Playwright: Annie Baker. At: A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 N. Wells St. Tickets: 312-943-8722;
www.aredorchidtheatre.org; $25-$30. Runs through: March 3
Our play opens on two nondescript men engrossed in contemplative silence that continues unbroken for nearly three minutes—in performance time, an eternity—but this is not Waiting For Godot. Jasper and KJ are in their late 20s, dressed in shabby mall-outlet garb, and their domain is the back lot of a coffee shop located off a highway where unseen cars occasionally pass, but never stop. Jasper is a high school dropout, while KJ lives with his New Age mother, following his breakdown and subsequent departure from college. Jasper has long abandoned the garage-band (called "The Aliens"), for which KJ once wrote songs, to pen his great semi-autobiographical novel. Ah, but today their solitude is interrupted, by a teenage baristo named Evan who thinks they're really "cool."
Okay, maybe this is Waiting For Godot. (Did I mention that Jasper admires the neo-beat aesthetic of the late Charles Bukowski, and that KJ's major was theoretical mathematics and philosophy before psychotropic medications rendered his universe even more nebulous?) Unlike Vladimir and Estragon, however, these comrades-in-torpor are past pretending that their vigil has any purpose. Evan's shy overtures—bringing snacks and sparklers to their spartan Independence Day observances—disturb their self-imposed enervation only momentarily. Will the impressionable youth likewise succumb to inertia, alleviated by occasional bursts of hostile rage, or will he inspire his elders to escape from their existential void?
A production pandering to audiences' expectations might sentimentalize the male-bonding aspects of Jasper and KJ 's relationship to invoke a slacker version of George and Lennie, or perhaps emphasize the threat posed by a society indifferent to bright young misfits. At the very least, it would reconfigure the dialogue into that unique brand of theatrical repartee swapped by allegedly bored characters, but carefully phrased to keep spectators entertained (known in the trade as "enhanced ennui").
This is not such a production. Director Shade Murray is not afraid to dispense with actorly artifice to confront the tragedy of creative potential lacking the tools to express itself, and has instructed Steve Haggard, Brad Akin and Michael Finley to play these social waifs every bit as repressed and inarticulate as Baker has conceived them. Their leisurely delivery, designed to while away the endless days, may present a challenge to our patience, but theatergoers willing to stay the course will be rewarded with a vivid portrait of post-adolescent anomie in America today.
