Playwright: Josh Zagoren. At: Hobo Junction at The Cornservatory, 4210 N. Lincoln. Phone: 773-704-9707; $15. Runs through: Sept. 27
You can bring drinks into the Cornservatory, and alcohol definitely improves some shows, especially comedies. Indeed, downing a couple at the corner before you enter to see Talk Kiss Blackout is a good idea. Reviewed at the final dress rehearsal, it's not an awful show, but it's a comedy of small scope and ambition which may have limited appeal to folks outside showbiz.
Barely 60 minutes long, it's a backstage look at rehearsals for a new play that reveals the theatrical hierarchy of director, actors, stage manager, technical crew, etc. The main issue is that, after a month of rehearsal, the leading man and woman haven't realized they must kiss in the final moments, and now are unable to do so. Their conflict is paralleled by a male techie and female techie whose bickering banter quite predictably results in a closing lip lock, the kind the leading man/woman couldn't achieve.
The degree to which you are amused will depend on the degree to which you find theatrical stereotypes amusing: the artsy-fartsy director ( who wears a beret ) , the constantly-loosening-up actors, the bossy stage manager, etc. Writing with energy, but also fast and sloppy, playwright ( and company co-founder ) Josh Zagoren plunks you down with no exposition whatsoever, not that it would add much to the shallowly-drawn characters. He conjures up a group of—what?—semi-professional theater folk who bear little resemblance to the actuality of Chicago Off-Loop Theater and a lot more to the types lovingly satirized by Christopher Guest in his film, Waiting for Guffman. Trained actors unable to kiss in a scene? A stage manager who allows an actor to eat food onstage and then leave the container dead center waiting to be tripped over ( which, eventually, it is ) ? Untimely farts and sneezes? Zagoren—who notably does not include the playwright as a character—stretches credulity and probability. If Talk Kiss Blackout was just a 15 minute sketch, the bar would be lower. But it's promoted as a play, and as such it requires more flesh and more structure, even as a small comedy.
Given the limits of what they are asked to do, the cast supports the work very well and provides a few smiles, especially Andrew Marchetti as the archly ethereal director; Derek Garza and Crystal Hartford as the attractive but smoochless actors; and Dane Lewandowski and Ashley Bagot as the long-suffering stagehands whose final clinch is heavily telegraphed. There may be subtleties to their interpretations they haven't found yet, but they probably haven't been asked to find them by director Breahan Eve Pautsch.
If you're out for a night at a North Center restaurant or bar, Talk Kiss Blackout might be an amusing hour's stop, but it's not a main event.