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Spare Change
By Mia McCullough
Produced by Stage Left Theatre
3408 N. Sheffield
Chicago, IL
Tickets: 773-883-8830 - $20-$25
Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8:00 pm, Sundays at 3:00 pm (Sunday performances are followed by “Sunday Symposium” with the playwright, cast, and director)
Running time is 2 hours with one intermission
Through November 3rd
Can One Person Really Help Another?
That is the poignant question that ensemble member Mia McCullough asks in her original play, Spare Change, now premiering at Stage Left Theatre. Victoria Caciopoli and Kevin Heckman star in this often funny drama about Michael Ann, a homeless woman struggling with joblessness, raising children and mental illness, and Brad, a would be good Samaritan who Michael Ann happens to meet on Chicago’s blue line. Brad’s attempts at helping come to nothing for either Michael Ann, or for her Sybil-like prostitute alter-ego, Mikki, and Brad’s blundering nearly wrecks his career and his relationship with wife Claire, played by Cat Dean. In the end, this thought provoking and sensitive play leaves the audience with more questions than answers about a complex and worthwhile topic. The experience is an eye-opener and Spare Change is a theatrical gem.
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Director Ann Filmer makes good use of the small Stage Left space, allowing the actors to transform the condo living room set into a shelter, a hospital, and the train. The show is fast-paced, skillfully utilizing a seamless lighting design to focus the audience’s attention while creating the frequently simultaneous action of the variously located scenes. Heckman is riveting as Brad, the young finance professional who is struggling to find satisfaction and a little meaning in his cliché of a life. The show exposes nerves as it looks at work, marriage, race, and class as much as it explores homelessness and mental illness.
Spare Change is a product of Steppenwolf Theatre’s New Plays initiative and was presented as part of the First Look Repertory of New Work at that theatre. It is a marvelous play that to this reviewer feels yet a bit unfinished in spots. The clearest example of this is in the one-dimensional prostitute Mikki, who is in fact the unsympathetic side of the very sympathetic Michael Ann when she has the wrong medication. McCullough based the story on an experience she had while working in a shelter, so she knows the territory well and uses her understanding of the complex subject to astounding effect. In her real life experience it was unclear whether or not the basis of the Mikki character was actually the same person as the more sympathetic real-life Michael Ann. Maybe yes, maybe no. In the play, McCullough has assumed that they are one and the same, which may be the most serious flaw in this play that says so much about assumptions. Caciopoli’s Michael Ann is multi-faceted and Brad’s decision to reach out to her is plausible, even if not totally easy to understand, but the prostituting Mikki is thin, one-dimensional and confusing. There is no Jekyll and Hyde elixir transformation, no Sybil snapping across identities, so what exactly is Mikki? We don’t get to see enough of Mikki to understand how she is able to function and she does function …I assume. Anyway, with such a profound topic and Susann Jamshidi already playing a slough of supporting characters, what’s another scene? Sure, the show runs two hours as is, but audiences could probably watch the engaging Stage Left cast for two more without difficulty.
McCullough is a rising playwright with enormous talent; Stage Left is one fine little company; and Spare Change is a stunning example of why I believe that Chicago is the hottest theatre scene around. Do not miss this show.
HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
Randy Hardwick
randyontheglobe@yahoo.com for comments
Date reviewed: September 25, 2007
Jeff Recommended
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