If you’re a regular theatergoer, you’ll be forgiven for thinking Chicago’s theater scene is a godless place. Which isn’t to say that theater makers are more inclined toward heathenism than any other subset of the city’s population. But in a community overflowing with playwrights eager to write about Big Issues—police violence, gender inequity, mental illness, cyber bullying, addiction, homelessness, trauma, Alzheimer’s, gentrification, and seemingly every nuance of identity politics—it’s the rare scribe who tackles faith, the issue that has overwhelmed, mystified, and tormented several millennia’s worth of great thinkers.
With only a few days to go before Abigail’s debut in the pulpit, eighth-grader Ruth mentions, almost in passing, that “the devil tells me to do things.” As Ruth’s behavior grows increasingly unpredictable—she insists on sleeping in a fort she builds in the living room, goes to violent extremes in an effort to be named captain of her school basketball team, drops a massive F-bomb on her mother—it becomes less and less likely the teenager’s just going through a phase. Still, Abigail’s convinced her daughter’s driven not by a demon but by some underlying psychological ache she can’t express. Ruth, meanwhile, just wants her troubling faith to be taken as seriously as her mother’s. After all, if everyone believes Abigail can hear God’s voice guiding her in her daily life, why can’t anyone believe Ruth hears the devil’s?
Through 4/1: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM Broadway Armory Park 5917 N. Broadway 312-742-7502jackalopetheatre.org $25
