Pleasant Dreams
Written by John Schneider
Directed by Daniel Dvorkin
at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division (map)
thru Nov 4 | tickets: $15-$20 | more info
Check for half-price tickets
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Promising start becomes interruptions in singing duo’s sets
Two Lights Theatre presents
Pleasant Dreams
Review by Catey Sullivan
They’re in over their heads. Worse, they don’t know it. Such is an all-too common malady rife among young, earnest actors who wrap themselves in dialogue calculated to tackle Big Issues. Such is the trouble with Two Lights Theatre Company‘s production of John Schneider‘s Pleasant Dreams. Directed by Daniel Dvorkin, the backyard drama is weighted with heavy emotive passages that seem designed to give almost everyone in the seven-person ensemble the chance to show off their intensity in expressing love,
As a result, nobody gathered for the twilight picnic on set designer Matt Olson‘s pleasantly pastoral set earns the audience’s empathy. What should be moving comes across as self-involved and often pretentious.
The piece starts promisingly. Olson’s set has a distinctive Blue Velvet vibe to it, the sense that just underneath that lush green lawn, there’s a dark, dirty, complicated mess of squirming worms, both literal and metaphorical. That feeling is enhanced by the presence of a young man gutting a carp with an understated violence, stabbing away at the fish and exposing its oozing innards. The presence of an onstage singing duo dressed in ’40s garb and punctuating the proceedings with classics from the Les Paul and Mary Ford lends a slightly dreamlike quality to the stage. The music, floating and carefree, is at odds with Schneider’s dialogue, which quickly reveals all manner of familial dysfunction among siblings Freddy (Michael Carey), Shelley (Sophia Reppert) and Larry (Clancy McCartney) and their respective significant others.
That dialogue quickly devolves into conversation that merits more than a little eye-rolling. This group, which also includes Freddy’s wife Janet (Bridget Schreiber), Larry’s wife Rita (Eleni Sauvageau) and Shelley’s boyfriend Jim (Aaron Kirby) is prone to making pseudo-intellectual pronouncements ("Post-modernism is a cultural prophylactic") that call to mind the sort of profound (but not really) posturings that college freshmen spout in Philosophy 101. Janet is the exception. Bizarrely, she consistently speaks in the sort of relentlessly cheerful, slowly emphatic tones that one might use to address a kindergarten classroom.
Schneider’s characters are shells, instruments for dialogue that aim to be provocative but only succeed in striking poses. In the end, one wants to hear more from the Pleasant Dreamers band (Annie Pritchard, Cameron Benoit, Alex Mauney and Ryan Semmelmayer) and less from the players who keep interrupting their sets.
Rating: ★½
Pleasant Dreams continues through November 4th at Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm, Sundays 3pm. Tickets are $15-$20, and are available by phone (773-396-2875) or online through Artful.ly (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at TwoLightsTheatre.com. (Running time: play length, includes an intermission)
artists
cast
Mike Carey, Aaron Kirby*, Clancy McCartney, Bruce Moore, Sophia Reppert, Eleni Sauvageau*, Bridget Schreiber*
band
Cameron Benoit, Annie Prichard (vocals), Alex Mauney, Ryan Semmelmayer
behind the scenes
Daniel Dvorkin*, Matt Olson* (set design), Olivia Grzasko* (costume design), Nick Belley (lighting design), Jack Hawkins (sound design), Christian Nam and Karen Kuroda (photography)
* = denotes company member
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