Somebody Foreign

By Douglas Post

Directed by Terry McCabe

At City Lit Theatre

1020 W. Bryn Mawr Ave.

Chicago, IL

Call 773-293-3682, tickets $25

Fridays & Saturdays at 8 PM

Sundays at 3 PM

Running time is 1 hour 50 min with no intermission

Through March 26, 2006

Somebody Foreign is a tribute to personal honor

City Lit has committed to doing a series of “Chicago People” works by and about Chicago folks. The first play, Somebody Foreign, is by Douglas Post, a Chicagoan and Resident Playwright at Victory Gardens Theater. Post’s fictional drama is set in a North Shore suburb and deals with a woman professor of Middle Eastern Studies and human rights activists who has worked in the Gaza Strip on behalf of the Palestinians for several years.

Liz Fletcher (Bethanny Alexander) as the stoic, determined honorable liberal finds herself the target of an FBI investigation after the slaying of her brother and his fiancée in the Chicago suburb.

Liz is harassed by the local police fueled by intimidating FBI interviews and hounded by the local media. It seems that the FBI uses vague information about threats against Liz to get her to talk about her travels to Palestine. The FBI wants her to name her Hamas contacts. She refuses and the local police and her lawyer and her friends all pressure her to ‘tell what she knows’ so the murder(s) can be caught. Liz stands fast in keeping quiet because she doesn’t believe that Hamas would try to kill her or anyone in the Unites States therefore she doesn’t see the connection between the murders and Palestine.

Post’s script unfolds as a mystery, a baffling ‘who-done-it’ and Bethanny Alexander is steady and competent as the liberal professor. John Tomlinson, as Roger Lemons, Liz’s lawyer and former lover acts as narrator. The show’s slow pace puts a damper on the tension necessary to sustain a mystery but we empathize with Liz as the long arm of the FBI continues to pressure her with tactics that lead her to lose her job and many of her friends. Issues of personal privacy and need for justice conflict in this play that gets us to question the government’s harassment of a citizen who chooses to work with a group that it doesn’t approve. When the murder is finally solved, Liz is vindicated. Post has written a powerful piece of resistance to political pressure that gets us debating governmental witch hunts.

City Lit’s production could stand some edits and quicker pacing yet it delivers its warning effectively. Liz emerges as the heroine able to withstand pressure from the FBI and maintain her honor by being loyal to her friends. Her resistance to intimidation is a lesson for us all. Someday Foreign is a worthy and timely play.

Recommended

Tom Williams

Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments

Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast

Date Reviewed February 13, 2006