Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to receive ... love. Playwright Jenny Magnus, with this spellbinding and thought-provoking meditation on love and loyalty now in showcase performances at the Lunar Cabaret might have badly paraphrased Shakespeare as above when she had the idea for this show. Magnus' vision is a kind of a Les Liaisons Dangereuses for post-modern times, a riff on the perfidy of romantic entanglement, sexuality and the search for human connection.
Avant-garde theater is often clumsily produced and directed—at least in the shows I've seen. Often, its creators are more interested in showing off their interest in the surreal and the intellectual than actually saying something interesting. Luckily, with Round and Round, that's not the case. Here, we have a highly stylized script that is at once witty, literate, and because its subject matter is so universal, accessible. Her story, which concerns the dynamics of four players ( an excellent ensemble cast featuring Magnus herself, along with Guy Massey, Mark Comiskey, and Colm O'Reilly, who is able to speak volumes with his highly expressive eyes ) , explores how power, deceit and longing come into play in our relationships.
Superficially cynical, Round and Round, is, at its heart, brutally honest about the games we play when it comes to searching for connections and how those connections mold who we are. It's deep stuff, but Magnus knows that good art is about communication and sets forth her theses with dark humor and wisdom. At one point in the play, one of the characters, who realizes that he has been a pawn in the more cynical, and sophisticated, games of love the others in the story have been playing, cries out, "I will be left with a spectacular view of nothing." This line encapsulates one of Round and Round's themes: the corruption that obsession often leaves in its wake.
The show intelligently utilizes the Lunar Cabaret's small space to make its statement professionally and artistically. Aside from Magnus' razor sharp vignette style of pushing her narrative relentlessly forward, Paul Leisen's mobile round platform of a stage showcases the endless nature of the interactions of the heart. Beau O'Reilly's staging is always on target, moving his actors through their paces with style, economy and a kind of grace. Stefan Brun's lighting is simple, elegant and adds just the right nearly subliminal cues to our understanding of Magnus' story. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention Magnus' dialogue, which is arch, formal and perfect for expressing the downsides of affection and obsession.
Round and Round is a pleasure, a welcome respite from the often pedestrian "Broadway in Chicago" offerings we get downtown. True, those infinitely pricey tickets do reward us with slick entertainment, but none even come close to the originality and punch on display here, with Curious Theater Branch's smart foray into the matters of the heart.