DYSAN
But at least this Chicago premiere by the Actors Repertory Theatre is persuasively performed. Eric Nightengale’s staging makes up in energy for what it must inevitably lose in coherence. The actors know what they’re doing, and usually that’s half the battle.
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Here, unfortunately, it’s a lot less. There’s still the story to contend with. Dysan depicts a love triangle that defies time and logic: it brings together two men and the superwoman they’ve fought for over the centuries in several different incarnations. In this one, Jake is a sculptor whose shabby home faces Eddie’s pricey residence on the Pacific Ocean.
Jake finally confronts Eddie with his dangerous power-tripping. And Dysan denounces Eddie, her main lover, as a “grandiose bag of bullshit” (all but stealing the exact words of my notes). By the end, Eddie has advanced (or regressed) to a spiritual purity that allows him to join Dysan on her cosmic quest. At least I think he has: a laser beam started twitching on the back wall and lights were twinkling in the backdrop, then a flash pot exploded and the music soared. So it must have been some kind of apotheosis or transfiguration. As if by this point it could possibly have mattered.
