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Silent screen scandal comes to life in this rock club musical.

Sunday Aug 01, 2004.     By Christopher Piatt

Theater Feed

When the cast of John Fournier’s “Fatty Arbuckle’s Spectacular Musical Revue” started rehearsing, they were working in a large studio above a sex shop. Since it’s a rock musical with high impact clowning and tawdry burlesque numbers, you’d think they’d be right at home atop a store that sells ball gags and leather harnesses.

Don’t count on it. The adult toy store downstairs lodged multiple noise complaints.

Rather than worrying about good neighbor policy, though, director Shade Murray and his team took it as a good sign. After all, when staging a rock show about a Hollywood sex scandal, being too raucous for the kink shop below probably means you’re getting something right.

Which they are. After two Tuesday night performances last spring, the hit-and-run musical is back for another stint at Martyrs’. A rock concert/vaudeville revival/musical comedy produced by Second City theatricals, “Fatty” plays on Tuesdays because its cast, one of the most dynamic and diverse posses in town, can all be found on other stages during the rest of the week.

“We do it on off nights so everybody can still do their paying gigs,” Murray said of his performers. They’re a salt-and-pepper assortment of house musicians, improv veterans, Steppenwolf actors, bona fide striptease artists and guerilla clowns who pool their talents to tell the famous Arbuckle legend.

One of cinema’s first superstars, Arbuckle was a doughy, rotund comedian whose career was derailed when he was accused of raping and killing a rising starlet. The publicity flap surrounding the scandal amounted to a media circus so frenzied it makes the Michael Jackson story seem as tame as a crossword puzzle.

“His life is fascinating to me,” said Fournier. A local jazz/blues musician and songwriter, Fournier pieced together “Fatty” by pulling tunes from his existing catalog of songs and composing several new ones. His pastiche score is the backdrop to some serious horseplay from actors who recreate silent movie bits.

“I grew up in Chicago when going to the theater was the cool thing to do,” said Fournier. “I went to the theater when the Steppenwolf guys were first doing their thing. Those guys made it seem so sexy.”

That same intangible sauciness runs throughout Murray’s peekaboo staging. Watching him workshop the piece feels more like recess than rehearsal. (These days his gang practices above a yoga studio; fortunately, their zen neighbors have yet to ask them to turn the volume down.) “Thank you, Scooby Doo, for this move,” actor Halena Kays says as she recreates a cartoonish, slow motion scramble. Kays is playing a Keystone Cop chasing after silent film legends Arbuckle and Buster Keaton, embodied by Thomas Shea and Dominic Conti, respectively.

The three of them are working a number called “Asses Well Covered,” an elaborate scheme in which Conti’s derriere, exposed by a rip in his trousers, is covered up by a revolving series of hats. As they move in a circle, each steals the hat from his neighbor and puts it on his own head. Or, in Conti’s case, his own buttocks. It’s a swift, complicated sequence executed with the whimsical precision characteristic of silent screen comedy.

The trio perfectly represents the eclectic nature of the “Fatty” cast. Each is an accomplished Chicago performer with plenty of credentials, but each with a resume that couldn’t be more different from the others.

Kays, after all, is also the founder and Artistic Director of Barrel of Monkeys, the successful theater troupe that performs short plays written by Chicago Public School students. She’s also earned her clowning chops as a performer in the Big Apple Circus Clown Care Unit. Conti, meanwhile, has trod the boards of nearly every legitimate stage in Chicago. And even though his Fatty character barely utters a word during most of the evening, Shea pays his bills working as a singer at Navy Pier (when he finally gets to show off his pipes in the final number, you understand why).

Each time they run “Asses Covered,” Conti pretends to topple Kays with a clothesline move, prompting her to ask her director, “I’m getting paid more than these guys, right?” “Absolutely,” Murray answers, without missing a beat.

They’re not exactly what you’d expect to find on the stage of a music venue that usually showcases local punk and rockabilly bands, but the slapstick acrobatics have already played to huge crowds at Martyrs’. The appeal of it may best be summed up by the potty-mouthed sock puppet who helps narrate the show. “People like people who can fall on their asses,” Max the puppet declares. “Always have, always did, always will.”

”Fatty Arbuckle’s Spectacular Musical Review” will runs Tuesday nights in August at Martyrs', 3855 N. Lincoln; tickets $17. Call (800) 594-TIXX for reservations.