Playwright: Paul Barile
At: Breadline Lab, 1801 W. Byron
Phone: (773) 282-0344; $15-$18
Runs through: March 28
What a whimsical title! Too bad the production behind it fails to live up to the whimsy or even bear much of a link to either Robert Mitchum or Dunkin' Donuts. Playwright/ director Paul Barile, in this world premiere production by his fledgling theater group, Another Chicago Theater Company, seems to be someone with big ambitions but small talents, if this show is any indication.
Robert Mitchum is about a young couple three weeks away from getting married. Living together in a Lincoln Avenue apartment whose furnishings belie their yuppie professional lives, Casey and George are all wrong for each other from the get go. Both are shallow, unformed people who have no idea what marriage, or even a relationship, is about. Mistake number one: giving us characters for whom we fail to care. Casey and George are one-dimensional people with little wit, charm, or capability of inspiring empathy. Mistake number two: there's no suspense in watching a relationship founder from the very beginning. Barile fails to provide either of these people with any motivation for wanting to get married, so it's difficult for us to invest any interest in whether they make it to the altar or not. They don't seem in love; they don't have a strong physical attraction; there's not even financial or familiar forces pushing them together. Their relationship offers a huge 'So what?' Bad idea for characters central to a play that is supposed to entertain, if not enlighten, us. Mistake number three: Barile seems to be writing about these people with no cohesiveness (he confesses in his director's notes that he wrote the play in a bar between sips of whiskey, and I believe him) or any feeling for credible characterization on plotting. When George suddenly seems to be gay (in a shrill, silly scene where he and his fiancée have a hunky friend over for dinner), it pretty much comes from out of left field. Not only is it not necessary, it's gimmicky. Likewise, Casey's long dead father, and his back story, contribute little to the play's plausibility. When he appears, ghost-fashion, to extol her about the virtues of true love and being true to oneself, it falls flat and seems out of place.
Barile provides a few other stock characters as satellites around the principal couple. He gives Casey's mother little to do and her eventual falling for George's unemployed, wiser-than-he-seems best friend is, again, an example of not bothering with providing the audience with much motivation for their behavior. Casey's best friend, Shelby (Courtney Ann Melzer, the only cast member with any spark) works the midnight shift at Dunkin' Donuts (see the connection? A ha!) while waiting for an unprovoked self-actualization to seize her that she's not doing enough with her life.
Robert Mitchum Hangs Out at Dunkin' Donuts is a play that doesn't even give its characters enough credit to discover their own very obvious shortcomings, or at least to take us on a journey with them of discovery. Their problems are so painfully obvious to the audience that all of them appear as idiots for not seeing their own lives more clearly. There's little here for an audience to laugh at, become involved in, or even believe. Tedious, filled with platitudes, and immature, Robert Mitchum Hangs Out at Dunkin' Donuts is better avoided. Instead, settle in for an evening at the Belmont Dunkin' Donuts for a lot more entertainment.