Playwright: Peter Ackerman. At: Windy City Playhouse, 3014 W. Irving Park Road. Tickets: 773-891-8985 or www.windycityplayhouse.com; $25-$60. Runs through Oct. 4
Peter Ackerman's 1999 New York sex comedy Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight, now being revived in a strongly acted production at the swanky Windy City Playhouse, certainly begins with a great premise. How do you react when your lover says something totally offensive to your core while also sexually climaxing?
Specifically, the comedy takes off when cookbook editor Nancy ( Emily Tate ) ecstatically calls her med-school lover Ben ( Peter Meadows ) a "hook-nose Jew" mid-orgasm. Understandably, Ben is thrown for a loop and the ensuing argument he has with Nancy is an uncomfortable, yet hilarious back-and-forth sparring match played to the hilt by Meadows and Tate.
Unfortunately, things lose a lot of steam once Emily leaves in a huff and the scene shifts to the bedroom of her friend, Grace ( Patrese McClain ), and her hitman acquaintance, Gene ( Shane Kenyon ). Ackerman creates a scenario where Gene wants to be seen as more than a boy toy, while Grace just wants sex.
Although McClain and Kenyon do their best to make the scene work ( and garner a lot of laughs in the process ), they're ultimately let down by Ackerman's writing which feels very generalized in terms of switched heterosexual desire dynamics. It also distracts too long away from the initial conflict.
Thankfully, things pick up when Nancy barges into Grace's apartment seeking advice, which leads to an early-morning call to Gene's gay younger brother analyst, Mark ( Chris Sheard ), who has a predilection for much-older men like Mr. Abramson ( Robert Spencer ). Soon all three couples begin debating Nancy's anti-Semitic outburst and her insecurities that Ben might also be secretly gay.
As staged by director William Brown, the space of the Windy City Playhouse is smartly played along a diagonal as audiences bounce their heads back and forth following each interjectionparticularly when the second-act three-way phone call hilariously entangles all the characters at 3 a.m. in the morning. Even if the characterizations are barely skin-deep, Brown and his ensemble certainly scratch out plenty of laughs along the way.
Take, for instance, the character of Mr. Abramson, whose only purpose appears to let Ackerman humorously inject in some old-Jew shtick. But given that, Spencer works wonders with such paltry material with great comic delivery, playing well off of Sheard whose main duty appears to be looking well-toned in his underwear.
Given the inherent weaknesses in the writing of Things You Shouldn't Say Past Midnight, one wonders why the Windy City Playhouse chose Ackerman's sex comedy for its initial season. But when you see the great talents assembled to bring the play to life, the Windy City Playhouse gets a pass for skillfully serving up some silly sexual fun at the end of summer.