Autobahn
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Profiles Theatre’s superlative 2004 production of Adam Rapp’s Blackbird showed it also has an affinity for the dark side of life, which would seem to make a good fit with LaBute’s uncompromising, unsentimental vision. But despite this midwest premiere’s altogether excellent execution, LaBute’s new play Autobahn gets the better of the company–its structure throws his flaws into stark relief.
LaBute gets a lot of credit for realism, and deservedly so. But his dialogue is far from naturalistic, and his scenarios are seldom plausible. His insight resides in the larger game-theory truths he plays out rather than in details. That makes Autobahn–essentially six unrelated vignettes set in a car–a dicey proposition. A one-act simply doesn’t allow enough time to set up, let alone trigger, LaBute’s usual rhetorical bear traps. Not that he doesn’t try to snap a few shut. Applying his slow-reveal method, he drags out the exposition a few times: a man angrily attempts to apologize for something. A couple slowly comes to terms with something. A man and a girl go on a road trip somewhere. But in every case, all that emerges is a previous event and a clearly cancerous relationship, which then idles until the inevitable blackout.
When: Through 4/23: Fri-Sat 8 PM, Sun 7 PM
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Wayne D. Karl.
