*** This is one of those reviews that cause me to stop and analyze to a different level. Wild Door Theater is a fairly young troupe of Chicago performers who are attempting to bring bold stories to their stage, which in this particular situation is the 2nd floor studio at the Athenaeum Center, on the city’s north side. The play is a 90 minute ( no intermission) story that takes place in the bathroom of a “trailer home” ( they call them manufactured homes now, and there are some very deluxe models that cannot be moved on a whim.
In this play, a midwest premiere written by Max Mondi, we meet a young couple, residing in a trailer home in the Northeast. From what we are told, this is based on a true story, and this couple, Ben ( deftly handled by Lucky Star ) and Gail ( a powerful Isabella Isherwood), start the play by playing sex games in their bathroom. She plays a prisoner, and he, the guard and they have sex. In the next scene, she is doing a pregnancy test, again in the same bathroom ( designed by Jose Alexander), and we continue to watch this couple live their experiences, in the bathroom.
He is a mechanic, mostly unemployed, and she is an artist with a small shop. When she finds out that she is with child, her concern for the future begins to take hold. Ben always wanted kids and they were afraid they might not be able to do so, so his excitement level is far greater. They begin to think ahead to the future and “tomorrow”. Ben has a job interview, by computer/phone and gets hired for a sales job in an auto dealership in Gary Indiana. They move their “home” to Indiana, knowing that being close to Chicago, opportunities will be far greater.
We watch the progress of her pregnancy, their changes when Benji is born and how a new business online, that ben creates for Gail takes off. He ends up leaving his position in order to become the parent for their son, and Gail, from the bathroom creates her art and sells it on-line. There comes a point where she breaks the fourth wall and begins to talk with the audience. Sharpley directed by Andrew Gallant, we learn more about their relationship and how much love he has for Gail, while she fears leaving her “safe spot”, the bathroom.
It is a play about feelings, intimacy, fear, love, and we, the audience get to view all of it taking place. There are even moments when both of the characters come into the seating area, realizing they are in a play, and communicate with us and even give a work of art to one of us. There were a few moments when it appears they were making it up as they went along. We also say them open and close a bathroom door that didn’t exist, which I thought they had not done yet. However, this too was part of the play. In fact, there is another surprise at the very end. While you might think the story is unreal, understand that it is based on a true happening, and I am sure if you look online you will see that this is not the only one.
Presented by Wild Door Theater
“Maybe Tomorrow” will continue Thru – May 24th with performances as follows:
Fridays 7:30pmShow Type: Drama
Box Office: 773-935-6875
To see what others are saying, visit www.theatreinchicago.com, go to Review Round-Up and click at “Maybe Tomorrow”
a second opinion
Review: Maybe Tomorrow by Wild Door Theater
By:
Paul Lisnek, Curtain Call Chicago
***/4
“Maybe Tomorrow is Confident, Uneasy and Darkly Funny”
Maybe Tomorrow is playwright Max Mondi’s intimate and unsettling story which relies on transforming a cramped bathroom into a pressure cooker for marriage, memory, and questionable reality. Wild Door Theater’s production embraces the play’s off-center energy by delivering an intimate, if not uncomfortable experience that is darkly funny one moment and psychologically challenging the next. This play is surely a smart choice for sophisticated audiences who enjoy a play that keeps shifting under their feet and concludes that there are no easy answers to satisfaction in life.
The play uses a deceptively ordinary setting—a bathroom—as a “safe” setting to dig into marriage, fear, perception, and the stories people tell themselves to stay afloat. The production leans into the script’s intimacy and instability; it’s performed at about 85 minutes, without an intermission, which is exactly the right approach for a show built on shifting realities, emotional pressure, and maintaining tension without ever losing momentum.
The play blurs the line between psychological suspense and theatrical playfulness. The premise explicitly invites the audience to question what is real, what is imagined, and how much of a relationship is shaped by private anxieties that are never truly insulated from public life (both in the play with vis-a-vis the audience.
Isabella Isherwood and Lucky Star both give vibrant, confident performances as Gail and Ben bringing warmth, precision, and an easy sense of chemistry between them. Isherwood plays a natural emotional and sometimes neurotic clarity that makes her scenes resonate; Lucky Star has a grounded presence and character that helps guide the play’s tension from his sense of seeking a normalcy in life. His dreams, her interference…and just what is the reality they are living?
Maybe Tomorrow is a polished, unconventional drama and that is part of its appeal. The show is clearly designed to be disorienting, humorous, and more than a little uncomfortable, with a kind of surprise factor that keeps the audience alert from start to finish.
Paul M. Lisnek, J.D., Ph.D.
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