PILL HILL
Chicago Theatre Company
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Five years later, Charlie has been passed over for the promotion but swallows his disappointment and concentrates on maintaining his perfect attendance record. Eddie has passed the bar, and Al is a real estate agent. Scott now has a job with the CTA, and Joe still insists he’s only “a few paychecks” away from his last mill shift. He’s been educating himself by buying an encylopedia and a Great Books set from Tony, who’s purveyed his talent for selling into a $30,000-a-year income–big money in 1978. But it’s obvious to everyone that his employers see him as a pipeline to the black dollar.
By 1983, Eddie is similarly exploiting his own people: his debut case at a prestigious corporation requires him to oppose the very people he once called his peers. Al’s business is doing fine, but he can’t forget the poverty and uncertainty of his first year, living on a smile and a shoeshine, when his suit and briefcase were no more protection from scorn and humiliation than Charlie’s Cadillac was from Mississippi bigotry 20 years earlier. With virtually no education, Tony is now engaged to a university professor and is in the market for a house in–you guessed it–Pill Hill. Scott is a glamorous “music promoter” who has trouble with his short-term memory and gets beeped to make deliveries at odd times. But worst off is Joe: he’s squabbled with his supervisor once too often and is now jobless, penniless, and soon to be homeless, sustained only by cheap liquor, empty phrases, and the occasional handout from Charlie, now retired from the mill with a full pension.
Erikka Kenton is an attractive but klutzy young writer who’s recently kicked alcohol and written what promises to be a best-seller about the process. Her roommate, Alex, is a psychotherapist with a penchant for nonstop jokes and a lover to whom he is faithfully unfaithful. Their neighbor, Tania, is a retired crystal gazer now living in an apartment full of paranormal phenomena and a cat that may be more than he appears.
