Playwright: Richard Greenberg. At: Artistic Home at Stage 773, 1225 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: 773-327-5252; www.stage773.org; $15. Runs through: Aug. 26
She's Jewish, the beautiful daughter of an expat dowager dubbed "the Duchess" by her neighbors. He's a handsome WASP to whom, she asserts, "nothing has ever happened." Lili Adler summers in the Catskill Mountains on a private estate, while Nick Lockridge is a guest at the fashionable resort across the lake boasting "American Plan" accommodations—lodging, meals and entertainment all in a single package. From the moment they first meet, they both lie—a reflex response acquired from parents and peers who also lead lives rooted in deception.
The year, you see, is 1959—a time when, following the upheaval of the recent war and the economic Depression preceding it, the return to peace and prosperity was predicated on conformity to "American" values as defined by those in power. (Grace Metalious' novel, Peyton Place, had exposed the underside of THAT culture three years earlier, but denial has an enduring shelf life.) When your mother fled Hitler's Germany only to be widowed by American anti-Semitism, when your father committed corporate crime and then suicide, when your gay schoolboy chum arrives seeking a more permanent arrangement, when the servants also conspire to shelter you from the truth—well, is it any wonder that this pair of lonely young people see in one another an escape from the secrets that cripple their spiritual growth?
Nothing good can come of romance founded in mutual humbuggery, of course—the lesson addressed in countless fables of love vs. money (Henry James' Washington Square, Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Friedrich DÃĽrrenmatt's The Visit among them). Unlike his predecessors, Richard Greenberg spares his ill-starred pilgrims a tragic end to their charade. Ten years later, Lili and Nick reunite in the city for the funeral of the Adler matriarch. The habits bred of an upbringing based in hypocrisy are hard to break ("Happiness is for other people," Lili concludes in Chekhovian mode), but the clamor of youthful protesters in the streets outside the posh apartment hints at future deliverance.
Most theater artists approach a play as a series of scenes, but what distinguishes Artistic Home productions is its holistic view of its material. To illustrate: When the lights dim to indicate passage of time or change of locale, the actors don't drop their personae and march offstage, but continue the previous dramatic action even as they exit. This creates three-dimensional characters quickly engaging our hopes for, if not happy, then kinder days ahead for all.
