"LIFE SEPARATES US," Cousin Billy Plays & VanChester Productions at Chicago Actors’ Studio
BY LUCIA MAURO
Playwright Sean Farrell does not string words together. He composes beautifully paradoxical linguistic compositions – ethereal yet raw; heightened yet real. One of Chicago’s most consistently astute playwrights (as well as one of the city’s lesser known theater innovators), Farrell has an exquisite gift for pushing the boundaries of text on stage at the same time he roots his words in the most basic human drives.
Form mirrors function in his latest – and most touching and arresting – work, "Life Separates Us." Receiving its world premiere by Cousin Billy Plays and VanChester Productions at the Chicago Actors’ Studio, it turns a Chicago-based group therapy session into an emotion-rippling sextet for a chamber orchestra. Three couples flail about trying to piece together their unhappiness and dissatisfaction in an uncertain world. They twist their lives in an unbearable tangle of impossible needs and expectations only to realize, as Farrell notes in the program, "the first step towards simplifying any relationship is examining what makes it so complex."
The playwright performs a similar task in his writing. He has perfected a painstakingly intricate writing style that’s capable of liberating the fundamental core of humanity and its desire to connect and be loved. For Farrell, universals do indeed arise from specifics – except the joy in experiencing one of his plays is the chance to luxuriate in the writer’s crisp, uncontrived details.
"Life Separates Us" is almost a non-categorizable work. It even defies description. I do know that this economical and burningly truthful production – also directed with a light yet meticulous hand by Farrell -- carried me to a transcendent place.
In a series of tightly tragicomedic scenes, we come to know the contradictions engulfing each character’s life. Tom, a former seminary student, opens the show as he squints into a bright light and tells an invisible but omnipresent psychologist about his self-doubting college years – leading up to his meeting the smart, ambitious and blisteringly unhappy Marie (whose scars on her wrists emit an aura of sensual gloom).
Then the feuding Sarah and David barge into a room, and it becomes clear that the devoutly Catholic lawyer David is accusing his resentful atheist wife of committing "an unmerciful act." Words, like "manipulative," also swirl around Sarah, who battles with infertility and the suggestion that she had an abortion before she and David were married.
Next enter hip club owners Ali and Steven – the former a sexy, high-strung control freak who accuses her husband of womanizing; the latter a laidback pothead.
These confused people – minus Marie – are thrown together in one of the most hilarious, horrific, uninhibited and cuttingly written group therapy sessions to wail across a Chicago stage. The synergy of the actors is astonishing; and, at no point, do their anger and frustration dissolve into a screaming match. The words are always central. And Farrell quietly keeps us rapt in attention. We’re held captive by his intricate weaving of words and phrases, which carry us across the arc of a perenially relevant story.
Much of Tom’s story is told in flashbacks. To get a sense of Farrell’s unobtrusive way of evoking humor and mystery, imagine the following exchange: Marie: "Do you believe in God?" Tom: "Do you want a LifeSaver?" Throughout the play, we understand Tom’s uncomfortable attachment to his late mother, who used to live in New York City and his uncertain relationship with God.
During one of the many arguments Tom has with Marie, after they’ve married and settled in Manhattan (where she works for a top investment firm in the World Trade Center), Marie blurts out, "Your mother took her own…" Farrell also understands when words fail us. Then he jumps back into the verbal fray with Marie yelling at the decidedly non-high-powered Tom: "I would never buy a house in Indiana; I would sooner buy a house in fucking Wisconsin!"
What comes through in these brilliant verbal blows is the fact that we as individuals have our own goals and dreams. When one person commits to another, those dreams have to be nurtured and compromised and re-shaped or abandoned altogether. In fact, Tom seems to be trapped inside a dream world – perhaps, in another life, he’ll awaken.
Sarah and David represent two sides of an ethical coin. And, through them, Farrell explores the ambiguous role religion plays in the overall secular nature of our daily existence. The pair can never reach a compromise. Sarah constantly reminds David that he doesn’t count; and he points out her dangerously immovable nature. Their relationship should serve as the basis for a thesis on Religion and Ethics in America.
While Ali and Steven may come across as the most shallow and self-absorbed of the group, they bring to the table (despite their cringingly yuppie-hipster dispositions) the one ingredient that the other characters’ lose sight of: unconditional love.
The themes Farrell tackles are vast and provoke intense self-examination. Yet he never points a finger at society’s selfish, convoluted ways. Instead he poetically suggests how we can better understand each other if we only paid attention to the details and did not let long-held belief systems stand in the way of small -- but ultimately monumental -- changes of perception. The playwright achieves another extraordinary feat. He integrates a September 11 sub-plot with the utmost subtlety and grace, while reversing our expectations of what can easily be treated as a cliched, chest-pounding metaphor.
Farrell’s production, in the tiny Chicago Actors’ Studio space, pulls us magnetically into these characters’ layered psyches. He has assembled one of the most synergistic ensembles of the year. And one can’t help but be mesmerized by the realness underlying the operatic skill they bring to every breath and gesture.
Philip Winston instills the lost-soul figure of Tom with a soothing contentment; and Jenny Lamb’s Marie seems like she can shatter into a million pieces despite her unflinching resolve. As the semi-stoned Steven, James Holton does not resort to predictably "high" stereotypes. Rather he reveals, in quiet increments, Steven’s own gnawing dissatisfaction. Danica Ivancevic’s Ali emits electrical currents of sexual energy that give the staging its dynamic tension. Yet her "power" also points to a sadly unfulfilled woman who is not quite sure what she needs to attain inner peace.
Bill Ryan’s David evocatively toggles between slick know-it-all and deflated outcast; and Erica Peregrine’s Sarah is his perfect counterpart – devious, loyal, cruel, compassionate and, in a disturbing way, the one with the greatest chance for survival.
Dean Schmitt’s rigid set design – plastic chairs, a water cooler, a coat rack – creates an appropriately sterile and polarized tone, further enhanced by Michael Ciok’s accusatory fluorescent lighting and sound designer John Schickedanz’s cryptic bell tolling, or boxing-ring clang.
But one of the most powerful design elements is wrapped in Kimberly G. Morris’ character-revealing costumes. Her chic outfits – from Ali’s slinky pants and hint of sexy lingerie to Marie’s awkwardly elegant party dress and David’s stiff and gradually rumpled suit (not to mention the ladies’ trendy little handbags) – are the visual equivalent of Farrell’s unconsciously metaphoric words.•
Cousin Billy Plays’ and VanChester Productions’ staging of "Life Separates Us" runs through December 8 at the Chicago Actors’ Studio in the Flat Iron Arts Building, 1567 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: $20. Call 312-458-9943 or log onto www.cousinbilly.org.
