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By David Jacobi

Directed by Marti Lyons

Produced by Sideshow Theatre Company

Dark Comedy Tries to Have it Both Ways

I’ll say this for Sideshow’s world premiere of Mai Dang Lao: it never stops being interesting. This drama by David Jacobi is described as “chilling” and “terrifying,” and based on the real-life events that inspired it, that’s to be expected. In 2004, a McDonald’s in Mount Washington, Kentucky, received a call from someone claiming to be a police officer. That person told the staff that an employee was suspected of theft, and the manager detained the employee in the office, where she was sexually assaulted by the manager’s boyfriend, in compliance with the fake police officer’s instructions. But Mai Dang Lao (the Chinese name for McDonald’s, and a particularly perplexing title) is about the exploitation of minimum wage workers more broadly, and attempts to represent this through satirical humor, until the last ten minutes of an eight-five minute play, when things suddenly get extremely bleak. The mixture doesn’t quite hold together upon examination.

The first voice we hear is that of an irate customer cussing out Sophie (Sarah Price), the cashier, because the person at the drive-through window took too long delivering her food. And no, says the voice, she will not pull up to the white line, the workers need to bring her sandwich and cup full of sauce to wherever in the drive-through she decides to idle her car. Sophie’s manager, Roy (Matt Fletcher), apologizes profusely, and reminds his workers of the importance of eliminating lag-time and customer complaints. Sophie says this is a perfect example of why she has already given her two-week notice.

Roy had long accused Sophie of not being a team-player, and now that she’s leaving, she barely pretends to respect him or the supervisor, Kara (Lanisa Renee Frederick). Not that there’s much reason why she should. Sophie’s obnoxious in a dozen ways, but Roy and Kara are established as clueless, self-righteous imbeciles from their first lines. Fletcher and Frederick’s performances will remind you of every unfair pseudo-authority figure exercising petty power you’ve ever encountered, so of course they immediately fall for “Officer Bill” (Jim Poole). Kara loves the drama of a police investigation and takes satisfaction in destroying people who think they’re entitled to special treatment like respect, and Roy sexually desires Sophie and is furious with her for servicing nearly every man they know except him. For Roy, Officer’s Bill’s order to strip-search and restrain Sophie is a dream come true, not that he’d ever admit it, even to himself.

Interspersed with scenes of Roy and Kara tormenting Sophie in the office are the much more mundane degradations in the kitchen. Mike (Andrew Goetten) is the closest thing to a friend Sophie has at McDonald’s. A handsome stoner whose dream is to buy a car so he can do doughnuts in the parking lot, Mike’s altered mental state and low expectations allow him to be more tolerant than Sophie of their miserable environment, but even he has limits. Nancy (Tyler Meredith), a nervous, awkward girl who’s being trained for a promotion, has a crush on Mike which he emphatically does not reciprocate. Not yet even a junior manager, Nancy loves nothing more than following Kara around and joining in on her bullying, although when they’re apart, Nancy shows more signs of a conscience and intellect. But those traits don’t wind up being useful in this script.

All the actors are perfect for their parts, the design is spot-on, and the humor is hilarious. Jacobi nails not only the capriciousness of authority, but also the absurdities of everyday interactions between bored people who don’t have much to talk about. The problem is that he was determined to incorporate the strip-search hoax into the story without making it the main focus. Of the show’s six characters, one is likable, but totally at fault for what happens to him, two are irritating, but get over-punished, and three are absolutely vile. In the exaggerated world of comedy, characters can be taken to extremes, but a call for compassion for food workers would have to make them all sympathetic (like Samuel Hunter’s Pocatello). The strip-search hoax really happened, but a serious exploration of the environment that allowed it would have been an undramatic soul-crushing grind (like Annie Baker’s The Flick). Mai Dang Lao uses its subjects for dark comedy for seventy minutes, and then attempts to shift into an overwrought, picturesque validation of their suffering at the very end. It’s a jarring conclusion, but not one which completely spoils the insights, enjoyment, and drama which came before.

