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(Abridged) .........Energy- atomic, unharnessed, virulent- abounds in Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre company revival of “Balm In Gilead” the Lanford Wilson dope opera that was first produced in 1965. The set may depict a grungy, all-night coffee shop on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but it soon takes on the sulphurous glow of the lower depths: A rush-hour subway car, say, sometime during World War III. Junkies, hhookers, drag queens, derelicts, ganefs and hit men rub up against Joe (Danton Stone) and Darlene (Laurie Metcalf) a couple too amiable or dense to survive the Nighttown scene until morning. “They every one of them steal,” one denizen grumbles, and steal they do: money, drugs, a cup of coffee, a shred of strutting self-respect, another minute of free-for-all banter before collapsing in sleep or death.
Stage-managing the zoo-parade is a strung-out addict named Dopey (Gary Sinise) who looks and acts like a guerilla refugee from the Twilight Zone. In this liberal adaptation of Wilson’s text, [director] John Malkovich has shown some up-front ingenuity: spotlighting or freeze-framing conversation, orchestrating the Ivesian symphony of invective, offering instant replays of the climactic murder. But chaos still reigns. It is as if the frat brothers from Animal House, instead of Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, decided to put the show on right here.
Actors lover to appear in this kind of play, whether it is a tattered valentine to eccentricity like The Time Of Your Life or a doper’s tone-poem like the Connection or this dated, indifferent travellogue through the seventh circle of hell. An actor can both inhabit his character and stand outside it, flashing signals that say, “I’m not really this low-life, but it’s fun to pretend.” Perhaps this is why the audience at off-Broadway’s spacious new Minetta Lane theatre, where Balm moved last week after a successful run at the Circle Rep, looks to be enjoying the play a bit too much for its own good. They are sharing not a drink of human dregs, but a celebration of show biz in all its volcanic, specious theatricality. Such are the seductions of energy.
Sept 17, 1984