By: Jerre Dye. At: Route 66 Theatre Company at Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-404-7336. Greenhousetheater.org; $35 ( $20 students ). Runs through: May. 25
A play set in a sweltering Mississippi summer, Cicada requires quite the stretch of imagination for Chicago residents still pleading for mercy from this slow-dying winter, but Route 66 Theatre Company actually manages to take us there.
Jerre Dye's play, a product of the Voices of the South Theatre Company in Memphis, Tenn., conveys the oppressive nature of not just a Southern summer, but also the traditional aspects of the Southern way of life. Mother and son main characters Lily ( Amy Matheny ) and Ace ( Aaron Kirby ), cling to each other, memories of their past and questions about their future amidst a supporting cast of ghosts, including Lily's mother, grandmother, aunt and an older sister who died young.
If all the cast members were alive, Cicada would modestly resemble a Tennessee Williams play. Much of the drama plays out poeticallygrim poetry about regret, loss and grief, to be specific. If you've lost someone closeor several someonesCicada will tug at those emotions. Although Ace comes off at first as that 17-year-old whose going to get out of Mississippi, out of the house built by his great-grandfather's hands, he is really trapped.
The play traps its audience as well. Among the many quality choices Route 66 artistic director Erica Weiss makes in the production, the sneakiest and perhaps most effective is keeping the room temperature in their Greenhouse Theater space a smidgeon below unbearably stuffy. Suddenly, imagining the claustrophobic heat of the South presents less of a challenge, particularly as the drama in the storytelling escalates.
Tensions between Lily and Ace and within themselves grow when the father Ace never knew appears in their lives. Just like that, the secrets of the past conjure up a literal and emotional thunderstorm. Lily is at the eye of said storm, so Matheny works with the hardest material, and it's clear the toll playing the part takes; the emotions even carried over to the curtain call.
Equally deserving of mention in the play's change-of-pace character, the neighbor LaNora ( Cecilia Wingate, who originated the role in the Memphis workshop production ), a big woman with a bigger Southern mouth also coping with loss. Not only does she help create the authenticity of the setting, but she also shows the many colors of grief. She and Robert Breuler as her deceased husband, Preacher, have a chemistry that evokes memories of the warmest of moments between grandparents.
Although Cicada plays a little liberally with the rules of its ghost-inhabited world to the point where it actually gets confusing, Route 66's production manages to hold its audience captive in the South long enough to be poignant, relevant and stirring.