Rhinofest GOOSE Review – A Story About What’s In Between

Editor's Note:  To learn more about Rhinofest and this production, read the preview interview with Brent Eickhoff here.

Perhaps because puppet festivities are so much in the Chicago air these weeks, it’s easy to feel that the title character puppet of GOOSE steals the show (Puppetry Design/ Samanth Courter and Jessica Ervin), and especially when actress Isabel Rivera first brings it to life.

Said puppet was the target of 13 year old Dallin (Joe Lino) on a hunting trip with his oft-absent Dad (Ryan Murphy). Dallin’s Dad tries to explain to his son that it’s not so much jostling to make the big shoot, as it is for others, but all that surrounds it-- the in between. This hunting trip is a parent-child bonding exercise and this family ritual makes its return as a story coda. In between these hunting bookends lies a coming of age, and then more age, and more still story.

Young Dallin, one heckuva smart nerdy kid, had opened the story with his physics fact-filled musings on our insignificance vis-à-vis the cosmos. Old Dallin, glimpses anew at these questions through the lens of his parents’ passing and tender feelings for his young teen daughter ,as a window on both the fleeting and fragile nature of life.

Lovers of storytelling will find much to like in Michael Yichao’s script. While Dallin’s mother, sister, and later his wife never appear ,we know them as well as the characters on the stage.

Rhinofest Low Budget High Creativity Trademark

In typical low-budget Rhinofest fashion, there are few props but many creative ways in which these are re-purposed to keep us smiling again and again, even if the script is veering sentimental. One moment a pillow is a pillow, and then this down pillow is the goose of which its stuffing came. A plate holding a birthday cake becomes the car steering wheel in a style typical of how all the show’s props reincarnate.

We come to admire scene changes almost as much as the scene. Transitions are made seamless with Tchaikovsky’s music – Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy and later the theme of Swan Lake—and the touching reminder of young Dallin’s cosmological musings is underlined with the finale Fly Me To the Moon. All of these are the touches of Director Brent Eickhoff, who also seems to know exactly how to unleash his actors to give the story heart. Right from the gitgo, you find yourself observing that Joe Lino is the brainiac 13 year-old of the story, five o’clock shadow notwithstanding, and he handles giving what may be a way too long monologue more than its due.

In this writer’s view, the script works against itself by being three or four times as long as it needs to be. The talents of these actors help to smooth these rough edges.  From start to finish, expect to be engaged.

Recommended

Note: This is now added to the Picture this Post round up of BEST PLAYS IN CHICAGO, where it will remain until the end of the run. Click here to read – Top Picks for Theater in Chicago NOW – Chicago Plays PICTURE THIS POST Loves.

Performance/Cast Schedule:

January 19 and 26 @ 12:00pm
Young Dallin/Goose.....Joe Lino
Dad/Older Dallin..........Ryan Murphy
Goose/Allie..................Isabel Rivera

February 2, 9, and 16 @ 12:00pm
Young Dallin/Goose.....Joe Lino
Dad/Older Dallin..........Bobby Wilhelmson
Goose/Allie..................Isabel Rivera

February 23 @ 12:00pm
Young Dallin/Goose.....Joe Lino
Dad/Older Dallin..........Bobby Wilhelmson
Goose/Allie..................Ashley Greenwood