Authentic Chicago Ensemble’s “Safe Landing: Coyote Embrace”/Photo: Alex Albrecht
A projected, inter-titled film paired with interpretive stage movement and a bit of banter between Jax and Jack, the main character pair of mismatched co-owners of a bait shop-bistro, open Authentic Chicago Ensemble’s “Coyote Embrace.” It isn’t long before the audience finds that another character, Anj, waits in protective custody under the odd couple—who happen to be former U.S. Marshals—to testify against a human-trafficking ring that has unfortunately happened to put out a hit on her. As hitmen Rio, Riley and Angel cook up their relatively raw scheme, Anj greets her sister Casey and her sister’s band at the safehouse after surreptitiously hiring them to play a nonexistent gig. The audience watches family drama, missed medications and morally educational conversations until the inevitable confrontation among all parties.
Just by the synopsis one can tell that the complex plot of Tim Kough’s “Coyote Embrace,” well, embraces every potential style and thread. There are elements of drama and comedy, thriller and variety show and farce and morality tale. A core flaw that “Coyote Embrace” fails to work with is its muddied genre and style. Jordan Ratliff’s direction of the players is split between earnestness and irony, with some performers including Danielle Lorae Byas as Jax and Susan Payne Anderson as Dede delivering believable and at times engagingly earnest performances, with other actors such as Emma L. Anderson as Rio and Melody Contreras as Angel delivering ironic turns.
Though all these styles are entertaining in their own right, the way they’re haphazardly deployed in this production confuses the action and performances. For instance, Rio’s farce-level comedic moments, brandishing a knife with sadistic glee, brought chuckles from the audience—but her naturalistic reactions to the violent acts she’s forced into failed to move due to the shift between styles being so sharp. Angel’s intense childhood trauma monologue perplexes when juxtaposed with her maniacal threats to skin people alive. Similar moments occur across the cast with no unifying thread of decision to guide the play.
Authentic Chicago Ensemble’s “Safe Landing: Coyote Embrace”/Photo: Alex Albrecht
Confusing stylistic choices also pervade design and staging. The naturalistic interior of the bait shop is dressed with an appreciable humor, particularly in the fishing and beer signs tacked to the run-down wallpaper. But all sense of naturalism is lopped off by interstitial and intermittent interpretive dance. Coyote-masked performers move about the stage with knives and, at times, guide other characters around, but it’s unclear what’s driving these choices or what they contribute to the story.
I was left with more questions than answers. Is this story meant to give the tickle of a comedic farce, the emotional engagement of an earnest naturalism or the affective abstraction of modern dance and experiment? Is this a morality play, a thriller-jaunt, a generational drama? The most ridiculous farcical scenes, including Rio’s dramatically-lit slow dance with a decidedly deceased lover, could reach hilarity if not weighed down by the emotionality of other moments. Similarly, the earnest performances some deliver could move the audience with compassion if not undercut by the silliness of other scenes. Generally, I could also do without the heavy-handed moralizing about mental health treatment, which in its attempt at earnestness flattens the experience of mental illness to stereotype.
It isn’t that varied styles and motivations are mutually exclusive, but they must in some sense come together. At some point in act two, the audience seemed adrift. I, for one, didn’t know how to respond when characters expired with dramatic final words immediately followed by a debate about punishment in the face of mental illness, and I could hear shifting in seats around me. Leaning into just some of the choices made in this show would produce a more entertaining and memorable response.
“Safe Landing: Coyote Embrace” is onstage at Theater Wit, Theater Two, 1229 West Belmont, through July 26. Tickets are $20-$25, available at theaterwit.org.
