THEATER REVIEW: "Middletown" ★★★ Through Aug. 14 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes; Tickets: $20-$73 at 312-335-1650 or steppenwolf.org

At one point in Will Eno's wonderful new play “Middletown” — a piece that's a bit like Thornton Wilder's “Our Town” if it had been penned by Dr. Seuss and edited by Samuel Beckett — a character suddenly feels moved to discuss the linguistic difference between the word “rock” and the word “people.” “'Rock,'” he opines from the stage of the Steppenwolf Theatre, “has a real honest ring to it. ‘People' feels like an afterthought.”

Like a lot of things in a play that seems quirky but actually is profoundly wise, you have to think about that one for a while. Here's another one: talking about botulism, another citizen of Eno's small town of Middletown wonders if this word might actually refer not to a disease but to “a philosophy of really bad choices.” Get it?

But let's go back to “rock” and “people.” If you do think about it — and if that sounds like a drag, this review is not your review and this play it not your play — you'll surely conclude that the guy's observation has merit. And from there, perhaps, you might start wondering why people, who created our language system even as rocks were just sitting around on the ground, chose to imbue an inanimate object with such gravitas and themselves with the wimpiest of monikers. What the heck does that say about our lack of confidence in ourselves? And at that point, as at other points, “Middletown” would be working its spell.

Eno, who also wrote the acclaimed piece “Thom Pain (based on nothing),” is an unusual writer, to say the least.

Where most contemporary playwrights would just write the word “hello,” Eno will typically write, “hello, hi, how are you?” and protect that trifecta from an editor. Not only is his dialog uncommonly rich and poetic, it free-associates with the most rare and delicious kind of abandonment. His characters start talking, it invariably feels, without actually knowing where their sentence is going to end, or even what they are going to say. But that's not to say that the resultant play is pretentious or formless or academic or esoteric or even just plain weird. Actually, “Middletown” (like the Wilder model) is tightly focused on what matters in small-town life: finding ourselves born, dying, relating to others, finding our place, searching for personal meaning, fighting off loneliness, passing the time.

Steppenwolf Theatre Company literary manager Joy Meads is leaving the company, the theater confirmed; she's returning to California.

Following a restructuring of artistic operations, the theater now is searching for a literary associate.

Erica Daniels, the longtime casting director at the Steppenwolf Theatre, and a peerless source of knowledge on Chicago actors, has a new title. She's now to be known as associate artistic director, reflecting her years of experience at the theater.

Following the departure of Polly Carl for Arena Stage, associate producer Rebecca Rugg also has upgraded billing. Henceforth, she is to be known as the new "artistic producer."

Polly Carl, the director of artistic development at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company, is leaving Chicago to join Arena Stage in Washington as director of the American Voices New Play Institute.  Arena Stage announced Carl's hiring Thursday night.

Carl's tenure at Steppenwolf has been short. She arrived from Minneapolis in May, 2009. But she's been influential in developing the company's artistic relationship with smaller theater groups, especially through the Garage Repertory program. She has also worked as a dramaturg on several new plays, including "Detroit" and "Sex with Strangers," both of which are looking forward to Broadway futures.

The institute, Arena Stage said in a statement, has been designed not just to develop new plays but as " a center for research, development and dissemination of effective practices, programs and processes for new play development in the American Theater." Polly was a wonderful contributor to Steppenwolf and we'll miss her," said Steppenwolf artistic director Martha Lavey, who praised Carl's "intelligence, energy and good humor."

 
Carrie Coon (from left), Tracy Letts, Madison Dirks and Amy Morton in "Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" The revival of Edward Albee’s play was directed by Pam MacKinnon in 2010 at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company. (Read the ★★★½ review posted Dec. 12: Steppenwolf's 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' is driven by a dangerous George)

The Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf" will move to Broadway in the fall of 2012, the producer Jeffrey Richards announced on Tuesday afternoon, with its entire original Chicago cast of Tracy Letts, Amy Morton, Carrie Coon and Madison Dirks under the direction of Pam MacKinnon. Along with Richards, the lead producer, the other producers are Jerry Frankel, Susan Quint Gallin and Mary Lu Roffe.

