Every classic play comes with its own set of commonplaces—those little hooks we pick up in school, giving us the shorthand we need so we can appear at least halfway educated. Long Day’s Journey Into Night is autobiographical. The girl in The Glass Menagerie is Tennessee Williams’s sister. Picnic is by a closeted gay guy. Nothing happens in Waiting for Godot, but nothing is the point because it’s absurd. Shakespearean English isn’t so hard to understand once you get the hang of it. That sort of thing.
The town’s two leading families as far as we’re concerned are the Gibbses and the Webbs, each moderately prosperous, with its weary patriarch (Dr. Gibbs, the general practitioner, and Mr. Webb, who publishes the biweekly local paper), its no-nonsense matriarch (who addresses her husband by his honorific rather than his first name), and its pair of children (one male, one female). The elder Gibbs child, George, is Biff Loman without the Oedipal issues: a big-hearted high school sports star who struggles with math but loves the outdoor life and has a plan in place to buy a farm. He’s sweet on the elder Webb child, Emily, who excels in school but has no plans other than George. He declares his affection for her by carrying her books and buying her an ice cream soda (as distinguished from a phosphate, which costs less.) We’ll see their wedding in the second of the play’s three acts.
Through 10/8: Thu-Sat 7:30 PM, Sun 3 PM Redtwist Theatre 1044 W. Bryn Mawr 773-728-7529 redtwist.org $30-$40
