“The Killer” reviewed by Jacob Davis

[rating=4]“Our reason will be founded on anger!” the demagogue bellows. Some of the listeners say she makes good points, although there are many who are apathetic and one who is doggedly pursuing justice. This is The Killer, one of the first full-length plays by Eugène Ionesco. Best known as the author of the 1959 drama Rhinoceros, it was in this play a year earlier that Ionesco introduced the world to his everyman hero, Bèrenger, and absurdism in its mature form. Currently, Ionesco is one of the playwrights responding to civilizational crisis who has attracted renewed interest on Chicago stages, with Trap Door’s new production revisiting a play about searching for goodness in a world filled with nihilistic mass murderers.

We first see Bèrenger (Dennis Bisto) when he is delightedly praising a neighborhood where he is about to impulsively buy a house. It’s wonderful, he babbles to the self-satisfied landscape architect/city manager (Michael Mejia), a physical manifestation of the transcendent experience he once had before he was brought back to the grime of the rest of the city. The architect is pleased to have his work acknowledged, although he abruptly points out that dreams often turn into nightmares. He’s been having some trouble lately with a secretary who insists she can’t work for the city office anymore, despite his warnings that once she quits, she will no longer be protected. Bèrenger becomes infatuated with the young woman (Abby Blankenship) as easily as he did with the neighborhood, but soon, the truth becomes tragically apparent. The neighborhood is haunted by a serial killer who strikes several times a day and claims the young woman as his latest victim. Soon, The Beautiful City will have to be demolished, and not even the mirage of an oasis will remain.

This sets Bèrenger off on an odyssey to bring what clues he can to the police inspector. Along the way he encounters an old friend carrying all the stuff the killer would have, indifferent, abusive police officers, and the aforementioned rising dictator. For the show’s entire hundred-something minutes, Dennis Bisto sustains a physically intense and vocally adroit performance. Bèrenger may live in his own little world, but he’s incredibly eloquent, earnest, and thoughtful. This is a stark contrast with nearly all the other people who appear onstage, who jostle each other impatiently and are habitually mean and inured to suffering. At one point, Bèrenger’s friend Èduoard (Kevin Webb), mentions that the serial killer’s existence has been common knowledge for months and everybody has accepted it. This is the new normal, unless the demagogue who commands people to goose-step can give them a fresher means of expressing frustration (or indulging in some killing of their own).

Director Mike Steele is a Trap Door veteran and keenly aware of how to use pacing and design elements to bring out all the themes in Ionesco’s meditations while making them into a coherent whole. Sound designer Sam Clapp, scenic designer Nicholas James Schwartz, and costume designer Rachel M. Sypniewski have created a noisy, drab world where it’s always raining (even indoors). An exception is the steampunk foppery of Mejia as the architect, the only visual representation we get of the Beautiful City that Bèrenger was momentarily enthralled by. Holly Cerney, Laura Nelson, Keith Survey, and Logan Hulick fill out a whole society where hope and imagination seem to have withered away along with beauty and gentleness, lone heroes excepted. (Trap Door’s production coincidently overlaps with A Red Orchid Theatre’s production of Ionesco’s similarly titled Killing Game, which came later in Ionesco’s career and revisits some ideas.)  Audiences who normally find his works obscure might feel more comfortable with him after numerous opportunities for exposure and obvious topicality. Grim though Ionesco’s vision of the world is, he does allow The Killer to end on a somewhat cathartic note, as Bèrenger is allowed to confront the ultimate manifestation of evil and maintain his own humanity. Ionesco leaves it to the audience to decide whether Bèrenger is left alone.

The Killer runs through July 13th, at Trap Door Theater, 1655 W Cortland, Chicago. Parking is available in the neighborhood.

Running time is one hours and forty-five minutes with no intermission.

Performances are

Thursdays:          8:00 pm

Fridays:                                8:00 pm

Saturdays:           8:00 pm

And Wednesday, July 3^rd.

Tickets are $20-25, with 2-for-1 admission of Thursdays.

To order, call 773-384-0494 or visit Trap Door Theatre.

To see what others are saying, go to Theater in Chicago, go to Review Round-Up and click at “The Killer”.