Aline Lathrop’s messy new domestic drama feeds on overworked formulas, symbols, and shock effects: a tense Thanksgiving family reunion, a festering dark secret, a sluttish teenager’s seduction of her mother’s middle-aged boyfriend, a faded rose memorializing a father who died under questionable circumstances. Unforgivable things get said without observable consequences, and after a lie is exposed the family repairs itself with alarming ease and swiftness. Yet Lathrop lets petty discussions go on forever–you want to shout “Drop it already!” every 15 minutes. Director Kimberly Senior works overtime to find the play’s buried treasures, but to no avail; Marguerite Hammersley has the hardest going as the elaborately but unconvincingly miserable mother. –Lawrence Bommer a Through 2/18: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, 312-633-0630, $22-$28.
