Guinea Pig Solo

Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun Times

"There was a deep, stunned silence as the lights faded on the Collaboraction production of Brett C. Leonard's "Guinea Pig Solo" this week. Then there was thunderous applause. It was the only possible response to this altogether haunting and harrowing play -- a work that debuted last year in a co-production of New York's Public Theater and the very hot LAByrinth company, and is now in a truly blistering Midwest premiere.

Leonard's work -- about the slow, painful, psychic self-immolation of a young Hispanic-American soldier who has recently returned from combat in Iraq and cannot come to peace with the society he has re-entered -- bears the marks of a passionately engaged writer with a poetic soul, a gift for bristling dialogue, a pitch-black comic sensibility and an almost Orwellian view of the world.

It is based on "Woyzeck," a classic of early 19th century drama (and 20th century opera) by the shockingly modern German dramatist Georg Buchner. But it's utterly contemporary in its reworking. And director Anthony Moseley, in collaboration with Sam Porretta and Eric Gelehrter (sets and video), Jacqueline Reid (lights), Kevin O'Donnell and Mikhail Fiksel (music and sound), has crafted a brilliantly cinematic production driven by superb acting.

Jose Solo (Dale Rivera, phenomenal in a grueling performance that is a true career breakout) is back on the mean streets of New York. He is profoundly troubled by his tattered marriage to Vivian (Sandra Delgado in a performance so vivid it almost burns an outline on the stage), his disturbed child, his failing attempts to make a living as a hot dog vendor and barber, and the daily assaults that face the underclass. He holds on, but is increasingly at the breaking point -- fed up with the trivial pursuits of his pal, Gary (a sharply comic Micah Smyth), saved but abandoned by an empathetic cop (Len Bajenski), force-fed moral pablum by his therapist (Ed Westfall), and finally driven over the edge by his estranged wife's affair with a cop (the solid Sal Velez Jr.).

In a just world, our government would send this production to every military base where veterans of the current war congregate. In its blazing honesty, it would provide the kind of primal catharsis rarely found on the stage" –