June 04--If you are convinced your once-lovely teenager has been taken over by an alien invader, then you may find yourself sympathizing with Maggie, the beleaguered mom in Walt McGough's new play, "Chalk," a piece with a title that seems to suggest Bertolt Brecht but a heart and soul very much in the horror-science fiction realm.
Maggie's daughter, Cora, has an invader inside her body, causing her, and thus the wildly energetic actress Nina O'Keefe, to flail, scream and convulse for most of the 70 minutes of running time of the work.
I should note that the setting is not some suburban kitchen here, but something closer to the end of the world. And I should further note that the aliens in this play have not limited themselves to Cora. Au contraire, these parasites have a much broader interest in the human populace.
Although hardly the first to work with this metaphor, McGough's play certainly captures some of our contemporary neuroses. You could see Cora as a metaphoric addict, I suppose. Or maybe the invader is a stand-in for the digital or robotic beasts ready and waiting to churn up our insides and take all our jobs, just as soon as someone writes the correct programming language. Or maybe it's just a really intense depiction of how parents tend to feel when their offspring turn around, ready to bite.
Either way, "Chalk" certainly has its moments. The problem, though, is that the show ends up being a bit of wash because neither the script nor director Megan A. Smith's Sideshow Theatre production (the show's premiere was in Boston with a different cast) offers up much of a story arc, or the sense that it is heading to any new place in particular. O'Keefe nearly rips herself apart fulfilling her assignment, but all of the hyper-intense physicality -- too much for my taste, frankly -- makes it hard for this generally empathetic actress to really win our sympathies. And you don't find yourself taking sides in the mother-daughter battle -- it all seems and feels overly distant.
The actress Kathleen Akerley, who plays the mom, conveys a sense of being beleaguered by the disappearance of her real daughter, but her point of view otherwise remains too obscure for a fully complex experience. She is a passive presence, and when you've only got characters, that's a problem.
"Chalk" does have an interesting design from Megan Truscott, and, for sure, represents brave work on all sides. The issue, dramaturgically, is that there is no normal here to contrast with all the craziness. Not only do we have the brain-munching demon, but mom lives inside a chalk circle at the end of the world with all other humans dead. In other words, there is no particular reason to get the core of Cora back, or for us to care about its return.
Jones is a Tribune critic.
cjones5@tribpub.com
REVIEW: Chalk by Sideshow Theatre at the Biograph
2 STARS
When: Through June 28
Where: Victory Gardens Richard Christiansen Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave.
Running time: 70 minutes
Tickets: $20-$30 at 773-871-3000 or http://www.sideshowtheatre.org
