Four Places. Photo by Liz Lauren. Playwright: Joel Drake Johnson. At: Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-871-3000; $20-$45. Runs through: May 4
After watching Victory Gardens Theater's world premiere of Four Places, you may want to sit in a comfortable chair, rub your head and sip hot tea mixed with aspirin. No, Four Places is by no means a bad headache-producing play, but playwright Joel Drake Johnson does dredge up a difficult subject matter that most people generally go to the theater to forget about.
Johnson astutely explores the shifting family dynamic many grown children face as their parents age and become infirm. It's not a topic many of us want to deal with, but Johnson builds an involving drama from a situation where children have to make hard parental decisions for their own parents.
Four Places follows middle-aged children Ellen ( Meg Thalken ) and Warren ( Peter Burns ) as they visibly stress about taking their aging mother Peggy ( Mary Ann Thebus ) out for a lunch date. But the pained behavior of Ellen and Warren soon becomes clear as we discover that the lunch is means for them to confront their mother about her mistreatment of their invalid father at home.
Four Places could refer to the play's four settings ( which glide by effectively in Jack Magaw's functional set design ) , or to the fact that the family's four places at the dinner table may forever be broken up after this stressful luncheon.
Johnson injects a lot of cutting and honest humor throughout the piece, but you may find yourself uncomfortably squirming as much as the grown children do on stage. The fact that you squirm shows the honesty of Johnson's writing, not to mention director Sandy Shinner's effective handling of her compact cast.
Thebus garners the most attention as the matriarch in the play's showiest role. Thebus cleverly shows how Peggy uses her elderly state to win sympathy and how childishly petulant and cutting she can be with her words when she doesn't get her way.
Burns brings an honest frustration to the divorced and embittered school teacher Warren, while Thalken is an expert of silently showing her distress and pain of being a widowed psychologist bearing the knowledge of her parents' marital troubles for so many years.
Thrown into this troubled mix is Jenifer Avery as the perky waitress Barb. Avery's interjections as Barb become rightful comic annoyances, though Johnson's surprising back story for the character does feel a tad contrived to suit the situation at hand.
Bitter pill that it may be to swallow, Four Places makes for an effective family drama that is both funny yet ultimately devastating at the same time. It may not be a feel-good drama that you recommend to friends, but its uncomfortable universality is one that is undeniably effective.