28 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 4, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Theater

Seismic Shifts of the HeartThe subtleties of Haruki Murakami’s stories don’t always come through onstage.

AFTER THE QUAKE STEPPENWOLF THEATRE COMPANY

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By Kerry Reid

A fter a year filled withtsunamis, hurricanes, andearthquakes, you might

understandably look for insightto Japanese writer HarukiMurakami’s After the Quake, alovely collection of short storiesabout life after the 1995 Kobedisaster, which claimed morethan 5,000 lives. But Murakami’ssix tales don’t deal with epiccalamities or their political impli-cations—instead they focus onthe quiet aches and namelessfears that put pressure on the tectonic plates of the heart.

For this Steppenwolf TheatreCompany world premiere,adapter-director Frank Galaticombines two of the stories inMurakami’s 2002 book. In“Honey Pie” a lonely writer,Junpei, still loves a woman hemet in college, Sayoko, who mar-ried his best friend instead.When her daughter, Sala, suffersnightmares after the quake,Sayoko asks Junpei for help, andhe makes up stories about aclever bear to calm the little girl.Galati’s invention is to make thesecond tale, “Super-Frog SavesTokyo,” part of Junpei’s storywithin a story, as the six-footamphibian asks a beleaguered,unappreciated bank loan officer,Katagiri, for assistance in fightinga giant worm determined to setoff another earthquake in Tokyo.Despite its comic-book outlines,even this narrative is mournfullywistful rather than frenzied.Whether Super-Frog is the loanofficer’s hallucination or a gen-uine superhero, he and Katagiriare outsiders who form a touch-ing relationship, and the endpresents Katagiri with both lossand the possibility of a richer life.“Honey Pie” ends with Junpei’sdeclaration that he wants “towrite about people who dreamand wait for the night to end,who long for the light so they canhold the ones they love.”

After the Quake is differentfrom some of the literature that’sattracted Galati in the past: inthe late 80s he captured entireeras in the large-scale, populistGrapes of Wrath and the whim-sical She Always Said, Pablo,devoted to modernist art, litera-

ture, and music. By contrastMurakami addresses the fragilelinks between ordinary people—and one extraordinary frog—whosometimes have difficulty putting

these linksinto words,especiallythe emotion-ally para-lyzed writer.Wisely,Steppenwolfis presentingthis quiet,formal

adaptation in its smaller, newlyreconfigured upstairs theater.(The new permanent prosceni-um works well for After theQuake, but future productionsmay feel the loss of the old, more flexible space.)

Galati’s actors occasionallystruggle to make the lines soundspontaneous, especially in thebeginning, when their measuredcadences suggest story theater.This presentational qualityobscures the complexities of

WHEN Through 2/19:Tue-Sun 7:30 PM.Also 3 PM Sat-Sun.WHERE SteppenwolfTheatre Company,upstairs theater,1650 N. HalstedPRICE $20-$60INFO 312-335-1650

Murakami’s point of view andtone, which cries out for perform-ers who can deliver casual obser-vations and harsh truths even-handedly, in the manner ofChekhov. And though the twomain characters are faced withmajor decisions—Junpei wrestleswith asking Sayoko, now divorced,to marry him, and Katagiri mustsummon the courage to believe inSuper-Frog—there’s an occasionalair of forced jollity, particularly inthe early “Honey Pie” segments.The attraction between Junpei(Hanson Tse) and Sayoko (AikoNakasone) doesn’t ring true untillater in the 90-minute show,reaching its apex only whenSayoko and Sala (adorable KaylaLauren Mei Mi Tucker, alternatingin the role with Tiffany Fujiwara)play a goofy game involving theone-handed removal of a bra. Therelaxation and ease with whichNakasone plays the game shouldbe infused into the earlier scenes,especially the flashbacks with shycollege boy Junpei and the moreaggressive Takatsuki (Andrew

Pang), who eventually becomes ahard-charging reporter as well asSayoko’s husband.

