“Mosquitos” review by Frank Meccia

[rating=4]This was my first time going to STEEP Theatre, and I lived in Edgewater for 12 years. I did not know what to expect from a small 50 seat store front theatre. With a Play called Mosquitoes I was prepared for a play dealing with the jungle, instead I dealt with a hard, fast paced drama of two sisters who collide harder than the Hadron Collider. This U.S. premier drama centers around two sisters completely opposite in every way. And Kirkwood bombards us with so many ideas and emotions that you leave as thou you were the one inside the Bern Collider. Even the set design makes you feel that your part of the experiment that took place between 2008 to 2012.

Alice the older sister play by Cindy Marker has her PhD, and a particle physicist living in Geneva Switzerland and working on the Hadron Collider in 2008 the beginning process for the Higgs Boson Particle or as the newspaper mentioned back then the “ God Particle” , Alice takes after her mother Karen a scientist and wife of a Nobel Winner played by the talented Meg Thalken, who keeps playing roles of woman with dementia beautifully. Jenny her sister, played by Julia Siple, is common, plain, normal IQ, lives in Luton England spending her free time googling for conspiracy theories and loses a baby daughter after a scare story about the MMR vaccine. But even thou she is a little nuts, she has common sense. Both sisters are divorced, and Alice lives with an entomologist Henri played by Peter Moore. The constant battles between these two are intense, but what helps is the comic relief of quotes thrown out by the two sisters, as when Jenny during an argument says “That’s why I am Forest Gump and you’re the Wizard of fu**ing Oz” or when Alice tells Jenny you’re the reason they put “Hot liquid  on coffee lids”, but they both love and protect Alice’s son Luke played by Alexander Stuart, a clever, smart cute teenage son, slightly disturbed, dealing with teenager problems but is fiercely critical of the environmental consequences of his mothers work.

The director makes you question everything, Alice is smart, a true workaholic, Jenny is anti-science, but is full of practical sense, it is Jenny who takes care of her mothers dementia, and it’s Jenny who understands Luke’s problems and she takes responsibilities for his criminal act, never telling her sister.

The only problem I have with the play is the length, it needs to be shortened, there are too many themes and sidelines being thrown at you. Even the monologue of Richard Costes who plays the Boson, was too wordy that you lose interest in what he is saying, even thou most of what he says is a bunch of scientific equations all drawn together. But, if you love good hard-hitting drama, set on a perfect small stage then go see MOSQUITOES. Steep Theatre is a small, modern theater staging plays by emerging writers performed by its resident acting company.

The play will continue thru – Nov 9, 2019

Price: $27-$39

Show Type: Drama

Box Office: 866-811-4111

Running Time: 2hrs, 40mins; one intermission

www.steeptheatre.com

The theatre is located at 1115 West Berwyn, Chicago, plenty of parking on Broadway, which is one block away, or take the red line

To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Mosquitos”.