Browse the full May 12, 2022 issue. Download a free PDF of the print issue.

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Browse the full May 12, 2022 issue. Download a free PDF of the print issue.

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The Chicago Bears certainly had some excellent times with Tarik Cohen. He was an outstanding running back that made special plays with a very unique skill set. As a gadget man or a straight-up running back, he was able to make things happen.

The unfortunate thing is that the Bears cut ties with him after the 2021 season because of some injury troubles. He had a bad knee injury in 2020 that has caused him to only play in three games over the last two years. He has been working hard at a comeback from there.

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Andr? Snellings and Eric Moody highlight the players who will be more highly sought after in fantasy leagues next season thanks to the way they’ve played during the NBA playoffs.Read More

Editor’s note: Out Here is a new column for the Reader’s City Life section featuring a variety of local writers joining in on adventures with an interesting Chicagoan. This week art writer Leah Gallant tells us about her hangout with comedian Jayson Acevedo. 

On Saturday, April 9, at 1:09 PM, comedian Jayson Acevedo walked into EXPO Chicago. He was running behind schedule. The plan had been to arrive two hours earlier, in time to catch a panel on NFTs. But at 11 AM, the 28-year-old Acevedo was still sleeping off the previous night, which he had spent driving Lyft until dawn.

The ninth edition of the EXPO Chicago art fair (the first since the Glorious Beforetimes) had returned to its usual post at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. More than 140 galleries from around the world descended on Chicago for the occasion. A keen observer of the week’s earlier EXPO-adjacent events might have noticed the sudden infusion of short men with slicked-back hair and British accents taking loud, seemingly important phone calls into otherwise modest hosting institutions across the city; meanwhile, Chicago artists who just a month prior could be found discussing the merits of recentering one’s life around pure experience were suddenly armed to the teeth with business cards and sound bites about their burgeoning careers.

When asked to describe his general appearance, Acevedo thought for a moment. “A homeless guy who just discovered money. Today,” he said. For EXPO, he wore his standard day-to-night attire—Acevedo works as an after-school teacher in an outer burb, and also performs regularly at the Laugh Factory, Zanies, and other venues—a pinkish hoodie, sweatpants cinched at the ankle, Nike runners, and dollar store sunglasses with a vaguely steampunk-meets-seventh-grade-class-clown look. 

He also sported a few key accessories: an old-timey tobacco pipe (empty), a prank horn (defunct), and a fanny pack whose sole contents were a pink bra (his mother’s). His plan was to adopt a persona for his interactions with the art world: the name would be Wilfredo Franco III, “an art collector who’s been kicked out of auctions because he’s buying too much,” or possibly “a guy who was once on the waitstaff,” or, alternatively, the classic art world archetype, “[a] pompous cunt.” As for his attitude going into the fair: “unapologetically silly and present,” but also “ready to fuck shit up.”  

A sticker reading “Life is Sweet” may or may not be art. Credit: Leah Gallant

To accompany a comedian throughout their day is to bear witness to the conversion of mundane interactions into a kind of nonstop social parkour. A lull at a traffic light becomes an occasion to wave and holler wildly at adjacent drivers. While driving for Lyft, Acevedo has been known to sing to his passengers, accommodating requests for Kanye and Childish Gambino. Once, over the phone, this writer overheard Acevedo strike up a conversation with a pizza delivery guy about the merits and upkeep of his unibrow.

At EXPO Chicago, the antics of “Wilfredo Franco III” did not disappoint. Working his way up the northern flank of the fair with the thoroughness of a door-to-door canvasser, the comedian approached gallerists with a similar set of questions. He would first ask if they had made the work behind them, then feign surprise at their disparaging no. Acevedo (as Franco) would then move on to asking how much the most expensive piece in the booth was going for, before exclaiming, “That’s it?” 

What followed next was typically a series of first date-like questions (“Is this your first time in Chicago?”) and a line of inquiry, this one gauche in its sincerity, about the meaning of the art itself. A collage of gallerists’ facial expressions would have registered polite disdain, restrained horror, and simple disinterest. 

