Playwright: Deborah Zoe Laufer. At: Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Rd. Tickets: 773-891-8985 or www.windycityplayhouse.com; $25-$45. Runs through April 26
The folks behind the new Windy City Playhouse are certainly on a mission to impress. Despite its unprepossessing location where you'd expect to find a laundromat rather than a subscription-based professional theater, the Windy City Playhouse instantly amazes with its swanky décor reminiscent of a trendy nightclub.
Windy City Playhouse artistic director Amy Rubenstein also aims high with the level of talent she has attracted for the opening production: a revival of Deborah Zoe Laufer's quirky comedy End Days which was previously seen in 2009 at Evanston's now-departed Next Theatre.
Goodman Theatre artistic associate Henry Godinez directs End Days, and his five-member ensemble features three professional Equity actors. Scenic designer Brian Sidney Bembridge also goes to town with his End Days set design which prominently features a symbolic art installation piece suggesting a freeze frame of an explosion of suburban stuff hovering over the stage.
Now if only Laufer's play itself didn't strain so hard to be so sitcom-quirky. Some may find elements of End Days to be very cloying, especially how Laufer explains away why the love-struck teenager Nelson Steinberg ( an ever-optimistic Stephen Cefalu Jr. ) always wears an Elvis Presley-sequined jump suit, or how the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001 are used as an easy motivational crutch to illuminate the often-comical dysfunction of the Stein family.
The Stein father, Arthur ( a believably lethargic Keith Kupferer ), sleeps all day and has almost no motivation to grocery shop ( or bathe ). Newly Christian evangelical mother Sylvia ( an often strident Tina Gushchenko ) dedicates all her time to proselytizing and doing good works which she does in tow with an apparition of Jesus Christ ( a comically low-key Steven Strafford ). Meanwhile, goth-rebel daughter Rachel ( an amusingly petulant Sari Sanchez ) herself is visited by apparitions of physicist Stephen Hawking ( Strafford again, this time with mechanical mobility scooter and electronic vocal inflections ).
Despite is bouts of cute cloyingness, End Days does tackle some weighty issuesparticularly how people find wildly different ways to cope or adapt after a traumatic, life-threatening event. And it's also nice to see how a catalyst like Nelson can bring the Steins back together as a family unit.
Godinez and his ensemble do very good comical work and get to the root of their characters, though I wonder if the laughs might have been bigger with a different seating configuration. The comfy swivel lounge chairs make it too easy to turn your focus away from the onstage actors to your nearby drinks and appetizers.
So even if some audiences may have qualms about the location and configuration of the new Windy City Playhouse, at least the work onstage for End Days augers very well for its future. It's definitely a welcome addition to Chicago's theater scene.