Playwright: William Inge
The Artistic Home, 1420 W. Irving Park
Phone: ( 773 ) 404-1100; $18-$20
Runs through: May 1
Poor William Inge. The acclaimed dramatist of Bus Stop and Picnic struggled throughout his life with his homosexuality and alcoholism. Artistic successes became fewer later in Inge's life, which ended in suicide in 1973.
You can see Inge flailing around with his pessimistic drama Natural Affection, which briefly flopped on Broadway in 1963. Watched today, the play has the earmarks of someone trying to compete with Tennessee Williams for theatrical shock value, but lacking the poetical language and intriguing characters that make for a satisfying evening of slumming with people's many woes.
Inge's unsubtle recipe crammed with plot devices certainly aims to startle early 1960s sensibilities: Start with guilt from an unmarried working-class Chicago mother dealing with abandonment issues regarding her juvenile delinquent son. Add in Oedipal overtones between the two plus some extra jealously and resentment from mom's younger live-in boyfriend with expensive tastes. Add to the mix a frisky nymphomaniac neighbor married to a raging alcoholic closet homosexual with a penchant for drunken orgies. Top it all off with a violent murder to blow the lid off this pressure-cooked scenery-chewing stew.
The Artistic Home is certainly daring and ambitious to dredge up Inge's Natural Affection. It easily fascinates early on with its dramatic set up and feels right at home in the theater's cozy storefront space ( the generous amounts of Chicago-area name-dropping also helps ) .
But Natural Affection comes off as a disappointment. The problematic script calls for the characters to unbelievably turn their emotions on a dime. And when the cast does just that, it comes out in such a loud ( and unconvincing ) screech that you question why the Artistic Home even deigned to lavish any attention on this histrionic muddle.
Don't fault the actors for trying. When not in emotional duress-mode, the cast is quite enjoyable. Mike Carroll comes off best as the boyfriend Bernie with his thick Chicago accent and contempt at making less money than his girlfriend. Kathy Scambiatterra and Peter Fitzsimmons have some uncomfortable moments of mother-son incestuous tension, while Mark Dillon has fun being the drunk questioning his sexuality.
Under John Mossman's direction, Natural Affection certainly received a handsome production at the Artistic Home. Kurt Boetcher's aspirant working-class apartment is cozy and detailed ( the spinning aluminum Christmas tree is a great piece of camp ) . Lighting designer Molly Neylan frames the drama nicely around the characters, who are all done up nicely in Elizabeth Ann McKnight's period costumes.
The Artistic Home certainly bit off more than it could chew with Natural Affection, but it still is interesting to see simply as a relic from a not-so-distant past. Natural Affection also is an insight into the unhappy life of Inge, who tragically took his artistic failures much too personally.