The main joke didn’t have much of a punchline: did the art world want to engage with a comedian’s antics? No, it did not. The comedian passed by, bellowing in Spanish or making a series of staccato nasal yips; the art world stared slack-eyed into its MacBook.

“I am a vibe. I am a drug. I am art,” Acevedo noted.

“The comedian passed by, bellowing in Spanish or making a series of staccato nasal yips; the art world stared slack-eyed into its MacBook.” Credit: Austin Pollock

Acevedo paused for a breather at one of the champagne kiosks dotting the fair. He rocked back and forth on a high-end chair (the Rokkå, $2,900), legs akimbo, taking occasional pulls on his pipe and complimenting bemused passersby on shirts and hats. Turning to his right, Acevedo struck up conversation in Spanish with the champagne servers, dressed in austere long aprons, asking after their work with an easy familiarity. A couple floated by, pushing 80, in checkered fur coats and platform sneakers. Acevedo reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of singles, which he placed in the previously scant tip jar. Then it was back to the races.

Jayson Acevedo’s upcoming appearances:
Performing as part of The Whose Line Show (improv), Sat 5/21, 8 PM, Comedy Shrine, 2228 Fox Valley Center, Aurora, 630-585-0300, $20-$40, all-ages

Performing as part of The Naughty Show (improv), Sat 5/21, 10 PM, Comedy Shrine, 2228 Fox Valley Center, Aurora, 630-585-0300, $20-$40, 18+

The North American premiere of the mockumentary Jambon et Fromage, featuring a cast made up of stand-up comedians (including Acevedo), Sun 5/29, 7 PM, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, $12, all-ages

Performing stand-up as part of Latin XL, a comedy showcase, Sun 5/29, 8 PM, Laugh Factory Chicago, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, $20 and two beverage minimum, 18+

Halfway up the northern flank, the comedian spotted an old flame (the flicker had been brief), and became, for once, somewhat cowed. She was browsing the wares at the booth for Printed Matter, the New York-based space for artists’ books, accompanied by a person who appeared to be a special friend; the comic geared himself for an interaction, for the sake of Art, but after some deliberation, when the companion’s hand was spotted trailing down her back, decided against it. 

Soon the VIP Collectors Lounge beckoned, then just as quickly underwhelmed. Not only was there no free food to be had, the bar didn’t even carry Sprite. Acevedo dug into the collective snack haul, smuggled in via backpack and pocket: a protein bar liberated from an untended box, two samosas from an Uptown market, a strangely delicious orangeish Target brand majority-sodium snack mix. He then proceeded to horse around. The bra emerged from the fanny pack, and was draped across the comedian’s chest. Also two nipple stickers were procured (free for the taking as part of an artwork earlier in the week), which Acevedo affixed to his coat as cufflinks. 

A Very Important Person seated nearby asked what on earth was going on. After that, finally attention, but an earnest, open kind, in the form of a gracefully middle-aged couple, recently remarried, and such good sports that they proved wholly untrollable. He did something as the operating officer of a real estate firm that managed student housing, if memory serves, and she did something whose only word that registered was “portfolio.” Art, they said, was their life. In the span of about three minutes, the conversation turned to matters of the heart. “She’s my heaven and she’s my hell,” Acevedo noted, then held forth on “the love of [his] life,” who lived in LA, before opening the floor to relationship advice.

The author and Acevedo standing on Navy Pier. Credit: Austin Pollock

But the day was wearing on, and the comedian had places to be: picking up a date at 6:40 PM in Wheaton—not the love of his life, but a total catch nonetheless. (“I asked her if she wanted to go to a fancy restaurant and pretend to get a divorce.”) This was to be followed by his show at the Laugh Factory, at 7:45 PM, and then a planned brief reappearance at EXPO’s warehouse after party.

The comedian headed towards the exit, stopping to pose with a monumental brick artwork (“I told you they’d build a wall around me”) and then at a Colombian gallery’s booth. Acevedo chatted with the gallerists (his family is Colombian) before his attention wandered to a young lady milling nearby. After confirming she was not in their party, he approached, in one fell swoop complimenting her shirt and asking for her Instagram.

