There’s a neat little feature in the program for this year’s First Look Repertory of New Work, at Steppenwolf Theatre. It’s called “The Pyramid Challenge,” and the way it operates is that each of the three playwrights getting developmental stagings of their scripts is asked ten questions. The first response must be given in one word, the second in two, and so on, yielding an interview that’s graphically wide on the bottom and narrow at the top—i.e., a pyramid.
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Raised in a hand-built cabin high up in the mountains outside Buena Vista, Colorado (an actual town, by the way, that calls itself “8,000 feet above average”), Noah left to attend Yale University and follow his dream of creating a human habitat on the ocean floor off southern Florida. The thirtysomething prodigal son has returned home now, though, seeking refuge in the wake of professional and romantic reversals. Only, when he arrives at the cabin for what he expects will be a quiet retreat, he finds Freddy already in residence there. And, especially in Karen Vaccaro’s scary performance, she’s a piece of work—a compulsive hoarder, at once wheedlingly prone to tears and vicious as hell.
Noah is understandably less than pleased to see her, and they have it out as a heavy snow falls outside, joined eventually by Tom and Noah’s strangely dissociated girlfriend, Monica.
The Gospel of Franklin may be the star of this year’s First Look, but Nabers’s Annie Bosh Is Missing supplies competent, conventional drama. The girl of the title is a 22-year-old mixed-race mess who, as a teenager, parlayed major recreational drug use into a suicide attempt. She isn’t missing in a literal sense, but she’s definitely at a loss. Out of rehab now, she’s come home to a nice house in a gated community in Houston, where her mother keeps her under tight surveillance while her brother continues a quiet cocaine habit. Annie doesn’t know what’s become of her black father, whose genetic imprint is nowhere to be seen on her blond-haired, pink-skinned body; her wildly misguided attempts to compensate for that absence drive the action of the story, while the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina plays in the background.
Through 8/25: Wed-Fri 8 PM, Sat and Sun 1, 4:30, and 8 PM check theater for repertory schedule Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Merle Reskin Garage Theatre 1624 N. Halsted 312-335-1650steppenwolf.org $15-$20 per show, $45 three-play pass
