With a palpable awareness of moral ambiguity, “Mrs. Mackenzie’s Beginner’s Guide to the Blues” tells the alternately poignant, humorous and musical tale of a married Minnesota schoolteacher who carries on a sexual affair with one of her students, a high school junior. That should be enough to make it clear that Stage Left Theatre, which is offering the Chicago premiere of this new work by Patty Lynch and Kent Stephens, currently has very risky material on its hands.
But thanks in no small measure to a pair of remarkably profound and truthful performances from fringe stalwart Jenny McKnight and fine newcomer Geoff Rice, Stage Left also deserves to have a major hit with this emotional and compelling new play. Jessi D. Hill’s fast-flowing production, which includes the requisite live blues band and navigates this work’s dangerous thematic complexities with great dexterity and heart, is among the very the best off-Loop shows of the season so far.
First seen at the Illusion Theatre in Minneapolis in 2000, this work got a brief glimmer of national attention when it won the Roger L. Stephens New Play Award, given annually by the Kennedy Center. One can see why it was honored.
A hybrid play with music that sometimes recalls the work of Keith Glover, “Mrs. Mackenzie” uses a complex narrative structure to sketch out events in the life of Suzanne Mackenzie (McKnight). A well-meaning but dark soul trapped in a sanitized world of Little Falls, Minn., bonhomie, Mackenzie uses her job teaching music appreciation — which she thinks of as blues interpretation — to assuage her own personal and marital frustrations. The object of her desire is a student named Tyler (Rice), a prodigious guitarist who first idolizes his cool teacher but then recoils from her sexual ministrations. He is, after all, a kid.
In the midst of this developing tempest — told with a scrambled chronology so we know it ends in disaster right from the start — a trio of decent musicians interweave blues standards, played live from an upper platform. And the central characters get in a few vocal and guitar licks, as events dictate. The strength of this show lies partly in the writing. The piece manages to eschew sensationalism and instead explore with sympathy an essentially decent white woman who loves the blues because she craves danger and edge and fears her inevitable passage toward middle-aged boredom.
The themes here will surely ring true for anyone who feels his life has become less exciting with the passing years (or who has felt trapped in an unforgiving non-urban community). But despite some “Graduate”-style sensuality and parodying of moral small-mindedness, the work also shows the inherent incompatibility of old and young, giving the whole thing an almost tragic demeanor.
McKnight, hitherto best known for her work at Eclipse, is superbly cast and she turns in a rich, compelling and strikingly sympathetic performance. She’s ably matched by Rice. Even though he’s several years too old for the part, this savvy young actor deftly captures the inevitable childishness of his character, once his patina of sophistication unravels. Rice, clearly, is a name to watch.
Some of the minor characters (all played by either Karin McKie or Jesse Weaver) are written with too much smugness — and portrayed here with insufficient truth. But whenever McKnight is on the stage, she grounds the whole affair in truth and coaxes a couple of excellent scenes from McKie and Weaver as, respectively, her dysfunctional mother and her treacherous husband.
Thanks to its wisdom and humanistic spirit, the fusion of comedy and music with this kind of tricky plot works far better in theatrical practice than one might imagine from the description.
The result is a sensual, moving and entirely compelling affair perfectly matched for a tiny Wrigleyville theater occasionally shaken with sounds from the elevated tracks outside.
“Mrs. Mackenzie’s Beginner’s Guide to the Blues”
When: Through April 6
Where: 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.
Phone: 773-883-8830
