Playwright: Jim Cartwright.At: Ka-Tet Theatre at Stage Left,3408 N. Sheffield. Tickets: 1-800-838-3006;www.katettheatre.com; $15. Runs through: Aug. 29
Twice since March, an off-Loop troupe has reinvented a difficult large-cast play I thought I knew well, wiping away memories of ( or comparisons to ) fabled past Chicago productions. Strawdog did it with Red Noses and now—more impressively as the troupe is brand-new—Ka-Tet does it with Road, Neil Cartwright's 1986 play about working-class despair in a Northern England industrial town.
Road is part of a line of post-WWII proletarian plays by John Osborn, Arnold Wesker, Edward Bond, Mark Ravenhill, Caryl Churchill, Sara Kane and others, mostly featuring self-loathing and self-defeating characters. Road is more comedic than similar plays, but is episodic to a fault and more rant than social analysis in its tour of drinking, clubbing and sex along the local high street, guided by a sometimes-charming vagrant, Scullery ( Jeremy Clark ) . Road overflows with raucous poetry, and often seems like an urban, post-industrial and violent twist on Dylan Thomas's Under Milkwood. As one young woman, Louise ( Kathryn Bartholomew ) , observes, "I wanna say things but it's hard. I got big wishes. ... Everything has been made ordinary in our lives." Says her would-be swain, "Fuckin' hell, who's spoiling love? Me, us, them or God?" As a skinhead describes a dust-up, "I struck deep and dark, the twist of the fist in the night. It was fierce."
But language aside, Road's characters don't have growth opportunities. There's scarcely a kind syllable spoken in Act I's nihilistic scenes of emotional and physical violence, while Act II allows the need for human comfort to trump despair—at least temporarily—in the wee hours of the morning. "Try a little tenderness," Otis Redding intones on his magnificent recording, as Joey and Eddie ( Nick Mikula and Dan Meisner ) impress their girls with a passionate lip-sync routine that's the show's unexpected and captivating climax.
Point is, Road very much is an actor's play ( vs. message or story ) , and an ensemble play even more. For its debut, Ka-Tet sports a fine ensemble of 12 mostly young actors playing 27 major and minor roles, throwing themselves with deep commitment and great comic ability into director Richard Stockton Rand's rapid and highly physical staging. In the tiny and dark storefront space, Rand creates most effective tableaux utilizing the theater's depth all the way into the back alley. Musical selections from Harry James and Puccini to Jerry Lee Lewis and the Bee Gees add much texture to the production even if not period-perfect.
Ka-Tet probably is unaware of the legendary 1987 Chicago premiere of Road, directed by Robert Falls for Remains Theatre ( staged one block from Ka-Tet ) . Most Ka-Tet kids would have been two years old, but it's just as well. They make Road their own, and put themselves on the Chicago theatrical road map.
