September 6, 2010
The Philadelphia Inquirer
by Toby Zinman

The Madwoman of Chaillot

The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium does it again: a fine production of a rarely seen French classic. Giraudoux's The Madwoman of Chaillot is a sweet fantasia about joy conquering evil, the triumph of beauty and the spirit of love over greed and the ruthlessness.

Written in 1943, with obvious sources in the despair of Nazi-occupied Europe, the play is startlingly relevant to the world today. The plot revolves around the search for oil and the willingness of Big Business to destroy both nature and civilization when they find it.

Tina Brock, who directs this ambitious production (18 actors playing 30 characters on the tiny Walnut Studio 5 stage), also stars as the Countess, the madwoman of the title. Her performance captures the grand eccentricity of the role, and the urgency of the old and heartbroken not to let the young and hopeful miss their chance at happiness.

The cast is charming, even in the smallest roles, and the costumes are surprisingly lavish.

September 14, 2010
The Broad Street Review
Madwoman of Chaillot’ and Marat Sade at the Fringe
by Jim Rutter

Many Philadelphia theater companies suffer from budget constraints. But two of them consistently turn these conditions to their advantage, as these two Fringe festival productions amply demonstrate.

Blessings of adversity
Actors, directors and designers frequently express two complaints about Philadelphia’s theater community: the cliquey, high-school atmosphere of the companies, and the sheer number of groups that cloud the arts calendar with run-of-the-mill productions. I don’t sympathize much with the former complaint, which often comes from performers criticizing social-artistic circles they’d like to join.

The latter complaint I appreciate from an economic perspective. Too many companies producing similar work with too few sources of support hamstring many small organizations into staging underfunded shows. Financial limits constrain artistic choices to small-cast plays while also reducing the potential for spectacle in costumes, lighting, music and scenic design.

But at least two companies—Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (IRC) and EgoPo— consistently turn these conditions to their advantage. While Philadelphia’s other troupes fight over the rights to this season’s third and fourth productions of Putnam County Spelling Bee, the IRC and EgoPo occupy boutique spots near the end of the theater market’s long tail. Both excel by carving out a niche spot, and their current Fringe Festival productions demonstrate how to reap the few benefits of a cliquey social climate while turning a limited budget into a theatrical asset.

Capitalists and socialists
The IRC only produces plays canonized as “Theatre of the Absurd,” a quality illustrated perfectly in its madcap staging of Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot. Here, greedy capitalists plan to dig for oil under a Parisian café after a prospector with an oenophile’s nose for petroleum sniffs it out in the drinking water. Countess Aurelia (Tina Brock) and her regular patrons— a deaf mute, a sewer man, shoelace peddler, among others— stand in the way, so bankers blackmail a young man into blowing up the zoning commissioner.

Yes, I know— it sounds like BP’s strategic drilling plan. But Giraudoux blurs the lines by poking fun at capitalists, socialists and reactionaries alike. Brock’s direction capitalizes on the absurd humor, particularly in her casting of a trio of batty society ladies— the excellent Kirsten Quinn, Sonja Robson, and Jane Stojak— and the jester-like comic timing of Bob Schmidt’s Rag Picker.

I balked when I heard that IRC planned to stuff 18 actors (across 30 roles) into the small, 60-seat space of the Walnut Street Theatre’s Studio 5. Stephen Hungerford’s minimal set of two walls and some furniture caves back diagonally into the stage to serve as the streetside café and Aurelia’s subterranean cellar, and only Brian Strachan’s ornate costumes show the signs of expense.

But the budget restraints— even in IRC’s most ambitious production to date— enable the audience to focus entirely on the clever writing and skillful delivery. It’s a safe bet that most actors could more competently play Ibsen than Ionesco, and by casting a number of IRC regulars (including herself, which under Barrymore Awards rules saves money), director Brock could count on the comedic talents of Lee Pucklis, Kate Black-Regan, Michael Dura and Schmidt to shine through with minimal direction.

September 26, 2010
The Broad Street Review
‘Madwoman of Chaillot’ (2nd review)
by Steve Cohen

Was The Madwoman of Chaillot a swipe at France’s Nazi occupiers? Only in retrospect. Let’s lay this myth to rest and consider the play’s other virtues

The wrong box for Giraudoux

The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium is known, as its title suggests, for its productions of absurdist theater, best exemplified by Ionesco and Beckett.

Jean Giraudoux is often tossed into that category, but his The Madwoman of Chaillot is a bit different. It’s direct rather than cryptically obscure. It’s not so much absurd as a whimsical fantasy about the plots of Big Business and the oil industry to dig for petroleum under the streets of Paris, regardless of the resulting disruption of life and property.

