Centerstage - Chicago's Original City Guide

From the mournful wail of an alto sax to the dead, yellow glare of a street lamp, the noire world steams with a sensory overload that begs to be satisfied as in Tarantino's "Pulp Fiction" or satirized as in any of the "Police Squad" movies. Sadly, Shattered Globe's production of Eric Overmyer's "In a Pig's Valise" fails to do either.

Shattered Globe, like any good black box theatre, has taken Mies van der Rohe to heart and learned to make more from less. Director Roger Smart serves double duty as set designer and creates a sharp, urban corridor of a set that turns the small Shattered Globe space into a compact cauldron of alley life and cabarets. A whiskey soaked, Tom Waits vocalization by Michael Quaintance guides the audience up and over the stage and into their seats at the top of the show. And as the lights dim a blind musician strolls into the blood colored light of a dying sun and blows his horn and with it us into the show. That is the last of any true noire feeling, in an otherwise overwritten and overwrought production. Shattered Globe runs into three major problems in this unsatisfactory endeavor, 1) a verbose and confusing script, 2) poor casting and 3) a surprising lack of understanding of the genre they are attempting to satirize.

Eric Overmyer tries to cram every noire cliche ever told, and many more invented just for the evening, into his script, from similes stretched to the point of breaking (as in "The fog was as thick as Liquid Paper.") to self-reflexive comments by the characters on just how much they are commenting on themselves (Kick that needle out of the groove it's stuck in and let the show play on.) to unfunny butcheries of stereotypical ethnic malapropisms (Dolores Con Leche's repeated use of "Undulate" instead of "Andale" ). I welcome politically incorrect humor, just make sure it's funny. The same could be said for this show, I welcome a wild bashing of a genre, but Eric Overmyer's barbs rarely hit their intended mark. Add to this the fact that the script refuses to hold to its narrative course leaping from "ethnic dancing" to dream snatching to Walt Disney, and the resulting literary miasma produces, as the lead James Taxi describes, a "narrative motion sickness".

The script problems are compounded by poor choices in casting. Joe Forbrich in the lead as Private Investigator James Taxi, sells well the tongue in cheek nature of his character, but he comes off as too clean cut to pass for a street scarred dick (Trust me. They don't leave this turn of phrase untouched). And Rebecca Jordan, as femme fatale Dolores Con Leche, does not prove up to either task of singer or Hispanic, although she does have the legs for the job. Roger Smart also dips into genderbending casting with mixed returns. Eileen Niccolai gives a spicy performance as the evil and male Shrimp Bucket, and Julie Goldstein as Blind Sax is nicely understated, as well as a talented musician. However, I expected more in terms of plot and/or character from Greg Kopp's undimensional Dizzy Miss Lizzy. Shattered Globe is known for its talented ensemble, perhaps the best casting choice would to have been to select a play that showcased their strengths instead of revealing their weaknesses.

Finally, "In a Pig's Valise" is a show with no heart of its own. Little of Roger Smart's staging reveals that he has a true and necessary understanding of what makes noire "Noire" to successfully satirize it. Noire boils with passions scribed in the turn of a woman's hip or undercut by a palooka's clipped phrase. Smart refuses to let his actors care about the situations they are in, leaving cynical derision to carry the comedy. It doesn't. The actors need to strap on concrete golashes and drown in themselves in character and story. Only their caring and commitment will pull us in. Even the lushly orchestrated music of Kid Creole, whose songs pepper the show, turns flat and lifeless with this malaise, offering little in the way of spark or momentum. James Taxi sings that he is a character "trapped in a genre". Shattered Globe's "In a Pig's Valise" is a show trapped in the mistaken thought of what the genre should be.