Now that Chicago’s been granted, in quick succession, two full-scale, well-acted productions of Lolita Chakrabarti’s biodrama Red Velvet (Raven Theatre’s 2016 version closed a year and three days before Chicago Shakespeare Theater opened its current staging), it’s clear how singular an anti-achievement Chakrabarti’s play is. She manages to take the fascinating, complicated life of Ira Aldridge, perhaps the 19th century’s only African-American international theatrical star, and drain from it most everything that makes it fascinating and complicated. In its place she fabricates a tale that loses coherence under even moderate scrutiny.
In another perplexing turn, Chakrabarti suggests Aldridge’s failure at Covent Garden not only severely hobbled his career (in truth, he was across the Thames a few days later in Othello at the Surrey Theatre) but ultimately drove him to madness. She opens her play with an aged, demented Aldridge, badgered by a young female journalist (whose sole purpose in the play is to point out that women also faced enormous career hurdles in the 19th century). One question haunts the ensuing two and a half hours: What caused a capable, talented, strong-willed man to lose his reason? Since Chakrabarti shows us almost nothing of Aldridge’s post-Coventry Garden life, she offers only one unsatisfying answer.
Through 1/21: Wed 1 and 7:30 PM, Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM (no show 12/24), Tue 7:30 PM; also Sun 12/31, 8 PM, and 1/7, 6:30 PM, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, 800 E. Grand, 312-595-5600, chicagoshakes.com, $58-$68.
