Playwright: Sam Shepard & Joseph Chaikin. At: Two Lights Theatre Company at the Viaduct, 3111 N. Western. Phone: 773-296-6024; $10. Runs through: Aug. 16
Savage/Love is precisely the kind of play that appeals to students and recently-graduated students. For one thing, it's all about sex. Oh, the authorslate 20th-century icons Sam Shepard and Joseph Chaikinclaim that it's about romantic love but that concept, by its very nature, invites PG-13 erotic expression of the sort that fledgling actors relish. For another, it has no linear plot, but is instead a series of free-verse soliloquies with titles based solely on subject, so that characters"Virgin," "Escort," "Drag Queen," etc.can be freely assigned to the various speaking voices, of which there are enough to guarantee every company member a solo moment in the spotlight. Finally, the open-form structure of the script permits each performer to embellish the text according to their individual interpretation.
Upon entering the auditorium, we see, on one side of the stage, a vaguely western-styled tavern with tables, stools and a staircase that will later facilitate personnel climbing onto the roof ( often while wearing high heels ) . The other side is dominated by a pair of floor-to-ceiling white shutters concealing a large, rolling bed, when not serving as a projection screen. The dramatic action occurs in and around the locales suggested thereby: a young man and woman contemplate the significance of their meeting, a miniskirted coquette parades atop the bar, a transvestite seduces a nervous youth ( "Which presentation of myself would make you cross the border?" ) , a wife laments the absence of her unfaithful spouseand a lone woman, identified in this production as "Aphrodite," circulates among these and other would-be lovers, dispensing advice, comfort and a cappella serenades.
The language is lush and lyrical, as befits its theme ( "I want to strangle your dreams inside me/I want to know I'll die before we aren't lovers anymore" ) , but lest it reduces what purports to be a theatrical event to a round-robin Poetry Slam, the relentlessly verbal content is alleviated by such visual and aural elements as a score of classic pop tunes, a wardrobe of likewise vintage garb, quasi-psychedelic videos and orchestrated-movement exercises. For all the imagination and energy reflected in the efforts of the Two Lights ensemble for the show's ninety minutes' duration, however, the results at this time cannot help but emerge a schoolroom project more to be enjoyed by the participants ( and their immediate adherents ) than by spectators.