Profiles Theatre, a rough, gutsy and long-established storefront on the North Side, is one of the few off-Loop theaters to have perfected the art of the long run.
Though most similar troupes hate to divert from a full season of dramatic offerings, Profiles likes to find a populist, new-to-Chicago script that can fill its 50-seat theater with young folks for months at a time. The formula worked very well with “Popcorn,” a Ben Elton comedy from London’s West End that the bigger players in town all passed up, but Profiles managed to run for more than a year.
The current show at Profiles, Richard Zajdlic’s “Dogs Barking,” is another British show. The run, which is an American premiere, already has been extended twice and, last Sunday night at least, every single seat at the Profiles Theatre contained a live body.
Zajdlic is an English author (with a firm background in television writing) who first snagged some attention back in 1994 when London’s fringe Bush Theatre premiered a play called “Rage.” The Bush, a venerable pub-based venue that jump-started the careers of such fine Euro-playwrights as Jonathan Harvey and Conor McPherson, also premiered “Dogs Barking,” Zajdlic’s latest domestic opus.
The dramatic canvas of this work is the dysfunctional relationship that won’t die. Neil (played by Darrell W. Cox), the kind of loser who’s alternately clingy and hostile, returns to the flat he formerly occupied with his ex-girlfriend, Alex (Sara Maddox). In the kind of passive-aggressive behavior beloved by the spurned, he refuses to give up his half-interest in the place and uses the real estate tussle to try to rekindle some kind of ongoing affair. Meanwhile, Alex has moved on to a new fellow while still dealing with her own baggage from the long involvement with needy Neil.
To complicate things further, Zajdlic introduces into the mix Neil’s sad sidekick Ray (played by Joe Jahraus), and Alex’s manipulative sister Vicky (Jenna Rabideaux). All bash heads for two hours as a variety of personal complications come down the pike.
“Dogs Barking” is neither a great nor an innovative play. It sometimes recalls such works as Neil LaBute’s “Lepers” or David Mamet’s “Sexual Perversity in Chicago,” but Zajdlic lacks those playwrights’ talent for menace and their ear for inter-sexual brutality. Instead, he concentrates on a twisting plot and creating archetypal situations and behavior with which an audience can easily identify. And by creating a narrative that hooks one in deftly, he does so very well indeed.
Ken Mitten’s gutsy, fast-paced production ripples along very nicely, with Cox’s self-indulgent character staying on just the right side of credibility. Maddox is appropriately ambivalent but empathetic as Alex, who’s just enough of a loser herself to fail to get rid of the one ruining her life. And in their character roles, both Jahraus and Rabideaux have their stereotypes down cold.
Offering something of a guilty pleasure but a ripping yarn nonetheless, Profile’s dogs will likely be yapping well into 2002.
“Dogs Barking”
When: Through Jan. 27
Where: Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway
Phone: 773-549-1815
