Playwright: Neil LaBute. At: Profiles Theatre at the Main Stage, 4139 N. Broadway. (fka National Pastime’s Old Speakeasy) Tickets: 773-549-1815; www.profilestheatre.org; $35-$40. Runs through: June 3
Every time Betty opens her mouth, what emerges is a lie. Bobby blurts out whatever happens to be on his mind, under the impression that this constitutes “being honest.” She is a conniver, he is a bully—even when they are not at odds, she connives and he bullies. This incendiary dynamic is what allows playwright Neil LaBute to craft 95 minutes of performance time from Betty attempting to conceal the truth and Bobby determined to browbeat it out of her.
The scene of their confrontation is a rustic cabin on a rainy night, where Betty has summoned her estranged brother to assist in cleaning out the detritus of its former tenant. No sooner does the drenched, half-drunk Bobby arrive than the two proceed to vilify one another with accusations and recriminations based in times long gone by: Betty, we learn, was a teenage slut but is now a college dean, as well as a model wife and mother. Bobby, twice-divorced by spouses weary of his abuse, resents her good fortune. At their ages (unspecified, but looking thirtysomething), real-life siblings have usually forged defensive counter-strategies to deter this kind of button-pushing—but not Betty and Bobby, who rise to each attack with the impulsive candor of squabbling children.
This locked-room drama could easily be played as a British-style thriller, all twitchy silences and sideways glances, but without Darrell W. Cox and Natasha Lowe emoting a storm as noisily volatile as the thunderclaps and electrical failures that Jeffrey Levin injects at well-timed intervals, we might miss an almost invisible moment that introduces the possibility of this entire convoluted scenario being a Who’s-Afraid-of-Virginia-Woolf-meets-House-of-Yes charade—thus rendering its theme a debate on moral tolerance, as director Joe Jahraus’ playbill note proclaims it.
None of this matters a bluejay’s patootie to unreconstructed LaBute fans prepared to revel in polemics on the battle of the sexes (a war rapidly becoming as antiquated as apartheid). For those not falling into that camp, however, this scene-study exercise nevertheless deserves attention, if only as a promising glimpse of the enhanced technical opportunities offered by Profiles Theatre’s expansion of its real-estate holdings to include a third, considerably larger, auditorium.