One of Murakami’s themes isthe saving grace of storytelling inthe aftermath of news coverage ofa tragedy: Super-Frog refers oftento Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky, andJunpei’s stories for Sala are anantidote to the horrifying imagesof the quake she’s seen on TV. Somore could definitely be made ofthe differences between the twowriters’ careers—the successfulTakatsuki has little interest in lit-erature while the little-knownJunpei bemoans the life of ashort-story writer, saying, “I writethem. They print them. Nobodyreads them. The short story is onthe way out. Like the slide rule.”But literary treatments of thecharacters’ own tales—story the-ater and the overuse of narratedexposition—tend to flatten themout, to erase the tension betweenthe real and the imagined,between the bittersweet past andthe fearsome future. When thecharacters’ storytelling helps

them gain insight into them-selves, the play sings. But whentheir realizations are simplyexplained to the audience, avaguely homiletic tone under-mines the drama.

Still, After the Quake can becharming and affecting. AndrePluess and Ben Sussman’s score,played live on cello and koto byJason McDermott and JeffWichmann, gives the love trian-gle poignancy. As Super-Frog,Keong Sim is both comic andcommanding in his goggles andknobby green gloves, and he’swell balanced by Pang, who alsoplays the nerdish, driven bankofficer. James F. Ingalls lightsJames Schuette’s set, a simplecurved wall of horizontal grayslats, with dreamy evocativeness.And Galati offers an intelligent,respectful take on Murakami’stales. What’s missing is a sense ofurgency in the characters, thedrive to overcome past mistakesand current cataclysms throughthe force of imagination andhuman connection. v

After the Quake

CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 4, 2005 | SECTION ONE 29

Books

SPANKING THE DONKEY:DISPATCHES FROM THEDUMB SEASON | Matt Taibbi Comparisons between New YorkPress columnist Matt Taibbi andHunter S. Thompson have neverbeen a stretch—as cofounder of theinfamous expat tabloid the Exile,Taibbi covered roaring-90s Russiajust the way the old man mighthave, with opportunistic delightand an enthusiastically jaundicedeye. But his new book, a Fear andLoathing for our times, shouldmake the connection stick.Spanking the Donkey is a post-mortem on the Democratic campaign-trail failures that led to the retention of George W. Bushin ’04, and read simply as historyit’s painfully educational. But as a guide to what the whole dysfunctional electoral process may really be designed to accom-plish, it could be invaluable.

“The presidential election, as pre-sented by the media, is a great tourde force of lies,” says Taibbi, “a kindof ritualistic piece of theater held

exclusively for the consumption ofupper-middle-class white people,for use in legitimizing a politicalprocess the rest of the countryknows instinctively is a bunch ofcrap.” The son of longtime networkcorrespondent Mike Taibbi, MattTaibbi was a member of the presspool following Dean, and thenKerry, writing for both the NYPand Rolling Stone, and his creden-tials as a renegade insider ring true.His dissection of the ’04 campaignseason is savage and meticulous.

Starting with the gross mediaundercounts of the massive antiwardemonstrations of January 2003—the largest since Vietnam—Taibbisuggests the press corps hasn’t justbeen asleep at the wheel but activelycomplicit in the dumb show that’sgot us in the fix we’re in today.Speechwriter, reporter, politicaloperative, and op-ed hack all speakthe same empty language, within ararefied bubble of plane, hotel, andcampaign HQ. Dark horses likeDean are set up to fall; darker oneslike Kucinich are so dangerous they

must be ridiculed from the get-go.While all the “drama” of the cam-paign trail may not be scripted, itsgoal most certainly is: eventuallythe prize must—and will—go toanother stuffed shirt.

For all his chemically enhanced

shenanigans—shrooming at adebate in New Hampshire, trippingin full Viking regalia amid theKerry press pool—Taibbi’s decon-struction of the mechanics of thecampaign trail is masterful andlucid, and his scorn for the sad

attempts of the Democrats tocounter Republican vituperationwith their “cheap imitation ofviciousness” is palpable. But analyt-ical chops aside, Taibbi’s greatstrength remains his role-playing

One Year LaterThe 2004 election is more controversial than ever.