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By Neil Connelly

Directed by John Wilson

Produced by Under the Rug Theatre Company

Playing in The Den Theatre, Chicago

An Architect Learns to Love Uptown

Most theater companies declare they have some kind of intention to serve their community, but it’s nice to see a new addition that has formed as many contacts as Under the Rug Theater Company for its inaugural production. Ride, a world premiere by first-time playwright Neil Connelly, depicts the aftermath of a biker’s death in a car crash. It is being produced with the support of biking, health, and transportation-related organizations, but uses its setting in a bike shop as an entry point for exploring the economic situation and culture of Uptown. Of course, what theatre-patrons are mainly concerned with is whether it is a good drama, but on that count, they need not worry.

Owning and operating an Uptown bike shop was not the career the family of Cal Brennan, the dead man, had wanted for him. His brother, Danny (Todd Wojcik), and sister, Molly (Annie Prichard), take in the punk aesthetic of Brennan’s Bikes with dismay and disdain, wondering what Cal must have been thinking to forego the upper-middle class lifestyles they’ve enjoyed. Even more baffling to them is Quill (Rose Freeman), a woman with an adolescent disposition who Cal permitted to live in the back of the shop with the dubious justification that she is a valued employee. Quill asserts she is also the part-owner, and while the siblings find this laughable, Cal’s estate will take some time to settle. In the meantime, Danny surprises Molly by wanting to keep the shop operational, at least for the time being, and thinks it would be easier to not antagonize Quill. When she challenges him to bet ownership of the shop on whether he can make it into a more successful business than Cal, he accepts.

Connelly’s dialogue is a little clunky at the beginning of the play, when he’s setting up the culture clash, but it improves as his characters take over. Wojcik’s performance makes clear that, while Danny is proud of his accomplishments as an architect, he felt stifled by the corporate environment. At the shop, he meets Riley (Alex Dauphin), a young woman who is more sensible than Quill and was likely Cal’s lover, but doesn’t pretend to prioritize her work at the shop, and Dell (Abe Elmourabit), a scavenger who credits Cal with turning his life around. As he becomes more comfortable in Uptown, Danny begins to appreciate the notion that Dell’s current situation may really be a massive improvement over however he lived previously, and that Cal was doing some good here. They debate the justness of the economic situation and their perceptions of each other, with Dell taking the position that City Hall mugs Uptown every day, so its residents have as much reason to be fearful of Danny’s clean-cut office look as he does of Dell’s hobo get-up. Still, as much as Danny grows in his understanding of the way the other side lives, his professionalism is undoubtedly improving the shop’s finances.

Ride hinges on Rose Freeman’s character, and her performance, down to Quill’s scratchy voice, is absolutely convincing. Quill can be charming, in a child-like way, and Danny believes he is making progress with her. Their tragedy is that he doesn’t have enough experience with people like her to recognize that her behavior indicates depression and alcoholism, and that nagging and setting a good example for her won’t treat those problems. Neil Connelly has created a nuanced portrait of the intersection between young people who stayed middle-class, and those whose choices, lack of opportunities, or personal problems caused them to fall away from it. Director John Ross Wilson, who also designed the set, guides these characters along a journey that makes us empathize with them, while still recognizing the flaws on all sides. Ideally, this production would move to Uptown, since doing it in hipsterville complicates its message. But Ride also deserves to be in a venue where it will get attention, and hopefully, Under the Rug Theatre Company will continue to build on their success.

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By Gary Mitchell

Directed by Jeri Frederickson

Produced by Irish Theatre of Chicago

Playing at The Den Theatre, Chicago

Journey to Northern Ireland Like Visiting a Different Planet

When Gary Mitchell’s play In a Little World of Our Own was first produced in February of 1998, it established him as one of the first major contemporary playwrights of Northern Ireland. Debuting only months before the Good Friday Agreement, In a Little World of Our Own probes a question that has been at the forefront of tragedians’ mind since the time of Aeschylus: whether laws are the best tool for establishing a just peace. Even with the end of The Troubles in sight, the characters in Mitchell’s drama, set in his own hometown of Rathcoole, exist in a world of clannish retaliation and communal violence. Transplanted to Irish Theatre of Chicago in 2016, the drama becomes a thriller that unfolds with a feeling of inevitability, and which depends on assertions about the culture in Rathcoole that sound very odd to outsiders.

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