DRINKING IN AMERICA
Drinking in America, the show that made Eric Bogosian famous and allowed him to step out of Soho’s arts ghetto into the lucrative mainstream, is only a little more than seven years old, but it’s already showing its age. Written and first performed when both solo performances and the backlash against booze and drugs were still something of a novelty, Drinking in America now seems trite, obvious, and artistically exhausted.
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In 12 relentless unrelated monologues, Bogosian introduces us to a handful of lonely, thoroughly unlikable characters, few of whom have stories interesting or original enough to justify their time on the stage. Bogosian’s more tightly structured play Talk Radio revealed his eye for the vermin populating America’s underbelly: bigoted Holy Rollers, unctuous salesmen, coked-up Hollywood agents. But in this play, it’s clear that once he maneuvers his characters onstage he doesn’t really know what to do with them.
Far too rare are bits like “Our Gang,” in which a drugged-out gang member relates in gleeful detail the insane antics of he and a friend the night before, antics which become so wild and unbelievable as the monologue progresses–stealing and setting fire to a hippie’s van, invading the home of an innocent farmer and his wife and tying them up–that it’s clear the young man is lying just to impress. This monologue is so perfectly written (and performed by Michael Shannon) that it puts the rest of the show to shame.
The shortness of Heller’s play proves fatal to Eric Zudak’s production, which takes a long time to find its satiric legs–thanks in part to Keith Berkes’s bland portrayal of Yossarian and Chris Gerson’s equally colorless take on Clevinger. (It certainly didn’t help that on opening night Colin Cordwell still seemed unsure of his lines.) But even if all of the performers had been right on the mark, this glorified curtain raiser would still easily be the worst deal in Chicago late-night theater.