Later, at the party in a warehouse in an industrial strip somewhere near Pilsen, “the whole Chicago art world,” as an acquaintance had characterized it, milled around and tactfully avoided each other. The stock of alcohol expended, a lone person in a latex catsuit held down the front of the quickly depleting dance floor, where DJ Ariel Zetina was spinning on what appeared to be a train cart perched in the middle of the tracks. 

In their wanderings, Acevedo and his date Dana Norris, also a comedian, had figured out a route up to the roof. If one was prepared to ignore a cryptic diagram tacked to the wall, which outlined which areas had dangerous levels of radio wave exposure if stood in for more than six minutes, the view was very nice. The tractors of trucks passed in and out of an enormous, strobe-lit lot, and occasional freight trains trundled by below. Back on the ground floor, someone had opened up an enormous shipping crate, and a quad of art-world youths had clambered inside it, bathing up to their necks in packing peanuts. Miami may do Basel with glitz, but Chicago’s superspreaders have more of a rust belt chic. 

Speaking of regionalism, at a postshow interview, Acevedo, a born and raised Chicagoan, offered some concluding thoughts. “New York was full of shit,” he noted. As for LA: “Those galleries used to be homeless shelters.” 

Acevedo reminisced about some of the finer moments of the fair. “Remember that girl who followed me on Instagram? She blocked me ten minutes later.”

He did, however, have one regret. “Not pulling out my mother’s bra enough in public.” The comedian paused and thought for a moment. “Did I need to know she was a B cup? No. I did not. But now I know.”

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Editor’s note: Out Here is a new column for the Reader’s City Life section featuring a variety of local writers joining in on adventures with an interesting Chicagoan. This week art writer Leah Gallant tells us about her hangout with comedian Jayson Acevedo. 

On Saturday, April 9, at 1:09 PM, comedian Jayson Acevedo walked into EXPO Chicago. He was running behind schedule. The plan had been to arrive two hours earlier, in time to catch a panel on NFTs. But at 11 AM, the 28-year-old Acevedo was still sleeping off the previous night, which he had spent driving Lyft until dawn.

The ninth edition of the EXPO Chicago art fair (the first since the Glorious Beforetimes) had returned to its usual post at Navy Pier’s Festival Hall. More than 140 galleries from around the world descended on Chicago for the occasion. A keen observer of the week’s earlier EXPO-adjacent events might have noticed the sudden infusion of short men with slicked-back hair and British accents taking loud, seemingly important phone calls into otherwise modest hosting institutions across the city; meanwhile, Chicago artists who just a month prior could be found discussing the merits of recentering one’s life around pure experience were suddenly armed to the teeth with business cards and sound bites about their burgeoning careers.

When asked to describe his general appearance, Acevedo thought for a moment. “A homeless guy who just discovered money. Today,” he said. For EXPO, he wore his standard day-to-night attire—Acevedo works as an after-school teacher in an outer burb, and also performs regularly at the Laugh Factory, Zanies, and other venues—a pinkish hoodie, sweatpants cinched at the ankle, Nike runners, and dollar store sunglasses with a vaguely steampunk-meets-seventh-grade-class-clown look. 

He also sported a few key accessories: an old-timey tobacco pipe (empty), a prank horn (defunct), and a fanny pack whose sole contents were a pink bra (his mother’s). His plan was to adopt a persona for his interactions with the art world: the name would be Wilfredo Franco III, “an art collector who’s been kicked out of auctions because he’s buying too much,” or possibly “a guy who was once on the waitstaff,” or, alternatively, the classic art world archetype, “[a] pompous cunt.” As for his attitude going into the fair: “unapologetically silly and present,” but also “ready to fuck shit up.”  

A sticker reading “Life is Sweet” may or may not be art. Credit: Leah Gallant

To accompany a comedian throughout their day is to bear witness to the conversion of mundane interactions into a kind of nonstop social parkour. A lull at a traffic light becomes an occasion to wave and holler wildly at adjacent drivers. While driving for Lyft, Acevedo has been known to sing to his passengers, accommodating requests for Kanye and Childish Gambino. Once, over the phone, this writer overheard Acevedo strike up a conversation with a pizza delivery guy about the merits and upkeep of his unibrow.

