The Famous Door Theater's Hellcab that opened in 1992 and didn't close until nearly ten years later was big, loud, and rude—hey, that was "Chicago-style" acting in those days, and the twenty-three passengers making the hapless hackie's Christmas eve anything but merry and bright were played by nine actors, switching off personae at adrenaline-pumping velocity. The 2010-2016 Profiles Theater revival, on the other hand, opted to cast each role with a different actor, who would then have to make the most of their few seconds onstage. The Agency Collective's staging, however, now in its second year, is conspicuously quiet, even contemplative, by comparison. At a stage of our social evolution where many playgoers may have never before traveled by taxicab and many of the local landmarks referenced in the script are lost to history, director Cordie Nelson and her cast are wise not to rely on shared experiences to spark recognition of, or empathy for, the denizens of this urban snowscape, but must instead delve Kern's laconic, often cryptic, dialogue for clues to the dynamic underlying the brief connections forged by strangers—one of them, a rare female cabbie, played with weary patience by Regina Linn—occupying a space suggesting a confessional. If this analytic approach sometimes dims the dazzle of previous incarnations, it more than redeems itself in an intimacy revealing a story arc reflecting the bleak zeitgeist of our own age. To put it another way, the play may be set in 1992, but we are still watching from 2018. The Agency Collective is to be commended for its cognizance of that fact, and its rejection of nostalgic stereotypes in favor of realistic portrayals documenting personalities and concerns still prevalent today. Those doubting that assessment need only abandon their cars for an evening and take a ride with the providers of safe passage through the dark streets of an uncertain world.
