Playwright: Craig Wright. At: Bare Bones Theatre Group/Interrobang Theater Project at Raven Theatre, 6157 N. Clark St. Tickets: 773-338-2177; www.raventheatre.com; $25. Runs through: June 9
What happens when two people, after 15 years of marriage and a total of six children, discover that they don't want to grow up? For the last three years, David and Bethboth married, but not to each otherhave been canoodling with each other on the down low. Granted, Beth's husband, Brad, is a hyperjock boor, and David's wife, Cathy, can be more Athena than Aphrodite. Still, there are the children to think about (as a bargaining chip in their parents' negotiations, if nothing else), but now Beth wants to have another child, this one fathered by her paramourafter they leave their "mistakes" behind, of course.
The discarded spouses' reaction to this plan varyBrad rages while Cathy dismisses her departing hubby with managerial efficiency. Unsurprisingly, no sooner do the sweethearts settle into their own nest than guilt over their estranged families sets them to squabbling. Ah, but then Beth announces that she's pregnant (the results of her toddler son having snacked on a month's supply of her birth-control pills). The final word goes to David, apostrophizing a letter to his newborn baby daughter, in which he confesses to the pain he has caused others in conceiving herthus laying the blame for his transgressions upon HER, all but ensuring his progeny's anticipation of a similar fate.
Well, hasn't romance always been predicated on obstacles, and lovers universally selfish and irresponsible? This isn't Romeo and Juliet, however, but bored suburbanites weary of being adults, for whom sympathy is not easily generated. Director James Yost's valiant efforts include suspending the play's action in a limbo furnished with pensive incidental music and a spartan four chairs and bed (upon which Cathy collects one final orgasm from her submissive mate as she warns him that the thrill-of-the-forbidden he pursues so relentlessly will soon wane).
The intimacy of the Raven's west theater allows us to remain alert to the actors' emotional cues and the text's hints of what is to come, catalyzing the empathic response to a degree rendering us willing to accept the notion of the characters truly believing what they say they believe. Ultimately, though, skeptics cannot help but speculate on Craig Wright's own marital disposition in 2002, when he wrote this absolution of messy mid-life crises, even as it extends comfort to those sharing its ethical myopia.