Another Part of the Forest
PRICE $40-$58
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Of course, Freud’s lesser works stopped getting produced regularly as his reputation waned along with the century. But now, suddenly (maybe it’s a boom-generation thing–a return to the psychoanalyses of our fathers), there’s a spasm of revivals in Chicago. No less than three Freuds are running simultaneously: two by William Inge, one by Lillian Hellman.
And two of those are awfully good: the Shattered Globe production of Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba–and now, the Writers’ Theatre staging of Hellman’s Another Part of the Forest.
And “challenge” is the right word for it. Inge plugs away at Cora’s problem for 145 earnest minutes, offering only other problems as relief. Though he’s got obvious affection for the characters in this reputedly autobiographical play, produced here by American Theater Company, he doesn’t get them the way Hellman gets hers. He draws them with a combination of mawkishness and clinical reserve that suggests he doesn’t want to know them so much as solve–or resolve–them.
