Acts of Mercy
by Michael
John Garcés
produced by Flush Puppy
Productions in January 2002 at Angel Island
Set and Costume Design: Julie
Lutgen and Matthew Osmon
Light Design: Phoebe Daurio
Original Composition: The Sucka MCs
From the Chicago Reader--January 25, 2002:
"The
playwright couldn’t ask for a smarter, more nuanced production than the one
Joanie Schultz directs, a world premiere. Like
a handful of other great young directors in town, she can coax seemingly effortless performances that have
titanic effects. Her cast waste no
energy on embellishment—character walks, forced accents—but devote their
full attention to the shifts in relationships that make up the play’s action.
and like Garcés, Schultz understands the dramatic power of concealment.
Her actors spend their time making their true emotions and
intentions—just as most people do in daily life.
The
performers have dug so deeply into their characters that they have no need of
actorly gimmicks. And they never
neglect Garcés’ well honed script, giving his rapid-fire sentence fragments
an unmistakable musicality. Scenes
build, creating clearly define arcs. There’s
craft in nearly every moment, lending even the most horrifying of them a kind of
beauty.
This
is the sort of intelligent, passionate work one sees only rarely, even on the
biggest stages in town. And if this
pickup band of unfounded twentysomethings holed up in a tiny storefront can act
circles around our best-paid, best-rehearsed casts, one need never fear for the
life of the theater.
-Justin Hayford
