Playwright: John Guare
At: Artistic Home, 1420 W. Irving Park
Phone: 866-811-4111; $20-$23
Runs through: March 18
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
Fans of crime procedurals—CSI, NCIS, Law & Order, et al.—will likely enjoy the whodunit at the core of John Guare's 1977 play. So seductive, if no longer shocking, are the sordid deeds providing the plot its momentum, that we are almost willing to ignore the bevy of terminally introspective and relentlessly garrulous personifications of urban angst—stereotypes abandoned by most of Guare's fellow Caffe Cino beats by the end of the 1960s—comprising its populace.
Our milieu is Greenwich Village, where a serial murderer has been leaving a trail of decapitated corpses in the shadows of the early post-Stonewall gay district. This doesn't deter teenager Bert Yearn and his slackerly buddies from preying on the Christopher Street habitués for thrills and profit. But Bert's antisocial behavior stems from a different source than that of his toxic peers: three months earlier, his mother uprooted the two of them from bucolic Maine to the boho squalor of New York City—ostensibly, to search for her sister, now cheerfully employed as a Times Square stripper and occasional skin-flick model. When Rosalie dies in an accident within days of being discovered, virtuous Betty proceeds to adopt her late sibling's 'carpe diem' philosophy—until the mutilated body of her son is fished out of the Hudson.
Guare's story, however, begins long after the fact, with Betty and the investigating policeman reuniting on a Nantucket ferry. It then flashes back to the scene of the initial interrogation, after which it flashes still further back to acquaint us with the circumstances leading to the possible filicide, the late Rosalie's cheerful ghost acting as our omniscient guide. But the chronological reversal is not what presents problems. Having taken us backward in time, Guare then feels obliged take us forward again, making for a plethora of closures that we no longer need or want.
Artistic Home Director John Mossman and his ensemble struggle to overcome their material's torpor. Betsy Elizabeth Ann McKnight fares best as the singing, dancing, peekaboo-clad Rosalie, chirpy and serene even in death. Michele Graff and Kevin Mose endow Betty and Bert with a few welcome variations on the agonized innocence—shrill for her, sullen for him—mandated by their inflated text, as do a squad of supporting players portraying assorted period lowlifes. But ultimately, Guare's ambitious artistic agenda renders his message as inert as the grisly corpse facilitating it.