Steppenwolf and playwright Sam Shepard have gone together like peanut butter and chocolate since 1982, when the theater mounted an acclaimed production of True West starring Francis Guinan, John Malkovich, Laurie Metcalf, Jeff Perry and Gary Sinise. You know, those guys.
Did I say like peanut butter and chocolate? Allow me to amend the simile: Steppenwolf and Shepard go together like dynamite and a struck match.
With a searing new production of Fool for Love starring next-generation ensemble members Cliff Chamberlain, Tim Hopper and Caroline Neff alongside TV star Nick Gehlfuss, Steppenwolf and Shepard deliver another explosive theatrical treat worth savoring.
Neff is never not good, and it’s wonderful to see her in a role that fully showcases her dramatic chops. Her May is paired with the sharp Gehlfuss’s Eddie as on-again, off-again lovers locked in a lifelong struggle with attraction and repulsion that stretches back to their high school days.
Chamberlain makes a full meal out of his snack-size role, earning big, tension-breaking laughs as Martin, the mild-mannered date who unwittingly walks in on the couple’s latest round of drama.
Hopper plays the Old Man, a character who sits off to the side of the stage and interjects increasingly ominous statements into the proceedings until we realize with dawning horror exactly who he is in relation to the lovers. I always enjoy Hopper’s performances without always loving the shows he’s cast in (and sometimes seemingly typecast in), but his work here is his best since his excellent turn in Downstate and takes his acting in a refreshingly mold-breaking direction.
Clocking in at barely over an hour under the brisk direction of Jeremy Herrin, this propulsive story plays out on a gorgeous set by the gifted Todd Rosenthal, who takes a seedy motel room in the desert and blows it up to mythic scale. That set, along with eager anticipation for the latest Shepard-Steppenwolf collaboration, was undoubtedly one of the reasons why Saturday’s opening-night audience created such a heightened pre-show buzz. The show more than lived up to those high expectations.
There’s something so juicy and sweaty and noir about a play pitting two characters against each other in a seedy motel room. Just think back to the killer production of Tracy Letts’ Bug that was cut short by the start of the pandemic. In the right hands, it’s a can’t-miss setup for drama.
Fool for Love is in exactly the right hands here, and it leaves the audience pondering just how much emotional wreckage one person’s selfishness can create.
Fool for Love runs through March 23 at Steppenwolf Theatre.
For a full roundup of reviews of this show, visit Theatre in Chicago.
Photo by Michael Brosilow
