“In families, you protect the weak ones. In businesses, you get rid of them,” says John Chapel, Jr….”Jack” to his intimates. But Chapel Brothers Billiards is a family business, and his intimates are his partners-in-commerce. The year is 1966, the era of “swinging London,” and England’s economy is finally emerging from its post-war depression. And therein lie problems.
At the start of Stephen Jeffreys’ semi-autobiographical play, brothers Jack and Gordon reluctantly confront the prospect of telling their father that it’s time for him to retire. In turn, their sons are contemplating their own futures. Tony, Gordon’s son, wants to expand the business to include American-style Pool tables in addition to the pub-sport furnishings that have been Chapel’s stock-in-trade for decades. Jack’s offspring, David, is a bookish University boy. Barry, heir to the late Len Chapel’s stock in the company, cares only for his music. When pretty young Vicki Molyneaux arrives in her accountant father’s stead to audit the books, the only one not worried is Ray, the firm’s sole hired employee.
Veteran character actors Robert Scogin as the Chapel clan patriarch, along with Roderick Peeples and Daniel J. Rivkin as the squabbling Jack and Gordon, project a gravity blending exactly the right proportions of mature resignation and midlife restlessness (while reminding us that some faces just get better as they age). Brad Johnson as the calculating Tony, Drew Vidal as the sensitive David and Steven Shine as the brooding Barry likewise paint vivid portraits of youth seeking its own way. And Patrick New provides comic relief as the incorrigible Ray, while Kathleen Logelin lends warmth and humanity to the role of Vicki, the outside agitator.
Father-son issues are receiving a great deal of attention these days, what with Alan Brandt’s 2 1/2 Jews…another three-generation chronicle…currently running at Apple Tree. But as demonstrated in The Libertine, Jeffreys is capable of simultaneously intertwining a number of narrative threads, making A Going Concern’s exploration of its topic more complex and richly textured than Brandt’s single-focus story. And the cast assembled by Karen Kessler for this Famous Door production did ample justice to each multifaceted personality at the preview performance I attended, exhibiting the superlative ensemble playing that has made this company one of Chicago’s finest…well, Going Concerns.