Nor is The Madwoman really absurd at all: Its subject matter is realistic today— even more relevant than it was when the play was written during World War II.

The protagonist is neither mad nor ditzy; on the contrary, she’s the voice of reason. She chooses to live in an imaginary world of nostalgia and wishful thinking. In one beautiful passage, she regrets how people have changed: In former days, “Everybody you met was like yourself. You knew them. There’s been an invasion. The world is not beautiful any more.”

Greed of the privileged

The last part of that speech, written while France was under German occupation, could be taken as a subtle attack on the Nazis. But primarily this is a story about the greed of the privileged class and the eventual triumph of the common people. As such, it seems of a piece with other class-oriented Giraudoux dramas from the 1930s. Touches of Brecht and Odets animate the speeches of his “little people” of Paris. And the fact that most of the characters lack names but are simply labeled “the General,” “the Chairman,” “the Prospector,” or “the Ragpicker” reinforces that feeling.

The play concerns a cast of colorful Parisians– street singers, jugglers, friendly gendarmes, and so on– led by the madwoman of the title, Countess Aurelia. She enlists the help of friends, who include the “madwomen” of the neighboring districts of Passy and St.-Sulpice. A trial takes place in the Countess’s cellar and the villains are sent, in effect, to hell.

While it’s true that The Madwoman of Chaillot celebrates the eventual triumph of common people, too much has been written about the play’s supposedly anti-Hitler plot. If you attend a performance expecting jibes at Nazis, or even at non-specific totalitarian governments, you’ll be disappointed. And contrary to what I’ve read on the Internet, there’s no evidence that Giraudoux ever wrote roles for Nazis into this play.

The translator’s role

Could Maurice Valency, the original translator, have changed a plot with Nazis into something that sounds more like Odets? One of my friends, a student of Valency, reports that Valency was a teacher and author who never showed any interest in social-action causes. So let’s put that myth aside and enjoy the play’s skewering of corporate greed, religious fundamentalism and middle-class conformity.

This production is notable for its large cast of 18 actors who, almost miraculously, navigate the tiny space of the Walnut Studio 5. Their entrances and exits from both sides and from behind the set are handled smoothly by director Tina Brock, the company’s artistic head. She also plays the title role.

Brock brings out the Madwoman’s eccentricity and renders her a memorable figure. She and the cast members are a bit more forthright, perhaps more manic, than their counterparts in the 1969 Katharine Hepburn film.

The company deserves admiration for stretching so far and succeeding.

South Philly Review
Margin for terror at Fringe
by Joseph Myers

In part one of two-part series, a duo of daring shows highlighting locals kicks off the first week of the Live Arts Festival and Philly Fringe.

The (Idiopathic Ridiculopathy ) Consortium’s “The Madwoman of Chaillot” blends humor with the perils of corporate aggression.

Artistic director Tina Brock, of the 800 block of Kimball Street, is pleased to have the play uphold her gang’s mission of preserving and presenting difficult and rarely produced absurdist works.

“Works like ‘Madwoman’ are what I enjoy as a performer,” Brock said of the pieces that often present comic elements, tragic images and characters struggling for existential merit. “They are heady works on paper, but they come alive on stage.”

Exploring universal situations and current themes, “Madwoman” is not a work only members of “the intellectual squad” will grasp, according to Brock, whose company will be making its fifth Fringe appearance.

“The play deals, in a sense, with theories of expansion. I see Philadelphia’s art scene as expanding. The city is booming as a hotbed for art. I’m glad ‘Madwoman’ can have its shot,” she said of the 120-minute play that will drop at Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., Sept. 3 to 18.

Philadelphia City Paper ~ Fest Bets
The Madwoman of Chaillot
by Mark Cofta

The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's artistic director, Tina Brock, calls Jean Giradoux's 1943 absurdist comedy about a Paris oil-well-drilling scheme "less fantastic and absurd than this morning's headlines." Today, Giradoux's forward-thinking vision of lapsing etiquette, marauding pimps and environmental disregard feels as realistic as BP's well-cam. "And then," Brock asserts, "there's the old 'who's nuts and who ain't' issue — people not conforming and how this sets the stage for anarchy. In an age of 'whatever' as a reasonable response, when people pursue a passion with vigor, there is some question as to why they are so committed." The Madwoman, now more than ever, provides shocking answers.

Sept. 3-5, 7-12 and 14-18, $20, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St.

Philadelphia Inquirer Weekend Arts Preview
September 3, 2010

The noncurated Philly Fringe side of the festival can be hit-or-miss, but this year's includes a good number of regular players on Philadelphia's arts scene. They include Luna Theater's production of Thom Pain (based on nothing), Iron Age Theatre's Marx in Soho, Gas & Electric Arts premiering Between Trains, and the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's The Madwoman of Chaillot.