At EXPO Chicago, the antics of “Wilfredo Franco III” did not disappoint. Working his way up the northern flank of the fair with the thoroughness of a door-to-door canvasser, the comedian approached gallerists with a similar set of questions. He would first ask if they had made the work behind them, then feign surprise at their disparaging no. Acevedo (as Franco) would then move on to asking how much the most expensive piece in the booth was going for, before exclaiming, “That’s it?” 

What followed next was typically a series of first date-like questions (“Is this your first time in Chicago?”) and a line of inquiry, this one gauche in its sincerity, about the meaning of the art itself. A collage of gallerists’ facial expressions would have registered polite disdain, restrained horror, and simple disinterest. 

The main joke didn’t have much of a punchline: did the art world want to engage with a comedian’s antics? No, it did not. The comedian passed by, bellowing in Spanish or making a series of staccato nasal yips; the art world stared slack-eyed into its MacBook.

“I am a vibe. I am a drug. I am art,” Acevedo noted.

“The comedian passed by, bellowing in Spanish or making a series of staccato nasal yips; the art world stared slack-eyed into its MacBook.” Credit: Austin Pollock

Acevedo paused for a breather at one of the champagne kiosks dotting the fair. He rocked back and forth on a high-end chair (the Rokkå, $2,900), legs akimbo, taking occasional pulls on his pipe and complimenting bemused passersby on shirts and hats. Turning to his right, Acevedo struck up conversation in Spanish with the champagne servers, dressed in austere long aprons, asking after their work with an easy familiarity. A couple floated by, pushing 80, in checkered fur coats and platform sneakers. Acevedo reached into a pocket and pulled out a wad of singles, which he placed in the previously scant tip jar. Then it was back to the races.

Jayson Acevedo’s upcoming appearances:
Performing as part of The Whose Line Show (improv), Sat 5/21, 8 PM, Comedy Shrine, 2228 Fox Valley Center, Aurora, 630-585-0300, $20-$40, all-ages

Performing as part of The Naughty Show (improv), Sat 5/21, 10 PM, Comedy Shrine, 2228 Fox Valley Center, Aurora, 630-585-0300, $20-$40, 18+

The North American premiere of the mockumentary Jambon et Fromage, featuring a cast made up of stand-up comedians (including Acevedo), Sun 5/29, 7 PM, Music Box Theatre, 3733 N. Southport, 773-871-6604, $12, all-ages

Performing stand-up as part of Latin XL, a comedy showcase, Sun 5/29, 8 PM, Laugh Factory Chicago, 3175 N. Broadway, 773-327-3175, $20 and two beverage minimum, 18+

Halfway up the northern flank, the comedian spotted an old flame (the flicker had been brief), and became, for once, somewhat cowed. She was browsing the wares at the booth for Printed Matter, the New York-based space for artists’ books, accompanied by a person who appeared to be a special friend; the comic geared himself for an interaction, for the sake of Art, but after some deliberation, when the companion’s hand was spotted trailing down her back, decided against it. 

Soon the VIP Collectors Lounge beckoned, then just as quickly underwhelmed. Not only was there no free food to be had, the bar didn’t even carry Sprite. Acevedo dug into the collective snack haul, smuggled in via backpack and pocket: a protein bar liberated from an untended box, two samosas from an Uptown market, a strangely delicious orangeish Target brand majority-sodium snack mix. He then proceeded to horse around. The bra emerged from the fanny pack, and was draped across the comedian’s chest. Also two nipple stickers were procured (free for the taking as part of an artwork earlier in the week), which Acevedo affixed to his coat as cufflinks. 

A Very Important Person seated nearby asked what on earth was going on. After that, finally attention, but an earnest, open kind, in the form of a gracefully middle-aged couple, recently remarried, and such good sports that they proved wholly untrollable. He did something as the operating officer of a real estate firm that managed student housing, if memory serves, and she did something whose only word that registered was “portfolio.” Art, they said, was their life. In the span of about three minutes, the conversation turned to matters of the heart. “She’s my heaven and she’s my hell,” Acevedo noted, then held forth on “the love of [his] life,” who lived in LA, before opening the floor to relationship advice.

