Playwright: Idris Goodwin
At: Hermit Theatre in association with Prop Thtr at the Loop, 8 E. Randolph St.
Phone: ( 312 ) 744-5667; $15
Runs through: Dec. 21
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If you left out the catchball-game choreography, the train-conductor announcements of locale, the snapshot tableaux, the multiple blackouts-within-scenes and the ponderous delivery that director Stefan Brun imposes on his cast, the play would probably run about 20 minutes. With the addition of these elements, however, our evening stretches to an hour-and-a-halflonger, if you count time spent viewing the lobby display of artifacts alleged to be thematically related to the family we are soon to meet.
Ah, yes, the Locks: After inflicting the names of Venus and Odin on his helpless offspring, the clan sire ( whom we never see ) bought the roadhouse bearing his name, with the expectation that his children would someday assume responsibility for his investment. To be sure, Venus Lock prefers to serve as a bouncer for that establishment ( to the amusement of the hired muscle, played with sly humor by Tina Marie Wright and the author ) . And Odin Lock yearns to marry above his station and leave the tavern trade forever. Are they any more implausible than their most obvious prototype, the equally oddball Berry bunch in John Irving's Hotel New Hampshire?
But unlike Irving, Idris Goodwin seems less interested in his characters than in their dysfunctional dynamic: The angry Venus is a controller over and above the normal range of big-sisterly domination, despite being daddy's favorite. The meek Odin finds solace in an audio-diary to which he confides his 'philosophy'. When Odin attracts the attention of his ideal womanshe's brainy, cosmopolitan, she cooks and dresses elegantly, and she's AFRICANVenus transfers her competitive impulses to the slackerly consort she literally picked from the trash at the club.
This pessimistic saga is enacted on a stage starkly furnished with two banquet-hall chairs and a folding conference table, the latter doubling as beds, podiums, library and drafting desks and whatever else the action requires. And the casting of boyish-faced male actors opposite mature-looking females heightens the ambiance of an Edward Gorey-designed production of You're A Good Man, Charlie Brown. But if Goodwin and Brun don't care any more about The Locks than this, why should we?