The unhappy family in Keith Reddin’s “Brutality of Fact” is really, deeply and desperately unhappy.
Maggie is an embittered drunk; Jackie, her sister, is an out-of-control Jesus freak; and Val, their mother, is on the edge of senility.
In two acts and several labeled scenes (“Kill the Messenger,” “Lost Weekend,” “The Wages of Sin,” etc.), Reddin puts these unfortunates through their paces, watching them writhe in their misery, endure the hell of their daily existence and sink into their troubled dreams of death.
There is a cancer of emptiness at the center of their lives, and it only spreads and contaminates as the play goes on.
In other words, Reddin’s new work, in its premiere in the Goodman Theatre Studio, is about as dark as a dark comedy can get.
There always has been a distinct shade of black in Reddin’s writing, from the satire of American values in his “Life and Limb” and “Rum and Coke” to the dissection of contemporary social disintegration in “Life During Wartime.”
But in these earlier plays, there often was a note of hope and salvation to be found in a pure and innocent love. In “Brutality of Fact,” there is no such hope, and faith is laughable and false. The harder people search for solace, the more horrible their lives become. Things only get worse; the family becomes even more fragmented; death comes ever closer.
Amid this breakdown and the final whimper of his play’s resolution, Reddin has not lost his antic imagination or his sharp wit. A couple of scenes here-a bizarre sisters’ argument in a restaurant reunion, a drunken barflies’ encounter between Maggie and her randy ex-brother-in-law-are spiky little masterpieces, exploding with firecrackers of surprise in performance and writing.
Director Michael Maggio, in his fourth collaboration with Reddin, has given the playwright a beautifully tooled, chillingly effective production.
In the cloudy, abstract box of Linda Buchanan’s set design, the play grinds forward with the uneasy certainty of a nightmare. It’s an eerie, surrealistic world, lights popping on and off unexpectedly (compliments of designer Robert Christen) and figures appearing out of the dark to present themselves in mocking, fearful visions.
The performances consistently empower the play. Barbara E. Robertson is hilarious and heartrending as Jackie, a loveless woman crying out for refuge in the love of Jesus; and Leslie Lyles, in a truly unsettling portrayal, is courageously disheveled and distraught as the confused, nervous, alcoholic Maggie. Caitlin Hart’s Val might be a little more loony and a little less flat, but she does have the necessary spunk and cynicism.
Patrick Clear as Jackie’s befuddled ex-husband, Philip E. Johnson as her fellow born-again Christian (and a steely sadist too), Ann Keating as her frightened little daughter, and Carmen Roman and Donna Jay Fulks in multiple roles give the drama an invigorating authority of character even when it is in danger of drifting away into inconsequence.
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“Brutality of Fact” plays through March 13 at the Goodman Theatre Studio, 200 S. Columbus Drive. Phone 312-443-3800.
