Playwright: Greg Beam and Eric Poulin
At: Broken Compass at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago
Phone: 773-772-0712;$15
Runs through: Aug. 20
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
If you ordered something called a Bloody Romantic, you'd expect it to be sweet or at least exotic-hued, not the high-cholesterol veal-and-bacon snack described in Greg Beam and Eric Poulin's world premiere 'dark comedy.' And if that same comedy promised 'acerbic wit, crackling dialogue and rampant sexual disorientation,' you'd expect it to go deeper than the bedroom farces of the last two centuries in which everybody talks in bawdy double entendres, air-headed girls tease us with flashes of pretty-titty underwear and nobody EVER uses birth control.
In this inaugural production by the theater company Broken Compass, we are presented with Vince, an out-of-work chef ( making for lots of food-as-sex gags ) living in gay domestic bliss with Frank, a corporate attorney ( making for lots of law-as-sex gags ) . But Frank's boss, the licentious Ben, demands his subordinate's off-duty attentions. ( It's 2006, but nobody's ever heard of sexual harassment. ) And Vince is screwing Gloria, Frank's former wife, under the guise of giving her cooking lessons. This situation continues for 80 of the show's 90 minutes, at which time a fifth character is briefly introduced, along with—yawn—guns, knives and an unplanned pregnancy ( remembering that nobody's heard of safe sex ) , bringing the mischief to an end, if not a resolution.
The ensemble, directed by Frank Cermak, Jr., has talent and training sufficient to sell this weary Joe Orton-meets-Quentin Tarantino retread—in particular, Katlyn Carlson, doing her freaked-out-nymphet, Avenging-Kali turn again. Company members Brian Kilborn and co-playwright Beam, playing Frank and Vince, are an appropriately attractive pair of ambisexual slackers, while James Errico and Nick Hill lend a modicum of substance to their shallow plot-mandated roles.
Johanna Cohan's pop-art decor and Jeffrey R. Dublinske's quasi-Brubeck incidental music evoke the quintessential swinging-boho-bachelor pad circa 1959, and Dana Wall has choreographed some cute Apache-Dance foreplay for the het lovers ( man-to-man sex nowadays being thought unfunny, and thus depicted more sedately ) . But audiences unwilling to park their brains at the door are advised to wait for these undeniably talented artists to find material worthier of their time and industry.