In “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood,” Quentin Tarantino adroitly recreated the milieu of Hollywood in 1969 but completely rewrote history to suit the needs of his 2019 movie. That’s a reasonably close comparison to what Terry Guest does with his “Andy Warhol Presents The Cocaine Play,” a tragic storefront bacchanal made all the more striking by being staged in the prosaic Broadway Armory Park, where Jackalope Theatre plies its trade and, on this occasion, has crafted a shimmering little oasis for the senses.
Ergo, we meet Andy Warhol (William Anthony Sebastian Rose II), Marilyn Monroe (Alexis Ward) and Edie Sedgwick (Jasmine “Jazzy” Cheri Rush), but what happens to them deviates from reality, even as the painter Michael Brown (David Michael Dowd) forms a pillar of Guest’s original story. All of these actors are Black; the sight of Ward and Rose vamping in blonde wigs is intended both to jar and illuminate. It’s comic and telling both at once.
Guest, who both writes and directs, has created quite the immersive environment, replete with a super-cool set design from Sydney Lynne Thomas that shimmers and shines as it reveals multiple layers and vistas, a kind of more fabulous version of Warhol’s Factory in real life, with nods to Studio 54. You can even take little Polaroids of yourself in the lobby. Ethan Korvne is sound designer and wrote the original music for the piece, very much in the Warhol milieu, although Guest does not overly worry about whether the rest of his sensual and anachronistic soundtrack is a precise chronological match for what he wants to show us. He doesn’t have to. He has set his own rules.
I always like to show up when Guest, one of Chicago’s most interesting theatrical avant-gardists, has a project. His work invariably pays attention to multiple senses at once, is richly realized, and comes replete with an aggressive point of view. Guest’s bag, really, is to start with what he wants the world to be and then throw that against the wall of how it is, or was, especially when it comes to Black representation and participation in popular culture. I wouldn’t call “Andy Warhol” (this is not really about cocaine, thank god) finished or fully polished, and I felt (as I have felt before at Guest’s shows) that when the piece really approaches true emotional pain, the show moves on where it could linger. I think that’s in the future for this particularly gifted artist.
But what you are watching here, over a swift-moving two hours and 15 minutes (there are three short acts, each representing a different time period), is part parody, part reclamation, part fan fiction, part camp Pride Month entertainment, and part political theater pointing out America’s long history of worshipping dysfunctional and hedonistic white New Yorkers. The performances are all conceived as larger than life, although under-vocalized at times. I hope they fix that.
Brown’s addition to the story is especially interesting, allowing Dowd to craft a complex performance and Guest to meditate on one of his favorite topics, the arbitrary and coincidental nature of who finds fame and who makes millions and who gets forgotten or run over by a bus, in this case, one named Andy Warhol, only not that Andy Warhol, as the show keeps reminding us. The message is that it has little to do with talent and is usually a consequence of betrayal. Possibly fatal.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Andy Warhol presents The Cocaine Play” (3 stars)
When: Through July 6
Where: Jackalope Theatre in Broadway Armory, 5917 N Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $15-$45 at 773-340-2543 and jackalopetheatre.org
