Unchanging Love

Few fictional creatures are as terrifying as those hellbound to keep their family’s bloodline intact. Exhibit A: Linney’s Unchanging Love, adapted from Chekhov’s story In the Hollow and set in 1920s Appalachia. In it, a retiring patriarch (Gary Houston) sees to it that his bachelor son takes a comely bride (Betsy McKnight) who will doubtlessly produce a grandson. That he all but purchases her outright from a family of poor Christian folk singers, and that he doesn’t anticipate the familial, stew-pot jealousy that follows, leads to a small-town tragedy of nearly operatic scale.

Artistic Home, Chicago’s delivery system for underrated American classics, continues to best its own ensemble achievements with director Kelly’s charcoal portrait of tribal rural life. Stage vet Houston’s lived-in performance, preternatural in its realism, suggests an amiable man who may be chapped by his decades of survival, but whose unrealistic expectations for his clan are informed by his uniquely American good fortune. Meanwhile, soft, slow-eyed McKnight haunts as a naive kid oblivious to what she’s saying “I do” to. And her honeyed vocals linger like mountain smoke.

An unintentionally chintzy design scheme has a vaguely cheapening effect, and the live, come-to-meetin’ preshow music feels a little bogus. But these elements barely dent the overall effect, which is heartrending.—Christopher Piatt