Big scare, little payoff in frustrating 'Thugs'

October 31, 11:57 AMChicago Theatre Review ExaminerCatey Sullivan

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  Oh sweet Jeezuz on cheese-toast Profiles Theatre. Why must you tease us so? With “Thugs,” the house that Joe Jahraus built offers 60 riveting minutes of claustrophobic thrills, hilariously dead-on, day-job hell and an octet ensemble of vividly etched characters. Then, in the best Hitchcockian sense, a terrifying blackout. And then…..well, suffice to say we have not felt so outraged over being cheated of something that was rightfully ours since our kindergarten lemonade stand got knocked over by a group of third grade toughs back in early days of the Nixon administration. Really.
   Playwright Adam Bock needs to either write a second act or take his play and go home. Because it is woefully unfair to string people along with all kinds of delicious promise only to leave them cold. Men. How typical. Ah, but we digress. Let’s be clear – We’re not talking ambiguity here. Many’s the wonderful drama that has left us haunted by possible meanings and unsettled about precisely just what happened and what it all meant. “Thugs” isn’t ambiguous. It’s half-baked. 
   Other than the fact that it plays like a one act play, “Thugs” is fantastic. As dark comedies go, it’s as sharp as a suicide-ready razor and as blackly, absurdly funny as those temp jobs that feel like you’re stuck in an endless loop of “Waiting for Godot.” Indeed, as they sort and code legal documents, one character describes the work of their bosses with pure, Beckettian poetry: “Dumb lawyers saying dumb things to other dumb lawyers about dumb things stupid people did.”
   That’s one of the few sentences that is actually completed in Bock’s marvelously creepy script. Everyone speaks in interrupted staccato and as the half-articulated thoughts and verbal detritus accumulates, it becomes clear that something bad is going on in this office building. Very bad. Or, maybe it isn’t. Somebody was murdered. Or two people. Or nobody. It was a man. Or a woman. In the stairwell, the hall, on the 16th floor or maybe somewhere else. The snack shop in the lobby is mysteriously closed; there are police in the building. The ensemble works together like master musicians in a symphony: Every half sentence, pause, stutter and scream sounds absolutely natural. You’re not watching a play about these people, you’ve become a fly on the wall of their terrifying situation. Jahraus’ cast has taken scripted words and made them seem as spontaneous, natural and startling as real life.
   Equally potent is Kevin O’Donnell’s sound design, something that is highlighted by all the pauses and fragmented thoughts in the dialogue. Every noise that originates from outside the office is vaguely disturbing. High winds, thunderstorms – are those distant screams or is somebody having a party?
   And so for an hour, the tension builds inexorably, some as-yet undefined horror coming ever closer. But other than a bit of blood, a lot of screaming and a disappearance that – oh, so maddeningly - is left utterly unexplained, the payoff never happens. I hate it when that happens.

Photo: Caroline Dorge Latta (from left), Somer Benson, Tori Ulrich and Bob Pries.