If class and social status determine how we live, why shouldn’t it determine how we die? That premise is the jumping-off point for Lucas Baisch’s “Refrigerator,” now in a world premiere with First Floor Theater. In Baisch’s world — a dystopia wracked by war, famine and decay, as is the way of dystopias — people can choose “ascent” through IceBox, a corporation that promises to take them out of their miserable corporeal realm and reassemble them in a digital utopia.
The catch, of course, is that the ascent is limited to people of means. The rest of us end up as — well, think “Soylent Green.” There’s also a hint of “Brazil” in the anachronistic falling-apart corporate office where Baisch’s play unfolds, and a strong sense of thematic homage to Philip K. Dick (“Blade Runner”). Is what we’re seeing in this world the result of artificial intelligence run amok? Or is there yet another layer of duplicity and disinformation created by the rich and powerful, determined as always to maintain control by any means necessary?
All these questions collide and erupt, often with visceral visual imagery and heightened language. But despite all that — and the committed performances of the four actors in director Hutch Pimentel’s staging — there is an oddly muted sense of what is actually at stake here. The rules governing this universe feel fungible. Which may very well be the point, of course. But that also makes it harder to feel invested in what happens to the characters.
This is particularly frustrating because Baisch’s play also makes a valiant attempt to center physical connectedness — even in its most brutal manifestations — as a key to maintaining our human-ness. That argument is embodied in Roland (Nathaniel Andrew), a “glorified IT and admin” at IceBox who works on the side as a male escort and also has a relationship with co-worker Benjamin (Andrew Cutler), whose father is a major investor and who is preparing to make his own “ascent” at the end of the workday.
Roland and Benjamin work alongside Nochlin (Avi Roque), the always-on-edge leader of the team, and Mitchell (Shariba Rivers), a sardonic pragmatist. In a series of flashbacks, we also meet Krauss (Kevin Stangler), one of Roland’s clients and an art history professor whose assignations take place in front of a one-way mirror.
At one point, we also see Krauss deliver a lecture meditating on how our attempts to “infiltrate” an image result in failure, spurring us “into a deep place of longing.” However, Krauss’ larger role is also obscure. Is he “real” or a Cyranoid — one whose words and thoughts are created by another outside force? So it’s heady stuff, and Baisch’s resistance to easy narrative interpretation certainly lifts “Refrigerator” above cheesy sci-fi tropes. But that “deep place of longing” doesn’t really exist in this play once the narrative thickets clear. Roland yearns for connection. That much is clear. Nochlin commits an act of extreme self-mutilation, but the anguish that drives him to it doesn’t feel wholly convincing. Smooth talker Mitchell, who points out the “recycled colonialism” of letting only the high-and-mighty ascend, harbors her own desires for revenge.
But the interplay here too often feels self-conscious, as if the characters themselves have been transformed into Cyranoids for a playwright’s intellectual and political disquisitions. What makes the most powerful dystopic stories work is that we care, at some point, whether or not redemption or escape is possible. (It’s why the final image of Jonathan Pryce’s Sam in “Brazil,” humming away as we realize his own escape is a delusion, haunts me decades later.)
William Boles’ scenic design creates a marvelous grimy decaying backdrop. Andrew brings a potent live-wire quality to Roland, and Rivers’ cut-to-the-chase delivery of unvarnished truth (or is it?) brings needed comic relief to some of the grimmer interludes. But if we don’t know what’s real in this world, can we really care?
“In the end, nothing matters, Roland,” Nochlin tells his employee. We of course want that to be untrue. But for all its fumbling toward connection, “Refrigerator” remains too often a chilly intellectual dramatic exercise.
Kerry Reid is a freelance critic.
ctc-arts@chicagotribune.com
Review: “Refrigerator” (2.5 stars)
When: Through June 9
Where: Den Theatre, 1333 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes
Tickets: $20 at www.firstfloortheater.com
