These are trying times at Steppenwolf Theatre.
Its production of “The Song of Jacob Zulu” closes Sunday on Broadway, much earlier than hoped and just as the troupe at home prepares to open a new play by an unknown playwright, a selection that’s a last-minute substitution.
The May 16 slot originally reserved for director Frank Galati’s ballyhooed, but canceled, “As You Like It” will be filled by “Ghost in the Machine,” the first play by New York fiction writer David Gilman. It’s hardly as anticipated as the long-awaited, now-deferred Shakespearean debut of Chicago’s premiere acting ensemble.
As if that and the disappointing fate of “Zulu” weren’t trials enough for artistic director Randall Arney, the company’s previous local production, Arthur Kopit’s “Road to Nirvana,” a scatological, foul-mouthed indictment of Hollywood, incensed subscribers like nothing in the organization’s history. Letters poured in, some subscribers angrily canceled and one imaginative correspondent even wrote his complaint in language pointedly modeled after the barrage of curse words in Kopit’s dialogue.
Arney approaches all this with the same optimism and plow-ahead determination that have helped him survive six years in the balancing act that is the job of Steppenwolf’s artistic director. His is the task of managing a widely scattered ensemble in love with high risks and long distance.
Many of the troupe’s founding stars now live and work elsewhere, and “Nirvana” was a rare opportunity to bring back Gary Sinise as a director. One of Steppenwolf’s most exciting directors over the years, Sinise hadn’t staged a play in the company’s new home and hadn’t directed here at all since “Orphans” in 1985.
“We knew we had difficult subject matter,” Arney says. “But Gary always had an interest in the play, and I think his own experiences in Hollywood encouraged him to want to expose filmdom’s darker side. I’m proud of the show. We chose it for the right reasons. It involved an ensemble cast, it got Gary back, and Kopit, one of the country’s leading playwrights, came in to work on it.
“As to the letters, theater isn’t always there to make you comfortable,” Arney adds. “You can argue the merits of the play. But it was risk-taking, and I’m glad we’re able to take risks. We don’t want people saying, `You built this grand new theater, but you keep all the risks off the mainstage and upstairs in the studio.’
“And by depicting corrupt morals, we weren’t endorsing corrupt morals,” he says of the play itself. “The themes of the play are anti-greed and anti-selfishness. It’s not easy to hear people go after us, but I’d rather be at the center of controversy than have people say that our work is boring.”
The troupe is in the midst of its subscription-renewal drive, but Arney says he has no idea yet whether subscribers are increasing or decreasing in number-or whether “Nirvana” has had an effect. “I will say that the second most complaints in our history came when we did `Harvey.’ That show found the other end of the spectrum, patrons who said they subscribed to Steppenwolf not to see safe classics, but risk-taking, cutting-edge stuff.”
The abrupt cancellation of “As You Like It” doesn’t seem to have elicited many complaints. In fact, Arney jokes: “Maybe our subscribers are just used to unpredictable seasons. It’s ironic, of course, that this came the same season when, for the first time, we offered a more-or-less complete lineup a year in advance and tried to stick to it. That had not been our style in the past.”
He remains committed to mounting a Shakespearean production and planning subscription lineups well in advance.
“We hope to announce four of five selections for next season within the next month,” Arney promises. “It’s vital we find a way to stay in front of ourselves. This new space is more ambitious, and it’s more important for directors to be picked and talking with their designers much sooner. We run six weeks here, not 15, and we have to sell a show before its opening. We can’t wait.”
“As You Like It,” meanwhile, was canceled because it had been set up as an ensemble vehicle, Arney says. But, as the time neared, many of the ensemble members planned for the production were suddenly tied up.
“Alan Wilder and Robert Breuler were scheduled to be in New York in `Zulu,’ for instance,” Arney says. “Frank (Galati) planned to use Tim Hopper in a key role, but he had a play going in New York as well. We’ve wanted to do Shakespeare for 12 years, and we want to do it soon, but we want to do it right.”
Arney denied rumors that certain intended cast members weren’t getting along very well and hesitated to share the stage. But he acknowledged Steppenwolf may have gotten a bit overextended, what with the effort that went into taking “Zulu” to New York.
“Possibly,” he says. “But only two members of the company were actually in that show. The real problem with `As You Like It’ is that we envisioned it as a reunion, one that will simply have to wait to happen.”
Meanwhile, Jim True, the affable, talented young actor who has been an onstage mainstay for the company in recent years (“Curse of the Starving Class”), will be making his mainstage directorial debut with “Machine”-a task all Steppenwolf actors seem destined to undertake.
True keeps threatening to break through in the movies like many of his older, more celebrated ensemble colleagues. His part in the recent “Singles” was pared down to next to nothing, but a key fantasy scene deleted from the film was reaffixed to the end of the video version, an unusual move, to be sure.
True also has a promising part as a zany, rhyming elevator operator in “The Hudsucker Proxy,” a screwball comedy due out this fall from Joel and Ethan Coen.
True had been campaigning to direct “Machine” next season when “As You Like It” fell through. He first received a copy of the script from a friend who attended a New York reading of the play, a story about a group of academics whose conversations and careers involve music, science and religion.
The academics in question gather to discuss research about an Asian-American composer’s unusual, computer-generated music. There’s also a missing $50, which may or may not have been pilfered by one of the characters.
“There’s a shift in the story that I wouldn’t want to reveal, but it’s partly stylistic and leads you to question whether the drama, which has seemed realistic, is something else.
“It’s essentially about four dry, brainy people, or so you think, until late in the play it becomes extremely visceral and turns into a high-stakes situation, one with mystical implications.”
Does it, like “Nirvana,” boast profane or vulgar language?
True takes a deep breath. “None at all.”
