DOG EXPLOSION
Nor would this gentle, understated comedy ever be confused with the black comedies that filled both stage and screen in the 60s and early 70s–Little Murders, The Ruling Class, I Love You Alice B. Toklas, and Harold and Maude–comedies that earned our nervous laughter by scraping off society’s polite veneer and exposing the dark side of the status quo. In Peter Barnes’s The Ruling Class, for example, the elite consider a man mad when he thinks he’s Jesus but sane when he’s convinced that he’s Jack the Ripper. Such strong social protest is not really part of Clark’s agenda.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Though the play literally begins with a bang, not much happens after that, nor are the characters’ aspirations particularly exalted. Naomi, the most worldly of the three, aspires only to move to Kansas City or New Orleans–maybe. It’s a testament to Tim Carroll’s direction and to the cast’s powers that the play doesn’t seem slow or its story trivial. Tom Daniel plays the schlemiel Matt with just the right mixture of fool and wounded man/child. And Jane deLaubenfels’s take on bitter, aimless, alcoholic Naomi is remarkably free of cliches. It’s Julie Ganey’s portrayal of born-again Charlotte, however, that really sets off one of the major strengths of Clark’s play.
