“A Parallelogram”
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This highly stimulating new play about a woman who thinks she can see the future is from the acerbic playwright Bruce Norris. It’s both fascinating and consistently ahead of its audience, and it asks some profound questions: Could we stand to go on with our lives if we had unchangeable foreknowledge of what’s coming, including our own death? What if we knew our life ultimately did more harm than good? To its great credit, “A Parallelogram” manages to be about time travel and yet not really about time travel — the future is deftly kept at bay, so to speak. In Hollywood movies, time travelers invariably use the future to solve present-day problems; Norris mostly uses the future as a scalpel. With the help of direction from Anna D. Shapiro and fine performances by Kate Arrington and Tom Irwin, Norris has combined the alacrity of Edward Albee, the intellectualism of Wallace Shawn and some of the narrative questions of “Back to the Future.” This play makes your head spin in all the right ways. Through Aug. 29 at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted St.; $20-$70 at 312-335-1650 or steppenwolf.org
