It’s been nearly a quarter century since a nobody little Chicago ensemble called Steppenwolf took its production of Sam Shepard’s True West to New York and changed everything. One of the many consequences of that run at the Cherry Lane Theater was a rave by New York Times critic Mel Gussow, who singled out John Malkovich by comparing him to Jack Nicholson and calling his performance “an acting hole in one.” Malkovich became an immediate star. Gary Sinise followed a little later, as did other ensemble members, until Steppenwolf became a star in its own right, with a cool building and a National Medal of Arts award.
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That scenario seemed to be playing out again in late February 2004, when Bug opened at the Barrow Street Theatre in Greenwich Village. Written by Tracy Letts and directed in New York by Dexter Bullard–both substantial Chicago theater figures–Bug is a dark love story about a hard-luck divorcee’s entanglement with a young stranger who’s either paranoid or in huge trouble. The show received an over-the-moon Times review by Ben Brantley and even had a Malkovich in Michael Shannon, who played the stranger. “Bringing to mind an off-center, intelligent Leonardo DiCaprio,” Brantley wrote, “Mr. Shannon is an uncanny blend of calm and agitation, as tics disrupt his symmetrical features like ripples on a glassy pond. I’ve seldom seen a young actor turn up the volume of a performance so slowly and skillfully.” The production ran a full year, grossing $1.8 million on a capitalization of about $260,000, according to Variety. The cast won the Village Voice’s Obie award for best ensemble.
A Red Orchid is almost literally a hole-in-the-wall of storefronts lining the east side of Wells just south of North Avenue, in Old Town. A long brick corridor leads back from the street to a little theater behind a tiny lobby with a box office about as big as the driver’s cabin in a CTA train car. When he isn’t performing, Shannon seems to spend most of his time in that box office. It’s an unlikely setting for a hot young actor, but then, Shannon’s priorities are unorthodox.
Shannon met A Red Orchid founder Guy Van Swearingen through his first acting teacher, Jane Brody, and started doing a little of everything at the theater–from box office duties to writing director’s notes (when the director forgot). “It’s such a magical little place,” Shannon says. “There’s nowhere I get tangled up in something more than at A Red Orchid Theatre.”
“Would I like to do a show on Broadway? You bet. As long as it doesn’t conflict with something I’m doing at A Red Orchid.”
