Playwright: Sam Shepard
At: Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company at Angel Island, 735 W. Sheridan Rd.
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-0442; $18-$22
Runs through: Dec. 18
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
We hear the clan elders lament their farm's barren fields and their dead or crippled sons. But one of their enfeebled offspring keeps bringing in armloads of rich harvest. Then a grandson returns to the family homestead to claim his patrimony. 'You've all got a secret!' his girl friend declares, 'It's SO secret, in fact, you're all convinced it never happened!'
Sam Shepard's play sometimes features farcical stage business—the opening scene where an aged couch-grouch bickers with his likewise peckish heard-but-unseen wife, for example, or a later one where a bully's prosthetic leg is taken hostage. It also has its moments of enigmatic creepiness, as when a young woman is forced to endure a stranger's fingers thrust into her mouth ( no, he's not a dentist ) . There are also elements of pathos as moving as in classical tragedy.
Most productions never achieve the extremities indicated in the text, so reluctant are most actors to risk the autoemotional fallout associated with the commitment necessary to generate such tension. The Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company, however, has forged a 20-year reputation on their willingness to immerse themselves in personalities that any civilized person—including themselves, certainly—would find repugnant.
Under the guidance of company member Hans Fleischmann, making his directorial debut, the players never permit themselves the luxury of distance from their characters, instead inhabiting Shepard's twisted archetypes with a fearlessness that, combined with the intimacy engendered by the restrictive space, guarantees audience involvement so intense that when the catharsis arrives—so quietly we almost don't recognize it—our horror and relief are palpable. ( I heard a gasp from somewhere in my seat-row, and a slow 'Oooh, my god!' from the one behind. )
An ensemble of Mary-Arrchie regulars deliver some of their best work to date, notably Karl Potthoff as the affectingly underplayed oldest son, Richard Cotovsky as the dissipated clan patriarch, and auspicious newcomer Katlyn Carlson as the heir apparent's street-savvy consort. And in a play where objects get smashed to smithereens, set designer Grant Sabin deserves a safety award for keeping spectators well clear of flying glass ( though you might find a corn-shuck under your chair at intermission ) .