How's this for a provocative premise? There's these two adult stepsisters, see. Greta is a former TV anchorwoman who once did a stretch in prison for an unidentified crime, and Moo is a college dropout who may have burned down her campus dormitory. They meet for the first time in order to decide what to do with the remote country house belonging to their recently deceased parents, who appear to have been manufacturing biological weapons in its basement.
Playwright: Marisa Wegrzyn. At: Rivendell Theatre Ensemble at Live Bait Theatre, 3914 N. Clark. Phone: 773-334-7728; $20. Runs through: June 28
Well, what would you do with a house that could be contaminated with dozens of deadly microbiotic toxins? Do you swab it with superstrength disinfectant and try to sell it because you need the money? Do you burn it to the ground, destroying it along with its hidden skeletons? Do you take advantage of the disturbing family secrets to initiate some filial bonding? Why is the county sheriff keeping surveillance on the home? Was the fatal automobile accident really an accident? How much do the potential buyers of the property know? For that matter, how much do either of the surviving children know, and how much of it is true?
Unfortunately, playwright Marisa Wegrzyn doesn't seem to know the answers to the questions she poses, any more than we do. Oh, her play leads us this way and that, teasing us with information that later might prove significant: say, the introduction into the room of a large open pail of caustic—and flammable—cleaning fluid, followed by some banter about cigarettes and matches. But when the time arrives for Wegrzyn to reward us with a clever explanation for the creepy events bringing the two women—about whom we have come to care deeply—to their shocking dilemma, the action instead terminates so abruptly that only the full-stage blackout cues us that the play is over, leaving us uncertain of what we have just seen or what is likely to happen after the curtain falls.
All right, so life isn't fair and reality doesn't guarantee tidy resolutions. But after director Tara Mallen, actors Mierka Girten and Jenny Strubin, and designers Megan Wilkerson and Daniel Pellant ( whose mail order-equipped laboratory, with its hazardous-material containers and small animal cages, hints at menace from the beginning ) have worked so hard to generate suspense and empathy sufficient to ensure our emotional investment in their story's outcome, we deserve a better punch line than Wegrzyn delivers.