Playwright: Suzan-Lori Parks. At: Urban Theatre at the Beacon Street Hull House, 4520 N. Beacon St. Tickets: 312-239-8783; www.urbantheaterchicago.org; $20. Runs through: April 15
It's a "brand" in more ways than one, the scarlet "A" worn by Hester Smith, signifying her trade as an abortionist. It isas she explains to her likewise bloody-aproned suitor, the local butcherher "shingle and license," guaranteeing her customers the best-quality surgical care offered in this remote tropical Third World country, where gynecological information is shared in a polyglot patois spoken only by women. Adultery, that old-school source for the stigmatic emblem, is practiced by Hester's friend and confederate, Canary Mary, mistress to the nation's Mayor, whose wife is unable to conceive. This barren First Lady's wealthy parents, we learn, are responsible for sending Hester's son to prison for stealing foodan injustice invoking a mother's wrath.
Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks makes only passing reference to Nathaniel Hawthorne's classroom staple, borrowing more freely from Brechtian motifs imposed upon a plot lifted from Jacobean tragedy. The nebulously exotic setting, with its ethnically mixed populace, conjures an anarchic society where criminals are pursued by sadistic bounty hunters and convicts' families are encouraged to buy their kin's release. A screen mounted on the upstage wall flashes projected scene titles and translations of the aforementioned "women's talk," while a two-piece stageside orchestra supplies accompaniment for the text-based song snippets mandated by the aesthetic of "alienation" (another Brechtian term). Finally, violence designer Zev Steinberg engineers the copious distribution of gore appropriate to a tale of revenge.
Emotional intensity smoldering on the brink of ignition is Urban Theater's stock-in-trade, but any first production in a new space presents unforeseen challengesespecially when the auditorium is big enough to house a dozen of the storefronts comprising this neighborhood company's former quarters. Lyndsay Rose Kane and Madrid St. Angelo, veteran players of troupes specializing in epic extravaganzas (Vitalist Theatre et al.), enable Canary Mary and the Butcher to readily assume command of the stage for their appearances, as does Kelly Owens' Hester, whom director Richard Perez wisely locates downstage whenever practical.
Further adjustments are needed, however, before the operatic scope demanded by the sheer size of the Beacon Street Hull Houseonce home to the musicals of Black Ensemblecan be wholly reconciled with the intimate connection between players and audience characterizing the Urban Theater experience.