Playwright: Madeleine George. At: Rivendell Theatre at The Storefront, 66 E. Randolph. Phone: 312-742-8497; $25. Runs through: April 2
On one side of Madeleine George's dialectic is an ape that has, we are told, mastered a number of words sufficient to communicate with humans on an infantile level, but now is striving to shape its limited vocabulary to more complex concepts. On the other side is an elderly immigrant assisting a university in preserving her native russo-slavic tongue, despite the distress awakened by the phonemic recall. Caught in between these opposing images is a 42-year-old, pregnant, lesbian, curiously inarticulate linguist who has just learned that her baby may be born with brain damage.
The immediate question raised by this construct is whether prof. Brodie will choose to aborta decision that author Madeleine George leaves unresolved, the better to facilitate after-show discussions of whether Brodie should choose to abort, rather than risk bringing a "mentally delayed" mortal into this world. But George also wants to explore the nature of language itself, the inadequacy of the medical system, the unjust distribution of research money, the domestic problems engendered by sleeping with your grad assistant, and the casual abuse vented on helpless creatures like zoo animals and aged relatives. Is it any wonder that our heroine strays farther and farther from the practical into the abstract, until our final sight of her is of a voiceless beast huddling in the Monkey house with her gorilla-mom.
Brodie is played with alacrity (sans prosthetic belly) by Meighan Gerachis, dressed in the mannish garb presumably comprising the wardrobe-of-choice for academic lezzies. Marilyn Dodds Frank, her accumulation of Ditzy Crone and Precocious Primate mannerisms very much in evidence, retains a commendable dignity in roles that could quickly devolve into cute & cuddly cliché. And Kathy Logelin is saddled with the thankless task of portraying, with no vocal or visual changes to distinguish one from the next, a bevy of chirpy advisors mouthing empty platitudes.
The intense conviction that director Julienne Ehre and her cast bring to George's enigmatic script for the 80 minutes before it drifts irrevocably into the ozone provides a modicum of anchorage. But what beguiles us as we leave the theater is less to-foal-or-not-to-foal than how any of the ambivalent women we have met could hope to guide a childwhole or flawedto a fulfilling adulthood.