Interludes

VIEWPOINTS – Surreal, formally rigorous works that investigate the current state: YOU WILL GET SICK and EVANSTON SALT COSTS CLIMBING

• By drediman
• November 25, 2022
• No Comments

Over the course of the past week, I had the opportunity to take in a pair of formally rigorous Off-Broadway productions that conjure surreal worlds in their pursuit to make sense of our increasingly fractured and anxious world. Here are my thoughts on them.

EVANSTON SALT COSTS CLIMBING
The New Group
Through December

First we have The New Group’s production of Evanston Salt Costs Climbing (RECOMMENDED) by Pulitzer Prize finalist Will Arbery at the Pershing Square Signature Center. Set in the northern Chicago suburb of the play’s title, the work tells the story of a public works team responsible for salting slippery winter roads. What becomes clear almost immediately is how stilted and anxiety-ridden many of the characters are. Matters aren’t helped by an ominous, unnameable sense of dread that pervades the play. As the play spins forward, their world becomes less and less coherent, eventually devolving into dead end chaos. As a theatrical allegory for a society that’s fast spinning into meaninglessness, Evanston Salt Costs Rising is potent if occasionally baffling. But if you’re willing to surrender to the playwright’s topsy-turvy vision — especially as realized by director Danya Taymor and his game cast (especially memorable are Ken Leung and the great Quincy Tyler Bernstine, one of the city’s most cherished thespians) — you’ll very likely emerge from the theater disoriented in a fundamental way.

YOU WILL GET SICK
Roundabout Theatre Company
Through December

Equally surreal is Noah Diaz’s new play You Will Get Sick (RECOMMENDED), which is currently running at the Laura Pels Theatre courtesy of Roundabout Theatre Company. The play addresses our society’s inability to constructively admit to the inevitability of sickness, let alone death. This is manifested in the character of 1 (played by Daniel K. Isaac), who deals with his increasing debilitating condition by not dealing with it — either by paying someone else to do the dirty work or extracting himself from reality altogether, which explains the play’s persistent dreamlike quality. Just as delusional is  the character of 2 — played by the fabulous Linda Lavin — a 60-plus year old actress who remains steadfast in pursuing her dream of playing Dorothy in a stage version of The Wizard of Oz. As such, 1 and 2 are made for each other, making for an amusing if inherently frustrating pair. The Roundabout production has been directed by Sam Pinkleton, who embraces the work’s Magritte-like magical realism with a staging that directly accesses the playwright’s vivid imagination.