OUR LADY OF THE UNDERPASS Teatro Vista at the Greenhouse Theater
The monologues are separated by clever choral recitations that bring to mind different types of prayer—intercession, confession, petition. (“Please, Mary Mother of God, may toilet paper be on sale this week.”) But Saracho is no smart-ass, interested only in wringing laughs from the phenomenon. She takes imaginative leaps to fill out the characters, who represent a wide spectrum of faith and unbelief.
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The details of the monologues are perfect, with the pauses and dropped sentences, the abrupt shifts and idiolects of real talk—so perfect that I kept wondering whether they’d been taken verbatim from the interviews. Saracho and director Sandra Marquez are both veteran actors, and their love of creating real people onstage, down to the smallest nuance, carries over to the cast, who seem like they could’ve been pulled in off the street.
THE DAY OF KNOWLEDGE Stage Left Theatre
Observing and sometimes entering the family conflict are two mysterious figures. One, Serafima (Cat Dean), is a demented old woman who wanders around the village calling for “the child of lightning”—reflecting an age-old belief that a person killed by lightning is blessed in the eyes of God. The other is a seraph (Lauren Ashley Fisher), an angel in the form of a circus aerialist, who carries a burning rock with which she sears understanding into the other characters’ heads and healing emotion into their hearts.
Through 3/28: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield, 773-883-8830, stagelefttheatre.com, $10-$25.
