Playwright: Naomi Wallace. At: Eclipse Theatre Company at the Greenhouse, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave. Phone: 773-404-7336;$28. Runs through: Sept. 4
Our setting is a remote mountain village during the Great Depression, where the frustration born of inescapable poverty spurs adults to ritualistically smash crockery and teenagers joust with oncoming trains. Our story focuses on two representatives of each: meek Dalton Chance and butch Pace Creagan, along with Dray and Gin, the former's agoraphobic unemployed-dad and stoical breadwinner-mom. Then there is the local sheriff, who has his own eccentric ways of dealing with the stress of inactivity.
The lawman is introduced early because we begin with Pace dead and a jailed Dalton confessing to her murder, but refusing to expound further. Through a series of flashbacks, we gradually trace the developing attraction between the forthright tomboy and her compliant swain (Pace boasts of their erotically-chargedbut chastely warysexual explorations, telling Dalton's appalled mother, "He's your son! He does as he's told!"). No less fraught with risk than their suicidal games, however, is the malaise afflicting the town's factory workers, who labor under conditions bereft of union protection or safety regulations. What is the more dangerous behaviortaunting the intractable locomotives or immersing your hands in radioactive dyes until they glow in the dark?
Most young actors choose to internalize the emotions of their personae, in accordance with the lethargy invoked by Naomi Wallace's bleak environment, but director Jonathan Berry understands that there can be no tragedy without the possibility of triumph. To this end, he has instructed his cast to give full expression to the passions simmering beneath a veneer of resignation, even to suggesting characters sometimes finding their words AS they speak them. (When Dray laments, "I don't want to live," he then adds, almost as an afterthought, "like this.") The heightened attention to text makes for phrases and speeches unexpectedly leaping forth from the deceptively laconic dialogue to startle us with their surprising insights and eloquent observations.
"My heart's shooting dice in my chestsnake-eyes!" declares our heroine, thrilling to the powerful engines that swiftly slice through boredom and bodies. Is Wallace's play a neo-gothic romance of innocents thwarted by nihilism driving them to a despair as fatal as that of Heathcliff and his Cathy? Or is it a social drama, its subject the hardships suffered by working-class citizens in less enlightened times? Whatever the answer, there is no denying the riveting suspense generated by the Eclipse Theatre Company's darkly evocative production.