Mercy Strain
Written and Performed by Michael Milligan
Directed by Tom Oppenheim
American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron (map)
thru Oct 18 | tickets: $43-$48 | more info
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Implausibility diminishes Milligan’s critically important message
American Theater Company presents
Mercy Strain
Review by Catey Sullivan
Death, dying and health care are the fraught issues at the forefront of American Theater Company’s ambitious two-play season opener, with Anna Deavere Smith’s Let Me Down Easy (see review here) running in tandem with Michael Milligan’s Mercy Strain (formerly titled “Mercy Killers.”) Both shows are solo pieces, and both delve into frightening, inescapable issues that, sooner or later, we all have to face.
Mercy Strain is an unflinching tragedy that lays bare one of the most harrowing and inconvenient truths of life in the U.S.: If you’re both poor and sick in the richest country in the world, you’re screwed. Kudos to Milligan for stating it with such bald, unvarnished clarity.
Wiithin 60 minutes, we see Milligan’s character plunging irrevocably into an abyss he has no means of avoiding. Hammered by the destructive forces of a nationwide recession, a criminally collapsing housing market and a catastrophic medical crisis, it’s clear that this trucker cap-wearing, Rush Limbaugh-listening Everyman is doomed to be flattened by forces he can’t even fully conceive of, much less control.
Where Mercy Strain succeeds is in pounding home the fact that safety nets are a luxury a huge segment of the population are not afforded, something that absolutely contradicts the golden nexus of the American Dream. Most of us are all schooled from childhood on that if we just work hard enough and live honest, righteous lives we’ll succeed. But the idea that you can overcome anything if you just pull hard enough on your bootstraps is a cruel myth. The strongest element of Milligan’s monolog comes from his utter debunking of that myth. Hard work is no match for a housing market built on a foundation of shady mortgage securities sure to leave people homeless. And there’s not a bootstrap in the world that can hoist you over the hurdles presented by the joint disasters of a fatal disease and an utter inability to access adequate health care.
But Milligan’s performance repeats a single note throughout, and his script is flawed. The besieged character is drawn with the broadest of strokes. He’s a predictable stereotype, from his scruffy facial hair down to his work boots.
It’s clear where the story is going two minutes into Mercy Strain, as sirens wail in the background and the (anti)hero is seen in the chaotic center of flashing police lights. He’s been hauled into the police station following a violent domestic incident involving his ex-wife. His confession makes up the play’s monolog.
Structurally, that monolog has a large problem. Having covered various police beats for over a decade, I can assert that the odds of a cop sitting silent as the accused rambles through an hour-long autobiography are about zero.
But the unseen, unheard cop/s of Mercy Strain do just that, ostensibly taking notes as Milligan’s character relives his wife’s courtship and continues through detailed, tangent-veering description of his honeymoon, the political arguments that marked his marriage, his business woes, his home-owning troubles and his wife’s protracted illness. The officer even has the patience for a carefully constructed foreshadowing metaphor involving a dying squirrel. It’s impossible to overlook the utter implausibility of such a jailhouse scenario playing out, and that implausibility deeply diminishes the power of the story.
Rating: ★★½
Mercy Strain continues through October 18th at American Theater Company, 1909 W. Byron (map). Tickets are $43-$48, and are available by phone (773-409-4125) or online through PrintTixUSA.com (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at ATCweb.org. (Running time: 70 minutes, no intermission)
Photos by Michal Daniel
artists
cast
Michael Milligan
behind the scenes
Tom Oppenheim (director), Yu Shibagaki (set design), Brian Hoehne (lighting design), Bill Morey (costume design), Stephen Ptacek (sound design), Liviu Pasare (projection design), Katie Klemme (stage manager), Michal Daniel (photos)
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