BIG BLONDE, THE FAT GIRL, and EROSION, Studio 108, at Chopin Theatre. If ever there were a show to walk in late on, it’s this one. In fact, I urge you to miss the first piece in this evening of loosely connected plays.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Erosion, written and directed by Greg Nagan, is an intellectually confused and confusing audio work. All of the actors are prerecorded, their voices played back over the theater’s sound system accompanied by minimal visuals–curtains, a bare stage, a single light that grows in intensity. It’s a bit of postmodern radio fiction in the style of Joe Frank, but Nagan is no Frank. The tale he presents tries to be hip and mysterious; he even cuts between two unrelated story lines. In one a wistful woman walks along the beach; in the other a lout recounts how his female boss upbraided him for calling his Palm Springs vacation a trip to “pussy heaven.” In each unfocused story Nagan achieves blunt obviousness: the clearly lonely woman notes how sexual the landscape looks; the thick-necked man doesn’t get what his boss is complaining about.
