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Stone Cold Serious
By Adam Rapp
Directed by Joanie Schultz
At Circle Theatre
7300 W. Madison
Forest Park, IL
Call 708-771-0700, tickets $23
Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 PM
Sundays at 3 PM
Running time 2 hours, 10 minutes with intermission
Through February 18, 2007
When a cow drinks water, it becomes milk.
When a snake drinks water, it becomes poison.
…Samurai axiom
Rapp’s dysfunctional family is the ultimate group of misfits
Adam Rapp’s Stone Cold Dead Serious, now in a strong Midwest Premiere at Circle Theatre in Forest Park, is a raw suburban Chicago based story of the weirdest dysfunctional blue collar American family. This quirky family has an invalid father fixated on QVC and the Shopping Channel, a prostituting drug-using teen daughter, a video game computer nerd teen son who also turns tricks and has a Samurai mindset and a enabling working mother. The Ledbetter’s are an ignorant family struggling to find meaning and purpose. Linda (Jennifer Mathews), the mother rediscovers Catholicism, Wynne (Ryan Heindl) the nerd son discovers the cult of the Samurai, Shaylee (Darci Nalepa) escapes into sex and drugs, dad (Paul Joseph) abuses pain killers and beer and is fixated on TV’s shopping channels.
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This drama is filled with religious symbolism, raw language, abusive interrelationships and sexuality. Ryan Heindl is terrific as Wynne the nerd teen who is on a quest to find his purpose and rescue his family by mastering a video game thus qualifying for a reality TV show that will have three real Samurai-type swordsman in a actually death struggle with a millionaire dollar prize to the ultimate survivor. Rapp sure is mocking our addiction to TV and our blue collar inability to communicate with one another. Rapp also takes shots a Christianity, teenage angst and middle class America in this darkly humorous fable.
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I liked much of this way-out story. Heindl and Joseph gave strong, compelling performances. Darci Nalepa and Jennifer Mathews added effective performances. The writing stretches our openness and the TV reality contest near the end is incredulous. It is the easy acceptance by the family to the real violence of the TV show where their son Wynne is completing with his first love, Sharice, that bothered me most . This fascinatingly crude show dramatically focuses a fresh look at teen coming of age struggles and a family’s search for philosophies of life to give them a structure for living. While a tad preposterous, Stone Cold Dead Serious is an entertaining raw fable featuring fine acting on Bob Knuth’s smart, compartmentalized multi-door set. This show has its moments.
Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: January 16, 2007
Jeff Recommended
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