The author and Acevedo standing on Navy Pier. Credit: Austin Pollock

But the day was wearing on, and the comedian had places to be: picking up a date at 6:40 PM in Wheaton—not the love of his life, but a total catch nonetheless. (“I asked her if she wanted to go to a fancy restaurant and pretend to get a divorce.”) This was to be followed by his show at the Laugh Factory, at 7:45 PM, and then a planned brief reappearance at EXPO’s warehouse after party.

The comedian headed towards the exit, stopping to pose with a monumental brick artwork (“I told you they’d build a wall around me”) and then at a Colombian gallery’s booth. Acevedo chatted with the gallerists (his family is Colombian) before his attention wandered to a young lady milling nearby. After confirming she was not in their party, he approached, in one fell swoop complimenting her shirt and asking for her Instagram.

Later, at the party in a warehouse in an industrial strip somewhere near Pilsen, “the whole Chicago art world,” as an acquaintance had characterized it, milled around and tactfully avoided each other. The stock of alcohol expended, a lone person in a latex catsuit held down the front of the quickly depleting dance floor, where DJ Ariel Zetina was spinning on what appeared to be a train cart perched in the middle of the tracks. 

In their wanderings, Acevedo and his date Dana Norris, also a comedian, had figured out a route up to the roof. If one was prepared to ignore a cryptic diagram tacked to the wall, which outlined which areas had dangerous levels of radio wave exposure if stood in for more than six minutes, the view was very nice. The tractors of trucks passed in and out of an enormous, strobe-lit lot, and occasional freight trains trundled by below. Back on the ground floor, someone had opened up an enormous shipping crate, and a quad of art-world youths had clambered inside it, bathing up to their necks in packing peanuts. Miami may do Basel with glitz, but Chicago’s superspreaders have more of a rust belt chic. 

Speaking of regionalism, at a postshow interview, Acevedo, a born and raised Chicagoan, offered some concluding thoughts. “New York was full of shit,” he noted. As for LA: “Those galleries used to be homeless shelters.” 

Acevedo reminisced about some of the finer moments of the fair. “Remember that girl who followed me on Instagram? She blocked me ten minutes later.”

He did, however, have one regret. “Not pulling out my mother’s bra enough in public.” The comedian paused and thought for a moment. “Did I need to know she was a B cup? No. I did not. But now I know.”

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It may be difficult to comprehend today just how shocking Edward Albee’s drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was when it premiered in October 1962, the same week that the Cuban missile crisis began. While the atomic fireworks the world feared never happened, Albee’s three-act, three-hour-plus masterpiece detonated an explosion that rocked American culture to its core. As Invictus Theatre Company’s blistering new production proves, the 60-year-old play still sizzles, resonating on levels emotional, political, and philosophical.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Through 6/12: Mon and Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; Reginald Vaughn Theatre, 1106 W. Thorndale, invictustheatreco.com, $31 (students/seniors $26).

In a fall 1962 New York theater season whose most impressive openings seemed to be British imports—the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe and the musical Stop the World–I Want to Get Off—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was as American as apple pie, even if that pie was baked in bourbon and tinged in acid. At a time when Broadway’s main purpose seemed to be to placate its stereotypical audience of the “tired businessman” and his wife, Virginia Woolf vivisected middle-aged marital dysfunction. Another Broadway hit of the same season, the coyly cloying comedy Never Too Late by Sumner Arthur Long, concerned a 50-ish wife who unexpectedly becomes pregnant by her 60-ish husband. But—SPOILER ALERT—Virginia Woolf focused on a couple whose inability to conceive after 23 years of wedlock has led them to invent an imaginary son, and eventually to “kill” him.

And then there was Albee’s taboo-breaking language—harsh, vulgar, sometimes obscene. Audiences had never heard a wife yell “Screw you!” at her husband on a Broadway stage before. Nor had they watched a married woman showily seduce another man in front of her husband—whose response is to shrug off the taunt and, instead, bury his nose in a history book about the fall of Western civilization. Virginia Woolf—the “mainstream” debut of a young avant-garde playwright best known at the time for a handful of one-acts produced in Europe and off-Broadway—won the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards. But it was denied the theater establishment’s most prestigious honor—the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—because the Pulitzer board objected to its profanity and sexual content. (Albee’s next Broadway play, the 1966 A Delicate Balance, did receive a Pulitzer—an accolade interpreted by many as a belated apology for the earlier shortsighted slight.)

