Chicago Theater Review: SORRY (TimeLine)

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by Lawrence Bommer on January 26, 2015

in Theater-Chicago

THE JUICY APPLES’ SLICE OF LOVE

You can’t keep an eloquent family down. TimeLine Theatre Company’s concurrent productions of election-night episodes from Richard Nelson’s Apple Family Plays contrasts That Hopey Changey Thing (reviewed separately), set in 2010, with Sorry, which occurs two years later very early on the day of Obama’s reelection. The locale for both is the quaint Hudson River Valley hamlet of Rhinebeck (pop. 2,640), a two-hour drive from Manhattan.

Barbara Apple (Janet Ulrich Brooks, second from left) is torn about the family's plans for uncle Benjamin Apple (Mike Nussbaum, left), but her siblings Jane Apple Halls (Mechelle Moe, from left), Marian Apple Platt (Juliet Hart) and Richard Apple (David Parkes) are there to support her in TimeLine Theatre's Chicago premiere of Sorry, Part 3 of Richard Nelson's The Apple Family Plays, directed by Louis Contey, presented on an alternating schedule with Part 1, That Hopey Changey Thing, at 615 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago, January 13 - April 19, 2015. Photo by Lara Goetsch.

Despite the electoral occasion, this 110-minute family portrait is less political than the earlier installment and more intent on revealing the bedrock affections that make the Apples a whole much greater than its parts. As always with Nelson’s harvests, he conveys his characters as being, not doing. Nelson, who writes that his plays are about the “need to know,” cites theater tyro Harley Granville-Barker: “What livelier microcosm of human society can there be than an acted play.” Hear, hear! (pun intended).

Sisters Marian Apple Platt (Juliet Hart, left) and Barbara Apple (Janet Ulrich Brooks, right) must deal with the increasingly severe memory loss of Uncle Benjamin Apple (Mike Nussbaum, center) in TimeLine Theatre's Chicago premiere of Sorry, Part 3 of Richard Nelson's The Apple Family Plays, directed by Louis Contey, presented on an alternating schedule with Part 1, That Hopey Changey Thing, at 615 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago, January 13 - April 19, 2015. Photo by Lara Goetsch.

Lawyer and brother Richard (David Parkes, just as stolid but sweeter than in Hopey Changey) has returned before sunrise from an unedifying business trip to England to help his sisters in a family crisis: Uncle Benjamin (always marvelous Mike Nussbaum) has lost his inhibitions along with his memories. His late-blooming libido is too unpredictable for Barbara (anguished and secretive Janet Ulrich Brooks) to bear: This cranky old baby is heading for a home, playing his last jigsaw puzzle in the home he’s financed. Never certain she’s being understood, a guilt-ridden Barbara talks out her problems to her addled uncle, trenchantly fearing her loneliness when he leaves.

The Apple family (from left, David Parkes, Mike Nussbaum, Mechelle Moe, Janet Ulrich Brooks and Juliet Hart) gather on the morning of Election Day 2012 for an inportant but difficult family event in TimeLine Theatre's Chicago premiere of Sorry, Part 3 of Richard Nelson's The Apple Family Plays, directed by Louis Contey, presented on an alternating schedule with Part 1, That Hopey Changey Thing, at 615 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago, January 13 - April 19, 2015. Photo by Lara Goetsch.

This time breakfast, not dinner, serves as a nurturing ritual to connect two generations. Despite free-association table talk about Franklin Pierce, Benedict Arnold, and disease-spreading midges, you sense a pattern in this play: It’s the family members’ fear of “missing something,” mental or emotional. Happily, any supposed sins of omission only make them listen to each other better. And, as isn’t the case with sitcom-style domestic dramas, the secrets shared are significant.

Jane Apple Halls (Mechelle Moe, right) and her brother Richard Apple (David Parkes, left) talk about their family's troubles in TimeLine Theatre's Chicago premiere of Sorry, Part 3 of Richard Nelson's The Apple Family Plays, directed by Louis Contey, presented on an alternating schedule with Part 1, That Hopey Changey Thing, at 615 W. Wellington Ave., Chicago, January 13 - April 19, 2015. Photo by Lara Goetsch.Jane (Mechelle Moe, ardent as ever) worries that a severely divided America, plagued with diminishing returns since 9/11, has lost its all-uniting capacity for shared sacrifice (Jane’s boyfriend Tim, seen in the earlier work, is off performing in Chicago). Marian (Juliet Hart) now lives with Barbara and continues her commendable crusades. As Uncle Benjamin reads from his journal, we discover how hard he works to hold his mind together.

When each asks the others what they’d tell Obama if they had one minute of his attention, you sense that a polarized electorate begins at home. But, far from being talking heads presenting position papers that sometimes makes Hopey Changey a tad calculated, they’re linked in unison over their fear of the future. Suicide has already thinned the next generation: Bad weather, perpetual war, and no jobs threaten the survivors.

There’s more at stake in the hopes and changes that fuel the regrets in Sorry. Rich with what Nelson calls “human talk,” this seminal morning seems less an arbitrary, feature-length You Tube video than its interesting predecessor. As always, director Louis Contey makes it an action painting circa 2012. You could do worse than, as TimeLine’s artistic accuracy suggests, accidentally overhearing the Apples at work and play.

photos by Lara Goetsch

Sorry
TimeLine Theatre
615 W. Wellington Ave.
click here for specific dates
plays in rep with That Hopey Changey Thing thru April 19, 2015
for tickets, call 773.281.8463
or visit www.timelinetheatre.com

for more info on Chicago Theater, visit www.TheatreinChicago.com

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