THE MYSTERIOUS ELEPHANT AND THE TERRIBLE TRAGEDY OF THE UNLIKELY ADDINGTON TWINS* (*WHO KILL HIM) The Strange Tree Group
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Comparisons to Edward Gorey also inevitably crop up in discussions of Schwartz’s work. The aura of macabre elegance is similar. But where Gorey maintained a light, even astringent touch, Schwartz is all about excess—for better and for worse. On the one hand, her casts have expanded to routinely include live musicians, as in last year’s brilliant country-goth tuner, Mr. Spacky… The Man Who Was Continuously Followed by Wolves. On the other, she’s also started spelling out things that might better remain unspoken. But for those who find too much of a good thing absolutely wonderful, her latest opus, The Mysterious Elephant and the Terrible Tragedy of the Unlikely Addington Twins* (*Who Kill Him) provides a banquet of toothsomely morbid wit to savor.
A gallery of talking family portraits takes center stage for too much of the first act as various Addingtons relate the awful demises devised for them by the Narrator (death by Atlantic salt-marsh serpent, bee stings, horse trampling). The songs interspersed here also feel less robust than those in Mr. Spacky, perhaps because the actor/musicians are trapped behind portrait frames. Though the Strange Tree players, under director Carolyn Klein, boast beefy comedic chops, their singing voices tend toward the reedy.
Enoch in particular has sewn up the market on buttoned-to-the-chin, gimlet-eyed pragmatists. But there are also moments here where she softens in the presence of Holzfeind’s palpable vulnerability. Schwartz isn’t afraid to open a vein of sentimentality late in the show, which may be the most significant way in which her work differs from Gorey’s determined nihilism.
