Playwright: Matthew-Lee Erlbach
At: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted. Tickets: 312-335-1650. Steppenwolf.org; $20-$114. Runs through: June 2
You'll go through most of Matthew-Lee Erlbach's high-octane farce fairly certain you know what it is you're watching. There are 10 slamming doors, lots of groan-worthy puns, and plenty of gags about sex, poop and mistaken identities.
But Urlbach peppers the hijinks with something that is the opposite of farce—something frightening, catastrophic, violent and deeply disturbing. Such is the increasingly evident genius of Urbach's genre-flipping script, directed to perfection by Tina Landau.
Pulling off the whacky antics of farce is one of the most difficult jobs there is in theater. Timing is treacherous. With the slightest misstep, the farce becomes a puerile chore. Weaving lowbrow slapstick with a nightmarish commentary on race and violence and child soldiers? That's farce, with the difficulty level quadrupled.
Landau makes it work in The Doppelganger, a play that is hilarious until it isn't. Urlbach has incorporated a hairpin turn into the plot, and when it comes, the audience is abruptly hurtled into a world where laughter has been replaced by terror.
At first, The Doppelganger seems like standard fare farce. We meet Thomas Irdley ( Rainn Wilson ), the white owner of an African ( the country is never specified ) copper mine. Thomas has invited Jimmy Peterson ( also Wilson ), a gay kindergarten teacher from Quincy, Illinois for the weekend. The men met by chance and bonded over the fact that they look like identical twins.
The plot kicks into high gear when Thomas meets with an untimely accident, and Jimmy steps into his shoes. At risk: A massive multinational trade deal that will make all its participants ( an arms dealer, programming genius, a military dictator, a Brit with serious gastrointestinal issues and a Brazilian sexpot, among them ) wealthy beyond compare.
Thomas's maid, Rosie ( Celeste M. Cooper ), has designs on making the copper deal actually benefit the impoverished, war-form nation by creating a well-[aid humanely treated workforce. For the others, "workers rights" are an oxymoron. Their business plan involves a violent coup, the restoration of the dictatorship and, perhaps, a small civil war.
The brilliance in The Doppelganger is aptly twofold. First, the large ensemble cast has the timing of a Rolex watch that comes with a secret nuclear option. Second, Urlbach has has embedded dialogue with moments of jarring seriousness. One moment, everyone is laughing heartily at diarrhea gags. The next, they're gaping at a land of tragic violence and brutal oppression. The disconnect will leave you uneasy about your potential complicity: Nobody wants to admit that they're laughing at buffoons who are also architects of genocide.
Wilson and Cooper unarguably anchor Landau's cast. The latter shifts from madcap to dead serious in a heartbeat. Real talk: You do want to see Cooper using a dead fencer as a ventriloquist puppet. It's a role that's exhausting, both in terms of the highly physical comedy and the emotional drama. Cooper is both the co-star of the entire story and so unassuming she blends seamlessly into it.
If you've seen Wilson as office dweeb Dwight Schrute on The Office, you might not need reminding of his skills delivering comedy. But if Wilson's work of The Office is an eight on a 10-point comed-o-meter, then his turn as Jimmy/Thomas is a 12.
Landau's supporting cast is equally fine. Among the standouts: Audrey Francis as an amorous English politico; Whit K. Lee as a Silicon Valley wunderkind, and Karen Rodriguez as Marina, a Brazilian sexpot who is part Bond Girl, part Zsa Zsa Gabor and wholly her own creation. As a gay Middle Eastern prince who spends most of the second act naked, Andy Nagraj gives both his comedic chops and his undercarriage gets a berserkly amusing workout. There are also James Vincent Meredith as a deposed general, and Ora Jones as the one person in the world who doesn't quake with fear before him.
At one point, the script refers to a love-child between Kim Jung Il and Steve Bannon. It's hilarious … until you start thinking about just what such a creation would mean for the world. Then? You'll be hoping the bloodied miscreants of The Doppelganger get the hook—as soon as you've finished laughing at them.
