by Sidney Kingsley
Directed by Chad Wise
November 28, 1998 - January 2, 1999
Greenview Arts Center

Director Chad Wise made a bold artistic decision to present Detective Story in they only way it was meant to be presented, in complete black and white. Carefully selecting makeup, costumes and lighting, Wise presented Kingsley's black and white classic on the stage of the Greenview Arts Center.

REVIEWS

-The Chicago Tribune By Chris Jones
What’s black and white…New Millennium’s revival of classic ‘Detective Story’
When the first actor in the New Millennium Theatre Company’s startling but ultimately impressive revival for “Detective Story” walked onto the stage with a gray face, it took a moment to realize what this youthful theater troupe was attempting.
Then it clicked. New Millennium is trying to recreate the look of a black-and-white movie on the stage of the Greenview Arts Center. And the effort goes well beyond selecting a few neutral props and dark jackets. All of the actors have covered the flesh tones. The set is entirely black and white. Costumes come only in shades of gray. And with all color drained from the lighting, the result effect is a surprisingly close simulation of an old Billy Wilder flick.
Now, one might reasonably argue that Sidney Kingsley’s classic piece of leftist social realism is a play with such perpetual power that it does not require gimmickry and forced artifice. And a few of the actors end up looking more like bleached Frankensteins than celluloid cops.
But Kingsley’s 1949 pot-boiler is probably the single American play that comes closest to capturing the American-noir style found in late ‘40s Hollywood. Furthermore, the entire plot of this real-time, police-station drama revolves around the absolutist central character’s discovery that the world is not, well, black and white. So thanks to a great deal of work and care (Doug MacDonald’s low-budget lights are especially impressive), Chad Wise’s directorial concept works far better than this description might lead you to expect.
We buy into Wise’s idea mainly because this well paced and deftly staged production is otherwise so honest and well-grounded. The depth of acting required for this ensemble-driven show usually defeats college and many professional troupes, but there are some very carefully crafted performances here in small roles – Betty T. Whitmore’s pitch perfect shoplifter is a fine example.
Mike McNamara catches a nice balance of passion and coldness as McLeod, the central detective whose world is shattered in a single night. And the famous confrontation between the cop and his errant wife (the excellent Teal Kozel) is both moving and compelling. With only a very few weaker links, the entire cast works together here with a sense of craft and integrity that one does not often see at this level of Chicago Theatre.
Written (like “Death of a Salesman”) in 1949, probably the finest-ever year of American drama, “Detective Story” is an oft-overlooked masterwork. If you’ve never seen this show, New Millennium’s black-and-white rendition is well worth your time.
 
-The Chicago Reader By Mary Shen Barnidge
New Millennium Theatre Company, at the Greenview Arts Center. Director Chad Wise is enamored of film noir, if his program note is any indication. And he and his designers have rendered this production of Sidney Kingsley’s 1949 American classic in stark monochrome, simulating the harshly lit chiaroscuro of pre-Technicolor cinema. The actors are made up in chalky geisha-mask whiteface, and the costumes have been selected to enhance the décor rather than delineate historical period, social status, or personality – making inadvertently humorous such lines as “you’re getting pale” and “Why must you always make everything so black and white?”
The stylistic imposition would be less distracting if the New Millennium company had given equal attention to the text – to this day the prototype for precinct – room dramas, with its rich variety of characters and complex postwar domestic issues. Under Wise’s instruction, however, the cast’s playing is as broad and one-dimensional as the bare comic-strip set. (An exception is James Chlopek, whose Detective Brody hints at a life beyond what the playwright has given him.) Depriving the audience of discovery, suspense and empathy, this interpretation offers by way of compensation only a conceptual gimmick, and that’s not enough to sustain two full hours.