Things With Friends, the newest play by Pulitzer Prize finalist Kristoffer Diaz, directed by Dexter Bullard, makes its debut at American Blues Theater. It’s a surrealist, climate anxiety comedy of errors that takes place over one wild dinner party. At the show’s conclusion one walks away with some vague anti-commercialist messaging, but also more than a few questions, or just one in particular: Why did I let myself suffer through that?
The story centers on Burt (Casey Campbell) and Adele (Audrey Billings), a near-future married couple living lovelessly in New York City. We’re in the pair’s high-rise apartment while they wait for their dinner guests, socialite couple Vy (Cruz Gonzalez-Cadel) and Chabby (Jon Hudson Odom). But all is not well. Outside, New York City succumbs to climate catastrophes, its bridges falling, its tunnels flooding. On this evening the two couples drink an obscene amount of wine and discuss competing visions of their uncertain futures.
Things With Friends makes a mistake at the beginning, then continues with that mistake for the entire 90 minutes. It’s the narrator; I’m a little miffed just thinking about him. We’re introduced at the onset to a guy in a newsboy cap holding a notebook. The hipster is identified in the playbill as NYC (Nate Santana) but known to the audience just as some dude.
He is a terrible narrator. I cannot stress that enough.
NYC, standing in front of the stage at audience level, freezes the action every few minutes to describe, uninspiringly, what we can already see, “They kiss”; or to add unnecessary, cliched commentary, “They were that kind of couple,” “She believed that, I truly think she did.” His demeanor is nonchalant, at times excited. But also boyish and unserious, which undercuts the story’s dramatic tension. Whenever things get going, this guy chimes in and spoils the mood.
It’s as though Diaz wanted, through the narrator, to include in theater some of the flourishes achieved by prose. Maybe there’s something cool in the kernel of that idea. But when its vessel adds language most prose writers would edit from a final draft, he loses his legitimacy. Watching the show one hopes at first Santana will leave, but he never does. Then one hopes some explanation will make his presence worthwhile, but that never comes.
There are some superficially impressive things about the production. At the start Campbell grills a steak on stage. It’s novel and cool to see cooking in the theater—the narrator doesn’t us forget that, of course, and lays down a few eye-rolling meta comments about the quality of stage steak. Still, it’s a small spectacle seeing the smoke and smelling the meat.
Billings as Adele and Campbell as Burt, who live in quiet resentment, make for boring scene partners, though the introduction of the second couple enlivens the show. The more Things With Friends settles into its story, however, the less it makes sense. Perhaps it’s unfair, I know, to criticize a surrealist show for being nonsensical. But hear me out.
Without giving anything away, Vi and Chabby have ulterior motives. The larger-than-life salesmen socialites don’t only want to see their friends—shocker—they also want something from them. Or maybe they want three things? It’s unclear. Throughout the show Vi and Chabby deliver several reveals, twists. “We’re not here for this, we’re here for that,” etc. But if one pays attention to their evil plots, one notices they contradict.
Arguably the contradictions are part of the show’s surreal style, but I am not convinced. The contradictions aren’t highlighted in any way to suggest the author wants them analyzed; in fact, only through careful observation are they discernable, which suggests the author doesn’t want them seen, because they’re plot holes. Needless to say, the script for this world premier could use some improvement, though one performance transcended the material and entertained us anyway.
Odom as Chabby is, hands down, the best part of the show. Of all the characters, his seemed the most defined. He’s a social climbing jerk with a big grin and pity for no man. Odom sells the fiendish Chabby with believable swagger and condescension. He is the one confident thing in a mish-mosh of half-baked ideas. Odom improves the material, adding more entertainment value to a character than, I believe, is on the page.
Toward the play’s conclusion when—without giving too much away—the characters descend into madness, as they always seem to do in these Lynchian experimental shows, Odom sells the unmasked insanity just as well as the uptight American Psycho. It’s a dynamic performance, and I wonder if a one-man show about Chabby would’ve made for a better night out.
Things With Friends continues at American Blues Theater, 5627 N. Lincoln Ave., thru October 5. Running time is 90 minutes with no intermission. Ticket prices are $34.50-$49.50.
For more information on this and other productions, see theatreinchicago.com.
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