DetroitSteppenwolf Theatre Company
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Receiving its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre under Austin Pendleton’s meticulous direction, Detroit unfolds in the adjoining backyards of two homes. Mary and Ben, a married couple struggling to escape their middle-class doldrums, live in one house. Mary is a paralegal with no real interest in her work. Ben is unemployed but hopes to launch his own financial planning business after reading a how-to book and building a website. Sharon and Kenny just moved in next door without a stick of furniture. They’ve spent the last few months in rehab, they explain, and Kenny’s uncle, who owns the house, is letting them stay there until they get their lives together.
D’Amour crafts sly comedy from a string of conversational banalities while honing an edge of menace, part of which derives from a classist subtext: Sharon and Kenny perceive Mary and Ben’s exuberant, fake civility as unprecedented neighborliness and eat it up, but Mary and Ben see their new neighbors, with their trashy clothing, poor grooming, and lack of social graces, as members of the underclass, and the playwright clearly expects us to share their wariness. D’Amour also slips booby traps into her suburban Eden. The patio umbrella closes violently on Kenny just before dinner is served, and he’s left to sit down to a nice meal with a bloody head wound.
You can’t fault Pendleton’s sterling cast for Detroit‘s ultimate aimlessness. In fact, the ensemble’s laser-sharp performances make the production rarely less than engaging. But D’Amour makes the fatal mistake of pushing her lead character to a point of no return . . . and then letting her return. Great plays happen when people on the brink get pushed.
