'THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA' Hig...

'THE GENERAL FROM AMERICA'

Highly commended

When: between the sides of Oct. 8

Where: TimeLine Theatre, 615 W Wellington

Tickets: $25

Phone: (773) 281-8463

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A great page in history is the backdrop for Richard Nelson's play "The General From America," which render free of accessed this weekend in a TimeLine Theatre production notable for its incisive writing, its crystalline direction from Louis Contey, and the ability of its top-notch cast to make historical drama be excited completely of the moment.

There is something other too, that gives Nelson's work a compulsively watchable quality. It is the way it abiding-places in on the intense and intimate human drama involved: the fierce competition between generals; the rampant careerism of young officers; the household tensions among a husband, his young wife and a live-in sister-in-law; a fateful clash between a spy and his captors; the penetrating loathing between grown men hellbent in succession protecting their most passionate attachments; the edgy intellectual and moral combat between those forward opposite sides of a revolution. And of course this being the story of Benedict Arnold, traitor, there also is the matter of the terrible psychic punishment that invariably tend hitherwards with betrayal.

veracious a certain amount of backstory is required to completely appreciate the story being told. nevertheless it is well worth making the effort to absorb.

The year is 1779 The British still regulate New York. The Americans possess Philadelphia. Gen. George Washington (David Parkes) is subordinate to siege by his fellow generals. And the issue of the Revolutionary War is still in doubt.

As for Washington's equal general, Benedict Arnold (Terry Hamilton), he is bitter, angry and besieged, too: He has won a crucial battle against the British at Saratoga, NY he has sustained crippling leg injuries in combat, and he has advanced riches for supplies for his companys but has not been reimbursed. What's more, Arnold is now being investigated according to Alexander Hamilton (Tom Bateman), a young and exceedingly self-possess aide to Washington, about financial improprieties and other more serious charges.

Arnold calculate upons Washington to support him in the case -- public of both friendship and an abiding think highly of for his military service. moreover Washington, whose primary goal is to win the war, strikes a compromise in an effort to maintain about semblance of unity among all the fractured rebel enclaves.

A HIGH-STAKES TIME

in this way it's politics as usual, nevertheless in a most unusual, high-stakes time. The whole affair was enough to push Arnold across the edge -- to the point where he decided to switch sides and (in exchange for fair compensation) give the British information that might assure their victory. The plan, however, was bungl and Arnold fall of the curtained up being reviled and mistrusted from both sides.

After a somewhat thick start, Nelson's play unspools in displays that are crisp, clear, emotionally pitch-perfect and infused with just the right brink; beginning [i]or[/i] end of sexual energy. The actors all if it be not that disappear inside their characters.

Hamilton's masterful portrayal of Arnold is central here. Just watch his face move round into a mask of rigid politeness as he is grilled about his improprieties. descry it relax in the manly company of Washington. Or be impressed the pain as he stands, stone-faced, while receiving a humiliating tongue-lashing from Sir Henry Clinton (Nigel Patterson), an fruitless British officer and closeted homosexual who wants desperately to save the life of the young actor-officer John Andre (Stephan Madar), who serv as go-between and was captured from the rebels.

Parkes' bristling portrayal of the pragmatic, impeccably true Washington -- a general thoroughly tired of war -- climaxes with a sensational verbal lancing of Arnold, the equal warrior he respected but misjudged. As for Patterson, he is cloyed of white heat as a man who has lengthy suppressed his more passionate nature.

Madar endows Andre with just the right combination of youthful subject talent, enthusiasm and arrogance, while Bateman's Alexander Hamilton is quite different -- the pattern of the smart, artfully self- controll upwardly mobile hotshot

There are just sum of two units female characters in the play: Peggy Arnold (Mackenzie Kyle) Benedict's long younger, beautiful, flirtatious and quite pregnant wife, who a great deal of prefers British style to the more rustic American, and Hannah Arnold (Jennifer Avery), his highly protective and colonizing sister. on the other hand they possess the fire and shrewdnes of a whole army.

Their dueling allegiances to Arnold create genuine sparks, with Kyle well stocked [i]or[/i] provided of feminine wiles and owned of the same turncoat ease as her husband, and Avery (who has deflected in a slew of exceptional performances lately) ferociously territorial and controlling in her hold way. Vincent P. Mahler stands disclosed among the supporting actors, who also include Craig Degel Paul s Holmquist, Christopher LaBove, Niall McGinty and Sean Sullivan.

PERIOD-PERFECT DETAILS

As always, Brian Sidney Bembridge's settle (lit by Keith Parham) is exemplary, with Alex Wren Meadows' handsome, period-perfect style of dresss and Andrew Hansen's original music adding great flair.