Playwright: Jenny Laird
At: Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago
Phone: (312) 633-0630; $16-$20
Runs through: April 20
Jenny Laird is a Chicago playwright who's all about issues. I've seen two of her plays this season, Sky Girls at Northlight, and now, Only the Sound. Both plays share a love, and inspired research, for topics. In Sky Girls, it was female pilots during World War II and with Only the Sound, receiving its world premiere, the issue is multiple sclerosis. At first glance, Laird's work (at least what I've seen of it) appears to be character driven. But that's an appearance, not a reality. Laird's work is marked by a fascination for topic and theme, and the characters live to carry these interests out.
Unfortunately, this is not the way good theater works. It's the characters that capture our hearts and minds, and who take us on a journey, whether that journey is of the spirit, the mind, place, or a combination of all of these things. In Only the Sound, Laird's got it backwards. Her knowledge of multiple sclerosis is on target and credible as she essays the story of Nathan (Laird offers a conceit here, having both the adult and adolescent Nathan appear together, so that we can see the forces that molded the boy into a man) and how he grew up under the pressure and pain of a feisty, foul-mouthed mother who withers away under the specter of MS, and her dying relationship with her husband, an unfaithful, alcoholic college professor. We witness how Nathan's volatile upbringing makes him into the man he is—a lonely soul who is more interested in the calls of birds than he is in the calls of his own wife and the rest of humanity. Nathan is also plagued by MS and a guilty secret, the revelation of which provides the catharsis for Laird's story.
It's not a bad set up, but Laird withholds several things that mar this ambitious, but flawed work: she has skimped on creating real people and giving those people credible connections. Nathan's father is despicable … why does Lila, his mother, love him? And since Lila is barely portrayed in her pre-MS state, she appears as little more than a pitiable dying woman; we feel for her plight, but not for her. The adult Nathan's wife wants a baby as her biological clock clicks down … but that's about all there is to her. And Nathan himself is simply the sum of his environment, a reaction to it, rather than someone who stands on his own as a real person.
Director Russ Tutterow has done good work here. In spite of its flaws, the play moves along with precision, hitting its emotional highs and lows (mostly lows) flawlessly. The ensemble is capable and has an obvious investment in trying to bring their rather one-dimensional characters to life. Particularly outstanding is Janelle Snow, who lends a layer of depth to Lila that the script doesn't quite give her. Snow inhabits her part completely and when she's enraged, or her heart is torn, Snow lets us see why, without ever resorting to easy choices. As the young Nathan, Aaron Snook, in his Chicago debut, makes us feel the pain of adolescence and the fierce love Nathan has for his dying mother. Tim P. Miller, as the adult Nathan, however, needed to provide a more believable older version of this character. Very little of the young Nathan's speech patterns or mannerisms come through; he just is not the grown-up Nathan.
Chicago Dramatists is known for its nurturing of new playwrights and providing a workshop forum for developing plays. Only the Sound still has a ways to go in development before it is a unified whole about real people, rather than what the playwright thinks about them.