SPANKING THE DONKEY MATT TAIBBI (NEW PRESS)FOOLED AGAIN MARK CRISPIN MILLER (BASIC BOOKS)STEAL THIS VOTE ANDREW GUMBEL (NATION BOOKS)

continued on page 30

30 CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 4, 2005 | SECTION ONE

Books

routines—feverish fusions of out-rage, cynicism, and pitch-blackwisecrack that take him past Uncle

Gonzo and into the company ofhigh satirists like Swift andBurroughs. Whether fantasizingabout ruling a backwater in thefuture American empire or pitching

a reality TV show called “ExtremeFascist Makeover,” he portrays theright-wing other with all the dia-bolical glee of Dr. Benway adding

two inches to a four-inch incision.Unlike many a handwringer,Taibbi’s willing to engage the oppo-sition on a level deeper than conde-scension, bafflement, or pity. And

on a couple occasions, when hejoins his analytic and satiric powerstogether—as when tranny-baitingBush volunteers while undercoverin Florida—the results are dumb-founding. —Brian Nemtusak

FOOLED AGAIN: HOW THERIGHT STOLE THE 2004ELECTION AND WHYTHEY’LL STEAL THE NEXTONE TOO (UNLESS WE STOPTHEM) | Mark Crispin MillerMark Crispin Miller’s Fooled Againis a jeremiad aimed at the heart ofthe national Republican machine.But it’s also a work of originalreporting that in the end amountsto a solid case for Republican theftof the 2004 presidential election.

As he’s done in other work, from the Bush-whacking BushDyslexicon to Cruel and Unusual:Bush/Cheney’s New World Order,Miller casts the Republicanmachine as the apotheosis of theantidemocratic forces at work inthe national political culture. Froma lucid analysis of the psychologydriving the machine to a frighten-ing yet hilarious retelling of lastJanuary’s Senate proceedings dur-ing the Ohio electoral challenge—afarce of parliamentary proceduremore bizarre than the footage of AlGore’s incessant gavel slamming inFahrenheit 9/11—Miller practicesa kind of shock-and-awe rhetoric,overloading his reader withinstances of Republican chicaneryto the point where it’s hard to

argue with him. Some of the evidence is circum-

stantial: the uncharacteristicallylarge but seemingly systematicmargin between the Kerry victoryexit polls predicted and the finalvote tally in Republican-controlledprecincts, the intimidation felt bycountless voters confronted byRepublican challengers, the afore-mentioned psychological analysis.But for every conjecture there are a multitude of small, well-documented frauds, from illegaledicts issued by Ohio secretary ofstate Kenneth Blackwell in the run-up to the election to the vanishing of Democratic voter registrations to the manipulation of absentee ballots to break-ins atvarious Democratic offices in Ohiothat are eerily reminiscent of oneinfamous night in 1972.

Miller argues that these tacticsexemplify a new Republican strate-gy, a push for an electoral processwith no paper trail plus nickel-and-dime disenfranchisement tac-tics that add up to fraud. “So howwill America vote in 2008?” Millerasks in his conclusion. It’s a loadedquestion, sure, and like certain ofour elder statesmen (Jimmy Carter,say) Miller suggests nationwidestandardization of both votingmachinery and electoral procedureas goals worth pursuing. But in thenear term, he argues, overturestoward reform are insufficient.Without a politically engaged citi-zenry issuing a forceful cry forchange, and a press that does morethan parrot White House PR,Fooled Again may well describethe endgame that leads to single-party dominance through the nextgeneration. —Todd Dills

STEAL THIS VOTE: DIRTYELECTIONS AND THEROTTEN HISTORY OFDEMOCRACY IN AMERICA |Andrew GumbelIn “How to Steal an Election,” thefirst chapter of Andrew Gumbel’sSteal This Vote, the U.S. correspon-dent for London’s Independentsets out to illustrate the egregious-ness of the American electoralmachine, quoting Jimmy Carter’s“stunningly blunt” assessment that “the American political systemwouldn’t measure up to any sort of international standards.” InVenezuela, Gumbel points out, new electronic voting machines are equipped for recounts; in most states where these things are in use in the U.S., they’re not.

