they are hardly through customs when they take a dislike to the Actress, whose past roles include ads for pro-Russia politicians, roles in pro-Russia TV serials, and Russian characters in pro-Ukraine movies. She also points out that she has played many Ukrainian nationalists from the past hundred years (all of whom ended up being assassinated), but her cold condescension to those outside the intelligentsia does her no favors, and her fellow refugees give the first of several intense thrashings.

Modern technology proves to be a mixed blessing for the exiles. The Housewife is briefly able to maintain intimacy with her husband through videocalls, which the women’s shelter has a dedicated nook for, but which also forces her to hear the bullets and artillery barrage that cause him to go MIA. The Cat Lover figures out how to use a phone well enough to doomscroll reports of daily bombings and atrocities against Ukrainian prisoners, civilians, and occasionally, pets. Meanwhile, the Manicurist struggles to pretend things are normal as she searches for a new job when she doesn’t even feel safe being in one place for the time it takes a café to prepare her drink, and the Actress’s attempt to rally the world is met with a distressing amount of Russian sympathy within Europe, as well as complacency. A recurring theme is that even people who consider themselves friends of the Ukrainians have a tendency to fetishize them, chide them that the political history is not as simple as people who have personally been victimized are biased to think, perceive that they’re the threat by drawing other countries into the war, or resent them for making it complicated to enjoy Russian culture.
The most prominent feature of Merje Veski’s scenic design are the wheeled doorframes that the actors move through at various points throughout the play. Director Kay Martinovich is clearly comfortable with Brechtian Epic Theatre, using devices such as songs and projecting each scene’s title to achieve a distancing effect while maintaining the humanity of the play’s subjects. There are several highly meta moments, mostly involving the Actress’s work on historical dramas, in which the characters discuss what an artist’s intention is when portraying conflict. An in-universe Director (Jen Connor) says refugee stories are more effective as agitprop when they feature mostly female casts and devote a lot of attention to sexual violence. During the period after Russia occupied Crimea and Ukraine’s far East, but before the wholescale invasion, the Actress used to ask her directors if it was important to acknowledge serious flaws in slain historical Ukrainian artists. Over time, she stopped asking, apparently since doing that makes your own impending assassination sound like something reasonable people can disagree on. If playwright Natalka Vorozhbyt identifies with the Actress, where that character ends up could be taken as an interesting statement on art itself. Green Corridors is a deeply thoughtful work, and an expertly crafted production. And of course, you could hardly find something timelier.