'New Electric Ballroom' at Red Orchid: Fearless 'Ballroom' leaves humor and storytelling behind
THEATER REVIEW: "The New Electric Ballroom" ★★½ Through March 6 at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1513 N. Wells St.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $25-$30 at 312-943-8722 or www.aredorchidtheatre.org
Enda Walsh is at once perhaps the most original of the newer Irish writers and the hardest to produce.
His plays, such as “The Walworth Farce,” “Penelope” or “The New Electric Ballroom,” which opened Monday night at A Red Orchid Theatre in Chicago, are rooted in truthful human behavior and colorful characterization. Walsh is fond of people who regard the future with fear and are perpetually inclined to run back into their troubled past. And he's hardly adverse to comedic absurdity. But Walsh is more naturally an outré linguistic stylist and a far-reaching poet than a straight-up storyteller — he's not so interested in that grand Irish tradition of dimming the lights and seducing the viewer with the kind of poetic narrative that puts you in mind of a yarn told in some rural Galway pub. Walsh is closer to Samuel Beckett than Conor McPherson.
And thus his plays can be very hard for the regular theatergoer, especially the fatigued theatergoer, to unpack. If you're thinking of heading to “The New Electric Ballroom,” it's probably fair to say that you'll have to do some work to catch the rhythms, and indeed the point, of the play. But there is no question that Walsh's writing is so distinctive (and frequently wise) that you find yourself drawn to his words. And you never feel like you've heard any of this before.