The Broadway opening has been timed both to allow Letts and Morton to complete other commitments (Letts has to deal with the shooting of the movie version of "August: Osage County"; Morton is directing the first two shows in the Steppenwolf season) and also to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the play's original Broadway opening. Thus the show is slated to open on Oct. 13, 2012.

"This was Mr. Albee's decision," said David Hawkanson, the executive director of Steppenwolf, "and also another big gamble that Mr. Richards is willing to make."

Although any Broadway production is a gamble, this one is especially risky, given that this play was revived on Broadway in 2005 with Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin, both bigger New York names than Letts and Morton. Nonetheless, the show was critically acclaimed in Chicago (and also in Washington, D.C., where it played at Arena Stage), and Steppenwolf is on a roll.

This will be the second production from Steppenwolf's current, yet-to-be-completed season to move to Broadway. Also produced by Jeffrey Richards, Lisa D'Amour's new play "Detroit" opens in New York this fall.

This might not yet be the end of the Chicago-to-New York shuttle: a New York transfer for Laura Eason's  "Sex With Strangers," currently in production at Steppenwolf, has been widely discussed.

Steppenwolf Theatre said Monday that Jeff Garlin, the comedian with strong Chicago roots and well known for his work on HBO’s “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” will perform a solo show at the Steppenwolf in July. Slated for July 13-24 in the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, the stand-up show will be entitled “No Sugar Tonight.” Tickets go on sale Friday at 312-335-1650 or www.steppenwolf.org.

 
MacKenzie Mauzy stars in "White Noise" at the Royal George Theatre, the biggest production there in some time. (Tribune photo by Brian Cassella)

In Chicago and New York, this has been a week of surprises. The shows that I expected to be big hits of the spring mostly have not been. And productions that I expected to be more — well — routine have contained myriad revelations.

Of all the shows this spring, I was perhaps most looking forward to Tina Landau's take on Lanford Wilson's “Hot L Baltimore” at Steppenwolf Theatre. Wilson's poetic, intensely compassionate, multicharacter pageant — a slice of SRO life in the 1970s, you might say — seemed like the perfect match for a director so accomplished at finding the humanity and musicality in classical American dramas. But although Landau had her orchestra playing with passion on opening weekend, a clear melody stubbornly refused to emerge.

On Broadway, the major new musical of the 2010-11 season was expected to be “Catch Me If You Can,” the work of writer Terrence McNally and “Hairspray” songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman. “Catch Me” is an adaptation of the Steven Spielberg movie about the confidence trickster Frank Abagnale Jr. The idea seemed like a perfect match for these gifted creators, who decided to give the production a theatrical identity by creating the outer frame of a variety show, wherein Abagnale Jr. would tell his story. But as things turned out, a clear melody stubbornly refused to emerge.

These were very different shows created by leading practitioners of the theaters. But they both struggled with one of the most vexing challenges — how to find the right balance between creating a rich and fulsome theatrical landscape and being able to walk an audience through that world. Intriguingly, both shows found themselves caught between the smoother ambiance of the 1940s and 1950s (the glory days of the Hotel Baltimore and the American variety show) and the sharper edges of the 1960s and early 1970s (the world in which Wilson wrote his play and Abagnale pulled his cons).

Nick Sandys and Annabel Armour in the Remy Bumppo Theatre Company production of "The Goat or, Who Is Sylvia?”

Whenever you see an actor in Chicago who is entirely wrong for a role — an inappropriate age, say, or lacking the skills needed for the part — it's usually because the performer had some pre-existing relationship with the director or theater company. I sometimes find myself sitting in my seat and thinking, “You would never have gotten that role were it not for …”

I'm hardly alone in that thought. Since the good roles in Chicago are outnumbered by actors who would like to play them, it's human nature for actors to rationalize not getting a part by assuming that whoever did must have had some sort of inside track. They may or may not be right. The arts are no different from other professions in their reliance on networks; people like to work with people they know and trust. Maybe to a fault. Some people like to make sure they're working with someone who won't usurp their authority. Sometimes a favor is owed. Sometimes a particular piece of casting is a good political idea. And sometimes — and I can think of a couple of shows in Chicago right now — the art suffers.

