Playwright: Laura Jacqmin At: Buzz22 Chicago at the Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Tickets: 773-404-7336; www.greenhousetheater.org; $20 Runs through: April 6
Most adults have learned to accept death as a sad inevitability, but for young people first confronting it, the sudden disappearance of a loved oneforevercalls into question the order of the entire cosmos. A playwright writing about this experience must understand its cataclysmic proportions, and the despair too often exacerbated by parents and peers demanding a premature cessation to its unsettling repercussions. Laura Jacqmin acknowledges her heroine's crisis of faith by allowing the bereaved Ora, after fleeing a squad of oppressive therapists, to embark on a journey through the realm of the dead, equipped only with her bicycle, a magic GPS device and a few talismans associated with the deceased friend ( significantly named Eddie ) who long ago taught her to ride the velocipedal wind. Since an adolescent's grief encompasses the entire universe, a panoply of necrodeitiesGreek, Hindu, Buddhist, Norse are recruited to assist the teenaged crusader determined to restore her comrade to the living, whatever the sacrifice.
Oh, but Buzz22 Chicagothe ensemble that conjured a Dungeons-and-Dragons fantasy kingdom in the Steppenwolf Garage for Qui Nguyen's She Kills Monsters in 2012doesn't stop at allegorical hypotheses. Instead, John Wilson's scenic design configures the Greenhouse's upstairs auditorium into a labyrinth of curtained and ramped paths for George Bajalia and Molly Fitzmaurice's dazzling array of wheeled vehiclesneon-hued BMXes, baroque modified Huffies, inline skates, rolling walkers, kick-scootersconveying the underworld denizens on their assigned activities. Izumi Inaba's costumes and Jeff Glass' lighting likewise evoke a multicultural pantheon ranging from the, literally, two-faced Hel and the scavenging Datsue-ba to a band of Lethewater-swilling slackers and a roiling river of malcontents ferried by a weary Charon.
This is a staggering load of tech-spec to pack into 90 minutes, even with Matt Deitchman's original score and Nathan Drackett's choreography facilitating swift changes in the subterranean landscape, making for a few moments of opening-night lag. A playbill insert acquainting us with the myriad phantoms we encounter would also expedite our orientation to each new locale. The lesson underlying all religious myth, howeverthat we are powerless to control our fatesis never eclipsed by the theatrical legerdemain. When Eddie finally speeds Ora on her way back to the light, our elation is as manifest as our epiphany upon sighting the sidewalk shrine erected to his memory ( coincidentally, called a "ghost bike" ).