Playwright: Yasmina Reza. At: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn. Phone: 312-443-3800; $25-$78. Runs through: April 17
In the course of Yasmina Reza's latest Teapot Tempest, one of the four people onstage vomitsalso onstageunder stress. This reflex enables her to maintain composure for longer than the remaining three, who must find other, only slightly less literal, methods of venting their internal turmoil.
The pretext for this tension is a playground scrap culminating in one boy smacking another with a stick with sufficient force to damage the latter's teeth. The injury itself is easily repaired with insurance, but then the parents join in the fray: Veronica Novak is a scholarly writer currently researching a history of Darfur and thus armed with a vocabulary of slaughter at the ready. Her husband, Michael, is a self-made mercantile success, uneasy at his wife's accumulation of elevated-status accouterments. Alan Raleigh is an attorney whose fiery temperament is better suited to defending his Big Pharma client than quibbling over domestic contretemps, while Annette Raleigh is the fragile flower with the sensitive stomach.
Although conducted well after the on-site furor has diminished, this interclan conference nevertheless makes for an uncomfortable situation familiarif the opening-night vocal response was any indicationto many audience members. Indeed, it is difficult not to shout warnings at the stage ("Turn off the telephones!", or "No! No alcohol!") as we see the inevitable meltdown approaching. But beneath the farcical premise of allegedly-civilized adults reverting to infantile primitivism, there lies a lesson in how molehills become mountains dividing families, communities, governmentswhole countries, even. The attitudes expressed by these irate guardians are echoed in countless languages spoken in courtrooms, counselors' offices, and break-rooms the world over.
Although Reza's two-couple roster may call to mind a Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? gone looney-tunes (similarities that may reflect simply the choices for this particular production), director Rick Snyder and his quartet of poker-faced troupers demonstrate their mettle at delivering sitcom-with-bite dialogue conveying the myopia of bourgeois citizens unsure of their place in a nebulous society. Moreover, if the small cast, single set, modern dress and 75-minute running time guarantee this play's popularity with theater companies of all budgets, you really can't blame Reza for repeating the formula that proved so commercially successful with Art, her groundbreaking 1994 play. It's not as if human behavior has changed much in the last 17 years.