"TAKING CARE" at Steppenwolf Garage Theatre
BY LUCIA MAURO
In one of Ma’s many insensitive moments in "Taking Care," she compares trying to converse with her mentally ill son Benny to "talking to a potato." While it elicits a quick laugh, her statement unwittingly points to an inherent dramatic challenge faced by local playwright Mia McCullough in her two-person tragicomedy premiering at the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre.
The play threatens to be a solo tour de force for the irrepressible Roslyn Alexander as Ma, while Guy Van Swearingen must define Benny mostly through brooding silences, sporadic twitches or monotone retorts. And because the lack of communication has kept these characters in a constant state of button-pushing and fear, the playwright can easily get stuck in dramatic limbo.
That said, "Taking Care" is a sharply written play with an astute balance of wit and pathos. The fact that there is no true resolution, and these two people circle around the perimeters of truth within a daily grind of TV and sandwiches, makes its own depressing statement about familial relationships. However, with only radio sound cues to take us from 1996 to the present, a grinding inertia sets in.
Yes, we feel their monotony, but it’s difficult to feel like an arc of a story has unfolded. The underlying premise of McCullough’s play is co-dependency. Ma – whose husband and, eventually, two daughters, have left her – cares for her middle-aged son Benny (who appears to suffer from a vague combination of schizophrenia, manic depression and agoraphobia). As Ma ages and later breaks her hip, the care-giving gets reversed. Benny is forced to take care of Ma.
But Benny does not go on a compelling journey. In fact, the degrees of his mental illness are not clearly asserted. And, out of nowhere, we get a startling glimpse into Ma’s abusive child-rearing methods. After the play settles into the bickering and boredom of these people’s lives, it really can’t go anywhere but down. It does, and then fizzles out.
Although McCullough’s decision to not delve into the origins of this dysfunction or take the story to a level beyond a low hum of mere existence in order to convey the reality of wasted lives, "Taking Care" can still better define its characters and progress with greater urgency. These people are so unpleasant to be around that the experience can be quite emotionally debilitating.
Director Tim Hopper also hits a few roadblocks in pacing, and the work’s repetitive nature can sap a great deal of smoldering dramatic energy. Set designer Russell Poole’s long rectangular configuration of the stage (bathroom, kitchen, living room) spreads the action, or in-action, across a linear plane that prevents viewers from being intimate voyeurs into these sad individual’s daily lives.
As Ma, Alexander stands out for her invincibility beneath her character’s delusions, cruelty and unchecked mental imbalance. Van Swearingen, a deeply invested actor, has the difficult task of making Benny more than curt replies and shaking hands. His portrayal remains centered, yet never quite establishes itself – and Van Swearingen is not helped by a long, disheveled synthetic wig so hideous and distracting, it comes close to destroying the play’s core sense of truth.
This is a touching and meaningful play about the unsteady foundations upon which family ties are forged and responsibilities delegated. It just needs to propel us more potently into that realm.•
"Taking Care" runs through April 6 at the Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted. Tickets: $12. Call 312-335-1650 or log onto www.steppenwolf.org.
