'Constitution' play offers food for thought and an essential parting gift
Editor's note: Concerns about the coronavirus have caused some cancellations throughout Chicago and the suburbs this week. Before you go, check online or with the venue to confirm the event is still happening.
“What the Constitution Means to Me” - ★ ★ ★ ★
Ideally, good theater provides food for thought and fodder for conversation, the latter in the form of a vigorous post-show confab with companions.
That's certainly true for “What the Constitution Means to Me,” actor/playwright Heidi Schreck's droll, emotionally charged examination of the document that established the U.S. government, its three branches and the rights of its citizens, some of them anyway. More about that later.
Schreck's nearly solo, mostly autobiographical show - a 2019 Broadway hit and Pulitzer Prize finalist currently running at Chicago's Broadway Playhouse under Oliver Butler's seamless direction - provides theatergoers something besides food and fodder. Each audience member receives a pocket-size copy of the Constitution courtesy of the American Civil Liberties Union. Just in time for me: My old copy from the Paralyzed Veterans of America is getting a bit tattered.
But the parting gift is only the third best thing about the play, whose Broadway run featured Schreck playing herself. She's replaced on the tour by the superb Maria Dizzia (“Emergence,” “13 Reasons Why,” “Orange is the New Black”). More about her later.
Heidi (as channeled by Dizzia) is a brainy teen obsessed with Patrick Swayze and enraptured by the Constitution, which she describes as warm-blooded and steamy. We meet her in a wood-paneled American Legion hall, one of the many such locales where she competed in Legion-sponsored Constitutional debates to earn college tuition money. She proceeds to re-create her speech and rhapsodizes on its implied rights, those indistinct “penumbras” that helped buttress the movements for civil rights, women's rights and gay rights.
“Who we are now is not who we will become,” she says, waxing poetic on the Ninth and 14th amendments. The former confirms that citizens' rights aren't limited only to those enumerated in the Constitution. The latter ensures due process and equal protection under the law.
“The Constitution doesn't tell you all the rights that you have because it doesn't know,” Dizzia - as the precocious teenage Heidi - enthuses under the watchful eye of the Legionnaire moderator, played by Mike Iveson, who represents “positive male energy.”
That brings us to the second best thing about the engagingly elliptical “What the Constitution Means to Me.” It's Schreck's insightful, informed writing. Painfully honest in its recounting of an unplanned pregnancy and abortion, it's also intellectually rigorous, referencing such Supreme Court decisions as Dred Scott, Griswold v. Connecticut, Roe v. Wade and Castle Rock v. Gonzalez. The latter held police could not be held responsible for failing to enforce a protection order on behalf of a Colorado woman whose husband defied it and murdered their three children. That last decision cast a chill I imagine many audience members found difficult to shake. I know I did.
As the play unfolds, Dizzia as Heidi shifts from 15 to 40-something, at which point she adopts a more critical view of the flawed document, which she points out was crafted by and for wealthy, white men to the exclusion of indigenous people, people of color, members of the LGBTQ community and women.
At that point, the debate shifts from academic to personal as Schreck draws parallels between the Constitution's failure to protect women and the abuse that female members of her family endured from their spouses over several generations. Dizzia expresses in anguished detail the violent legacy, including Heidi's own experience with toxic male energy. (Iveson elaborates on that toxicity in his own gently nuanced monologue late in the show.)
Now to the very best thing about “What the Constitution Means to Me”: Maria Dizzia. A graceful, poignant presence, Dizzia's performance is acutely emotional, personal and entirely authentic.
As the play draws to a close, Dizzia debates a teen (played by actual teens Jocelyn Shek and Rosdely Cibrian who alternate in the role) about whether to keep the Constitution or abolish it. As a theatrical stunt, it's effective, eliciting from the audience both cheers and boos.
The opening-night debate concluded on an inspiring note (one I suspect is sounded at every performance), with a poised, confident Shek arguing to retain the Constitution while urging the crowd to work to change what they dislike.
“Wake up,” she said. “Go vote.”
Location: Broadway Playhouse, Water Tower Place, 175 E. Chestnut St., Chicago, (800) 775-2000 or broadwayinchicago.com
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; 2 and 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Sunday; 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday through April 12. No 2 p.m. show March 18 or April 1. No 7:30 p.m. show March 15, 29 and April 12
Tickets: $30-$143
Running time: 110 minutes, no intermission
Parking: $14 with validation at Water Tower Place
Rating: For teens and older; contains some adult subject matter and language