Playwright: Carlos Murillo. At: Walkabout Theater Company at Breadline Theatre, 1802 W. Berenice Ave. Phone: ( 312 ) 458-0566; $15. Runs though: Jan. 31
If the scenario depicted in Edward Hopper's Nighthawks were updated to the 21st century, it might resemble the world of this play. And there'd be a television set in it.
The titular Human Interest Story is a chirpy little newsbite about a cat who paints pictures—with some prodding from its owner. Its telecast is doomed to be interrupted, however, by a breaking story of a senator's spectacular on-camera suicide, the details recounted to us by his shaken colleague. Watching the newscast are a young couple alienated from one another after a visit from an old school chum. And, unknown to all these people, the mother of a 'Teenage Cyberpunk Separatist Wannabe' stares incredulously at the images recorded with the camera she herself gave him.
On the surface, these premises and personnel might seem as generic as the medium figuring so prominantly in their progress ( a lonely bachelor even words his sexual fantasies in videomatic terms ) . But author-director Carlos Murillo's impressively articulate text keeps us always cognizant of our narrative dimensions and the cast he has assembled for this Walkabout production embrace their universe with an intensity that renders significant every pause and twitch. In the hands of Harry Eddleman, a cigarette becomes a conductor's baton orchestrating the subtlest of line readings. Likewise adroit interpretation is displayed by Kelly Cooper ( whose delivery of the innocuous remark, 'I pick up my beer and I take a looong sssssip' generates a frisson as shivery as the beverage it celebrates ) .
Marssie Mencotti captures the stunned anguish of a parent confronted with monstrous offspring ( and, in another scene, an on-target vocal impression of feline rage ) , while Mary Grill hints at the cruelty lurking beneath small-town domesticity. Sean Sinitiski conveys all the supressed horror of an eyewitness to willful self-destruction, and Paula Stevens utters the play's shocking opening speech with a sweetness that calls us to immediate attention.
A more careless execution might have resulted in just another talking-heads docudrama. But in Breadline Theatre's chilly cabinlike space, Murillo's literary expertise and the Walkabout ensemble's fierce concentration transcend their material to hold us riveted for the show's densely packed 90 minutes.
