Playwright: J. T. Rogers. At: Next Theatre Company, 927 Noyes, Evanston. Tickets: 1-847-475-1875; www.nexttheatre.org; $30-$40. Runs through: Feb. 20
Madagascar is an onion: it reveals the depths of its characters and basic exposition only layer-by-layer. At first, author J. T. Rogers's literate language alone must hold you, or the hints of mystery he drops, for it takes time for anyone to comprehend the network of lies, half-truths and cloudy memories he eventually unveils.
Initially, we meet Lillian, June and Nathan in a hotel room overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome, but they aren't there at the same time or together. Slowly connecting the dots, we learn that Lillian is mother to twins June and Paul, and wife to an aloof, powerful and frequently absent husband/father. In time, Lillian takes family friend Nathan as her long-time lover. This particular hotel room in Rome is where Lillian always took her children or lover. Growing into adulthood, Paul learns of the Lillian-Nathan affair and takes it as betrayal. His response is a sinister and sick psychological punishment that pushes his mother and sister to the edge. Through the intertwined monologues of Lillian, June and Nathan, often speaking in the past, we learn the story.
Besides a devastating portrait of Lillian, the focus of the play is on the unseen Paul, a human monster that both Lillian and June adore in almost god-like fashion. In a stew of Freudian implications worthy of Henry James, Paul wants no man and no thing to come between himself and them, freely acting on Oedipal and Electra impulses ( as I see it ) to destroy his family.
This is powerful material but it's not a powerful plot. Madagascar isn't a play of action or incident, but of character. It requires an astute director and three extremely capable actors to make it click and keep it interesting for an audience. Fortunately, this Chicago premiere has the team it needs. This is not material which can be rushed, and director Kimberly Senior unzips the onion at a relaxed pace that's never too-slow. Carmen Roman is utterly perfect as the elegant and patrician Lillian, her pain as unexpected as her passion. Cora Vander Broek as June brings a sense of life-unfulfilled to the quiet sister/daughter who is competent but lost. Finally, Mick Weber beautifully underplays Nathan, the plain-spoken survivor of, and witness to, the family disaster. At the same time Nathan is the unwitting catalyst.
Jack Magaw's set nicely captures the sense of an old palazzo turned into a once-elegant hotel. The room is spacious but stripped-down and bare-bones with peeling plaster. One must imagine its polished and paneled elegance just a few years earlier, when Lillian made itand Romethe center of her life. Now a-crumble, it's a metaphor for the family disaster played out within its walls.