Aside from its perennial popularity with audiences, the theatrical thriller has a complex modern relationship with serious purpose. Decades ago, plenty of weighty playwrights penned spine-tinglers wherein audiences were coaxed toward the edge of their seats waiting for one plot revelation or another.
But in more recent years, the suspense drama has been seen as a refuge for hacks.
Chicago-based writer Douglas Post, whose previous works include “Murder in Green Meadows,” is one of those rare scribes who is both a serious playwright capable of exploring important themes and an unabashed lover of the thriller genre with a weakness for the ripping yarn. It’s a savvy niche.
“Personal Effects,” in its world premiere at the Circle Theatre in Forest Park, is a play that revels in a good plot twist even as it explores such potentially viable themes as communal guilt, the limits of revenge and the possibility of forgiveness.
This particular play has been kicking around in workshop form for several years. Despite its long genesis, it still feels like a work in progress whose overly contrived execution does not live up to its potential. It needs a lot more work.
The central character is an accountant who discovers that someone is out to destroy his life — emptying his bank accounts, stealing his girlfriend, ruining his reputation at work and otherwise deconstructing the poor fellow. Ergo, the play’s subtitle — “A Tale of the Dispossessed.”
Most of the play — which uses a plot similar to David Mamet’s superior “Edmund” — follows the accountant’s quest to find out the name and motive of the aggressor(s). In time, he finds the answer in a web of familial complexity.
This is the kind of clever intrigue that could support about a two-hour show, but “Personal Effects” lasts nearly three, at least in Ty Perry’s earnest but rambling and over-the-top Circle production. There are some intense performances — and the neophyte actor Dan Holahan makes a solid debut in the lead role. But the whole affair badly needs a good dose of irony and discipline in place of the endless emotional twitching and shaking taking place on the Circle stage.
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“Personal Effects”
When: Through Feb. 23
Where: Circle Theatre, 7300 W. Madison St., Forest Park
Phone: 708-771-0700
