Time Out Chicago
June 19, 2008
by Christopher Piatt
The one-man show is a card so few casual sharks know when to play. More often than not it serves as a shameless showcase for a hammy actor or a lazy exercise in biographical playwriting, or both. The most mature aspect of Dante Dies!!, Walt McGough’s hipster skimming of Dante’s Inferno, is that the gimmick of using a single actor is well-judged. The writing in McGough’s dramatization is thin to be sure, but it contains just enough forks to move the action and enough streetwise hooks to contextualize the contemporary voices he assigns to Dante. Were it filled out with a fleet of actors, there wouldn’t be enough meat to sustain them. On the other hand, were the text any denser, the actor playing everyone in Dante’s whacked-out world wouldn’t be able to keep his head above water.
As it is, the capable performer Matt Fletcher mostly dog-paddles. It’s impressive watching the young actor ration his energy over 80 solid minutes of treks through hell’s many bureaucratic sublevels, even if his actorly technique isn’t yet honed enough to transcend the stock types McGough has penned. (Fletcher yanks himself around plenty from pose to pose as he plays multiple pose-defined characters, who frequently argue with each other.) The experiment still feels more academic than professional, but a few bold design gestures harnessed by director Green—the sudden, sly appearance of a red door; the brief, backlit atmosphere of the dreaded ninth circle—convince you that you’re watching very young talent at play rather than slacker talent at rest.
Four Stars
Recommended
