Jordan River Productions and Act Now Productions, Chicago Fringe Festival, at the Organic Theater.
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Readers have been probing for mysterious meanings and coded messages in “Jabberwocky” ever since Alice puzzled over its backward words in a looking-glass book. Now Lewis Carroll’s parody of Anglo-Saxon dragon-slaying epics has inspired Indiana University theater student Michael Mark Chemers to write this dense, overlong, but sometimes quite clever one-act about a young man’s coming-of-age. Evoking a seemingly idyllic childhood that simmers with repressed anxieties, In Uffish Thought filters Carroll’s poem through a darkly whimsical sensibility that recalls 1950s movies like The Invisible Boy and Invaders From Mars, whose fantasy plots expressed deep-seated oedipal conflicts. The “beamish boy” hero (well played by Kevin Heckman) of Chemers’s strange comedy sets out to kill the mythical Jabberwock; on his quest he gradually acquires adult clothing and a businessman’s umbrella that turns into a vorpal sword, while his cozy backyard (complete with swing) becomes a spooky forest inhabited by mythical monsters, including the Jubjub bird, the frumious Bandersnatch, and an insectlike Jabberwock–soon revealed to be the hero’s father, who must be destroyed.
