The Eclipse Theatre Company is quietly making a name for itself around Chicago, with its innovative approach to producing theater. The company takes the work of a different playwright each season and devotes their efforts to that one voice. Past seasons have displayed remarkable creativity and talent when bringing to life the works of such renowned playwrights as Tennessee Williams and Lillian Hellman. This season, Eclipse is concentrating on the work of Romulus Linney, who has been active in the American and international theater for more than three decades. Eclipse, under the skilled and seasoned directorial talents of Steve Scott (who did outstanding work for the Goodman in its recent production of Wit), has made a gift to Chicago of one of the playwright’s most richly textured, imaginative and lyrical pieces, Childe Byron. The play focuses on the notorious poet Lord Byron, whose fame for hedonistic excess nearly matches his literary output.
Byron left behind a daughter when he died at age 36, Ada, who, although she barely knew her notorious father, shared his intellectual prowess, although she expressed herself in the much more exacting field of mathematics (like her mother), rather than the more ethereal realm of poetry. Ada, in an odd coincidence, also died at age 36. And it is near the end of her young life that Linney has chosen to focus. Dying of cancer, Ada takes laudanum to dull the pain of her suffering and the drug causes hallucinations. Through Ada’s eyes, the young Lord Byron comes back and we watch as father and daughter begin to get to know each other (Byron left his family when Ada was still small). Linney isn’t daunted by largesse of the poet’s reputation, nor the exacting nature of his daughter, and interlaces their exchanges with wit, humor, and the anger that Ada might have carried throughout her life for a father than abandoned her to pursue literary fame, sexual excess, and debauchery. It’s a fascinating portrait of the artist as he grows to literary renown while letting his love of pleasure become self-destructive.
Finally, Ada has her catharsis, which we come to see she must have before she can die in peace, and rages out at the father who left her and her mother behind. Jenny McKnight, as Ada, is a revelation and gives a nearly flawless performance, intermingling awe, love, rage, sarcasm, and waning health in a tapestry that’s always fascinating and always credible. Anish Jethmalani, as Byron, is a good match for McKnight’s skills as an actor, giving a carefully controlled performance that displays Byron’s paradoxical charm and his infuriating lack of regard for other people.
Chris Corwin’s delicate set design forms an evocative backdrop for the players to course in and out through time. The set design is accompanied by skilled work from lighting designer Nat Swift and gorgeous costumes from Brooke Gladish.
Eclipse has done wonderful work here: an ode to two of history’s more fascinating figures that should not be missed.