Life and Limb
Written by Keith Reddin
Directed by Emily Ruth Campbell
Steppenwolf Garage, 1624 N. Halsted (map)
thru June 24 | tickets: $20 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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Pursuit of the American dream leads to this?
Steppenwolf Theatre presents
Life and Limb
Review by Catey Sullivan
Marked by fine performances and crisply professional production values, Life and Limb is getting a far better staging than it deserves at the Steppenwolf’s Next Up 2012 festival. Directed by Emily Ruth Campbell, Keith Reddin’s play is baffling and inconsistent, a clunky mash-up of fantasy, farce and serious drama. None of the elements seem to fit in the story of Korean War vet Franklin (Jürgen Hooper) and his young wife Effie (Grace Rex).
As for the fractured narrative, it centers on Franklin’s inability to get a job when he returns from war, and by extension his failure to achieve even a small slice of the American Dream. Franklin’s journey is clearly one of innocence to disillusionment, but it’s a journey that’s impossible to invest in because it never seems genuine. Franklin’s dearest, symbolically lead-footed dream seems to be to provide Effie with a television set. In pursuit of the stability and well-being the ability to make such solidly middle-class purchases represents, he’s willing to utterly debase himself. Life and Limb first breaches the realms of believability when Franklin shows himself willing to perform fellatio in exchange for a job at an artificial limb factory in a moment . It’s a scene that doesn’t ring remotely true for so much as a nano-second.
Effie, meanwhile, is dealing with her own issues, escaping to the movies with her best friend Doina (Audrey Francis) and embarking on an affair. Absurdity is piled on absurdity when a freak tragedy befalls the women and the action is abruptly moved to hell, here seen as a gleaming white prison where the inmates are stuck making potholders and shopping for groceries in an equally snow-hued supermarket.
The primary problem in this chilly, remote play is that Reddin never gives us much of reason to care about whether Effie is in hell, heaven or at the movies. Life and Limb is so caught up in its clunky allegory and symbolism that the story – such as it is – never resonates. It’s possible to discern that in Franklin’s yearning for a television and Effie’s infatuation with the movies Reddin intended to portray a pair of lost souls hopelessly searching for happy ending and an American Dream that simply don’t exist in their world. But their journey is remote rather than immediate, and pocked with dialog and situations that come across as artificial at best.
Rating: ★★
Life and Limb continues through June 24th at Steppenwolf Garage Theatre, 1624 N. Halsted (map). Tickets are $20, and are available by phone (312-335-1650) or online here (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at Steppenwolf.org. (Running time: 1 hour 35 minutes, includes an intermission)
Photos by Michael Brosilow
