Playwright: William Nedved. At: Gift Theatre Company,
4802 N. Milwaukee. Phone: 773-283-7071;$25-$30. Runs through: July 17
Once its inhabitants have assimilated into middle-class culture, a ghetto ceases to be a ghetto and becomes "The Old Neighborhood," its parochialism recalled with nostalgic affection by those safely distanced therefrom. These altered perceptions do not necessarily reflect hypocrisy. The decision to abandon the security of having your life's path pre-determined by others for the uncertainty of making your own way among strangers is a choice fraught with trauma, but one that must be confronted to achieve true adulthood.
The Chicago community whose foundation is the highway of our play's title is rooted in blue-collar Irish/Eastern European values, spawning Catholic school-educated clans of teachers, firemen, policemen and parents. Our thirtysomething hero is a product of this insular environment: a law enforcement officer (albeit with a college degree in philosophy, of all subjects), now encumbered with a hoggish (and possibly crooked) work-partner, a barmaid girl friend (who's just announced that she's pregnant), and the family house (filled with the detritus of generations). Oh, and a pair of dueling real estate agents guiding him to a suitable environment for a family man—one of them, his boyhood buddy (who is now out-and-proud gay) and the other, his bossy aunt (who, at 42, fled to embrace the yuppie lifestyle with a vengeance).
This is enough premise to fuel an entire television series, ripe with promises of subsequent intrigues both sudsy-dramatic (cops under investigation over missing drugs, a reformed-addict romantic rival) and cuddly-comic (Aunt Joyce's African-American Hyde Park-academic husband, Colin's propensity for Latino boys). Under Si Osborne's deft direction, however, what could have deteriorated into domestic hankie-wringing emerges a surprisingly uncluttered 90 minutes on Gift Theatre's snug stage, its weighty complications proceeding at a tempo neither overly-rushed nor cloyingly maudlin, even as its physical action never seems cramped by Adam Lucas Veness' museum-replica backyard/porch/basement-stairs scenic design.
None of this would matter if the actors did not likewise resist the temptation to mock the stereotypical aspects of their characters, instead delving to the heart of the identity crises facing the denizens of a district much like that right outside the theater, but could just as easily be any place perceived by restless youths as better to be from than to be in. Isn't looking back always more comfortable than venturing forward?
