Playwright: Marisa Wegrzyn. At: Theatre Seven at the Greenhouse, 1229 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-404-7336; $12-$18. Runs through: May 10
A principle invoked in actors' training is awareness of an environment beyond the boundaries of the stage—i.e., where a character entering the scene enters from, or exits to. Marisa Wegrzyn could have written her play as a gritty noiresque life-in-the-big-city procedural—there's street violence in it, along with an unexplained death and what might be a ghost. Or she could have made it a Victorian romance, for the action also encompasses lonely strangers in a faceless metropolis extending one another compassion, solace and refuge. ( You won't find Diversey "harbor" on any map, by the way. )
Instead, the facts are purposely minimal: a man walking a dog near the Lakeview beach happens upon a mugging. Both interfere, the dog chasing the thief away and the man comforting the victim, who refuses his offer to escort her to her door. A stupidly drunk student later encounters the runaway animal and returns it to its owner. In the morning, the aforementioned assault victim is discovered drowned in the lake. We hear testimonials from the deceased's roommate, from the Good Samaritan intruder, from the ex-girlfriend who helps him search for the lost pet and from the stranger who finds it. In the end, however, our knowledge of these events is kept as unresolved and speculative as those of the involuntarily participants. Will the incident affect the lives of those touched by it? And if it does, how? Will they forge fresh bonds as a result? And will they be better for the changes thus generated?
Young adults new to Chicago will likely recognize themselves in Wegrzyn's personae, but the hypersubjective roads they trace may also spark nostalgic memories in former witnesses to the early 1970s flowering of the neighborhood once dubbed "New Town," of a poignantly innocent universe where restive isolation provides a defense against the bittersweet retrospection that comes of too-recent displacement ( an all-ages phenomenon nowadays ) and the future stretching ahead in all its terrifying and seductive uncertainty.
This remount of the Theatre Seven company's 2007 debut production has its work cut out to establish the requisite intimacy in the spacious Greenhouse mainstage, but under Brian Golden's direction, the four-person ensemble navigates its 55 minutes of spartan phrasing, sprinkled with flashes of startling lyricism ( the moment in the gestation of a plan, for example, where "your head feels like it's full of firecrackers" ) , with a skill and delicacy to render this "Chicago love poem" exquisite beyond the most jaded expectations.