Memory

Though it’s nearly constricted by its own structural flourishes, Lichtenstein’s play-within-a-play—or, really, two-plays-within-a-play—finds wells of emotion in its superbly acted Chicago debut. Memory begins in a putative rehearsal room. The actors (among them Brenda Barrie, Tony Bozzuto and Bilal Dardai, calling each other by their real names) soon arrive, chattering about parking-meter headaches and coffee or the lack thereof.

As they launch into running scenes, though, this pretense eventually falls away and we’re left wondering about its purpose. The “rehearsed” scenes span three periods. In early 1930s Berlin, Barrie’s Eva is a young Jewish woman pursued romantically by two friends, the Jewish Bozzuto and gentile Patrick De Nicola. As this time frame progresses, we see the trio affected by the rise of the Third Reich. Then in 1990, after the fall of the Wall, Eva’s pursued for information by the grandson (Shane Michael Murphy) who never knew her. Interspersed are scenes from modern-day Bethlehem, in which Samuel Buti, as an Israeli soldier, tries to remove a Palestinian (Dardai) from his home so it can be razed for the construction of another wall.

Lichtenstein’s parallel between Nazis driving out Jews and Jews driving out Arabs feels a bit unearned, if only because it’s hard to swallow that the play-within-the-play contains both settings. There’s no narrative link, just the connective tissue of the rehearsal-room device, which the playwright basically drops midway. But Reeder’s smartly paced production mostly sidesteps our misgivings, thanks to finely attuned performances that ink in Lichtenstein’s pencil sketches. The always exquisite Barrie, toggling between love-struck youngster and wary survivor, leads the pack.

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