Showbiz veterans add luster to middling 'Middletown' at Chicago's Apollo Theater
“Middletown” - ★ ★ ½
When the stars of “Middletown” enter the stage of Chicago's Apollo Theater, they literally greet some members of the audience. I myself was surprised to be shaking hands with Adrian Zmed, the 1980s star of TV's “T.J. Hooker” and the film “Grease 2.”
This brush with celebrity can be joyous, but also humbling. Audiences of a certain age might remember the 1970s and early '80s when Sandy Duncan starred on Broadway and on tour as “Peter Pan,” or when Donny Most played the sidekick Ralph Malph in the TV sitcom “Happy Days.”
But time marches on for us all. Memories of these performers in their youth suddenly collides with the reality of these showbiz veterans as they are today.
This dynamic adds poignancy to “Middletown,” a comic drama by Dan Clancy now making its Chicago debut following runs last year in Nevada, Delaware and Pennsylvania. Longtime Chicago actress and multiple Jeff Award winner Kate Buddeke completes the cast, and she comically shines in the play's showiest role.
“Middletown” flashes back to 1976, somewhere in the New York tri-state area, when the straight-laced Peg Hogan (Sandy Duncan) meets the zany Dotty Abrams (Kate Buddeke). They're both dropping off their daughters on the first day of kindergarten, and the two become fast friends.
The women plot to extend their friendship to include their husbands - Adrian Zmed as Peg's husband, Tom, and Donny Most as Dotty's husband, Don - via dinner at a fancy restaurant. Despite some initial bumps, the two couples become lifelong friends and make a point to meet every Friday to dine out together.
Through the course of three decades, the couples face life's joys and sorrows together. Clancy's characters deal with infidelity, sickness and even a national trauma.
Under the direction of Seth Greenleaf, the actors all do a great job at wringing out the laughs and pathos from the script. And they all do so reading theater-style, with their scripts on music stands.
But this is just one aspect of “Middletown” that invites comparisons to a host of arguably better plays. For example, A.R. Gurney's 1989 play “Love Letters” also featured celebrities performing with their scripts. But Gurney's play had a more inventive script device of being entirely composed of exchanged letters.
“Middletown” also shares its name with a 2010 play by Will Eno (staged by Steppenwolf Theatre in 2011) that similarly explored the cycle of human life. Eno's “Middletown” was much more elegiac and existential, whereas Clancy's “Middletown” is more conventional and surface with its characterizations.
Clancy has his “Middletown” characters repeatedly meet over dinner, which is also what happens in Dan LeFranc's grand-sweep-of-life play “The Big Meal,” which first staged in 2011 at Chicago's former American Theater Company. That play followed one family's inevitable tragedies at a much faster and emotionally jarring pace.
Yet Clancy's “Middletown” still delivers laughs and drama on its own touching terms. Plus, it features an esteemed cast of theater, film and TV veterans who elevate the material to starry heights.
Location: Apollo Theater, 2540 N. Lincoln Ave., Chicago, (773) 935-6100 or apollochicago.com
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, 5 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday and Wednesday; through March 22
Tickets: $65
Running time: About 90 minutes with no intermission
Parking: Area pay lot and area metered street parking
Rating: One profanity and content featuring marital problems, but largely for general audiences