Playwright: Dennis Lehane. At: Steep Theatre, 3902 N. Sheridan. Phone: 312-458-0722; $18. Runs through: Nov. 3
Only one, or maybe two, of the desert desperadoes in novelist/screenwriter Dennis Lehane's first conceived-for-the-stage play can be called truly malicious. But all of them are desperate, and the desperate are often far more ruthless than the outright villainous, despair being a condition blinding those afflicted to alternative solutions providing hope—and, thus, imbuing them with the conviction that they have nothing to lose by risking everything, regardless of the consequences and injury to others.
The action opens at a roadhouse juke-joint in the sun-baked outpost of Coronado, one of many almost-microscopic dots on the map of the sprawling U.S. Southwest. In the corner booth, a pair of lust-besotted lovers plot to murder the lady's husband—a romantic scheme proving unnecessary, but ventured nevertheless. At a table, a strung-out courtesan attempts to seduce her therapist a second time—if not by feminine wiles, then by threats to expose his previous infraction. And somewhere across the room, an old crook and his son reunite following the latter's release from prison for theft, their conversation centering on the whereabouts of the boy's girl friend and the loot, both mysteriously missing.
Eventually, we come to discover that these scenes occur in different time frames, and that some characters are the later incarnations of those we've met earlier. But this isn't a Sam Shepard ramble-through-the-surreal-badlands, however similar its sordid environment. So tightly-constructed is Lehane's intricate narrative and so riveting his preternaturally-eloquent personnel that we never lose our way—or if we think we may have, we are happy to wait until we find it again.
None of this would matter if this Steep Theatre Company production did not realize the author's vision in every detail. But director Kevin Gladish and his stalwart cast embrace their personae's myopic motives to generate ensemble performance at its most exemplary ( though Karyn Morris, playing the haunted femme fatale, and Brian Parry, as the crafty con artist, deliver standout portrayals of amoral personalities most actors would shrink from assuming ) . Also to be commended are sound designers Joe Griffin and Steve Baldwin, whose score of unobtrusive honky-tonk ballads cleverly pre-empts any ambient disruption emanating from the actual country-western tavern next door.