Playwright: Elise Spoerlein. At: Broken Nose Theatre at Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: www.brokennosetheatre.com; Pay-what-you-can admission. Runs through: March 26
Elise Spoerlein's world-premiere comic-drama A Phase, for Broken Nose Theatre, is both thoughtfully entertaining and frustratingly stingy. It offers insights into casual sex among twentysomething heterosexual Chicagoans, although the brevity of A Phase ( running just over an hour ) makes it feel more like an unfinished draft or a TV-series pilot rather than a standalone drama.
Spoerlein not only provides the dialogue, she also stars in A Phase as the morose leading lady named Sam. It's a solid performance for a character who is more reactionary to her very vivid co-stars rather than being a take-charge type of person.
A Phase shines a brief light into Sam's first months of her move from the suburbs to Chicago. Recently been dumped by her first boyfriend and high school sweetheart of six years ( an unseen Connor ), Sam is still grieving the relationship that she thought for certain would result in marriage.
Following a comical move-in scene that teems with exposition and energy from Sam's ever-cheery Mom ( a very fun and motivational Shariba Rivers ), Sam gets back into the dating world. A Phase then becomes a rotation of scenes involving Sam's navigation of adjusting to big city life as a newbie journalist while she meets up with a series of men in her grubby North Side apartment.
The banter that Spoerlein provides for her male characters certainly rings true with plenty of amusing narcissism and bluntness, especially from the likes of the pot-smoking woodworker Jeff ( Dennis Bisto ) and Sam's noncommittal photographer co-worker, Emilio ( Dago Soto ). Also spot-on is the roundabout nervous discussions with Zack ( David Weiss ) who had a hidden high-school crush on Sam, plus the hook-up negotiations involving Gabe ( Andrew Cutler ), a random guy picked up at the gym.
Spoerlein haltingly reveals character emotions and nuance just fine, especially as you see Sam struggle with notions of physical desire versus the kind of intertwined love and intimacy she previously experienced with her ex-boyfriend. Also of great help to the play are director Spenser Davis and David Weiss, who artfully create hilarious multimedia clips that cross-cut Chicago location footage with snarky smartphone texts and Internet searches.
Sam's revelations in A Phase are so internalized that they don't fully register unless one takes a moment to reflect. In one sense this makes A Phase daring since there isn't an explicit happy resolution, but it also feels unsatisfactorily finished by the time of the halting conclusion. You also can't help but question whether Spoerlein's decision to appear in her own play took vital time away from her further fleshing out the text which tantalizingly contains so much promise.
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