Gwydion Theatre Company’s “Por’Knockers,” with Grayson Kennedy, Joseph Percy and Dontaye Albert/Photo: JonMarie Johnson

There’s a lot of obscurity packed into Lynn Nottage’s “Por’Knockers,” ranging from the characters’ back stories and motivations to the play’s theme and message to its very title. But this Gwydion Theatre production does make one thing painfully clear: there is nothing at all funny about mass murder. Creating a self-described “social satire” about a band of fuzzy-brained, inept terrorist-revolutionaries, whose negligence results in the unintended deaths of a dozen children, is a radically bad idea, which no amount of acting or directorial skill could possibly redeem.

It’s the sort of play that wants to provoke the audience and prompt intense post-curtain discussion. However, the only pressing questions raised by “Por’Knockers” is how a much-lauded playwright like Nottage—who has won not one but two Pulitzer Prizes over the course of her career, as well as a MacArthur “Genius Grant”—could write something this tasteless, lifeless and misguided, and why any theater would choose to produce it.

“Por’Knockers” was written just before the horrific Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, an event that the play in various ways prefigures, including the government building as target and the many innocent children as victims. It opened off-Broadway soon after the attack and was met with a level of popular and critical hostility rarely encountered in the modern era of heckle-free audiences, kid-glove reviewers and obligatory standing ovations.

In a 2020 Guardian article, in which several playwrights were interviewed about their biggest flops, Nottage described the opening-night atmosphere for “Por’Knockers” at the Vineyard Theatre in New York. It was typified by one audience member who shredded his or her playbill while announcing to all and sundry that “I am canceling my subscription to the theater.” Says Nottage of that (short) 1995 run: “There would have been backlash if more people saw it, but few came because it was so badly reviewed. It’s never been redone.”

It’s an open question why the author would grant permission to revive this star-crossed play, which suffers from more than just bad timing. The script—lacking such key elements as suspense, a climax, character depth and development, sociopolitical context, plausibility and basic coherence—reads very much like a first draft, not a finished product.

Perhaps Gwydion chose the work for calendar reasons, as opening night of the current run occurred one day before the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11. The play would indeed be timely if it shed any useful light on the terrorist mentality.

These characters, however, have hardly any mentality. They are flattened, cliche-spewing nuisances who have a certain revolutionary rap down pat. Ungrounded in any comprehensible history or personality, their anger and rhetoric add up to very little.

Maybe that is the play’s message, that terrorists are simply clueless clowns who should never be taken seriously, and whose random acts of violence are as inconsequential and ephemeral as a toddler’s temper tantrum. And yet we are subjected to their back-and-forth, pseudo-political yammering for ninety padded-out minutes. (No intermission, no respite.) As presented by director Makari Robinson-McNeese, the characters tear into their many longish, unenlightening monologues in the spirit of sincere realism, with none of the poker-faced, exaggerated craziness that signals the satirical impulse at work. It’s an understandable decision: after we’ve learned about all the dead kids, such a blatantly comical tone would be the height of sick humor. So what are we supposed to think about these terrorists? We get no help from the author or director, who focus on trivial details and lean away from the central question of moral responsibility.

Gwydion Theatre Company’s “Por’Knockers,” with Grayson Kennedy and Dontaye Albert/Photo: JonMarie Johnson

I’ve avoided describing the plot up to this point because so little actually happens. The story takes place in a safe house in Brooklyn where, in act one, five amateur terrorists hole up as they plot to blow up a vaguely described government building in order to achieve vaguely delineated goals. In act two, the group, which bears the awkward label “People’s Diasporatic Party,” reassembles to celebrate their revolutionary act, only to discover they have blood on their hands and bulls-eyes on their backs. They spend the rest of the evening drinking, ragging on each other, exchanging pedantic pomposities (e.g., “We decided to reject the traditional paradigms of leadership”) and avoiding any consideration of the gravity of their crime or the perilousness of their own situation. In the end, there are no consequences; apparently we’re intended to chalk up the collateral damage to bad luck spoiling good intentions.

Instead of insight, we get a lot of sitcom-level palaver about the poor quality of batteries these days and the indifference of FBI agents who won’t take calls during holiday weekends even from wanted terrorists. When the gang finally gets around to explaining to each other why they’re at war with the state—a topic one would expect to have come up earlier in the process—the reasons range from rude bartenders to the availability of cheap, tooth-rotting candy in the ghetto to the fact that one terrorist lacks a lawn to call his own. The dialogue manages to be neither funny nor serious, just inane.

Meanwhile, the gang’s leader (pardon my paradigm) is having either visionary or psychotic episodes, imagining a crouching man with gleaming gold teeth, armed with a machete, stalking the margins of the tiny stage. This anomalous character, I learned from Google, is the por’knocker (AKA “pork knocker”) of the title, one of a hardy breed of prospectors who brave the thick Guyanese jungle to pan for gold in streams while subsisting on the flesh of wild pigs. What this dreamlike figure represents in the context of the play—warrior spirit? greed? a long-lost oneness with nature?—is anyone’s guess.

With so little substance to the characters, it’s no surprise that the actors frequently overdo their line readings, as they desperately search for true notes in a script that offers mostly clinkers. Unlike past Gwydion productions, there’s not much ensemble chemistry here—which isn’t surprising, as the play itself never explains what brought this ragtag, querulous bunch together in the first place.

Scene and props designers Catalina Niño and Ellory Jezuit, respectively, do a decent job of evoking the nineties, that quaint era of corded phones and transistor radios, in their simple set. And Grace Weir’s costumes are nicely period-appropriate, although it’s puzzling why terrorists seeking to be inconspicuous would wear suits and ties in the working-class neighborhood where the drama is set. The gang’s leader says their formal appearance lends dignity to their revolutionary gesture—but why would this matter if no one is supposed to see them in action? It’s just one muddled plot point among others.

Gwydion Theatre, now beginning its fourth year in Chicago, is an artistically ambitious troupe that has always taken significant risks. It’s an approach that has in the past produced some terrific work, but which leaves the company open to equally spectacular failures. A glance at their schedule for the coming season reveals a promising lineup of plays, including Eric Bogosian’s “subUrbia”; Lyle Kessler’s “Orphans”; “Don’t Feed the Pigeons,” a world premiere by the ensemble’s own Nena Martins; and, in collaboration with Two Edge Theater Company, Arthur Miller’s classic “A View from the Bridge.” One can learn a great deal from non-great shows like this one, and so I’m betting that “Por’Knockers” is just a speed bump in Gwydion’s overall onward and upward trajectory.

Gwydion Theatre’s “Por’Knockers” is on stage at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 North Lincoln, through October 4. Tickets are $32.