Playwright: George F. Walker
At: Famous Door Theatre at Victory Gardens, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-3000; $25-$35
Runs through: June 12
If anybody could make a silk purse out of a George F. Walker, it would be the company that brought us The Cider House Rules. But while the first presentation in this double-bill requires only mild magic on the part of director Marc Grapey, its companion piece puts David Cromer's directorial wizardry to the test. Putting aside the question of whether American playwrights are really so myopic and mealy mouthed that we need a Canadian to tell us what's wrong with our country, the problem with Walker's plots is their formulaic structure: put a crowd of oddballs into a room, add lots of slapstick violence, and have everyone mouth editorials until they run out of steam.
Both of the plays grouped under the collective title Suburban Motel have as their theme the struggle to stay clean in a dirty world. Adult Entertainment proposes a lawyer and a policeman willing to trade sex for favors, then introduces the latter's partner, who, literally, knows where the bodies are buried, and who eventually persuades his estranged wife of the social necessity for this amorality. Molly Glynn, Matt Andrew, Steve Walker and Sarah Charipar adopt immediately recognizable characters, each with a distinctive delivery that, along with precise comic timing, render Walker's didactic pronouncements amusing more by HOW they are said than by WHAT they say.
The same factors are brought into play for Criminal Minds, in which a trio of small-time crooks find themselves under the command of a psychopathic rebel going up against heavily-armed supervillains. Daniel Rivkin, Karol Kent, Halena Kays, Scott Rutherford and Larry Neumann, Jr., create vivid personalities. Cromer orchestrates the dialogue with an edge so sharp that unfunny lines pull laughs based on rhythm alone. But all their refinements cannot rescue a script riddled with manifestos, explanations and self-analyses, punctuated by too many 'Shut Up!' and 'Oh, come on!' feed-lines, culminating in a protracted harangue meant to illustrate the delusion of non-involvement.
Famous Door has recently announced a change in their season schedule, which is now to consist of one big-budget production per year. If Suburban Motel is all there is for 2005, it's gonna be a long wait to 2006.
Ain't Nothin' But the Blues
