Playwright: Keith Huff
At: Premiere Theatre at Peter Jones Gallery, 1806 W. Cuyler
Phone: 773-250-7055; $15
Runs through: March 31
By Jonathan Abarbanel
Chicago playwright Keith Huff generally delivers highly intelligent work and Gray City doesn't disappoint. It's set around the University of Chicago in the 1980s, with time and place locked in via references to Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap, Milton Friedman, Lolita, The Who's Tommy, Kierkegaard and the dangers of Hyde Park at night. Huff's pop culture and scholarly allusions also establish the intellectual framework as 22-year-old Mickey and 21-year-old Katie meet, mate, love, suffer and separate. Their verbal sparring and conversations—filled with scholarly and pop-culture allusions, and peppered with French—ring true for two very bright, intense yet callow collegians.
The play's title is a nickname for U. of C. when Hannah Holborn Gray was president. It also expresses the view that very little in life is black or white. Adult decision-making is complicated because most situations are some shade of gray. Katie argues that a world of absolutes would be much easier to navigate, but that's not the way it is ( or The Way It Was, another of the play's pop references ) .
The same is true for theater. Few plays merit uninhibited raves or unforgiving pans. Gray City is no exception. Despite the intelligence and quality of its conversation, it seems like an elaborate playwriting exercise. 'Take two characters,' the playwriting prof says, 'and write their first meeting, their falling in love, their break-up.' Or, the exercise might require placing them in some particularly dramatic situation, on a sinking ship, say, or pregnant and unwed.
Huff does it all, minus the sinking ship. Further, Mickey is a socially regressive virgin while Katie is a chatty man-eater. He's blue-collar poor, she's not. Their romance—Katie coaxing Mickey from his shell—could be the entire play. Here, it's just two scenes in 90 minutes that also include dependency on prescription meds, a rape and carrying an anacephalic fetus to term. The couple caroms from crisis to crisis as if Huff were trying them out for something bigger and yet to be written.
Scott Stangland ( Mickey ) and Anna Carini ( Katie ) imbue their damaged-goods characters with energy and even charm that isn't apparent in the text itself. Stangland's rapid change from sociopathic nerd to confident lover was especially well-handled as Huff's pithy play makes huge emotional leaps without transitional scenes. Director Anna C. Bahow shaped their work well. I could tell both actors are bigger than the characters they played. I don't know whether that's good or bad.
Huff himself supplied an ever-changing collage of video images used as the play's kinetic background ( along with David Denman's painted gray skyscape ) in a simple, effective physical production in harmony with the funky art gallery location.
