Three new shows this season celebrate defiance and derring-do, from the poetic grit of Saul Bellow to the feminist sass of six famous wives to a pioneering thrill-seeker.
“He’s taken this extraordinary 400-page novel and turned it into a play,” he says. “If you know the novel and the language, you think, ‘How the hell is this going to work onstage?’ He was brilliant in many ways, one of which is that he’s translated all the events into language that sounds like real people, yet at various moments, particularly for someone who is voiceless or powerless or unable to speak, he then used direct quotes pulled from the novel for what we now refer to as ‘the Bellow music.’ So you hear some of the original Bellow syntax and vocabulary and extraordinary writing, even in a world where people talk like people.”
Queen of the Mist
The Adventures of Augie March 5/9-6/9: Wed-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat-Sun 2 and 7:30 PM, Court Theatre, 5535 S. Ellis, 773-753-4472, courttheatre.org, $50-$74, $37.50-$51 students.
