Chemically Imbalanced Comedy scoops Dog & Pony Theatre Company on a Chicago premiere.
By Deanna Isaacs
Krissy Vanderwarker is –to be polite about it- a little bummed. She’s been waiting three years for her date with Mr. Marmalade and wasn’t expecting to have to share him. As artistic director of Dog & Pony Theatre Company, which prides itself on staging local premieres, Vanderwaker had been chasing the Noah Haidle play-about a precocious four-year-old and her problematic imaginary companion, Mr. Marmalade- ever since Orange Country’s South Coast Repertory first performed it in 2004. “We have friends out there who keep an eye out, and they said, ‘You have to go after this script,”’ Vandrewarker says. “We got our hands on a copy, read it, and promptly started asking for the rights.”
According to Vanderwarker, Dramatists Play Service withheld rights until after the lay opened in New your (at the off-Broadway Laura Pels Theater in November 2005), and then a little longer, probably hoping that and Equity house might want it. Itinerant three-year-old Dog & Pony finally got the rights last spring and immediately set to work on the proposal to mount the show at the city’s Storefront Theater. The city accepted the proposal in May, and Vanderwakere says Dog & Pony then announced the run in a press release and on their Web site. They also listed it in PerformInk’s annual new-season guide, which came out in September. It was then they discovered their production would not be the Chicago premiere. According to Performink, Mr. Marmalade also had a date with Chemically Imbalanced Comedy at the Cornservatory. CIC opened their show March 22 (reviewed this week in Section 2), while Dog & Pony’s will open April 5. Both productions run through the end of next month.
“We called Dramatists Play Service to make sure our contract was still valid with them, and we were assured it was,” Vanderwarker says. Beyond that, there wasn’t much to do. Dramatists Play service doesn’t notify companies of such conflicts, and non-Equity Theaters don’t qualify for exclusive production rights. Even if they had qualified, Vanderwarker says, it would have been too expensive. The possibility that another production could crop up next to theirs is “a risk we take every time we do a play,” she says. Since Dog & Pony was locked into its arrangement with the city, a change in lineup didn’t seem feasible either. But maybe Chemically Imbalanced could be flexible? In October, Dog & Pony literary manger Jarrett Dapier e-mailed CIC to suggest, ever so diplomatically, that they consider producing their Mr. Marmalade after the D&P show closes May 5. 
CIC’s executive Producer Angie McMahon responded with an equally diplomatic no, explaining that her company had already signed contracts with the Cornservatoy and arranged for playbill advertisers. Dapier, undeterred, floated another possibility; given that Dog & Pony’s mission is producing premieres, and “a lot of our funding is dependent on following through on this claim,” perhaps CIC, in a charitable gesture, could postpone its production until the next year? “Is this something your company would be willing to do for us? Dapier asked.
For McMahon, history was repeating itself. In early 2006, CIC got the rights to Christopher Durang’s Betty’s Summer Vacation for a September production, then discovered that Infamous Commonwealth Theatre would be producing it on exactly the same dates. In that case McMahon backed off, substituted another during play in her lineup, and turned the potential conflict into a four-theater Durang minifestival, cooperatively marketed. This time, she says, “I wasn’t willing to change my season again-nobody’s willing to change their season for me, and we had already started our marketing. I asked if Dog & Pony wanted to do a cross-promotion-you go see one Marmalade, come to another for $5 off or something-but they weren’t interested.” That was the end of it.
McMahon notes that Dog & Pony is getting some pretty nice perks for its show; free marketing by the city and a League of Chicago Theatres “Theater Thursdays” slot that she coveted. Besides that, she says, come reviewers seem to be ignoring the first two weeks of her show, perhaps biding their time until they can file double reviews. Vanderwarker, who says her schedule won’t allow her to take in CIC’s production, is trying to put it out of mind. “This would have been our fifth premiere in a row,” she says. “But we’ve been in love with this script and chasing the rights for so long, we’re just going to keep focused on what we’re doing and our interpretation.”
McMahon thinks the venues will appeal to different audiences; people who want a “big evening” downtown wouldn’t come “slumming in the boroughs,” she says. But maybe, drawn by the chance to make caparisons (and primed by America Idol), they will. Haidle’s dark comedy delivers inventive social commentary and features over-the-top characters. Which four-year-old is more annoying? Which Marmalade more toxic and delicious? Which of his personal assistants prances off with the show? With everybody wired, it seems theater companies could avoid the sort of conflict, But it might be fun.
