By Venus Zarris

A hyper-stylized retro TV-land acid trip meets poetically stark and academic sociopolitical subversion in Trap Door Theatre’s Chicago premiere of The Unconquered by British playwright Torbin Betts. Beata Pilch intuitively directs a feverish rendering of this chaotic reality that draws us in on the visual level and then knocks our psyches back and forth. Funny, frightening and frenetic, this hypno-morality play packs more than loud laughs and literate lines, it exposes the easily twisted and vulnerably dangerous superficiality of lives lived unconsciously serving mainstream convention.

‘Mother’ and ‘Father’ are oblivious slaves to the middle-class ideal. Mother gleefully keeps a perfect house and offers up the perfect casserole to her perfect husband when he comes home from his perfect 9 to 5. He pontificates and postulates over the days news, authoritatively saying nothing with righteous indignation in a condescending tone that seems to soothe his plastic Stepford wife. ‘Girl’ is a freethinking bookworm infuriated by her parent’s puerile conformity. When civil war breaks out and an insane ‘Soldier’ shows up to protect/pillage the family, the breakdown of rigid structure resembles a malfunctioning video game that keeps repeating scenes and themes in hopes of a successful reboot back to its original program.

The result is Beckett’s Endgame meets Orwell’s 1984 meets Max Headroom set to 1980s candy punk pop. What happens when the theatrical equivalent of Ward and June Cleaver get bitch slapped by anarchy and totalitarianism? They pimp out their daughter to an influential military bureaucratic rapist, of course.

The impeccable ensemble churns out the insanity with unflinching focus and impeccable characterizations. There is NOTHING natural about this production and the cast delivers the toxic artificial ingredients to bizarre perfection.

The Los Angeles Design Group and Trap Door Theater create a vibrant world of plastic furniture, gaudy colors and Astroturf. Sir Iris Bainum-Houle’s costume design and Bob Roskos’ sound design wonderfully round off this absurd live-action adult cartoon.

Bett’s cynically fantastical story represents contemporary shallowness challenged by erudite intellectualism crushed by high tech fascism and Pilch’s direction of this remarkable cast seems to be fueled by mischievous cleverness on crystal meth.

Trap Door takes on scripts uniquely suited to challenge actors, directors, designers and their audience to function outside of the parameters of dramatic normalcy, outside of any comfort zone. In doing so they achieve distinctive results guaranteeing a wild ride that is singular to the exceptional, otherworldly ambitions of surreal and absurd examination. This is NOT your mother’s theater, unless she happens to be a maniacal lunatic or an insane genius.

3 ½ STARS

(”The Unconquered” runs through December 19 at Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland Ave. 773-384-0494.) Trap Door Theatre

The Unconquered production photos by Michal Janicki.

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