`Sunken Land” has a timely topic, abortion, and a timely take, echoing another play getting quite a buzz from the recent festival in Louisville.
“Sunken Land,” however, is here now, written by Chicagoan Jeff Mangrum, the third offering this season at Stage Left Theatre. Despite a gripping subject, though, “Sunken Land” is probably the least successful from the troupe’s new regime, installed at the beginning of this season.
Mangrum has an image-the sci-fi future where tyrannical government officials and the Mormon Church team up to suppress abortion rights-and he has an ending.
He just hasn’t come up with much of a beginning and middle, or a workable plot, for that matter.
In the world of “Sunken Land,” abortion is strictly illegal. Even rape victims are hard pressed, and, in a tale told in cryptic shorthand, we learn that zealous Mormons (to whose faith playwright Mangrum converted for a brief time three years ago) kidnap rape victims, imprison them in secret hospitals and force them to carry babies to term-or murder the women altogether.
Mangrum’s story follows the plight of Laura Calamos (Marguerite Hammersley), whom a corrupt official rapes and then kidnaps.
She finds herself strapped to what looks like a portable toilet, bound as well as imprisoned.
Her rebellious, plain-spoken neighbor at the hospital (Callie Beaulieu) freely curses her captors and luridly taunts them. Later, she’s snuffed out.
Such skulduggery is just one in a series of slow-moving events. Mangrum’s futuristic vision is half-baked, and it bogs down in pseudo-noir cops-and-robbers melodrama. His anti-abortion villains are too one-dimensional in the end to loom in a potent plea for free will and self-determination.
When we finally learn Laura’s fate, Hammersley delivers a chilling soliloquy and finish. But otherwise “Sunken Land” is fog-bound and sketchy, its scenes awkwardly written and shaped, their impact highly negligible.
This is a drama that should race to its finish with harrowing, nightmare speed and excitement.
Instead it plods along like an afternoon tea party, despite some choice moments from the performers, including Hammersley, Beaulieu and Michael Cimino as a sly evildoer.
”SUNKEN LAND”
A drama by Jeff Mangrum, directed by Mike Troccoli. Playing at Stage Left Theatre, 3244 N. Clark St., at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday, through May 2. Length of performance: 2 hours. Tickets are $8 to $16. Phone 312-883-8830.
