Chicken Shop
Urbanite Theatre, 1487 Second St., Sarasota
941-321-1397
Runs through May 6-10 (all earlier shows sold out)
8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday
$20, students with I.D. $5
Prior to a couple of weeks ago, Sarasota boasted three fine theater companies known for their first-class productions. Now joining Asolo Rep, Florida Studio Theatre, and Banyan Theatre is Urbanite Theatre, which has recently come into existence with a winning production of Anna Jordan’s provocative Chicken Shop. Urbanite has new digs near downtown Sarasota, with a modern, smart-looking house that in some ways resembles Tampa’s late lamented Gorilla Theatre: think a long rectangular space with just a few rows of seats facing an equally elongated stage. The company already has an alluring summer schedule on tap (Reborning opens June 12, Isaac’s Eye on Aug. 14), not to mention a nascent staged reading series (Gidion’s Knot appears April 28, other plays to be announced).
Helmed by Summer Dawn Wallace, Harry Lipstein and Brendan Ragan, ambitious Urbanite promises to bring avid theatergoers some of the edgier contemporary plays ignored by the other houses. And if Chicken Shop is any indication, Urbanite will deliver these plays with professionalism and style.
Jordan’s play, an award-winner last year in England, is about Hendrix, who at 16 years old is just beginning to make sense of his increasingly urgent sexual needs. His mother Hilary is in a relatively new relationship with a saucy younger woman named Katie, and news of Hilary’s lesbianism is making Hendrix a target of bullies and gay-bashers at school. But Hendrix isn’t gay: his fantasies are fueled by Hustler magazine and the straight porn that he finds on his computer, and he’s just anxious enough to prove his heterosexuality by losing his virginity to a prostitute named Luminita.
But Luminita is far from the image of woman that Hendrix has found in his magazines and websites. A Moldavan by birth, she’s the prisoner of a brutal Hungarian who abuses her, threatens to harm her family, and keeps her so high on drugs that she can’t figure out how to escape the life of sex-for-pay to which she’s been enslaved. Chicken Shop shows us some days in the life of this unbalanced liaison, days including Hendrix’s growing realization of Luminita’s plight and of his responsibility to help her. But there are no easy answers in playwright Jordan’s worldview: you may find the drama’s conclusion unsatisfying, but at least it’s not the corny ending a lesser playwright would have concocted. There’s hope for Hendrix, and for Luminita too: but the road ahead for each is fraught with danger. And there’s no telling if they’ll prevail.
Leading Chicken Shop’s five-member cast is Joseph Flynn as strung-out Hendrix. Flynn brings us a wonderfully persuasive portrayal of an adolescent who finds himself a victim of his mother’s well-meaning meddling, her girlfriend’s enticements, his schoolfriends’ bigotry, and the raging hormones washing through his blood. Flynn is particularly good at showing us how much he misses his mother’s earlier lover Meg, who acted as a caring parent to him, and not as a would-be seducer like Katie. In his scenes with Luminita (her room is situated over the eponymous chicken shop), Flynn’s Hendrix is almost painfully at odds with himself: he wants sex but not immediately, has kinky tastes but can’t understand why, and he’s also baffled as to how to help the unwilling prostitute out of her predicament. As that young woman, Ashley Scallon is near perfect. Speaking haltingly with an accent, in a stoned haze of total quiescence, she only attains to a full emotional life when in a furtive phone conversation with a beloved relative.
As her pimp and subjugator Leko, Jason Bradley could hardly be more despicable; no doubt half the audience was tempted, like me, to call the cops and have him arrested. This is virtuoso acting, all the more impressive in that Bradley doesn’t try to garner our sympathy. There is real evil in the world, after all, and sometimes it has to appear that way on the stage.
The two older women in Hendrix’s life are also portrayed superbly. As the boy’s mother, Lauren Wood could give a clinic on how even the very best maternal attentions can come across to an adolescent as humiliating invasions of privacy. And as Mom’s lover, Lucy Lavely is spunky and uninhibited and far too interested in making Hendrix desire her. Barbara Redmond’s direction is confident, and Rick Cannon’s bright set is attractive and eloquent. Monica Cross’s costumes show us everything from Hendrix’s simple sloppiness to Katie’s deliberate sexual predation.
So welcome to the west coast, Urbanite. You’re off to an excellent start with a moving play splendidly acted.
There are bound to be bumps in the road. Surpass them — and prosper.
This article appears in Apr 16-22, 2015.
