Jeffrey Hatcher brings two plays to Chicago area

Theater, like life, is not fair. Not every great actor is famous. Not every prolific playwright is a household name.

Jeffrey Hatcher, for example, wrote (with Mitch Albom) the graceful stage adaptation of "Tuesdays with Morrie" that played at Northlight a few seasons ago. He is also the man behind the intelligent, well-received book, "The Art & Craft of Playwriting."

But only true theater aficionados know who he is. Or are aware that he has two shows opening in Chicago in the next month: his moody, experimental adaptation of Henry James' psychological thriller, "A Turn of the Screw" (now in previews, opening Nov. 28 at the Writers' Theatre), and an up-tempo bio musical, "Ella," about Ella Fitzgerald (opening in previews Nov. 28 at Northlight Theatre).

The two shows couldn't be more different.

"'A Turn of the Screw' is essentially a ghost story," Hatcher says. "'Ella' is a stage biography with lots of Fitzgerald's fabulous hit songs.

"My adaptation of 'A Turn of the Screw' was suggested (in the mid-'90s) by Greg Leaming at the Portland Stage Company," Hatcher said, "where it premiered in 1996."

On the other hand, Hatcher is still tinkering a little with "Ella," even though it received its world premiere two seasons ago at the Florida Stage.

The appearance of both shows in Chicago at the holidays is pure chance -- although both shows are, in their way, holiday stories.

"A Turn of the Screw" is an old-fashioned ghost story set during the holiday season, and "Ella" is the kind of flat-out musical evening Northlight has been staging each year to ring out the old year and ring in the new.

"The challenge of 'A Turn of the Screw' was to find a way to tell the story without sacrificing the mood or the ambiguity," Hatcher said. "The problem with some versions, both on stage and in the movies, is that once you see the ghost a certain amount of mystery is gone."

Hatcher's solution was to emphasize the theatricality of the story, about a young governess and the two troubled children she takes care of, by having two actors tell the story and perform all the roles.

The challenge with "Ella" was different.

"I was brought into the project after it had been worked on for a while," Hatcher says. "The songs were already chosen. It was like planning where the tracks would go after the stations have already been built."

Hatcher's work was complicated by the fact that Fitzgerald herself was an intensely private person.

"Unlike some of the other performers who have had shows written about them," Hatcher said, "like Billie Holliday, the subject of the play 'Lady Day at Emerson's Bar & Grill,' Fitzgerald was very careful to keep the drama of her life out of the public eye."

Hatcher's solution is to focus on the one time in Fitzgerald's life when her private life threatened to become public, during a tour of Europe almost canceled by the death of her beloved sister.

"I had to find a reason for her to explain herself," Hatcher said, "and find who she was speaking to. In my show she is practicing what she will say to her audience when she resumes her tour, after returning, jet-lagged and emotionally strung out, from a funeral."