Reviews for The Argument
CHICAGO THEATRE BEAT
Review by Lauren Whalen, Oct. 11, 2011
Read the full article.The Argument rides a strange but powerful wave
The word “post-apocalyptic” gets thrown around a lot these days, and it’s no wonder: the past decade has been rife with hurricanes, terrorist attacks and an economy collapse that’s inspired peaceful protests nationwide. Losses big and small have everyone questioning their every move and making decisions to avoid unnecessary regret. The Argument, the Chicago premiere of Gregory S. Moss’ play, is timely as well as bizarre and poignant. Though a bit scant at forty minutes, the one-act contains many beautiful moments and bare-boned but high production values.
Twin sisters Mia and Ana never had a chance to really live: orphaned since childhood, they work day and night in the bar their mother left them. When a flood leaves the world devastated and Ana drowns, Mia is undeterred. Rather than burying her sister, she drags her body through refugee camps and dirty dungeons, determined to give Ana the experiences her twin never had in her nineteen years on earth.
If this sounds strange, that’s because it is. Mia totes her sister’s body around first on roller skates, then in a wheelchair, then in a shopping cart. Refugees and derelicts judge harshly, despite their own impure acts in the face of disaster. In contrast, Mia’s actions, though extremely odd, are done out of love. Ana reveals in an early monologue what her life would have been like: seven great loves, two children and a brush with death that was avoided. Better late than never, Mia figures. And as the play goes on, rather than grow disgusted, the audience becomes convinced that Mia is doing the right thing. Read the full article.
TIME OUT CHICAGO
Review by Zac Thompson, Oct. 11, 2011
Read the full article.A young woman tries to give her dead sister the life she never had in Gregory Moss’s sweetly morbid one-act.
After the death of a loved one, the bereaved are entitled to a period of magical thinking (illogically believing, for instance, the dead will come back), but the heroine of Gregory Moss’s 2007 one-act takes it to a whole ’nother level. When a flood of biblical proportions takes out some unnamed metropolis, Mia (Carla Kessler) stuffs the body of her drowned twin sister, Ana (Victoria Bucknell), into a shopping cart and wheels her from place to place, hoping to give the corpse the experiences Ana will miss out on because she died before having really lived. Mia gets her dead sister a dead dog and even a dead boyfriend, whom Mia acquires at a necrophiliac brothel—a “charnel house of ill repute,” as the scuzzy proprietor puts it.
There is, of course, the potential for black comedy and for Weekend at Bernie’s–type maneuverings, both of which are ably realized in Jeffry Stanton’s unsettling production, which has the look of an urban wasteland or a staging of Rent gone terribly wrong. Stanton also manages to convey the script’s aching sense of loss and missed opportunities, and the show displays a surprising sweetness… Read the full article.
CENTER STAGE CHICAGO
Review by Marla Seidell, Oct. 14, 2011
Read the full article.A provocative comedy about death in the post-apocalypse.
Death, in both a metaphorical and physical sense, is always present. It just takes a play like “The Argument” to remind us of this fact. Death is a joke, a mystery and a very good reason to start living your life. From the vantage point of 19-year-old twins Mia (Carla Kessler) and Anna (Victoria Bucknell), death is a liberator. They’re stuck working themselves to death as barmaids, sometime in the grim future, when natural disasters swoop down on a regular basis. Ana is fed up with not living, and Mia is resigned to live for her work. When Ana drowns in the latest killer storm, both sisters gain an opportunity to break out of their rut.
Ana’s dialogue tells us that death is really not bad. It’s just like life, only “you finally get the chance to say everything you ever wanted to, but no one is listening.” Ana, on the other hand, is consumed by guilt and remorse, and she tries desperately to give her corpse sister the life she never had in the living world. In hilarious black comedy fashion, Mia sticks Ana in a pair of roller skates and wheels her around, picking up a dead dog and a handsome male corpse along the way for her sister’s post-mortem enjoyment. Read the full article.
CHICAGO PRIDE.COM
Review by Michael J. Roberts
Read the full article.Interrobang’s “The Argument” Masterfully Macabre
You will never hear George W. Bush utter the words “Brownie, you’re doing a helluva job” in Greogory S. Moss’ macabre drama “The Argument” which is currently being masterfully staged by director Jeffry Stanton for the Interrobang Theatre Project. This post-Katrina story follows orphaned twin sisters Ana and Mia who have inherited a dimly lit bar from their mother. After the apocalyptic rain claims Ana’s life, Mia sets forth to give her dead sister the life she missed.
Mia, played magnificently by Carla Kessler, evokes an earthly pathos that is clearly steeped in regret for a life that might have been. Through Mia, Ana (Victoria Bucknell) is given a pet, a boyfriend and a glimpse at what life may have been like should the deck not have been stacked against her and her sister. Mia takes her dead sister on a journey to survivor camps where the seedy have taken their entrepreneurial endeavors to new levels of the grotesque.
Yet, out of this hell comes a beautiful love story between two sisters and the lesson of how not to take what we have for granted. It is through this dark new world, mostly seen through Mia’s imagination, that her soul is cleansed and redeemed. Mr. Moss’ script takes you immediately into the hell of these characters and never lets you go for the entire forty minutes of the work. Mr. Stanton has a firm grip of the material and has used his first rate cast and Viaduct stage masterfully. Make no mistake; this is a very difficult piece of theatre, both for director and actors because many of the scenes contain performance art as much as they do dramatic line readings. There are also some lovely choreographed moments with the entire cast. “The Argument” is one of those pieces of theatre that will keep you talking days after you have seen the production. That is always the mark of good theatre. Read article on website.