"SUGGESTIONS FOR THE PREVENTION OF SERIAL MURDER," O Theater at Chicago Dramatists
BY LUCIA MAURO
Don’t be fooled by what appears to be playwright Carey Friedman’s metaphoric overkill in his contemporary absurdist work, "Suggestions for the Prevention of Serial Murder," receiving its local premiere by O Theater at Chicago Dramatists. Just when you think his massive unseen antagonist -- a serial killer who swallows her victims and everything else in their wake whole -- represents large-scale materialism or political/corporate greed, the notion will elude you.
She (one Meredith Aaboe) may merely be an all-encompassing invisible menace that has terrorized civilization since the beginning of time. Or she could be a ludicrous distraction from the cryptic action taking place around her – or a simple excuse for the sardonic litany of fat jokes that crescendo toward the play’s finale. Whatever this huge omnivorous presence represents eventually disintegrates by the end of this baffling, frustrating and ultimately thought-provoking performance piece.
By constantly forcing audiences – through a veil of confusion (at times, too thick a veil of confusion) – to question why we’re faced with a futuristic wasteland, where people of various classes and creeds (including a self-serving senator) search for their social consciences following an airplane crash, viewers will find themselves creating a play of the imagination within this zany play.
At the center is a hapless waiter, named Johnny, from a catering company. As he guards the cake and ironically wields a carving knife while awaiting wedding guests, a plane plunges to the ground. The only survivor is a U.S. Air Marshall who gives him a seemingly bizarre lecture on black boxes being neither black nor boxes. Then FBI Agent Clifford Seaman jumps in to warn Johnny to "not fall prey to magical thinking."
We later learn of Allison Strong’s impending marriage to Seaman. She’s the daughter of Senator Strong and sister to the brazen Bliss, costumed in red, white and blue (making one think she could be America screwing over the world – but that point is up for debtate). The pudgy Allison, a sad-eyed young girl, soon reduces her bloated state. And her former love, the mysterious Fen Alberghotti with whom she has experienced "prelapsarian, no-navel love," reappears after being disguised as a chopped liver bust.
Plot at this point is irrelevant and almost impossible to summarize. But the audience will always be reminded that something is remiss and not quite what it seems. All the characters point paper guns at each other; Angela Altenhofen’s gauze-like jumpsuits make the actors look like astronauts or a biochemical clean-up crew. They wade around set designer Jason Greenberg’s blindingly white, toilet-paper-strewn ruins (as if the innards of the universe have been gutted). The all-paper set allows for chronic tears in the fabric of society.
And, despite Friedman’s intermittently self-conscious direction, messages of denial and obliteration rise to the surface. The sense that all of these characters, except the chirpy sacrificial Little Girl, choose to not notice the creeping nihilation around them consumes this play – in a strangely quiet way.
Jennifer Larkin’s clinical yet celestial lighting, paired with Matt Schultz’s twisted and near-terrifying sound design, add to this multisensory cautionary experience reminding us to be more cautious. While this play may leave audiences, who seek order and structure, flummoxed, its surreal words and images resonate later – all pointing us to a place of greater awareness of the necessary delusions that set civilization in motion (only to lead to its potential downfall). Friedman, an insightful wordsmith, also turns words into a musical mush (some characters even speak in tongues) to allow us to find our own voices as inhabitants of this complex planet.
The writer-director has brought together a fearless cast tuned into the exhaustive rhythms of language and the chilling power of silence. Jennifer Grace as Allison Strong is particularly memorable in a solemnly committed way, and Maximino Archiega, Jr., brings an innocent air of immovability to his portrayal of Johnny. In the gender-bending roles of Mr. Agent Kenner and Mrs. Agent Kenner, Lori Myers and David Skvarla negotiate language and space with seamless agility. And the young Stephany Jemel Stovall as the Little Girl delivers an electrifying and honest performance.
In the end, Friedman tries to pull from the debris true love and these characters’ long-buried ability to feel. The overpowering cries of babies in the rubble both comfort and terrify us. Sure, they survived, but what does their future hold?
Then Friedman makes us question every literal truth that has passed before our eyes across the generations. Is society forever polishing the veneer of mis-truth? Or is it possible that a chopped liver bust is just a chopped liver bust?•
O Theater’s production of "Suggestions for the Prevention of Serial Murder" runs through December 15 at Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago Ave. Tickets: $10-$15. Contact 312-494-2648 or information@otheater.com.