Gumbel’s grand argument is thatelectoral fraud is ingrained in theAmerican political system. Hetakes readers chronologically fromthe Constitutional Convention andthe first great theft of power in thefederal arena—in which southernslaveholding states secured a non-representative Senate based on thethree-fifths compromise—throughthe rise of machine politics underBoss Tweed in New York in the1800s, and in Chicago in the 20thcentury, to the national Republicanmachine’s activities last year.

The confirmed theft of 1876plays large: then, the Republican

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continued from page 29

Taibbi’s role-playing routinestake him past Uncle Gonzoand into the company of high satirists like Swift andBurroughs.

Ink Well by Ben Tausig

That’s RichACROSS 1. Goldman ______6. Unlocked?

10. Offend14. White wader15. HOMES’s E16. It's a thought17. Like the answers to 62-Across and

10- and 34-Down, in a way20. Angler’s gear21. Swims with sharks, say22. Frat letter24. Leg, slangily25. Briefs letters28. Type of citizenship29. Calls from the bull pen?33. Invented a whopper35. 60s lip-syncher37. Not reacting38. Makes a break40. Hall of late-night fist-pumping, once42. It may be glassy or icy43. Love group45. 669 martian days

46. Address48. Dracula’s breaking point?50. Moose relative51. Take it, as the Sox52. Nobel physicist Bohr54. War game58. Net blocker62. Bush people?64. “Must’ve been something ______”65. Words before many words66. Common sense67. Costumed shock rock band68. Bat mitzvah girl, just barely69. Sycophant’s answers

DOWN 1. Branch2. Turkish title3. Gator’s cousin4. Mild epithets5. Unemotional6. Emmy-winner Arthur7. Affordable oil source?8. Property law topic9. Clears the windshield

10. Grade-school expenditure11. Sit at a light12. Have a hunch13. In things18. Pea, e.g.19. Shiraz natives23. Stan or Shelly of South Park25. Sanctified, biblically26. Long view27. Calvin going, often30. Bridget’s portrayer31. R. Kelly event32. Baby deliverer34. 2005 adaptation of the thriller

Honogurai Mizu No Soko Kara36. Part of a Buddhist title

LAST WEEK: GONZO FILMS

55. Easing of tensions56. 2005 Category 557. Call after Geoff Blum’s sole

2005 World Series at bat59. Dillydallies60. “______ hollers . . .”61. Small salamanders63. IV, to III

39. Opposite of plus, at Marshall Field’s41. Back out (on)44. In vain47. Type of wonder49. Bright finish53. Composer who scored for guns

and typewriters54. Gulp from a flask

CHICAGO READER | NOVEMBER 4, 2005 | SECTION ONE 31

Party manipulated totals inLouisiana, Florida, and SouthCarolina (where federal troopswere still on the ground andRepublican “carpetbagging” stategovernments in power) to eke out awin for Rutherford B. Hayes.(Gumbel is always quick to pointout that theft happens on bothsides: during that campaign, SouthCarolina Democrats were also outin force, intimidating and evenmurdering blacks and generallymaking a nasty historical legacy forthemselves.) Afterward, confidencein the system’s fairness, already atlow ebb, was obliterated. Andalmost a century later LyndonJohnson was reported to have said,“If you do everything, you’ll win.”

Details from separate chapterson the 2000 debacle in Floridaand last year’s Ohio follies confirmthe idea. Gumbel argues fornationwide standardization in afinal set of conclusions, but pairedwith such a bleak historical mes-sage, his calls for reform ring a lit-tle hollow. But all is not utterlydreary: Gumbel notes that grass-roots activism in the area of elec-toral reform is growing, whichbodes well for long-term reform,however unlikely success in theshort term may be. —Todd Dills

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