Tigers Be Still
Written by Kim Rosenstock
Directed by Jeremy Wechsler
at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont (map)
thru June 3 | tickets: $18-$36 | more info
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A bona fide gift to every audience who sees it
Theater Wit presents
Tigers Be Still
Review by Lawrence Bommer
Every stage character starts out a stranger. The minor miracle every good playwright works is to make us care as if we’d known them all our lives instead of two hours. Aided by a perfectly cast and controlled staging by Jeremy Wechsler, author Kim Rosenstock accomplishes as much with the four fully felt creations in Tigers Be Still. This is a bona fide gift to every audience who sees it.
At first it seems to be a lifestyle sitcom drolly narrated by the main character Sherry. But in no time (it’s only 95 minutes) it evolves into a charming look at characters at crossroads, their choices and mistakes unmistakably real to anyone in the audience – even if they aren’t to the foursome.
Zack’s father—and Sherry’s new employer—is the embattled school principal whose big new worry is a runaway tiger for which his rifle may offer a solution. (It works as a metaphor for the wildness that the characters seek and also as a runaway tiger.)
Meanwhile, Sherry’s unseen mother remains holed upstairs in her room, one reason the father left home. Finally, we meet Sherry’s hard-drinking, slacker sister Grace who’s stuck on the family couch planning revenge against the fiancé who jilted her (including kidnapping his beloved Chihuahuas) and has a yen for a certain elderly letter carrier.
In summary this sounds a bit quirky-silly. But once the emotional baggage is unpacked, Rosenstock uses her hilarious and well-targeted dialogue to show us how small these folks seem to themselves and how strangely and wisely they blunder into helping each other. It’s as if each had hidden keys to the others’ locks and by trial and error manage to open themselves in the process. And, yes, the mysterious tiger fits in too.
What, given a lesser writer or director, could seem an enervating character tailspin (and in fact the play can’t avoid a few longueurs) turns into an enthralling look at how people process pain–when honesty isn’t just the best policy but the only hope. What works is the disarming way Rosenstock shows them blurting out stuff that turns instantly right the moment it’s spoken. So many “Gotcha!” moments amount to revelation.
It also helps that Mary Winn Heider makes tentative, hopeful and spontaneous Sherry the perfect exponent for the play’s tangled web. Her every reaction feels as fresh as an ingratiating script requires, a naturalness fully duplicated by Matt Farabee’s sweetly surly Zach. His sulking deadpan cuts to the core of every crisis, as if the kid is just too tired to tell any more of the lies that adolescents are required to. Guy Massey, in the whimsical part of Zach’s father, makes his control issues so precise and personal we adopt them on the spot. Finally, Kasey Foster’s Grace is the dysfunctional sadsack sister whose power to leave the sofa becomes a game-changing breakthrough—one more bedrock epiphany in a play where life’s little miracles manage to matter.
Rating: ★★★½
Tigers Be Still continues through June 3rd at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont (map), with performances Thursdays-Saturdays at 8pm, Sundays at 3pm. Tickets are $18-$36, and are available by phone (773-975-8150) or online here (check for half-price tickets at Goldstar.com). More information at TheaterWit.org. (Running time: 90 minutes, no intermission)
All photos by Liz Lauren
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