THE ROAD AND THE RIVER
Studio 108
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“I don’t know. And “I don’t know’ is all I need to know,” Christopher confides to us, positioning himself downstage after freezing the play’s action. “The atmosphere is dense with unanswered questions . . . Don’t look at me like I’m crazy, or, worse yet, self- absorbed.” But he is self-absorbed, for what we call mourning the dead is really mourning our own loss, and the adolescent self-indulgence with which he and Sheridan wear their weeds is as annoying as the cutesy break-down-the-fourth-wall theatrical devices that threaten to turn The Road and the River into yet another exercise in recycled avant-garde gimmickry.
John R. Pierson directs a Columbia College-based ensemble who acquit themselves enthusiastically, if ingenuously. Particularly fine performances come from Timothy Vahle as the mercurial Sheridan and Mark A. Fossen as Christopher’s father, and Christopher and Sheridan engage in a hilarious beach-umbrella duel, wittily choreographed by Corinna Bryan. But The Road and the River remains a flawed production. At least it’s a departure from Pierce’s precious The Fragmented Veins of Staci and Cayce last season. This play exhibits a more mature and focused narrative technique that, if sustained, might herald the arrival of a welcome new playwright on the Chicago theater scene.
