"Wyrd Sisters" A Theater Review

Purusant to my normal review policy, I'll have a brief non-Spoiler review at the top, followed by a more comprehensive Spoiler review after the poster.

Wyrd Sisters is an adaptation of a Terry Pratchett Discworld novel of the same name.  Unlike some of the other more Discworld intensive productions that the fledgling MorBacon Theater Company could have put on, however, Wyrd Sisters doesn't require you to have read that book or, indeed, any Dicworld book at all.  A passing familiarity with Macbeth, on the other hand, would be quite useful.

Terry Prachett's work is usually very funny, and Wyrd Sisters is no exception.  Translating the humor from the page to the stage takes effort, and I'm glad to say that in this case the work paid off.  Wyrd Sisters is good material competently executed.  If you're a fan of small theater and are in Chicago this weekend or next, you could do far worse than spend a couple of hours at the Side Project Theater with the Wyrd Sisters.

By the pricking of my thumb, something SPOILER this way comes!

When Burnham SPOILER comes to Dunsinane....

Wyrd Sisters puts me in an unusual position.  Normally, when you review adapted material you find yourself in one of two categories: you've read (or seen or played) the source material, or you haven't.  Indeed, many of my recent reviews deal heavily with a comparison between book and screen.  What's complicated about this review, however, is that while I did in fact read the book Wyrd Sisters, it was many years ago, and I only vaguely recalled that it had something to do with a play and witches.  I'm a Discworld fan, but my favorite books of Pratchett's are actually the Night Watch books like Guards, Guards! and Men at Arms.  And Good Omens, of course, which isn't Discworld at all.

That lack of memory about Wyrd Sisters worked to my advantage, however.  The play is, more than anything else, a comedy, and nothing ruins humor more than knowing the jokes ahead of time.  So from a personal enjoyment standpoint not remembering the book was perfect. It reduces my ability to compare the book to the play, of course, but that's an acceptable trade-off.

So rather than discuss how the translation to a play was handled, we'll just talk about the production itself.  First off, let me say that Wyrd Sisters was cannily chosen.   Not only, as I mentioned in the introduction, does the story not require any particular knowledge about Discworld or Pratchett's other works, but it also deals with the power of theater itself, which works exceptionally well in a theater setting.

The story, very broadly, is that of Macbeth as seen from the perspective of the three witches from the beginning of Shakespeare's work.  In that respect, as well as in the humorous approach they both take, Wyrd Sisters reminds me of another of my favorite works, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.  Unlike that latter work, however, the witches in Wyrd Sisters aren't trapped by the Macbeth narrative the way poor doomed Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are in Hamlet.  Rather, the witches here become active participants in the goings on and, contrary to their own rules, start to meddle.  Hi-jinks ensue.

The acting varies from competent to excellent, with Susan Wingerter's Nanny Ogg in particular being almost exactly how I'd pictured her character from the books.  I also found Shantelle Szyper's Duke Felmet to be surprisingly sympathetic for the nominal villain of the piece, and the running gag about her hands was nicely played.  

That does bring up an interesting aspect to the production.  Wyrd Sisters has an all female cast, but doesn't make a big deal about that fact.  After a conversation with the production's artistic director, I learned that the all female cast wasn't a conscious decision to play it that way.  Instead, they opted to choose the best nine actors of the forty or so who auditioned, regardless of gender.  I'm told that, for whatever reason, the Chicago theater scene has far more female actors than male ones, and as such there are often better women available than men for any given production.  I'm not conversant enough with the local acting troupes to know if that's correct or not, but the decision to ignore gender as a factor in their casting has led Wyrd Sisters to become an even more poignant mirror to Macbeth.  After all, when Shakespeare's play from the perspective of the male murderer turned king was first performed, it was with an all male cast, with men playing the female roles.  How appropriate, then, that the opposing view as seen by the female witches should then have an all female cast?

The production is intimate and minimalist, by which we mean it is held in a small room with little in the way of complicated sets.  But that's alright.  It means that even someone in the furthest row of seats, as I myself was, is far closer to the action than anyone would normally expect in a larger and more expensive theater.  Anyone who's visited the Neo-Futurarium to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (I almost typed "blond" just there which would be a completely different thing) will be familiar with the small independent theater vibe.  Wyrd Sisters and the Side Project Theater shares a similar feel.

Overall, as I said in the spoiler-free version, this is a fun production.  For $15 you're getting a very good deal on some quality funny theater.  And if you're uncertain, I'm told that Thursday the 25th is pay what you can night.  If you're a fan of Shakespeare, Discworld, or just like a quick, funny show, and happen to be in or near Chicago this weekend or next, I'd recommend you take the time to go see Wyrd Sisters.

Wyrd Sisters is being performed at the Side Project Theater, 1439 W Jarvis Ave Chicago, IL, 60626, (773) 973-2150.  Shows are at 8 pm Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, and 2 pm on Sunday through July 27th.  Tickets can be purchased online here. 

"World War Z" a Movie Review

By request.  As usual, I'll be doing most of this review full of Spoilers.  The Spoiler-Free section is up here, the rest is after the poster.

Super-short review: Not as good as the book, but not bad for what it's trying to be.

Less short:  They avoid a lot of the usual zombie movie scenes and they spend more time giving you things to think about how a zombie apocalypse would happen, but there's still moments of movie stupidity and I think I can see the seams from the re-shoot they did.

Overall:  Not bad.  Worth seeing in the theater, especially if you've managed to avoid most of the marketing.  You'll get your details in the spoiler section below.

We're going to need to evac from these SPOILERS.

Ain't no wall big enough for them SPOILERS!

