Playwright: David Hauptschein
At: Mary-Arrchie Theatre Company at Angel Island, 731 Sheridan Road at Broadway
Phone: ( 773 ) 871-0442; $12-$15
Runs through: March 30
A playwright takes big risks trying to write in more than one genre at the same time. David Hauptschein might be the sole author of When The Walls Have Ears, already scheduled for a British tour following the 2004 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, but in its present incarnation, his is a script suffering from too many cooks.
Hints of criminal activity and a sackful of McDonald's carry-out call to mind a suburban Killer Joe, while the entrance of a distraught female claiming to have been abducted by extraterrestrialsspecifically, a squad of 'glandelions'leads us to think we are in X-Files country ( if, in fact, she has ) or News Of The Weird territory ( if she has not ) . Of course, the play could also could be a thoroughlyuh, earthbound exploration of deteriorating family dynamics.
What our experience with plays of the last four decades assures us is that so placidly innocuous a setting as a kitchen where a matron cheerfully swills rum-and-coke and chats with her daughter about a bathroom window needing repair MUST have some dark secret lurking beneath its tranquil surface. We almost welcome the introduction of the drug-deal-gone-bad complication for its familiarity. Likewise the general concern over the clan patriarch's impending senility. But then we get the reports of Space Aliens and we know our work is cut out for us.
English-import director Julio Maria Martino strives to lend consistency to a text whose impressive craftsmanship is undermined by its author's ambivalence. The cast of seasoned players likewise wear their characters with tailored-to-fit precision, never allowing even the most extravagant actions to spin out of control, while rejecting clichés and stereotypes to create personalities at once commonplace and enigmatic.
Indeed, so glib does the Mary-Arrchie company render the extensive short-cuts demanded to resolve the plot ( violent confrontations accompanied by loud shouting mysteriously inaudible one room away, a sudden absence of visitors in a household of chronic drop-ins ) that only afterward do the contradictions become apparent. A number of serviceable plays are packed into this scenario, but it remains to be decided which one will cross the ocean next year.