Playwright: Calamity West. At: Sideshow Theatre Company at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave. Tickets: 773-975-8150; www.sideshowtheatre.org; $20-$25. Runs through: July 29
"Oh my God! There's the crawl space!"
That's what a fellow critic groaned while eyeing designer Sara Brown's 1970s suburban home set for Sideshow Theatre Company's world premiere of The Gacy Play at Theater Wit.
The performance hadn't even started yet, but you could already sense an uneasiness in the audience about playwright Calamity West's drama focusing on the notorious Chicago-area mass murderer John Wayne Gacy Jr., who sexually assaulted and murdered more than 30 young men in the 1970s. Known for dressing up like a clown and for his Democratic Party work (he was even photographed with then-First Lady Rosalynn Carter in 1978), Gacy's string of grisly murders also included the disturbing fact that the majority of his victim's bodies were buried in the crawl space of his suburban home in Norwood Park Township.
With such an unsavory subject matter, West really needed to pull out all the dramatic stops to make The Gacy Play work. Alas, West is successful only part of the time in The Gacy Play, with certain scenes being far more effective than others.
West sets The Gacy Play in the period right before the break-up of Gacy (Andy Luther) and his second wife, Carol (Elizabeth B. Murphy), as she becomes increasingly suspicious of her husband's attachment to young male employees like Dave (Andrew Goetten) and the stench emanating from below the house. West's play also has fantasy aspects, like an apparition of Hollywood star John Wayne (Jim Farrell) appearing to question Gacy's masculinity and a scene that has three of Gacy's victims (Alex Ring, Adam Shalzi and Andy Sheagren) pondering their untimely fate.
West is best creating an ominous atmosphere throughout the work, even in scenes of comic relief like when visiting guests Tom and Peg (the hilarious duo of Joe Mack and Deanna Boyd) drunkenly spar and inadvertently push Gacy's and Carol's buttons to evaluate aspects of their own troubled marriage. Other times, the dialogue doesn't feel genuine (like in Gacy and Carol's combative break-up scene) or come off like missed opportunities (the John Wayne's butch fantasy appearances.)
If the play itself isn't perfect, The Gacy Play certainly receives a strong physical production with plenty of good performances. Director Jonathan L. Green's decision to place the audience at two opposing ends to peer through the Gacy home center stage offers a certain amount of uncomfortable voyeurism and in-plain-sight/hindsight culpability while watching the show.
But then again, Luther plays Gacy with such regular-guy nonchalance that he gives a hint to how Gacy was able to pull the wool over the eyes of so many friends and colleagues. Knowing what ultimately happened will make you squirm throughout The Gacy Play.