Playwright: Neil LaBute. At: Awkward Pause Theatre at Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave. Tickets: 800-838-3006; www.awkwardpausetheatre.com; $10. Runs through: Dec. 29
Playwright and director Neil LaBute is known for his films and plays that probe the nastier side of men and women, and his 2004 short-play cycle Autobahn certainly lives up to LaBute's reputation. The plays of Autobahn are also full of wonderful acting challenges, some that are met and just missed in Awkward Pause Theatre's intimate revival at The Den Theatre.
Each of Autobahn's seven plays involves two people in a car, and a few are essentially monologues directed at a silent ( and often angrily stewing ) partner. Many of the tensions are sparked by arguments over opposing understandings over language and communication semantics.
LaBute also finds many chilling and disturbing ways to string audiences along through dialogue to piece together the characters' relationships, their motivations and whether or not what is being said is actually true. American suburban commercialism is ever-present ( LaBute name-checks many big-box retailers and chain restaurants ), all the while hinting at the banality of people who have ( or are committing ) emotionally manipulative or physically abusive actions.
For Awkward Pause's revival ( the company previously staged Autobahn in 2011 ), director Andrew Jessop has the luxury of casting 10 actors to play 14 characters, requiring only four to double up in roles. While this casting gives more actors a chance to appear, more role doubling could have showed off more of the performers' acting range and provided more cohesion to the show.
Yet Jessop's casting in many cases is spot on—disturbingly so in the pairing of Tony St. Clair and Alison Hixon as an older man and a teenage girl in the play Road Trip. Their casual banter over McDonald's menu options is a cover for a far more frightening situation.
Bench Seat featuring Matt Katzenmeier and Erin O'Shea as an engineering student and his girlfriend is another play that turns chilling by the end. Both are great physically in the scene, though O'Shea might have tipped her hand about her character's true nature a tad too early.
There's also plenty of humor to be had in Autobahn, even though the topics touch upon misoginistic slurs, gay male rape and the Nintendo 64 game system. Yet the actors performing in these scenes either feel slightly miscast, or don't probe deeply enough into the pain beneath the humorous surface of the situations.
Some of the actors who have to remain silent have a far more difficult job than the ones doing all the talking, since they need to react ( or not ) to everything being said and clue the audience in ( or not ) to what they're thinking internally. Of the mostly silent four, Katzenmeier and Catherine Dildilian do the best at listening and emotionally reacting to the situation.
Awkward Pause Theatre's Autobahn revival isn't perfect, though very respectable with solid production work by set designer Joe Schermoly and sound designer Preston Reynolds. It's also great counter-Christmastime programming for those who don't want to see elderly misers redeemed. In Autobahn, LaBute drives his characters to often disturbing ends.
