Monday night’s opening of “A Guide for the Perplexed” at Victory Gardens Theater was notable for the large turnout of Chicago’s acting elite: the likes of John Mahoney, Rondi Reed, Deanna Dunagan. No surprise. This was the world premiere of a Joel Drake Johnson play. And Johnson is much admired.
“I love him,” Reed said on Monday. For one thing, the two grew up together in Dixon, Ill. For another, Reed’s work some seven years ago on Johnson’s “The Fall to Earth” at Steppenwolf was a point of rejuvenation in her career. Since then, she hasn’t stopped.
In the growing roster of Chicago playwrights, Johnson is what you might call an interesting case. He is still an emerging playwright, even though he has been produced fairly steadily at various theaters over the last few years. His career dates to the Eco-Arts Theatre in 1991, and I first encountered his writing at the Zebra Crossing Theatre shortly afterward. He has been produced at Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens and others (he’s been part of the Victory Gardens playwriting ensemble since 2008).
But most of us still think of Johnson as a playwright on the cusp.
He is on the cusp at 60 years old.
Johnson spent most of his career teaching theater at Stevenson High School in north suburban Lincolnshire but has retired at a young age. To write.
“I wanted to see what it was really like to live the life,” the gently spoken Johnson said over lunch before his opening.
On the other hand, he says, reflectively, his retirement from teaching has made his writing rather more pressured. “It’s not so relaxing anymore,” he said. “I don’t have the other thing to go back to. There is no longer a divide. This is where I am now.”
By his own admission, Johnson is a very quiet and shy man and naturally averse to self-promotion. “I have to fight all of that,” he says, “to get myself out there.”
He surely wants to be out there — his retiring personality does not reflect a lack of ambition. In fact, you can discern a quiet hunger in Johnson. He is following the progress around the country of his 2008 play, “Four Places,” a piece about adults struggling to take care of their difficult, elderly parents. It was one of the best Chicago plays of the year, and it almost moved to the Manhattan Theatre Club. But that deal, like many such deals in the theater, fell through at the last moment, to Johnson’s dismay.
But “Four Places” has continued to stay afloat. The latest production, at the Rogue Theatre in Los Angeles, means that Johnson is suddenly being discovered on the West Coast, prompting calls from agents and networks wondering who he might be and what he might be doing.
I thought “A Guide for the Perplexed,” Johnson’s current play, had its problems, both in the script and the production. That’s why you won’t see it in my list of recommended shows, because I think it needs more work. But it still has many resonant moments.
Johnson, an uncommonly kind writer, has an innate understanding of regret — the feeling of being trapped in past mistakes. And he is constantly drawn to the theme of prodigal children trying (and usually failing) to go home again. “I don’t know why I keep writing about that,” he says, with intensity. “Maybe it is because I am so aware of my own mortality.”
Johnson may not be Chicago’s flashiest writer, or the writer with the highest profile. But even when he hasn’t solved all his structural problems, he is a playwright with bursts of passion and constant insight into the human condition, especially the loneliness and self-doubt that can overtake us later in life.
He’ll be back next season at Victory Gardens with another play. We’ll all be there.
‘A Guide for the Perplexed’
When: Through Aug. 15
Where: Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Tickets: $20-$50; 773-871-3000 or victorygardens.org
