LUV
Murray Schisgal treats the cartoonish characters in his 1963 comedy, Luv, with a similar high-speed distortion. He fast forwards their emotional crises and changes of heart till they resemble so many careening billiard balls. Poignantly, despite everything, the billiard balls still think they’re in charge. They never see the cue.
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
The daffy plot in this promising first offering by Sterling Theatre is a kind of emotional musical chairs. Love is no four-letter word in this play–it’s luv, an abbreviated hybrid that resembles a biological binge more than anyone’s idea of romance.
Luv is a comic concoction buoyed by helium; the smallest injection of realism could blow it up. No such worry with Mitzi R. McKay’s frenetic staging. McKay knows better than to try to flesh out Schisgal’s demented Feifferlike creations; her actors flatten themselves to two dimensions as naturally as if they’ve come straight from Toon Town. (Or had never left vaudeville–Schisgal throws in two sidesplitting scenes in which the characters one-up each other with increasingly heartrending tales of their deprived childhoods.)
