Playwright: Dusan Kovacevic. At: Moving Stories Theatre at the Oracle, 3809 N. Broadway. Phone: 312-213-6236; $20. Runs through: Aug. 29
"Everything happens overnight!" laments Theodore "Teya" Kry, and he should know—he's one of the people responsible for it. A former dissident writer calling for an end to totalitarian oppression, he has seen his champions rise to power, only to implement policies not dissimilar to those of their predecessors. His 45th birthday finds him with only two books—both fiction—listed on his CV, a snug post as editor-in-chief of a Belgrade publishing company, and a history of blackouts, both of the alcohol-induced and the government-encouraged variety. On this day, however, as his secretary holds back a crowd of sycophantic well-wishers and a crazed author demands the return of his mislaid submission, Teya will meet his nemesis—who, it turns out, figured more prominently in shaping his destiny than either anticipated.
What if Inspector Javert had not committed suicide following a lifetime of chasing Jean Valjean, but instead lived to make peace with his quarry after the inevitable civil unrest accompanying great social changes had rendered their differences negligible? Playwright Dusan Kovacevic proposes a confrontation between an ex-radical and the now-retired secret agent assigned to record his every subversive step. The dossier accumulated by the diligent Luke Lubin is now so exhaustive—encompassing even a collection of misplaced personal items—as to exceed Teya's own recollections of a career fueled by adrenaline and idealism.
Plays crafted on speculative political dialogues are the kind of material that actors relish and audiences dread, being too often reduced to symposia populated by talking heads nattering over minutiae significant—or not. Fortunately, this Moving Stories production boasts Steve Scott directing Paul D'Addario ( on loan from Gift Theatre ) and company artistic director Joe Mack in the respective roles of Teya and Luke. Together they quickly dispense with the ambiguity engendered by our initial suspicion over the extent to which Luke's report may have been fabricated from Teya's published works, instead engaging us for 60 minutes in the dynamic of men discovering the price exacted on their lives by fickle partisan sensibilities—regrets universal in their application to all those who sacrifice for a cause only to emerge disillusioned.
The Professional has run continuously since 1990 and met with acclaim in several translations—with good reason. When whole nations deem it convenient to embrace selective memory, the true heroes are the anonymous scribes whose unedited chronicles bridge the gaps imposed by temporal despots, lest the facts become as untraceable as a rejected manuscript.
