Playwright: David Schulner
At: Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway
Phone: ( 773 ) 549-1815; $18-$22
Runs through: April 24
Just when you thought that the theater community that brought us Killer Joe, The Persecution of Arnold Petch and Cannibal Cheerleaders On Crack couldn't get any nastier, along comes Profiles Theatre with their world premiere production of Reparation, David Schulner's savage indictment of Capitalism Gone Wild.
The play contains no nudity and the only sex is a reminiscence so sociopathically outrageous that we are sure that it must be fabricated. Bathroom functions are restricted to the offstage bathroom. A couple of firearms make an appearance, but there's little graphic violence. No, the obscenity that propels the plot this time is—are you ready for this?—SURGICAL AMPUTATION. Randolph, a corporate greedhead afflicted with a fatal illness, has negotiated—all legally, he assures us—a series of transplants, the various limbs and organs to be supplied by third world citizens. The press is horrified. His lawyer, Berman, is horrified. Even his own bodyguard is horrified. But the procedure continues, nevertheless.
Well, of COURSE it's a metaphor. When Berman objects to the appearance in his office of an increasingly mutilated African prepared to sign away his life's blood, literally, Randolph sneers at his attorney's sudden guilt, reminding him of his collusion in past business ventures obliterating whole villages in faraway countries, only to abandon them after their profitability wanes. And in this inhumane universe, says our author, money's power corrupts at all levels—as when Randolph's goon reveals that Berman's daughter SOLD him the torn garment he then uses to intimidate the distraught father.
Schulner's ham-handed analogies ( 'You're not God!' protests Berman, to which Randolph replies, 'Only the poor need God. I have MONEY!' ) provides Joe Jahraus and Darrell W. Cox another opportunity to do their Earnest Wuss and Handsome Creep tag-team turn. They are ably supported by Craig Degel as a surprisingly educated thug and Sean Nix as the sullen, but ultimately dispensable, supplier of human flesh. And Richard Cotovsky's unflinching direction renders the arguments as smart as they are provocative—for playgoers with sufficiently strong stomachs, anyway.