So let me start right out of the gate and admit that I not only read, well, technically listened to, the book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, but I loved it.  Writing what was essentially a historical telling of fictional events is one of those ideas I keep thinking about using myself, and doing it as an oral history so you still get the immediacy of a traditionally written story but can keep the detachment inherent in many non-fiction pieces was a brilliant touch.  Max Brooks did a great job with his book, and the fully voiced audiobook with a diverse cast is by far the best way to experience the story.

Indeed, I'm told there's an expanded version of the audiobook out now that includes scenes cut from the original that I'll have to track down one of these days.

World War Z the movie, however, is only broadly the story from the book.  For one thing, rather than being shot as a documentary after the fact as I would have done, it instead follows Brad Pitt's character around the globe as he investigates the zombie apocalypse in progress.  That's disappointing, because half of what makes World War Z:: An Oral History special is the way its structured and written as fictional non-fiction.  By forsaking that format, you're down to just the inspiration for the book, an earlier book also written by Brooks, The Zombie Survival Guide.

In The Zombie Survival Guide, they lay out rules for zombies and how to survive them.  Some of them, like Pitt's character wrapping his arm in a phone book to shield himself from zombie bites, actually made it into the film.  That points out something in the film's favor, that it's somewhat smarter than the average zombie film.  A lot of what humanity does to counter the zombies makes sense.  Moving as many people to ships as possible, for instance.  Or resettling into largely uninhabited areas to avoid large numbers of zombies for another.  Even though mistakes are made and battles lost, you at least get the feeling that people are trying to stay alive rather than the usual total collapse of civilization that one sees in more traditional zombie fare like  The Walking Dead and 28 Days Later.

Speaking of the later film, the zombies in World War Z the film resemble the fast moving ones from the 28 Days Later series more than they do the slowly shuffling ones in both The Walking Dead or, indeed, the original novel and The Zombie Survival Guide.  Indeed, there are times when the zombies are less individual attackers and more an irresistible wave of carnivorous flesh.  Those scenes really highlight the implacable nature of the enemy, and really work. The zombies don't have the any drop of blood can infect you aspect of the 28 films, however.  In another smart scene, Pitt's character finds that out when he gets some blood in his mouth and runs to the ledge of a rooftop, knowing that if he started to turn he'd fall off and spare his family from being attacked by him.  It's clever and well done, and I appreciate that level of thought in my zombie movie.

Unfortunately, the family represents a problem for the film.  It annoys me that, when facing global annihilation, we're supposed to care more because of a wife and a few kids.  The stakes are high enough, we don't need to know that Pitt's character, Gerry Lane, loves his family.  Every time we cut back to them it feels like we're wasting time that could be spent dealing with the zombie problem.

Furthermore, the usage of Lane's family as leverage to get him on the mission is Hollywood Dumb.  It's the end of the world, and that's all hands on deck time.  There's nothing Gerry can do staying on a warship with his family that will either help the world or protect his family any more than the armed personnel already will.  On the other hand, he legitimately has skills that could help the world out in the field.  For him to refuse to use those skills until the military pressures him through his family not only makes him less heroic for going out there, but makes him seem stupid and obstinate while also making the people in charge seem monstrous, which is redundant since there are actual monsters in the film!

What bothers me is that the trailers promise the opposite tack.  Presumably containing footage from before the re-shoots that delayed the movie's release, the trailer shows alternate versions of the same scenes where Gerry's wife actually supports his decision to try and save the world and the military commander doesn't threaten Gerry's family but rather more reasonably points out that Gerry and his family aren't immune to the end of the world.  If humanity dies out, they die with it.

I wanted to watch that movie instead of the one we got.

Which isn't to say that World War Z is a bad film.  It isn't.  I enjoyed much of it, and as there's word that a sequel has been greenlit, I expect I'll watch that one as well.  But I can't help but feel like this is an opportunity wasted.  This could have been, should have been, a better movie. What we got was pretty good, but it might have been very good or even great, and it wasn't.  Whether that failure comes from the re-shoots or even earlier when the decision was made to abandon the format that made the novel successful in favor of a more traditional Hollywood movie can never be known, but World War Z is missing a crucial something that keeps it from being special.

And that's a damn shame.

A couple of final notes.  First of all, if you've seen the trailers you've seen most of the big moments in the film.  While on one hand those scenes are impressive on the big screen, the sad part is, they lacked as much impact for me as they could have because I'd already seen them in the theater months ago.  Normally, I advise going to a theater only for big films and big moments, barring shows like Much Ado About Nothing where I'm investing with my dollars to support either a type of film (Shakespeare movies), or a creator (Joss Whedon), or both (Much Ado About Nothing).  Outside of things like that, I only go to the theater these days for spectacle where watching it on cable or on my laptop is a measurably inferior experience.  Hence I tend to watch a lot of the blockbusters and catch any smaller films at home later.

The problem with applying that standard to World War Z is that they didn't hold any of the big spectacle moments out of the trailer.  So if you're familiar with the trailer you've already seen the only moments that justify the $11 price tag.  If that's the case, it's hard to recommend this film for theater watching, although seeing those scenes in context is of course superior to watching it in isolation in a trailer.  If you haven't seen the trailer, or have seen it and forgotten it, it might still be worth the cash.

Secondly, there's a board game tie in to the film.  Unfortunately, reviews say it's kind of boring and that you should just play Pandemic instead.  Still, it exists.  So if you haven't had enough World War Z after you've seen the film, perhaps that's an option for you.  Here's the Vasel Review of the game if you'd like to see it for yourself.

So that's what I think.  Maybe the sequel will be better.