Playwright: Lisa Loomer
At: New Leaf Theatre at the Lincoln Park Cultural Center, 2045 Lincoln Park West
Phone: ( 773 ) 274-9026; $15
Runs through: April 8
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
On New Year's eve, a girl named 'She' meets a boy named 'He,' and they repair to his Manhattan loft, there spending the night together. That's our play's plot. Ah, but She, a dancer recovering from a foot injury, is occupied in constructing a 'history calendar,' each month equal to 500 years, so time is not measured as WE perceive it. He, a classical bassoonist who wants to be a filmmaker, is a bundle of Oedipal neuroses swaddled in an insular universe where She is quickly reduced to the role of supporting character. ( Upon learning that She is half Puerto-Rican, He promptly exclaims, 'You Latina girls are so metaphysical!' )
If this sounds like a heavy load of literary flourish for a one-night stand, it's just the beginning. Before the night/lifetime is over, the lovers have been haunted by their spectral mothers—He's is a hypersensitive valkyrie who squabbles with his father in a pseudo-operatic duet, and She's, a stereotypical Mamasota in high-heeled mules and clattering bracelets. We are also introduced to a Hindi cupid—NOT named 'Kama Sutra'—who provides sound effects, props and auxiliary personnel. But the second act is dominated by fourth-wall breakdown, in which He and She not only address the audience, but pretend to seek our opinions on what to do next. ( Significantly, the question of whether to continue the play or terminate it immediately never comes up for a vote. )
Playwright Lisa Loomer obviously adores these navel-gazing egotists. ( Before making love, She asks if He has 'one of those things', whereupon He proceeds to recite a lengthy thesaurus of synonyms for 'condom.' ) And the New Leaf Theatre Company strives mightily to make us love them, too. Georgann Charuhas and Michael Derting's vulnerable She and volatile He, Annie Slivinski and Isabel Quintero's twin-gargoyle matriarchs, and Tiffany Joy Ross' impish Musician, along with Nick Keenan's sound design, Matthew J. Mefford's video projections, and Brandon Ray's inventive stage business, struggle to mine substance from beneath the style. But all their industry cannot disguise Loomer's smug self-assurance regarding the patience of theatregoers asked to pay for the privilege of listening to her argue with herself.