There’s more to Albee’s text than swear words, of course. This is a work rich in heightened language, ranging from long, elegiac monologues—dreamy storytelling arias—to terse exchanges that recall the minimalist precision of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. And the play assumes a wide range of cultural literacy on the part of its audience. References abound, ranging from classical allusions (the Punic Wars) to an obscure Bette Davis film (the 1949 Beyond the Forest), whose seemingly trivial mention is actually a vital clue to the script’s theme of infanticide.

And then, of course, there’s Virginia Woolf herself—the proto-feminist pre-World War II British writer whose lifelong battle with mental illness led her to commit suicide in 1941. Reputedly, Albee came across the phrase “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf”—a joking nod to Walt Disney’s 1933 cartoon Three Little Pigs—scrawled on the wall of a Greenwich Village saloon. For Disney, “the Big Bad Wolf” was a metaphor for the Great Depression; for Albee, Virginia Woolf represents angst on a deeper, more existential plane.

Virginia Woolf‘s ferocious intensity still packs a wallop. Indeed, the in-your-face intimacy of Invictus’s storefront staging brings out the best in Albee’s play. Beautifully directed by Charles Askenaizer, the play is acted by a first-rate foursome, who engage the script’s rhythms and dynamics with the sensitivity of a finely tuned string quartet playing one of Paul Hindemith or Elliott Carter’s jaggedly lyrical compositions.

The cello and violin in this dissonant yet exquisite chamber work are George and Martha. He’s 46, six years younger than Martha, and a history teacher at the small New England college run by her father. They are smart and often quite witty. She drinks, and he keeps her company. Their marriage is codependent and abusive. George and Martha have stayed together for the sake of “the kid”—the make-believe son whose “existence” Martha must not mention to anyone outside their bleak, bitter marriage. Not even on the Saturday night this play takes place—the eve of the son’s anticipated homecoming for his 21st birthday. (And yes, “George and Martha” is an allusion to the Washingtons, and the make-believe son a symbol of the myth of “the American dream.”)

Enter the violins: Nick and Honey, both in their 20s—late-night guests whom Martha has invited over for a nightcap after a faculty soiree. Nick’s a new faculty member in the science department; Honey’s his trophy bride. They got married because they thought she was pregnant; it turned out she wasn’t, but like George and Martha they stayed together. A biologist by training, Nick is a rising star in the field of genetic engineering—cloning. In 1962, cloning was indeed a hot topic in academic circles, young heterosexual couples did get married because the woman got pregnant, and “faculty wives” like Martha and Honey were judged on their teacher-husbands’ reputations. Nick the biologist is the wave of the future; George the historian, like Western civilization, is in decline. (One of Martha’s nastiest digs at George concerns his “associate professor’s salary.”)

Two couples; one small, book-cluttered living room (impressive scenic and props design by Kevin Rolfs); copious amounts of alcohol. Party games ensue, as George and Nick—sexual rivals, the past and the future—size up each other, and each other’s wives. As the three-hour play progresses in real time, secrets are bared and facades are peeled away. Illusions are destroyed—but not people. As Martin Esslin wrote in his seminal 1961 text The Theatre of the Absurd: “Theatre of the Absurd does not reflect despair . . . but expresses modern man’s endeavor to come to terms with the world in which he lives . . . [and] to free him from illusions that are bound to cause maladjustment and disappointment. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions—and to laugh at it.” 

Virginia Woolf—harrowing but also very funny—is Theater of the Absurd couched in the trappings of realist domestic drama: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit mixed with William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, with perhaps a bit of Elliott Nugent and James Thurber’s The Male Animal tossed in for good measure.

Andrea Uppling as Martha is visibly too young for the 52-year-old character she plays, but she brings to life every twist and turn of Martha’s imbalanced energy—the rowdy humor, the flagrant sexuality, the soul-deep frustration that drives her raging attacks on George, the bottomless depression that she vainly tries to self-medicate with booze. Uppling’s Martha engages our compassion with her pain even as she repels us with her behavior. James Turano’s rumpled George, weary from years of suppressing his own emotional needs in order to keep Martha afloat, is remarkable to watch as he builds himself up to meet the crisis that has inevitably come.