David Cromer, the gifted Chicago director who has become one of Broadway's hottest talents (and who opens “The House of Blue Leaves” on Broadway later this month with Edie Falco and Ben Stiller), has long struck me as a director who has mostly avoided being beholden to the same small group of actors. While he has worked with a couple of folks more than once, he invariably has cast the right actor in the right role. He now has to navigate the Broadway star system; it will be interesting to see how he does.

But casting is a very tricky issue overall.

Take, for example, the recent widely acclaimed Steppenwolf Theatre Company production of “Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” The two central performances of Tracy Letts and Amy Morton were wholly dependent on an existing relationship of such depth and complexity, it made their onstage congress riveting. It would, I submit, have been entirely impossible to create such a show with three or four weeks of rehearsal by actors who had never worked together before. Who would have wanted to see that?

THEATER REVIEW: "The Hot L Baltimore" ★★½ Through May 29 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes; Tickets: $20-$73 at 312-335-1650 or www.steppenwolf.org

With its neon sign now flickering in memory of the great Lanford Wilson — and the 1970s receding into history — “The Hot L Baltimore” has become suffused with romanticism and regret.

When Wilson wrote this ensemble-driven play about the denizens of a Baltimore flophouse fast headed for the wrecking ball, the 1973 work was perceived as a gritty, darkly comic collage and a window into the communal front room of those who lodged on the edge. But that's not the mood at all of Tina Landau's intensely affectionate, if not yet wholly successful, revival, which opened Sunday night at the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

Landau's conception of the piece marches to two oft-competing soundtracks. One is the music of the era when the play was written — the kitschy 1970s, replete with Richard Nixon self-justifying on the black-and-white TV behind the front desk. The other ambiance comes from a much earlier time — a time of glamour and the American songbook, most notably expressed by actor Sean Allan Krill, playing The Man, a wordless fellow of Sinatra-like cool, who sings sad ballads as he wanders an upper floor of James Schuette's soaring, richly detailed setting. It is as if Landau wants to give voice to the very hotel itself, allowing it to remember the glory days, back before hookers and lost souls took over its rooms.

Lanford Wilson's play “Balm in Gilead” at Steppenwolf Theatre in 1980, starring Laurie Metcalf, Gary Sinise (background) and William Petersen.

• Read the Tribune's obituary for Lanford Wilson (posted March 24, 2011)

The first time Gary Sinise ever saw John Malkovich, Malkovich was auditioning for Terry Kinney, who was directing a one-act play, first at Illinois State University, and then in the famous Highland Park basement that spawned the Steppenwolf Theatre Company.

The production was “Home Free,” the story of a pair of troubled siblings who live as a married couple. Laurie Metcalf was in the show, but Malkovich didn't get the other part (he seems to have recovered). Its author was the great American playwright Lanford Wilson, who died last week at the age of 73.

Over the 35-year history of Chicago's most famous theater, three playwrights have, I think, been the most influential in the development of the Steppenwolf aesthetic. One is Sam Shepard, the author of “True West,” the single play that most fully cemented together Steppenwolf and that so-called, in-your-face style. But as Shepard told me last fall when he was in town to collect the Chicago Tribune Literary Prize, Shepard was never really personally involved in Steppenwolf, at least until its revival of “Buried Child” many years after “True West” made Sinise and Malkovich famous.

Another is Tracy Letts, whose play “August: Osage County” has redefined Steppenwolf on the international stage, and whose extraordinary on- and off-stage contributions have finally allowed Steppenwolf to move away from any dated conceptions of its work. More than any other writer, Letts wrote for Steppenwolf actors. His role continues into the future.

The third is Wilson.