Playwright: Braden LuBell. At: SiNNERMAN ( sic ) Ensemble. at Viaduct Theater, 3111 N. Western. Tickets: 773-296-6024; www.viaducttheatre.com; $20 ( plus fees ) . Runs through: May 22
When a playwright directs the world premiere of his own play, the result usually is disastrous. The author should focus on making the script as effective as possible, allowing others to interpret his/her creation. The director should focus on staging responsibilities, and the author's intentions. Even Noel Coward was not as good as he thought at writing and directing his own plays ( which he also produced and starred in ) .
Ignoring the failures of similar productions, SiNNERMAN Ensemble allowed Braden LuBell to direct his own play. Shockingly, Days of Late defies conventional wisdom. Mr. LuBell has devised a well-developed, character-driven script which he's directed with snappy pace and aplomb. That doesn't mean it's perfect. It's not boring, but it's still too long at two hours and 40 minutes. LuBell takes plenty of time to establish characters and storylines, but some of the exposition is too obviously laid out.
Intentionally or not, the script borrows freely from Friends and from Arthur Schnitzler's 1897 play, La Ronde, about overlapping couplings. LuBell's eight big-city characters are late 20s-early 30s, mostly unwed and all childless. They navigate relationship and sexual identity issues primarily, and career issues secondarily. Three of the men are gay/bisexual and a couple of the women could be bent. They long for love, for sex, for commitment, for no commitment. LuBell makes the point that men/women of his age may not know who/what they are, or if who/what they are is good. "The days of meeting a guy in the supermarket are long gone," one woman complains, as meeting/mating rituals are made and consummated quickly via chat rooms, Craigslist, no-strings-attached hook-ups and instant messaging. Eventually most people want something better-made and longer-lasting but don't know how to achieve it.
LuBell's play explores many permutations of the basic situation in a series of swiftly-moving scenes in which the dialogue rings true. The two characters drawing the most time and attention are freelance journalist Max ( handsomely husky Douglas Tyler ) and gallery owner Nina ( Ebony Williams, stylish in looks and delivery ) . In a classic Dan Savage conundrum, she accepts his bisexuality but he won't accommodate her taste for kink. Their love is genuine but doomed.
William Anderson's simple, gray-toned scenic design provides a raised platform furnished only with a parson's table and two parson's benches, and backed by four opaque wall panels. Jess Harpenau miraculously illuminates everything with only 20 lighting instruments, effectively employing too-rarely-used back lighting. The eight-person cast does LuBell proud ( and vice versa ) : the aforementioned Tyler and Williams, plus Shane Kenyon ( brilliant nerd ) , Brian Kavanaugh ( brilliant asshole ) , Christine Lin ( almost too exotic ) , Sue Redman, Brett Lee and Arianne Ellison.
Playwright/director LuBell beats the odds. He and this production deserve our attention.