'Stage Kiss' at the Goodman Theater in Chicago Until June 5, 2011

"Stage Kiss" is playing in Chicago at the Goodman Theater until June 5. The Sarah Ruhl play was directed by Jessica Thebus and makes the point that "Marriage is about repetition, but romance is not." (Sarah Ruhl has twice been nominated for a Pulitzer).

The special interest for those of living in the Quad Cities of Iowa/Illinois comes in the form of the minor character Laurie, who says she is from Iowa, but, later admits that she is really from Moline (which, of course, is in Illinois). It is hard to know where playwright Ruhl learned of the Quad Cities of Iowa/Illinois, since she attended Brown University graduating in 2001, but Ruhl made a conscious decision to portray the supposed Iowa native as nice and boring. She's a kindergarten teacher who supports her actor boyfriend and she has a long speech about the fact that Iowans are considered to have the most "accent-less" speech. (Later, one character says of Laurie, "Turns out she's not that nice. She's not even from Iowa. She's from Moline.")

To recap the plot, an actress who has not worked in 20 years (Jenny Bacon) auditions for a play entitled "The Last Kiss." The actress married and had a child and, as she says during her audition, "You're either Juliet or Lady Macbeth and there's not much in between." Her only other work while having a real life was an anti-depressant commercial, which her ex-boyfriend tells her she did well, as she seemed depressed.

During the audition (Act I), she asks the director and playwright, Adrian Schwalbach, what the play is about. He tells her it is about a woman who learns she has something called Johnson's Disease and only has a month to live. She asks her husband to let her say good bye to her first love, someone she had a torrid relationship with years ago and has not seen since. Her husband agrees and even allows the old boyfriend to come stay at the family's home.

When the actress (billed only as "she") finds out who her leading man is, it turns out that, in real life, he was her first true love and they were together for many years until she broke up with him. As they talk about their past relationship, she says, "You and I would still be together if we had been prescribed the right anti-depressants." She also notes, when he wonders about why she left, "You threw a large fan at me." Another line says, "People who don't grow up are a fucking nightmare," a sentiment that soon evidences itself onstage. Because the stage romance with her old boyfriend, played by Mark L. Montgomery, has them kissing repeatedly, the inevitable happens. The pair rekindle their offscreen romance.

The playwright makes valid observations on life and love. The new-again old couple goes back to his girlfriend Laurie's apartment. They are still in their play costumes. She says, "How many times can you have sex in 24 hours?" He answers, "Let's find out." Her response, "Sex should be outlawed." She also says of their former romance, "I had such a hunger for life. Now I just want to breathe." He begs, "Come live with me in a basement or an attic. Why'd you leave me?" This come-on is enough to convince the married wife and mother to run off with the starving actor, even though she says, "I fundamentally see the world as a violent place. Only my husband made me feel safe." She muses on how couples in their sixties reminisce and talk about the perfect tilapia meal they had many years before as her ideal idea of a stroll down memory lane.

In an attempt to get his wife back, her husband Harry (Scott Jaeck) commissions playwright Adrian Schwalbach (Ross Lehman) to write a play specifically for his wife and her boyfriend to star in. The play was to be about "a whore and an asshole" and is entitled "I Loved You Before I Killed You" or "Blurry." ("I didn't tell him to make it bad. I just knew it would be.") To make it even more comedic, the male lead has broken his ankle and is on crutches.

It is a total mess, with a laughable plot. When her husband comes to reclaim his wife---since her moments of mad passion have run their course--- (their grown daughter asks, "Where are the grown-ups?" before walking out of Laurie's apartment in a huff), Harry explains, "I've come to take you home. You always fall in love with whoever you're in a play with." Harry comments on her "exquisitely overactive imagination" and says he knew that putting her in proximity to her ex-boyfriend would lead to exactly what occurred, saying that putting her in that position was tantamount to "feeding bacon to a starving vegetarian."




After opening the second act to the strains of "Some Enchanted Evening" from "South Pacific" the entire play is happily resolved and the leading lady returns to her husband and family..