Keenan Odenkirk is a visually perfect Nick—the blond, muscular Aryan archetype that Albee envisioned. And he beautifully projects the opportunistic personality that Albee had in mind as well: shallow and ambitious, cunning and calculating. As Honey, Rachel Livingston is an Ibsen-esque doll-wife, with her sing-songy laugh and mousy manner of nibbling at the cocktail nuts on the coffee table. But, like Uppling, she reveals the pain and frustration of a woman trapped in the “feminine mystique,” to use the term coined by feminist writer Betty Friedan in her 1963 book analyzing the dissatisfaction and voicelessness of women in post-World War II America.

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It may be difficult to comprehend today just how shocking Edward Albee’s drama Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was when it premiered in October 1962, the same week that the Cuban missile crisis began. While the atomic fireworks the world feared never happened, Albee’s three-act, three-hour-plus masterpiece detonated an explosion that rocked American culture to its core. As Invictus Theatre Company’s blistering new production proves, the 60-year-old play still sizzles, resonating on levels emotional, political, and philosophical.

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
Through 6/12: Mon and Thu-Sat 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; Reginald Vaughn Theatre, 1106 W. Thorndale, invictustheatreco.com, $31 (students/seniors $26).

In a fall 1962 New York theater season whose most impressive openings seemed to be British imports—the satirical revue Beyond the Fringe and the musical Stop the World–I Want to Get Off—Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? was as American as apple pie, even if that pie was baked in bourbon and tinged in acid. At a time when Broadway’s main purpose seemed to be to placate its stereotypical audience of the “tired businessman” and his wife, Virginia Woolf vivisected middle-aged marital dysfunction. Another Broadway hit of the same season, the coyly cloying comedy Never Too Late by Sumner Arthur Long, concerned a 50-ish wife who unexpectedly becomes pregnant by her 60-ish husband. But—SPOILER ALERT—Virginia Woolf focused on a couple whose inability to conceive after 23 years of wedlock has led them to invent an imaginary son, and eventually to “kill” him.

And then there was Albee’s taboo-breaking language—harsh, vulgar, sometimes obscene. Audiences had never heard a wife yell “Screw you!” at her husband on a Broadway stage before. Nor had they watched a married woman showily seduce another man in front of her husband—whose response is to shrug off the taunt and, instead, bury his nose in a history book about the fall of Western civilization. Virginia Woolf—the “mainstream” debut of a young avant-garde playwright best known at the time for a handful of one-acts produced in Europe and off-Broadway—won the Tony and New York Drama Critics’ Circle awards. But it was denied the theater establishment’s most prestigious honor—the Pulitzer Prize for Drama—because the Pulitzer board objected to its profanity and sexual content. (Albee’s next Broadway play, the 1966 A Delicate Balance, did receive a Pulitzer—an accolade interpreted by many as a belated apology for the earlier shortsighted slight.)

There’s more to Albee’s text than swear words, of course. This is a work rich in heightened language, ranging from long, elegiac monologues—dreamy storytelling arias—to terse exchanges that recall the minimalist precision of Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. And the play assumes a wide range of cultural literacy on the part of its audience. References abound, ranging from classical allusions (the Punic Wars) to an obscure Bette Davis film (the 1949 Beyond the Forest), whose seemingly trivial mention is actually a vital clue to the script’s theme of infanticide.

And then, of course, there’s Virginia Woolf herself—the proto-feminist pre-World War II British writer whose lifelong battle with mental illness led her to commit suicide in 1941. Reputedly, Albee came across the phrase “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf”—a joking nod to Walt Disney’s 1933 cartoon Three Little Pigs—scrawled on the wall of a Greenwich Village saloon. For Disney, “the Big Bad Wolf” was a metaphor for the Great Depression; for Albee, Virginia Woolf represents angst on a deeper, more existential plane.

