House's Rose and the Rime

Snowflakes fall, little rabbits scamper, eager actors smile and charm, and a set of innovative designs promise the audience a great ride as they enter into House Theatre’s latest offering, Rose and the Rime. In their children’s-theatre-for-adults style, House delights with big shapes, bright colors, and lively music and in doing so evokes audible cheers and gasps from the audience. It’s exciting. It proves what Chicago storefront theatre can do, even in economic hardship: elicit wow-ing experiences. House delivers savvy spectacle on a shoestring budget. Most impressive is the almost miraculous lighting design by Lee Keenan that evenly covers a huge acting area and believably shifts the entire space from igloo to beach front. The sound design and original composition also energizes the audience with impeccable execution and fresh themes. If only all the originality and precision design-work enhanced compelling storytelling.
House prides themselves on “uniting actor and audience through imaginative storytelling.” They succeed until the end; the storytelling suffers for all the actor-audience uniting in Rose and the Rime. While the audience feels included in the performance through creative staging (i.e. Rose’s journey to the Rime Witch which alludes to Grusha’s journey in Brecht’s Caucasian Chalk Circle), the construction of the story itself falls flat when Rose returns. Though Joshua Horvath could not have handed them a cleaner plot arch in his music, the play peaks out upon Rose’s return forcing an antsy audience to wait out another 40 minutes of uneven performances and staging. Perhaps it’s the five-minute ensemble dance number that celebrates Rose’s return that makes the audience think the play must be over.
Unfortunately, the story gets more confusing and less developed along the way. While the overall loop is interesting, the second act watches most of the tight ensemble work crash, makes confusing scene shifts (like the moment when the entire ensemble shows up drinking with no explanation), and loses the whimsy so carefully established in the first act. Beside the fairy tale narrative, the only delightful part of the second act is Joey Steakley who plays the spurned brother of Rose’s lover. His wispy look makes it all the more unexpected and impressive that such clear, raw, stripped-down emotion can come from such a small instrument.
For all the fun and promise of the first half, Rose and the Rime fails to deliver in the end. The audience, ensemble, and story seem tired by the time the moral gets revealed leaving them more isolated than united.