No good deed goes unpunished — and that goes for playwrights as much as anyone. Focus too earnestly on a moral dilemma, and a playwright can find herself writing in circles.
Consider the predicament posed by Mia McCullough’s “Spare Change,” currently in a world premiere at Stage Left. What if a destitute stranger happens to be less than thrilled by the prospect of your guilt-induced help?
Initially staged last year at Steppenwolf’s First Look festival, the play centers on a chance encounter between a yuppie financial planner and a young mother on the run from an abusive boyfriend.
The woman, called Michael Ann (Victoria Caciopoli), is multiracial, a product of “the system” and barely out of her teens. The yuppie is Brad (Kevin Heckman), a white guy who lives in the kind of self-imposed bubble so many of us create, carefully sidestepping those with spending power considerably less than our own.
Only recently has Brad felt trapped. His awakening takes the form of “good Samaritan idiot,” with Michael Ann as his test case. He is both dense and well-intentioned, a terrible combination for a man sticking his nose in other people’s business.
The premise has a lot of possibility and is inspired by an actual experience McCullough had while working the crisis line at a battered women’s shelter in Evanston. Too often, though, she kicks dirt on the same material without moving the conversation forward. Director Ann Filmer lets the moments of subtlety that do exist in the script roll by without a second glance.
Brad has issues of his own, namely a high-strung wife (Cat Dean) who isn’t talking about her miscarriages — or her pregnancies, for that matter. As rendered here, the relationship feels theoretical. Dean has yet to find the human parameters of her character.
In 2001, McCullough burst on the scene with “Chagrin Falls,” a more nuanced look at responsibility and human interconnectedness. Her dialogue is as sharp as ever, particularly on house-proud details; she could write an entire satire based on the programming of HGTV.
But her work here feels too much like a Lifetime movie.
———-
ctc-tempo@tribune.com
– – –
“Spare Change”
When: Through Nov. 3
Where: Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.
Running time: 2 hours
Tickets: $20-$25 at 773-883-8830
