April 29--It's pretty much impossible to avoid culinary metaphors in reviewing Benjamin Brand's "Taste." But before you think, "Great, an onstage cooking show," Google "Armin Meiwes." I'll wait.
All right. Brand's play riffs on the German Meiwes, who in 2001 placed an online ad on a site called "The Cannibal Cafe" seeking a willing volunteer to be killed and eaten. Bernd-Jurgen Brandes answered the ad and, um, both apparently got what they wanted out of the arrangement.
Gruesome? For sure. Brand's play, which had its premiere in 2014 at Hollywood's Sacred Fools Theater under the direction of former Chicagoan Stuart Gordon (creator of the horror-comedy classic "Re-Animator"), doesn't stint on the gore in Aaron Sawyer's local premiere. (It's presented by Red Theater Chicago and Aperture Entertainment in association with Redtwist Theatre, which may be a way of diluting the blame for its more disturbing images among a trio of companies.)
Terry (Gage Wallace) is the cook and Victor (Kevin V. Smith), or "Vic," as he prefers, is the dinner guest/future meal(s) in this 90-minute two-character piece, which unfolds in real time. It's like Marsha Norman's "'night, Mother," in which a daughter reveals her plan to commit suicide to her mom, with Grand Guignol effects.
We're used to discussions of cannibalism as a last resort for survival -- and even then, it's usually of people who are already dead. (There's the Donner Party and Piers Paul Read's "Alive," about survivors of an Andean plane crash.) And of course the issue of assisted suicide has been around for years. But what would make someone volunteer to be killed and eaten? And what would make someone seek that person out?
Brand's play tries to answer those questions by hinting that what's unfolding is a secular act of transubstantiation. But whenever he seems to be getting close to the, well, meat of the matter (sorry), he shies away. The psychological underpinnings for fastidious and domineering Terry -- who pulls out the dictionary to show Vic that it's incorrect to say their arrangement is "fairly unique" -- in particular remain cloudy. We know he's a voyeur from his extensive porn collection and his need to videotape (as Meiwes did) every moment of his fateful last supper with Vic.
But what made him decide to move forward from fantasy fetish to "Oh my God, I'm really doing this"? He says more than once that he hates the "victim" mindset of contemporary culture -- but what happened to bring him to that conclusion? We don't know, and it should matter more than it does here. Brand does his best to avoid the damaging stereotype of the deranged murderous homosexual (think "Cruising"), but by not fleshing out (sorry again) more of Terry's background, we're left with too many holes in his persona.
That said, Wallace does a solid job at capturing Terry's surface charm, particularly in the early moments, where he and Smith's Vic play out what has to be one of the most awkward first (and last) dates in history. (The quiet music on the stereo suddenly reverting to blasts of heavy metal and the "should we shake hands or hug?" dumb show provide genuine laughs.)
But if you're going to present such a disturbing tale with full-frontal gore, I think the truly provocative thing to do would be to dissect the mindsets of Terry and Vic. The latter's sense of aching loneliness does come through, thanks to a sad inventory of the few things he enjoyed in life and Smith's own febrile physicality -- he seems about to fall out of his translucent skin at any moment. However, despite the excellent performances, "Taste" doesn't let us see enough of the souls behind the skin in this disturbing true-life tale.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
2 STARS
When: Through May 22
Where: Redtwist Theatre, 1044 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.
Tickets: free, but reservations suggested at 773-733-0540 or redtheater.org
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