Playwright: Janine Nabors
At: The Gift Theatre, 4802 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Tickets: 773-283- 7071 or TheGifttheatre.org; $20-$40
Runs through: Dec. 10
Suspension of disbelief is a writer's currency.
It's good only for use on a rapt audience, allowing you to build a world so real that little inconsistencies in your story won't matter. For all the work that director Chika Ike and this productions' amazing cast have poured into Gift Theater's A Swell in the Ground, author Janine Nabors' worldpremiere story of love and death feels hollow onstage. There is real pain at the heart of each member of Nabors' troubled foursome, but for the sake of expedient storytelling, it's been made generic and less effective.
When Olivia ( Sydney Charles ) meets Nate ( Keith Neagle ) in 2003, she is reeling from a very personal tragedy, the loss of her father, wrapped in a global public tragedy. After years of rumors and college awkwardness, she's ready to move on and find love, and Nate just happens to be at the right place at the right time. Jump ahead almost ten years, and now the married couple's troubles have compounded; another family loss ensures that Olivia is still our lady of continual sorrow, and Nate finds himself stuck in the role of her unstable support beam. To make matters more interesting, Olivia's college ex, Charles ( Andrew Muwonge ), appears, a success but still dodging his reputation as a former abuser, as does Abigail ( Darci Nalepa ), Nate's once and ongoing shoulder to cry on. As Olivia and Nate struggle to define who they are and who they'd like to be, the question is always if they will be able to find that balance together.
These characters aren't built to feel real so much as they are built minimally, as scaffolding for plot devices until the next blackout. They exist to get us to the next dramatic outburst, but are too faintly drawn to do much more. It's hard to understand Nate and Olivia's dynamics or what brings out their sweetness and venom, unless you were mining the script to manufacture a fight.
Why does Olivia's trauma manifest in hair cutting, noodle cooking, and singing tv-theme songs?
Maybe because all seem like characteristics for a great troubled protagonist.
What does work in this production is the stellar cast and the gorgeous design of the intimate space. Sydney Charles and Keith Neagle are so complex and winning, they bring out the humor and pathos of each moment, even as the story struggles to keep up. Likewise Andrew Muwonge and Darci Nalepa add humor, bitterness and rough edges to a landscape that needs them. Chika Ike and the artistic team have clearly worked tirelessly to bring this story to life, I only hope the same can happen for a script with a lot of potential.