Playwright: Nate White
At: Rogue Theater at The Playground, 3341 N. Lincoln
Phone: (773) 450-0591; $10
Runs through: March 12
Plays based on the lives of saints were a commonplace of medieval church festivals, used to entertain and instruct the illiterate masses. Author, director and producer Nate White delivers a modern day saint play in Me and Francis, presented by his new Rogue Theater, a troupe dedicated to producing 'gender-balanced plays about rogues, rebels, misfits and outcasts.'
The Francis of this world premiere is Francis of Assisi, transposed from 13th Century Italy to present-day Chicago, where he's generically Christian rather than specifically Catholic. After a crisis of faith, Francis rejects his State Street merchant family and material values, leaves his girlfriend, and pursues a mendicant life of humility and good works, eventually attracting male and female acolytes to his Uptown shelter. Clearly insane with divine fervor, Francis treads the winter streets of Chicago barefoot and in rags, enduring physical attacks in quasi-masochistic acts of abasement, and conversing with a voice only he hears.
Indeed, there are frequent one-sided dialogues in Francis and Me. Besides Francis and his holy voice, his closest followers narrate their stories to an unheard interviewer after his death. This is an inert dramatic technique violating the basic playwriting rule that says an audience should be shown, and not told. The play alternates such scenes with wordless tableaux involving masked figures, mimed to highly dramatic music, and evoking peak physical or emotional episodes in Francis' life. Whether intended or not, the mimes, masks and music parallel techniques of medieval drama, and provide most of the play's movement.
But there are three acts and many scenes, and the shifts between them are slow, and the lights keep going up and down, and it feels long and ponderous under White's direction although the actual running time is reasonable. We see Francis aglow with fervor, enduring all physical harshness, yet he never achieves a confidence about his mission, and his glow never transfers to his followers. Francis never speaks with eloquence or persuasion to them, and doesn't invoke God's glory. Gloom pervades. Others seem to follow him out of guilt or intellectual commitment rather than joy. We are told Francis is inspiring, but that inspiration never takes fire on stage. Playwright White has fashioned a plaster saint, not a real one. Perhaps White is wearing one hat too many with this show.
The play's burden falls on tall, slim Ryan Young—great soap opera name—as Francis. Considerably better than the script, he performs with credibility and tortured sincerity, his large eyes and attractive face hovering between handsome and gaunt. If he doubts the material, he doesn't show it for a moment. Lisa Stran provides able support as Claire, the girlfriend who follows Francis into his new life.