John Henry Roberts, Michaela Petro and Abigail Boucher
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A wonderful thing that can occur in a production in an intimate space like Strawdog’s is that moment when characters, and maybe even the audience, feel an overwhelming urge to escape, and yet there seems to be nowhere to go. Despite the two doors and window on Michael Mroch’s symmetrical set, there are definitely moments like that in this Pinter revival. It’s those moments when Kate (Abigail Boucher) looks like she’s been caught in a lie. She has invited her old friend Anna (Michaela Petro) to come visit her and her husband Deeley (John Henry Roberts) at their seaside home after some twenty years. Yet if they were such good friends, Deeley points out, he should have heard of her before now. The trio relate memories in order to work toward a shared understanding of the past, yet none appears hopeful that they will. Kimberly Senior’s direction mines the play for all its dark, twisted absurdism, and often, cruelly, luxuriates in the stone silences that accompany morbid realizations. (Neal Ryan Shaw)
Strawdog Theatre Company at 3829 North Broadway, (866)811-4111. Through November 12.
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