Playwright: Paul Turner. At: Annoyance Productions, 4830 N. Broadway. Phone: 773-561-4665; $10. Runs through: Thursdays through Dec. 16 ( no performance Thanksgiving )
As far as red flags go, few are hoisted higher and set to fluttering faster than those that result from a program indicating that the director and the playwright are one and the same person. Unless you're Conor McPherson doing The Seafarer, odds are it's best to let somebody else get your work into shape for an audience.
Special Import, directed and written by Paul Turner, is a case in point. The dialogue feels unfinished, the players under-rehearsed and the premise a lazy, tepid rehash of similar stories that have been coming down the theatrical pipeline for decades.
Stop me if you've heard this one before: Upscale Yuppie moves into gentrifying neighborhood and clashes with the crusty old corner pub barkeep who loves nothing more than to go on about how much better things were before all the local mom and pop shops were turned into pricey condos.
The battle between old and new has already been fought at least once this year ( in Tracy Letts' much-better 'Superior Donuts.' ) It's fought again here in a half-baked, lacksidaisical, wholly uninvolving manner.
Set entirely in a Burt's, a neighborhood joint in Albany Park, Special Import begins with long-time bartender Ray ( Tim Kitzrow ) belligerently berating new customer Josh ( Gabe Kroeten. ) Why Josh stays to have a beer in a venue where the bartender is so wholly abusive—making fun of everything from his name to his profession—is a mystery. But OK, for grins and giggles, we'll go along with it.
Harder to overlook is the third man in the bar, a loner given to shouting out non-sequitorial profanities every so often. One suspects Turner created the character to give the bar some salty neighborhood cred. But all he does is leave the audience wondering why nobody calls to get help for this poor soul obviously suffering from advanced stages of Tourette's Syndrome.
As for Ray and Josh, they never find focus in their rambling, pointless conversations. A lengthy exchange about the difference between cappuccinos and lattes is a bewildering deadened. Extended confusion that results when one character mistakes the phrase 'tapas' for 'topless' is—one suspects—supposed to be funny but in reality is about as humorous as a first-grade knock-knock joke. Ditto an obvious gag about whether the bar is actually located in Ravenswood Manor or Albany Park—they're all lumps of dialogue that sit, lifeless and without direction, on the underwritten, half-heartedly performed page.
Worst yet is Turner's didactic tone. It's clear that gentrification is bad, and maintaining the old neighborhood is good. There's no nuance or gray area between the two, now equivocations that would give the argument a deeper, more realistic tenure. As it is we simply get types, arguing about stereotypes.
