Playwright: Hamish Linklater. At: Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn Ave. Tickets: 866-811-4111 or www.steeptheatre.com; $25-$35. Runs through Nov. 7
Actor/playwright Hamish Linklater must have a thing for bears. Or at least using bears for audiences to puzzle over their symbolic meaning in his world premiere comic drama The Cheats for Steep Theatre.
Before The Cheats begins, Chelsea Warren's cozy upscale living room set with adjoining terrace and views of palm trees through the window instantly suggests a wealthy home in California ( which has a bear on its state flag ). Then later there's a conversation between the married couple of professional actress Anne ( Kendra Thulin ) and teacher John ( Peter Moore ) about their across-the-way neighbor's cursive "B" ball cap ( a vintage Chicago Bears football logo ).
And then there's that neighbor himself that John has so obsessively been spying on while taking smoke breaks out on the terrace. Jonathan ( Brad Akin ) is a bearish and laconic film gaffer who owns an oversize dog that often gets loose whose name is, you guessed it, "Bear."
But as the plot unfolds on this midweek Halloween morning, it turns out that both Anne and John have previously encountered Jonathan and his wife, Susie ( Julia Siple ), and have guarded reasons why they haven't made a unified effort to reach out to their neighbors. So when Jonathan barges into their home, his alternately sad and menacing presence upends the stable relationship between John and Anne as gnawing secrets and personal tragedies get forced out into the open.
Now some might find Linklater straining a bit too hard to make the plot mechanics of The Cheats work via so much coincidence and odd character choiceseven though he says in the program notes that the play was inspired by real events. Yet The Cheats is more than redeemed by Linklater's astute observations of the banalities of everyday conversation and what people try to conceal when uncomfortable truths are pushed too close to the surface.
Director Joanie Schultz has found a cast that works very well to bring Linklater's vision to life. Akin's Jonathan in particular proves to be very fascinating as his manly and lumbering bearish presence changes the whole easygoing husband-wife dynamic of Thulin's Anne and Moore's John. The actors also do a great job of highlighting the class differences that Linklater brings up between the couples and how they take divergent approaches to mourning.
Now with The Cheats, Linklater could be commenting on how many married couples' animalistic natures are constantly wearing away at a monogamous facade. That's because in addition to all of the aforementioned bear references, there's also prominent and comical appearances of famous porcine characters from pop culture in the play, too. So in addition to all the bears, watch out for pigs in The Cheats, too.