ANY PLACE BUT HERE
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No, things are not happy in the depressed blue-collar universe of Caridad Svich’s Any Place but Here. What makes the plight of these people all the more cruel is that, beneath the bickering and passive-aggressive control games, they seem to actually care for one another. Lydia scolds Chucky for allowing leftover food to go stale in the refrigerator, angrily insisting that he eat it; his response is to tease her, stuffing handfuls of cold pasta into his mouth–whereupon she pleads with him to stop before he makes himself sick. Even as Veronica bleeds from the cut-rate abortion she cannot reveal to Tommy, she decides to remain with her dominating husband.
The second act signals changes, however: Chucky has lost his latest dead-end job, and drink and idleness have made him so bug-brained that even Tommy declares him a liability at the bar. Lydia seems to love him all the more for his infantile dependence, however, chasing away the paranoid demons that beset him, reminding him to take his medication, and comforting him like a well-trained nurse. Veronica and Tommy have fared a little better: Tommy has finally swallowed his macho pride and now wears the glasses he’s needed for a long time (“It was getting where I couldn’t read the labels on the bottles,” he admits. “I’d be making drinks nobody ever heard of”). He has also grown serene, affectionate, considerate, well-groomed, and downright gentlemanly. None of this stops Veronica from leaving him, however. And though Lydia’s garb indicates she has risen in the work force, she doesn’t feel free to be her own person until Chucky dies.
