In Lady, a cork-like oaken box purports to be woods outside of Bethany, Illinois (though the only thing authentically Southern Illinois about it is the lighting). It shuts in three men who meet annually to hunt and supposedly renew a friendship since childhood that's frayed of late. But this "concept" set is all metaphor with no particular basis in reality. A huge rectangular inset is planned to come down at one point and reveal a clearing under a sky. On opening night, it went from not budging to noisly plummeting, resulting in an unplanned intermission during which we could guess the purpose of a stack of wood planks in a corner downstage.
After the repairs, we could ponder the purpose of the play, touted as a drama about unfaithfulness with political overtones. If we believe the playwright's notes, the men, on a "ragged journey through life," rotate around "the Lost Feminine"-- dog, wives, Lady Liberty herself. Yeah, sure.
Well, at least the Dire Straits music works. It fits Kenny's desperate calling for his dog Lady, derided by the one-overwrought-note Dyson. (Douglas Jones, who's more than capable of nuanced acting, doesn't get to leave anger for a minute.) Kenny's wife is dying of cancer, and he shares her drugs.
His other escape is macho movies. Dyson perpetually betrays his wife with other women. When canine Lady is shot and found near death, Graham -- now a congressman who's switched parties to stay in office in this GOP stronghold -- joins his old pals. Dyson blames Graham for the shooting and vice-versa. Kenny blames himself for bringing his dog into mortal danger. Dyson finally accuses Graham of killing his "kid" Duncan by patriotic talk that'll persuade him to enlist in the military and go to the Big Mistake War in Iraq.
If this triangle sounds familiar, recall Yasmina Reza's Art. Ostensibly about three friends' reactions to one of them buying a trendy, costly, white painting, it is really about the men's relationships with each other. The buyer loves the painting and wants the others to admire it. His strong friend is enraged at the purchase and the value placed on it by the purchaser. He wants the others to agree with him. The weak friend simply wants the buyer to be happy, the objector to calm down, and his own personality and interpersonal problems resolved. Substitute, for that painting, politics complicit with the Iraq War along with America's so-called need to avenge 911 and lead in world power, and we're close to effects on similar "buddies."
Unfortunately, Wright lacks Reza's talent for a stage drama as opposed to a TV show of the week.
The conflict between Dyson and Graham comes down to angry political dialectic with melodramatic sidebars on Graham's (unbelievably quick) effect on Dyson's son and on Dyson's rotten life choices. (Among the latter was to go not to Northwestern University but to SIU. Would that Craig Wright had done so in the same period, when SIU had an important graduate playwriting program. It produced a number of plays I saw that were a lot better than Lady.)
Oh, we sort of see an actual fight too. (The big blows land behind the stack of planks.) But no one seems to be hurt much, as if in an old movie. (Graham recalls seeing one such film as important.) Not even that solid actor David Breitbarth can make Kenny's virtual eulogy for Lady seem anything but overwritten indulgence in fake symbolism.
James Clarke does a good job mouthing Graham's patriotic platitudes, but they don't give him any way to humanize Wright's speechifying. Neither does director Hal Brooks.
Poor actors, to be at the mercy of the mediocre! And don't those of us who stayed after the forced intermission know how that feels!
