Neil LaBute’s “Bash: Latterday Plays” has already had television exposure on cable television in a taped performance by its excellent original off-Broadway cast; but until you see it played live, sitting inches away from the four actors who inhabit it in its Midwest premiere at About Face Theatre, you cannot fully feel the fearsome power this drama has over its viewers.
The play is actually three short plays, or monologues, which fall into the same confessional pattern (director Eric Rosen has changed their order for this presentation). Each segment introduces us to a person, or persons, who addresses the audience directly and, bit by bit, unfolds the history of a horrendous crime he or she has committed in the past.
In “Medea Redux,” a title that hints at the horrors to come, a young woman (Louise Lamson), nervously smoking and speaking quietly into a tape recorder, recounts the end of a disastrous affair she had years ago, when she was 13, with her junior high school teacher.
In “Iphigenia in Orem,” an all-American, average guy businessman (Kyle Hall) in his early 30s haltingly unreels a story of domestic tragedy and corporate melodrama to a stranger seated opposite him in a hotel reception room.
In the last playlet, “A Gaggle of Saints,” two cuddling, fresh-faced college sweethearts (Armando Riesco and Lisa Velten), all dressed up for a formal dance, take turns babbling about their night of the big “bash,” a word that turns out to have a shocking double meaning.
Meticulously crafted, so that the horror of the crimes creeps up and then slams in, the plays nonetheless have a marked similarity in structure, so that the playwright’s storytelling devices soon become obvious.
Each piece is well done, but as a trio, even though they run a total of only 90 minutes without intermission, they’re perhaps too much at one time.
It’s hard to complain about this, however, when confronted with the devastating portrayals that Rosen and the four actors have created for this production.
With the actors working solo, in a tight, close-up space, every small facial furrow or tic, every change in voice register, every long pause in the middle of a rush of recollection, is made casual and yet full of dread.
The way Lamson’s mouth curves up in bitter triumph or the manner in which Hall fidgets with his tie and squirms in his seat awesomely magnifies the personal horror stories they relate.
The text and production come together brilliantly in the final segment. Designer Daren Keesing’s black, empty space, electrified with the ebb and flow of his lighting design, provides a perfect setting for the dark doings of the story.
And Riesco’s portrayal, peaking to a frightening semi-hysteria of fear and loathing, is astounding in the shattering emotional force of its crescendo. He truly appears to be in the grip of a force he cannot fathom or control.
His character smacks of stereotype–he has a problem with his authoritarian father–but his performance sweeps everything away with the fury of its rage.
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“Bash: Latterday Plays”
When: Through March 4
Where: About Face Theatre, 3212 N. Broadway, Chicago
Phone: 773-549-3290
