Assisted Living
At the Profiles Theatre Second Stage
By Dan Zeff
Chicago – The Profiles Theatre has carved out an essential niche for itself on the local theater scene with sexy, violent, and edgy modern dramas. In “Assisted Living,” the company is taken a more low-keyed route in exploring four characters who desperately need to get a life.
Playwright Deirdre O’Connor recently gave the Profiles one of its major hits in the sexy-edgy-violent mode in “Jailbait,” about a pair of teen-age girls who venture into the adult world of club hopping. The characters in “Assisted Living” don’t go clubbing. They don’t have any real social life, trapped by circumstance and character flaws into a dreary day-to-day existence that points to futures as bleak as their collective present.
The core character is Anne, a woman approaching 40 who has stereotyped spinster written all over her. She’s a librarian saddled at home with a quarrelsome elderly mother in early stages of dementia. Her younger brother Jimmy is a loser with zero sense of responsibility, a drag on the already overburdened Anne. She has no boyfriend and the biological clock is ticking.
Enter Levi, a young ex alcoholic who has loser written all over him, applying as a nurse for Anne’s fractious mother. The lonely Levi and the lonely Anne develop an improbable sexual relationship that earns the disapproval of Jimmy, who has his own problems. He has a pregnant girl friend, a sweet and innocent girl named Christina who has been ostracized by her parents for getting in the family way with an irresponsible layabout. Everyone is futilely looking for love and a meaningful place in the world.
There isn’t much physical action in “Assisted living,” which runs about 95 minutes without an intermission, but there are plenty of raised voices as Anne and Levi and Jimmy go round and round in burses of frustration and resentment. At the end of the play O’Connor shows her hapless characters a bit of mercy with indications that life might be a little more supportable for all four, though probably not by much.
“Assisted Living” could bore some viewers who will grow weary of the commonplace characters and their drab lives. A more sympathetic spectator will get emotionally involved in Anne, Jimmy, and Levi (and marginally, Christina) as they try to fight their way to some satisfaction in their lives. None of the characters, even the feckless Jimmy, is a bad person. There is a Chekhovian flavor to their inability to make their lives work as they are thrown by a meld of bad luck and personal weakness.
The play may not be to everyone’s liking, but nobody can say a word against the pinpoint casting and superior performances. Connoisseurs of sensitive acting orchestrated by insightful and sure-handed directing will get a lot of pleasure from this production. Stacy Stoltz is perfect as Anne, a woman stretched to the limit by the demands of an ailing mother, a troublesome brother, and a social and professional life going nowhere. Yet there is spunk in the woman and a determination to hold things together.
Jordan Stacey does a fine job of humanizing the geeky and ineffectual Levi. He even convinces the viewer that he can romance the older and wary Anne, a considerable achievement. Their final scene together has just the right amount of rueful warmth. Layne Manzer has the toughest job in the ensemble, trying to convince the audience that Jimmy is anything more than a thoughtless, self-centered jerk. Manzer’s Jimmy has the looks and superficial social skills to woo a vulnerable girl like Christina but O’Connor allows the character moments of pain and self-revelation that Manzer converts into a young man who may not gain our acceptance but at least he touches our understanding.
Shannon Hollander is a total charmer as the big-bellied Christina, who manages to sustain her optimism in the future even though she’s been rejected by her parents and is tied to a man with no track record for success in life.
Joe Jahraus directs the play with an understated intelligence that makes this problematical play succeed as human drama instead of soap opera.
The new Second Stage is a solid facility for intimate plays like “Assisted Living.” David Ferguson’s set design accommodates the action functionally in Anne’s kitchen as well as a hospital waiting room. Bekki Lambrecht designed the lighting, Erica Griese the costumes, and Jeffrey Levin the sound as well as composing the original music. The theater may be small but it seems to be technically well equipped. Restroom availability may be a challenge and parking is a game of chance, but that’s all part of the storefront theater experience in Chicago. The play remains the thing, and this production of “Assisted Living” is a good one.
“Assisted Living” runs through December 18 at the Profiles Theatre Second Stage, 3408 North Sheffield Avenue. Performances are Thursday and Friday at 8 p.m., Saturday at 5 and 8 p.m., and Sunday at 5 p.m. Tickets are $35 and $40. Call 773 549 1815 or visit www.profilestheatre.org.
The show gets a rating of 31/2 stars.
Contact Dan at zeffdaniel@yahoo.com
Like Dan on Facebook.http://facebook.com/zeffdaniel