Each of the three plays running in repertory under the collective banner of Steppenwolf Theater's First Look Festival raises the question of whether suicide is the answer when you think you've hit bottom. Only one sends us home wholly convinced that it isn't.
Joshua Conkel's Okay, Bye begins at an AA meeting where former high school classmates Jenny and Megan reunite unexpectedly. The latter discloses her plan to euthanize herself with the aid of an over-the-counter device sold in pharmacies for that very purpose—a declaration rendering her credibility immediately suspect, but serving nonetheless as a premise for arguments regarding her avowed intent.
Brenda Barrie and Lara Phillips grapple with their patently artificial dialogue, valiantly generating suspense sufficient to prevent our tuning out before an epilogue hints that the struggling BFFs' necrophile fantasy might be a morale-bolstering rite invoked to reaffirm their rejection of less desirable alternatives.
The woman on the skids in Martyna Majok's Ironbound has already suffered two ill-starred marriages, two minimum-wage jobs, a runaway son, unemployment and homelessness. After an impromptu rescue by a teenage drug dealer whose preternatural chivalry leads us to wonder if the author means him to be an angel-samaritan, our heroine's renewed confidence enables her to negotiate sensibly with would-be husband number three. Chicago expat Lusia Strus performs a similar rescue on a text emerging as less a play than an interior monologue, assisted by foils Paul D'Addario, Nate Santana, and Billy Fenderson.
Contrasting with these gloomy sermons is Tanya Saracho's Hushabye, a comedy boasting linear structure and externalized action uninterrupted by imaginary scenarios/murky flashbacks. Its setting is a newly rehabbed loft apartment in Pilsen, occupied by a likewise newly rehabbed artist named Erika, one of two sisters recovering from the death of their parents. With the intervention of Erika's hipster landlord and happily gay cousin, siblings Erika and Cynthia reclaim administration of their late father's real-estate business from the dubious control of the latter's status-conscious husband, thus restoring the broken family's stability.
Director Yasen Peyankov has assembled an all-star cast that keeps the humor forthcoming and the optimism unrelenting, making this the most accessible (not to mention commercially savvy) play of the 2014 line-up. Conkel and Majok's social agendas might fuel post-show discussions, but you could base an entire television series on Saracho's charming and feisty clan, whose company we could enjoy for much longer than the 90-minute performance slot permits.
