 An audience member provides her feedback to the cast following the play. |
A/other Lover (Another Lover) is written by Resident Playwright Joshua Aaron Weinstein and was performed by the LiveWire Theater Company at The Side Project Theater in Rogers Park.
One of the potentially great things about attending small independent theater is the chance to see fresh and experimental fare performed by hungry up and coming talent. At theaters like Side Project, which opens it space to a variety of local theater ensembles, you can literally sit in the same seat and experience a wide swathe of Chicago's impressive diversity of performing arts.
But this degree of access occasionally proves to be a two-edged sword, as was the case with A/other Lover, which, although perhaps built upon an interesting premise nonetheless came across as a rather bewildered and unfinished production.
The cast was decent with the most convincing performance by Glenn Proud as Joe and the Chicago stage debut of Erin Barlow as Cherry. But with a running time of a mere 48 minutes and a storyline which was as uncompelling as it was unbelievable, both cast and audience had a undeniably perplexed look on their faces when the lights suddenly came up.
Granted, Weinstein attempts what could be an interesting experiment in "overlapping" nearly every element of the play, but while his intent may be apparent, it seems also as clear that he needed to spend more time on the actual story, ideally developing it to a strength matching the presence of his ambitious mechanical technique. And I do mean everything overlaps; The characters' dialogue, the plot's time line, and whether by design or the restricted space of the theater, even sets blend and collide. Interestingly there is at one point a scene where the play and its narritival content switch places, amounting to a play within a play. Even the play's title, the unpronounceable conflation "A/other" displays this tendency.
I found this experimental attempt quite fascinating and requiring some interpretation on the way home, but this play ultimately, like its title, may indeed contain a meaning which is intuitable, but nevertheless is quite clunky and awkward when read and nigh impossible to pronounce.
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