After pressure from the City of Chicago, the storefront Profiles Theatre now is spiffier (and, presumably, safer) than at any time in its storied past. But although the grunge is gone and the new exit signs positively glow with red rectitude, the fare on the stage remains as dark and Dionysian as ever.
Thankfully, the city hasn’t yet found a way to apply its draconian codes to what’s happening on Chicago’s actual stages. Thus Profile’s current production is free to indulge cheerfully — indeed, romantically — in the seedy side of life, from drug abuse to frank sexuality to young persons living on the precipice of despair.
Its bucolic title notwithstanding, Adam Rapp’s “Blackbird” goes out of its way to shock with the scatological, the sexual and the narcotic. The two-character play (which had its U.S. premiere at the City Theatre in Pittsburgh with the actor Michael Shannon and hasn’t been seen in Chicago before), is the tale of two sad-sack, drug-addicted desperados in the shape of Baylis (Darrell W. Cox), a Gulf War vet with a barrel-load of addictions, and a 19-year-old former stripper apparently named Froggy (Lindsay Gould) who has run away from a privileged home in Michigan for (it turns out) understandable reasons.
In a rented room on Canal Street, this odd and ever-declining pair drink, fight, kvetch, grope, take drugs and, from time to time, establish some mutual tenderness, not all of which involves staring longingly at a blackbird outside.
This situation — two lovers looking for salvation in each other — hardly brims with sociological insights. And as we watch Baylis and Froggy negotiate for their respective needs as surrogate parent and child, we’re not dazzled with dramaturgical originality.
But for all that, “Blackbird” (directed by Joe Jahraus) is a very affecting little character study. The typical rap against Rapp is that he’s an upscale intellectual and trendy writer whose obsession with the edges of life doesn’t always seem exactly organic. But unlike his “Finer Noble Gases,” the self-consciously dark mores of “Blackbird” are leavened by some intensely lyrical writing and a palpable sweetness and concern for the human soul.
I’ve been watching plays like this at Profiles for more than 10 years — invariably with Cox in the lead and Jahraus at the helm. But the work here now is far, far better than used to be the case. As an actor, the guttural Cox always has been willing to do pretty much anything to shock, but he now has developed a richer complexity and a more muted sadness.
“Blackbird” pairs Cox with a diminutive but immensely brave young newcomer in Gould, who throws herself into this character with the kind of intense oblivion that bodes very well for her future. Gould doesn’t patronize or sensationalize. But the more her Froggy is revealed to be victim of callous circumstance, the more this memorable performance makes a very sad but very sweet kind of sense.
———-
“Blackbird”
When: Through May 2.
Where: Profiles Theatre, 4147 N. Broadway.
Running time: 1 hour, 55 minutes.
Tickets: $18-22 at 773-549-1815.
