Caravaggio

TimeOut Chicago

Mike Simmer can convincingly play a love scene with either a boy or a girl, and he does both as persecuted, pansexual painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio in Vetere's new bio play. Meanwhile, Levi Petree, as his lion-maned page and come-hither boy, and sunrise-radiant Brenda Barrie, as a brothel strumpet who picks up side gigs posing for post-Renaissance painters, both keep up with him in the theatrical boudoir. So it's a bit disappointing that this production of such sophisticated, three-dimensional sensuality is lavished on a play with such a one-dimensional view of art.

Noted for his refusal to paint commissioned subjects in the flattering light they requested and, even more daring, his tendency to depict divine imagery with grotesque realism at a time when the Spanish Inquisition was still on the rise, Caravaggio is all too easy to portray as a persecuted martyr. Set during the painter's troubled exile from Naples, Vetere's play details a brief period during which Caravaggio took refuge under the roof of his mentor Carraci, a successful artist who was willing to whore himself out to any paying patron. Unable to depict the good-artist/corrupted-artist dichotomy without drooling over the former, the playwright takes the simplest view possible of aesthetic inspiration. This roadblock constricts Heinen's production, even with actors as good as Barrie, who can credibly sell lines like, "How should I know what art should do? I'm a whore." It's almost as if Vetere is directing her rhetorical question at us.