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Robert PoliakAlgren Essay Worst Of Big Deal Players, Play Considerably BetterPOLLAKThe worst thing about Big Deal (Playwrights at Second City) is a dour essay in the program by Nelson Algren, the novelist. Most of Mr. Algren’s fiction, to which I am allergic, seems to be based on the premise that if you are a bum an aura of saintliness hangs about you, but if you live in a ranch house and bowl every Thursday night you are bound to be a jerk. In the essay on Big Deal he informs us once again that the reputation of the poets will last longer than that of the men of business, a truism obvious to anybody who tries to remember the name of Shakespeare’s insurance agent; and that most citizens of Chicago are Elmer (the name Elmer is his symbol for the dull, slavish conformist) who will view Big Deal as a blow below the belt, a slur on Chicago’s reputation and a thing that ought to be reported straight off to the Mayor. In short, hedares you to like the show.Having read his mournful diatribe, I ordered a coffee from a black-clad waitress and settled back, prepared for the worst. Fortunately “Big Deal is considerably better than Algren’s endorsement of it. This opera for politicans, * another variation on John Gay’s immortal Beggar’s Opera is very funny for all its savagery, and although it will annoy the Mayor if he hears about it, its content will surprise nobody brought up amidst Chicago corruption.The old John Gay characters appear in various local guises. Jenny Diver is a Clark St. madam, Jonathan Peachum an unctuous buyable alderman, MacHeath, no antique highwayman, but a hood in the slum real estatebusiness who rapes and murders as a sideline. The little Playwrights stage is crowded with tarts, fixers, pimps, fences, money-loving polizei and bribable building inspectors. All in all, Big Deal is strong medicine, butalert, theater-minded grownups will find it bothamusing and instructive.The foreman in charge of* the departmentof quibbles whises (a) that William Mathieu weren’t so determined to avoid tonic song-endings (novelty can quickly become commonplace); (b) that the voices in the cast were better equipped to handle the songs; and (c) that the so-called improvised dialogue weren’t quite so improvised since it sometimes generates mere noise and confusion. Neverthe-Big Deal” emerges on balance as an incisive exercise in bitter satire and it usually manages to make its point.Further on the credit side kudos should go to David Shepard for his sharp lyrics and tocomposer-in-residence Mathieu for a mordant,witty score brilliantly played by Fred Kaz, the company’s pianist. As Alderman Peachum Win Stracke is a toweringly successful singing actor, and Dolores Alton is persuasive and pretty as MacHeath’s faithful Polly. Stephen Pearlman makes MacHeath as sinister as his local counterparts, the kind that end up deadin the trunks of cars, and Charles Lewsen, Tom Erhart and Ann Raim cavort expertlyin other principal roles.If you are still seeking entertainment after Big Deal you will find that man of iron Stracke and his guitar at work in the attractive panelled bar under the theater. He not only explores the folk literature from the inevitable Greensleeves to Methodist revival hymns, but persuades the clients to join him in thesinging of rounds..........to Latintexts yet. At 1 a.m. it all sounds pretty good.
Newspaper Details
Chicago Hyde Park Herald
Chicago, Illinois, US
Wed, Sep 27, 1961
Page 8
Full Page
Clipped by
Loyola U.
IL, USA 30 Mar 2020
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