Playwright: Edward Albee
At: Infamous Commonwealth Theatre at the Raven Studio, 6157 N. Clark
Phone: 312-458-9780; $15
Runs through: June 17
BY MARY SHEN BARNIDGE
It is ironic that an image that would have presented no problem to a 13th-century audience should have so thoroughly baffled Broadway theatergoers when Edward Albee's enigmatic drama premiered in 1980. Did not its very title reference the parochial assertion by New Yorker magazine that its content was 'not for 'the little old lady in Dubuque'—midwestern cities being as remote from 42nd Street as the dark kingdoms beyond the river Styx.
Our story opens on a group of friends playing a markedly hostile game of 'Twenty Questions.' The tension infecting the hosting couple, Sam and Jo, is largely engendered by the knowledge that the latter is dying of some unnamed and painful malady, but the guests—meek Edgar and his bossy wife Lucinda, oafish Fred and his passive fiancée Carol—are also palpably perturbed with one another. Later that evening, two strangers arrive: an elderly matron claiming to be Jo's estranged mother and a suave African-American consort. Sam is incredulous, even as his peers, and finally his own spouse, welcome these patent impostors.
So, if we can imagine a mythic Angel of Death, why not an Angel of Dying as well? Phantoms cloaked in guise of the moribund's loved ones, their unexpected affability mitigating their foreboding presence, come to ease mortal fears of the world beyond this earthly realm. Sam is not fooled—indeed, he must be physically restrained from ejecting the intruders—but soon the distraught husband comes to accept the inevitability of the spectral messengers' ultimately benevolent mission.
We accept it, too, once we catch on to the dynamic in progress. ( Attentive playgoers may find themselves speculating on the seemingly-innocuous Carol's imminent marriage to the self-destructive Fred—is she also a travel agent for the Grim Reaper? ) To be sure, this Infamous Commonwealth production tips its hand by furnishing Sam and Jo's apartment in an iron-and-gray-marble decor that could be dubbed 'funeral-parlor chic' and making no secret of its thematic selection in a season focusing on the topic of Death. All that said, this may well be the most coherent interpretation of Albee's cryptic text to date, its potential gloominess more than redeemed by the solace it offers grieving pilgrims in a sadly imperfect universe.