RIDING THE DOLPHIN
at Strawdog Theatre Company
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Riding the Dolphin gives us a young schizophrenic named Tiffani who is hyperaware of her condition and the absurdities of her own behavior but often powerless to do anything about them. Her real name is Mary Alice, a name she rejects because “names are just a label–they obscure the real person.” Yet when she finds herself in a group home for the mentally ill, the occupants introduce themselves by giving their illnesses rather than their names. This group, a sort of alternative family for Tiffani, attempts to function normally in a residential neighborhood that looks on them as a collection of undesirable diseases rather than as individuals coping in eccentric ways.
As Tiffani, Sara Devlin wisely downplays the fidgeting that usually passes for mental illness onstage. She gives us instead a woman who is ferociously focused, either listening to something the rest of us can’t hear or desperately trying to ignore it. It’s refreshing to see an actress refrain from indulging in a character’s insanity, concentrating instead on her struggle to appear normal. As the threat of homelessness looms, it’s too easy to picture Tiffani on the streets, degenerating into a classic bag lady. She and her fellow patients seem terribly small and vulnerable on Alan Donahue’s large, nearly barren set.
The Defiant Theatre has come up with some splendidly gruesome, darkly comic stage images to fuel Critz’s uneven script; and the company keeps the images coming so fast and thick that the play’s flaws seem almost inconsequential. This story of a mother who barricades her mentally unbalanced family from the rest of the world in order to keep the airborne disease of insanity from spreading is full of forced plot twists, and the second act contains an unfortunate attempt to explain away all of the inexplicable behavior. But the play also boasts a diabolical sense of humor, and the ensemble will stop at nothing to shock, sicken, amuse, and intrigue.
