At the Den Theatre in Wicker Park, First Floor Theater’s production of Will Arbery’s 2018 play Evanston Salt Costs Climbing stumbles despite an engaging script and strong acting performances.
The play follows four Evanstonians as they navigate three brutal winters amid a mysterious aura of death and decay. Basil and Peter are longtime salt truck drivers, their careers threatened by the introduction of new “heated permeable paving” technology to Evanston by their boss, Maiworm, with whom Basil is sleeping. Maiworm is plagued by anxiety that her poor leadership killed Peter’s wife and that her adopted daughter, Jane Jr., will kill herself because of the climate crisis. Oh, and there’s also a mysterious, purple-hatted entity hunting Basil. If that all sounds confusing, well, Evanston Salt Costs Climbing is indeed a bit muddled.
Keeping the play from wandering fully into this confusion is Arbery’s bright, peculiar language. The playwright, whose 2019 play Heroes of the Fourth Turning was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in drama, has a knack for crafting characters with just the right amount of wit, spunk, and eccentricity (Jane Jr., for instance, performs a different singer’s version of “Angel from Montgomery” to local retirees each year). Yes, the dialogue takes some getting used to—“fuck” is said about 110 times, and most sentences repeat 50 percent of the content of the previous ones—but it has a delightful rhythm. The content, too, can at times throw the audience off: characters say what real people wouldn’t say and don’t say what real people would. They are all very literal. There is certainly no other play that sounds like this one.
Arbery’s challenging script is handled ably by each member of the cast, but especially well by Jacinda Ratcliffe, who shines as Jane Jr. She is sometimes insecure, sometimes sharp, and sometimes quick, cynical, or blunt. She is, in other words, a teenager—which makes it all the more wonderful when she is eventually revealed to be 31, her development stunted by mental illness, her warm but incompetent stepmother, and the terror lurking below Evanston’s streets. In a play swirling with snow and the supernatural, Ratcliffe stays grounded. And her a cappella rendition of Bonnie Rait’s version of “Angel from Montgomery” in Evanston’s final scene is by far the play’s most emotionally compelling moment.
Unfortunately, the world around Ratcliffe is more slush than snow. Micah Figueroa’s direction, in particular, feels lost. This production of Evanston becomes about so many things—anxiety, suicide, climate change, technology, the supernatural, grief, love—that it isn’t really about anything. First Floor Theater’s design elements complicate the play further. It is set on two tiny stages bridged by a traverse, but, blocked without curiosity, the divide quickly becomes an exercise not in intrigue but in exhaustion. One cranes their neck to see the happenings to one side, then, while deafening noises thrum through a herky-jerky transition, must turn their attention to the other. And, for reasons unknown to this reviewer, Evanston feels the need to project B-roll of a city street on the background whenever Peter and Basil drive their ice truck.
Conchita Avitia’s lighting design is strong, and the bright oranges and purples that represent mental illness play well. But it cannot save a production where one would rather close their eyes than watch.
This play has its moments, certainly—an early expositional scene between Maiworm and Jane Jr., Basil and Peter’s banter, and Ratcliffe’s “Angel”—but, too often, it skids off the road. What is out there, in the dark technological future, I’m not sure Evanston knows.
First Floor Theater Company’s production of Will Arbery’s Evanston Salt Costs Climbing played at the Den Theatre through June 14.