Virginia Woolf‘s ferocious intensity still packs a wallop. Indeed, the in-your-face intimacy of Invictus’s storefront staging brings out the best in Albee’s play. Beautifully directed by Charles Askenaizer, the play is acted by a first-rate foursome, who engage the script’s rhythms and dynamics with the sensitivity of a finely tuned string quartet playing one of Paul Hindemith or Elliott Carter’s jaggedly lyrical compositions.

The cello and violin in this dissonant yet exquisite chamber work are George and Martha. He’s 46, six years younger than Martha, and a history teacher at the small New England college run by her father. They are smart and often quite witty. She drinks, and he keeps her company. Their marriage is codependent and abusive. George and Martha have stayed together for the sake of “the kid”—the make-believe son whose “existence” Martha must not mention to anyone outside their bleak, bitter marriage. Not even on the Saturday night this play takes place—the eve of the son’s anticipated homecoming for his 21st birthday. (And yes, “George and Martha” is an allusion to the Washingtons, and the make-believe son a symbol of the myth of “the American dream.”)

Enter the violins: Nick and Honey, both in their 20s—late-night guests whom Martha has invited over for a nightcap after a faculty soiree. Nick’s a new faculty member in the science department; Honey’s his trophy bride. They got married because they thought she was pregnant; it turned out she wasn’t, but like George and Martha they stayed together. A biologist by training, Nick is a rising star in the field of genetic engineering—cloning. In 1962, cloning was indeed a hot topic in academic circles, young heterosexual couples did get married because the woman got pregnant, and “faculty wives” like Martha and Honey were judged on their teacher-husbands’ reputations. Nick the biologist is the wave of the future; George the historian, like Western civilization, is in decline. (One of Martha’s nastiest digs at George concerns his “associate professor’s salary.”)

Two couples; one small, book-cluttered living room (impressive scenic and props design by Kevin Rolfs); copious amounts of alcohol. Party games ensue, as George and Nick—sexual rivals, the past and the future—size up each other, and each other’s wives. As the three-hour play progresses in real time, secrets are bared and facades are peeled away. Illusions are destroyed—but not people. As Martin Esslin wrote in his seminal 1961 text The Theatre of the Absurd: “Theatre of the Absurd does not reflect despair . . . but expresses modern man’s endeavor to come to terms with the world in which he lives . . . [and] to free him from illusions that are bound to cause maladjustment and disappointment. For the dignity of man lies in his ability to face reality in all its senselessness; to accept it freely, without fear, without illusions—and to laugh at it.” 

Virginia Woolf—harrowing but also very funny—is Theater of the Absurd couched in the trappings of realist domestic drama: Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit mixed with William Inge’s Come Back, Little Sheba, with perhaps a bit of Elliott Nugent and James Thurber’s The Male Animal tossed in for good measure.

Andrea Uppling as Martha is visibly too young for the 52-year-old character she plays, but she brings to life every twist and turn of Martha’s imbalanced energy—the rowdy humor, the flagrant sexuality, the soul-deep frustration that drives her raging attacks on George, the bottomless depression that she vainly tries to self-medicate with booze. Uppling’s Martha engages our compassion with her pain even as she repels us with her behavior. James Turano’s rumpled George, weary from years of suppressing his own emotional needs in order to keep Martha afloat, is remarkable to watch as he builds himself up to meet the crisis that has inevitably come.

Keenan Odenkirk is a visually perfect Nick—the blond, muscular Aryan archetype that Albee envisioned. And he beautifully projects the opportunistic personality that Albee had in mind as well: shallow and ambitious, cunning and calculating. As Honey, Rachel Livingston is an Ibsen-esque doll-wife, with her sing-songy laugh and mousy manner of nibbling at the cocktail nuts on the coffee table. But, like Uppling, she reveals the pain and frustration of a woman trapped in the “feminine mystique,” to use the term coined by feminist writer Betty Friedan in her 1963 book analyzing the dissatisfaction and voicelessness of women in post-World War II America.

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The Chicago Blackhawks are a bad hockey team with a very flawed roster. They have more issues than the head coach but that is something to address as they try to move beyond what was a horrid year.

Derek King did a decent job as the interim head coach after firing Jeremy Colliton but it certainly wasn’t good enough for anyone to feel that he deserves to automatically be the full-time hire going forward.

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