With the critical and festival success of such movies as “Ghostlight” and, more recently, “Mouse,” much-deserved attention has flowed to the admirable acting family of Keith Kupferer, Tara Mallen and their talented daughter, Katherine Mallen Kupferer. Still, most Chicagoans living in the area of the Rivendell Theatre on busy Ridge Avenue probably have no idea that such internationally acclaimed talent can still be seen doing plays next to the pizza joint.
Katherine Mallen Kupferer was in the audience Monday night watching her parents appear in a new work from a Chicago playwright, Alex Lubischer, who has penned a very black comedy about a young couple in Nebraska, whose planned nuptials explode in the bride’s face when her intended is killed in a farming accident on the eve of her wedding. The events of the night explore difficulties in accepting loss, when it occurs, as well as offering an absurdist but sympathetic look at life (and death) in the rural Midwest, where Applebee’s and paintballing are cultural touchstones and complicated family and friend relationships teeter between being empathetic and stultifying.
The strength of the night is the poetry baked into Lubischer’s writing, which reaches out and grabs you from time to time, as well in some very touching scenes involving Kupferer and Mallen (who play bereaved parents, step and otherwise) and the actress Ashley Neal, who plays the young woman who is snatched from the altar at the 11th hour and who sees no reason why her wedding to the dead guy (played, along with other roles, by David Stobbe) should not go ahead as planned.
The production, though, has some issues, some of which flow from a tendency of some in this cast to overplay in this very intimate house, arranged by director Hallie Gordon very intimately. “We are right here,” one finds oneself wanting to say, “not hundreds of feet away.” It’s just all way, way too big at times.
But that’s really a subset of a bigger issue: Lubischer’s writing strikes me as needing to be played straight, as in honestly and truthfully, as if this were pure realism, and then the comedy in the absurd situations he manifests can flow with veracity. Indeed, that happens at times. But at other moments, such as when the groom’s best pal Doug (Glenn Obrero) gets whacked in the eye, the actors lean too far into the gags and you find yourself questioning whether these characters really could exist, let alone inhabit this ever-compounding situation. Some of that was surely intensified at the performance I saw by an over-supportive audience, likely filled with friends. But the parts of this show that work are the ones that traffic in unadorned truth.
It’s good to see a play about rural Nebraska, Lubischer’s old stomping ground, especially one that finds such poetry and longing in the language of its denizens. The short script (replete with intermission) has some issues toward its potentially moving ending, which doesn’t yet feel entirely earned; one obvious solution would be to lengthen Act 2 a little and spend more time with Neal’s Kara and her journey toward the most uncertain of futures, perhaps with the help of the couple who would have been her in-laws but now find themselves similarly adrift on the prairie.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic
cjones5@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Pivot” (2.5 stars)
When: Through March 21
Where: Rivendell Theatre, 5779 N. Ridge Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $42 at 773-334-7728 and rivendelltheatre.org
