By: John Schneider. At: Two Lights Theatre Company at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St. Tickets: 773-278-1500; www.twolightstheatre.com; $15-$20. Runs through: Nov. 8
Two Lights Theatre Company's Chicago premiere of John Schneider's family drama Pleasant Dreams has the look of a winner. It's too bad the play itself is so undeserving of all the time and lovely ancillary efforts that Two Lights has lavished upon it.
Pleasant Dreams' production design is one of the best things about it, so let's give credit where it's due. Set designer Matt Olson has found a smart way of framing the play's suburban Wisconsin backyard setting in the middle of the Chopin Theatre's notoriously difficult basement pillars. Olson has the audience surrounding the fine faux lawn and the birthday party dinner table filled with dated crockery that would have been passed down from dysfunctional generation to generation.
Olivia Grzasko's costumes appropriately scream the 1970s, while lighting designer Nick Belley gives a great sense of a summer night shading into darkness to match the pent-up recriminations released among three embittered grownup siblings and their significant others. Jack Hawkins' sound design filled with wind chimes, buzzing mosquitoes and chirping crickets is also wonderfully evocative of summer.
Pleasant Dreams is also aurally blessed by a camp onstage band performing peppy tunes of Les Paul and Mary Ford ( the blissfully harmonic efforts of singers Cameron Benoit and Annie Prichard backed by musicians Alex Mauney and Ryan Semmelmayer make you wish their music was ironically punctuating a better show ). Surrounding the set are a series of evocative suburban "Tableau Vivant" photographs by Christian Nam and Karin Kuroda featuring actors from the play, and the images give off a better sense of familial dissatisfaction and mystery than director Daniel Dvorkin offers with his flesh-and-blood acting company.
Of course, Schneider's artfully pretentious script doesn't help. Schneider makes the characters so self-reflexive and self-aware within their dialogue that they don't come off as real people. So even when the accusations of adultery are made as years of simmering sibling resentment and unhappy romantic couplings come to the fore, it's tough to buy the characters as real people because many verbally overanalyze everything.
The cast does have its moments, though you get the feeling that they all should have at least another five to 10 years of life experience to make their characters more believable. For instance, Bridget Schreiber as Janet needs to reveal more of the underlying hurt of a verbally abused wife beneath her default appearance of being normatively perky all the time, while Clancy McCartney as the asthmatic Larry could give a bit more dimension to his constantly sulky and suspicious character.
With Pleasant Dreams, Two Lights Theatre Company shows that it can create a stunning theatrical setting in an intimate space. It's unfortunate that the discerning care didn't extend to the script selection.
Pleasant Dreams
By: John Schneider
At: Two Lights Theatre Company
at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division St.
Tickets: 773-278-1500;
www.twolightstheatre.com; $15-$20
Runs through: Nov. 8
BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Two Lights Theatre Company's Chicago premiere of John Schneider's family drama Pleasant Dreams has the look of a winner. It's too bad the play itself is so undeserving of all the time and lovely ancillary efforts that Two Lights has lavished upon it.
Pleasant Dreams' production design is one of the best things about it, so let's give credit where it's due. Set designer Matt Olson has found a smart way of framing the play's suburban Wisconsin backyard setting in the middle of the Chopin Theatre's notoriously difficult basement pillars. Olson has the audience surrounding the fine faux lawn and the birthday party dinner table filled with dated crockery that would have been passed down from dysfunctional generation to generation.
Olivia Grzasko's costumes appropriately scream the 1970s, while lighting designer Nick Belley gives a great sense of a summer night shading into darkness to match the pent-up recriminations released among three embittered grownup siblings and their significant others. Jack Hawkins' sound design filled with wind chimes, buzzing mosquitoes and chirping crickets is also wonderfully evocative of summer.
Pleasant Dreams is also aurally blessed by a camp onstage band performing peppy tunes of Les Paul and Mary Ford ( the blissfully harmonic efforts of singers Cameron Benoit and Annie Prichard backed by musicians Alex Mauney and Ryan Semmelmayer make you wish their music was ironically punctuating a better show ). Surrounding the set are a series of evocative suburban "Tableau Vivant" photographs by Christian Nam and Karin Kuroda featuring actors from the play, and the images give off a better sense of familial dissatisfaction and mystery than director Daniel Dvorkin offers with his flesh-and-blood acting company.
Of course, Schneider's artfully pretentious script doesn't help. Schneider makes the characters so self-reflexive and self-aware within their dialogue that they don't come off as real people. So even when the accusations of adultery are made as years of simmering sibling resentment and unhappy romantic couplings come to the fore, it's tough to buy the characters as real people because many verbally overanalyze everything.
The cast does have its moments, though you get the feeling that they all should have at least another five to 10 years of life experience to make their characters more believable. For instance, Bridget Schreiber as Janet needs to reveal more of the underlying hurt of a verbally abused wife beneath her default appearance of being normatively perky all the time, while Clancy McCartney as the asthmatic Larry could give a bit more dimension to his constantly sulky and suspicious character.
With Pleasant Dreams, Two Lights Theatre Company shows that it can create a stunning theatrical setting in an intimate space. It's unfortunate that the discerning care didn't extend to the script selection.