Playwright: David Alex
At: Azusa Productions at the
Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln
Phone: 773-871-3000; $20
Runs through: Aug. 24
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
This isn't the familiar cozy where the enlightened young student grows accustomed to her elderly mentor's face. Nor is it the one where the schoolmarm says, 'I'm 26, I'm single and I teach school, and that's the bottom of the pit' and rides off with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. No, this is the one where the 21-year-old mathematics genius declares, 'You're a mature woman. You accept men as they are, and don't try to change them.' And since the object of his assertion—his former English professor—is a nurturing 42-year-old academic with no other immediate marital prospects, she complies with the emotionally undemanding equation that her would-be swain confidently labels 'love.'
If Onto Infinity were a different kind of play, such a liaison would be the premise for incisive polemics, bittersweet hankie-wringing or tragic despair. But while playwright David Alex's young man/older woman Romance—with a capital 'R'—is commendable for its originality, the dynamic invoked by this unconventional attraction remains enigmatic, not only to their peers, but to us as well. For starters, their idiom is the language of metaphysical poetry and higher calculus, geekspeak that both share ( intuitively, doncha know? ) , but that all but ensures that no individual audience member will find the whole of their discourse comprehensible.
Further impairing empathy is our awareness of the author's literary manipulations—most notably, his none-too-subtle evasion of any obstacles not easily dismissed by his, literally, prestidigital hero's glib number-juggling, delivered with a self-satisfied smirk that makes you want to empty a beer over his head. But what most sabotages our credulity is the inexplicably lethargic pace the two lead actors adopt when swapping their sweet nothings. The 'passion' that our lovebirds claim is not a sensation conjured by cold blood, and as declaimed in the mannered performances of Luke Wager and Amy Anderson, theirs may be a marriage of minds, but not the all-fulfilling alliance they would have us believe it is.
This messy universe, as we all know, is not governed by logic and theoretical syllogisms. Lovers are permitted to banish this irrevocable fact from their consciousness, but in attempting to do likewise, Alex offers us no alternative but to anticipate with clinical detachment the inevitable moment when his clueless comrades must face the end of their tranquil—and patently artificial—Eden.