Actress Molly Brennan brings the funny, not feminist agenda, to her role in 'Animal Crackers'
(Tribune photo illustration by Bill Hogan and Michael Miner) Nina Metz profiled Molly Brennan for her performance in the Harpo Marx role in "Animal Crackers" at the Goodman Theatre Sept. 18 to Oct. 25.
Careering on her bike through the streets of Chicago, actress Molly Brennan is hard to miss: her hair short and dyed purple, her right arm covered in tattoos, including one of a pink rabbit on her bicep. A key member of the avant-garde troupe 500 Clown, she is one of the city’s more indelible performers, but ask her to assess her place in the Chicago theater scene and she’ll settle on this description: “Belly crawler, absolutely—and I think proudly so.”
That’s genuine modesty coming from a performer co-starring in the Goodman’s debut show of the season. “Animal Crackers” (a stage version of the raucous 1928 Marx Brothers film) begins performances next week, with Brennan in the Harpo role. Her presence will no doubt bring a scrappier element to the Goodman; when news broke that she would be playing a man, many in the theater blogosphere hated the idea. Director Henry Wishcamper felt otherwise, although Brennan, 38, was as shocked as anyone that she landed the role.
And yet there’s logic to the casting. Audiences familiar with her work have seen Brennan play tomboyish, childlike mischiefmakers juiced with a hilarious malevolent streak—what casting director Adam Belcuore calls her “wild-eyed, ravenous sensibility.”
That sounds an awful lot like Harpo. According to Wishcamper: “We made her chase every woman in the audition room repeatedly to make sure there was an aggressive male sexuality.” A physical comedian with fearlessness to spare (and the dings to prove it), Brennan says she’s just going to play the part: “There’s no feminist agenda.”