COPING WITH LIFE
Theatre Shoppe
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The all-over-the-map trio begins with Christopher Durang’s Naomi in the Living Room, a three-character absurdist journey into the living room of a batty, foulmouthed woman named Naomi who is paid a visit by her son and daughter-in-law. Durang once wrote a play called The Actor’s Nightmare; this show is essentially “A Daughter-in-Law’s Nightmare”: Naomi jumps from mood to mood, smiling sweetly before launching into a vitriolic verbal assault on her guests.
Things get a little better in Ethan Phillips’s slight drama Penguin Blues, which links two unlikely characters in an alcohol-rehabilitation center. Gordon, an acid-tongued radio announcer who does voice-overs, enters the room of Angelita, a nun who claims she just likes the taste of beer. Ostensibly he wants to discuss the process of drying out. But as the conversation proceeds we learn that Gordon has a different agenda: he wants to come to terms with the violent discipline of his Catholic upbringing, which is probably partly to blame for his drinking problem.
There are common threads in the three plays that make up “Coping With Life.” The characters in each express dissatisfaction with their lives, and each has motifs of failed relationships and dysfunctional families. But what really links these one-acts is their banality.
