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Say You Love Satan
By Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa
Directed by Scott Ferguson
Produced by About Face Theatre
At Victory Gardens Greenhouse Theatre
2257 N. Lincoln Ave
Chicago, IL
Call 773-871-3000, tickets $20 - $45
Wednesdays through Fridays at 8 PM
Saturdays at 5 & 8:30 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Running time is 90 minutes with intermission
Through November 19, 2006
Say You Love Satan doesn’t deliver enough laughs
About Face Theatre Company has a proud history of mounting terrific productions of gay oriented shows such as Loving Repeating: A Musical of Gertrude Stein, M Poust, Take Me Out, Winesburg, Ohio and I Am My Own Wife. We have come to expect a high level script every time out. Unfortunately, their latest, Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa’s Say You Love Satan play isn’t worthy of being a featured production.
Say You Love Satan is a cliché-ridden gay relationship work that is part comedy, part horror film, part Buffy episode and flatly mediocre. The play isn’t edgy enough, nor irreverent enough and it tries much too hard to be campy as it forces much of the humor with extreme gay stereotypes and dry personae. With strong pop culture references together with satanic film/TV hints, Say You Love Satan just doesn’t have enough sharpness or bite to sustain its thin premises.
At the opening night performance, the older audience members (me included) didn’t laugh much while the younger (and gay) audience members laughed and reacted to show positively. I didn’t get much of the pop culture and TV references, so that humor went right over me. The hackneyed gay stereotypes were more offensive than funny.
Andrew (Joshua Rollins) meets the perfect stud, Jack (Jonathan Pereira) who reads Dostoevsky in Russian, has a body to die for and has the knack to be able to get into any night club. Jack turnouts to be the son of Satan. This is a promising premise but Aguirre-Sacasa does little with it as it becomes more of a stretch than a base for comedy.
Joshua Rollins’ Andrew narrates with too many asides and lukewarm comments. Andrew simply lacks enough charm as he comes off as a boring loser with whom we don’t much care about. Jack, the devil and Jerrod (Benjamin Sprunger), Andrews’s saintly nice-guy boy friend are more interesting characters. Without giving away more plot details, let me say that the situations could have been funny if Aguirre-Sacasa had sharper, more stinging lines instead of going for more camp and obvious gay archetypes. Elizabeth Ledo, as Bernadette the fag-hag, was underdeveloped and Scott Duff so over played the swishy gay characters that it seemed that he didn’t trust the script so he forced his bits.
Say You Love Satan is mediocre and that’s my problem with it. Better to stretch than play safe. The younger gay crowd will either laugh hardily or be offended by this show. Too bad because the premise has potential. Some may enjoy this show, I found way too predictable and threadbare.
Somewhat Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: October 21, 2006
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