Playwright: David Lindsay-Abaire. Playwright: M.E.H. Lewis. At: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave. Tickets: 312-633-0630; www.chicagodramatists.org; $32. Runs through: Oct. 28
It's an injection, you see, and it will dissolve the tiny part of your brain where the painfully debilitating memories lie, leaving only the pleasant onesnot as ham-handed as a lobotomy, perhaps, but if you don't see the flaw in such a scheme by the time you finish reading this sentence, then you obviously aren't a nerdy scientist so besotted with her new toy that she can't comprehend why the people for whom she invented this procedure stubbornly resist its implementation.
Forget the theological ramifications, the question of who decides what constitutes a "destructive" memory and the potential for abuse. What makes M.E.H. Lewis' play smarter than its premise is her assertion that ignorance, whether genuine or artificially induced, can never be blissand isn't revelation the cornerstone of all Western literature?
The argument is initiated after we meet two potential recipients of Dr. Jane's miracle cure: her mother, Clothilde, who cannot shake off melancholy first-hand recollections of World War II allies (that's us, by the way) bombing her Dresden home, and an Iraq-war soldier called AJ, haunted by the events leading to her injuries in the field. Gradually, we come to recognize the alleged victims' complicity in their respective tragedies. Far from being innocent bystanders to the horror that neurotechnology would erase, they are perpetratorsinadvertent, to be sure, but enablers nevertheless. To forget that fact would be, for Frau Clothilde, to shirk the respect owed the dead and, for Sergeant AJ, to withdraw forever into a far-from-secure retreat.
Audiences expecting a science-fiction thriller with mad doctors and big needles will be disappointed to learn that Lewis' argument is not one of medical ethics, but of personal responsibility. Many details of the set-up need further clarificationthe circumstances dictating an active-duty military subject's participation in the experimental program, for examplebut once Ann Whitney's flinty Clothilde and Kelly O'Sullivan's scrappy AJ dig in their heels to reject the whitewashing of history, regardless of its scope, we eagerly anticipate answers to the mystery of the burdens they have adopted and their willingness to shoulder them. We get thembut not until we have been led through a labyrinth of discoveries (and a few red herrings, too, so stay alert even after you think you've guessed the secret) that keep our loyalties shifting right up to the final moments.