Right Now

by Catherine-Anne Toupin at Facility Theatre

I recommend Facility Theatre’s production of Right Now by French Canadian playwright Catherine-Anne Toupin, running through December 9 at their space in Humboldt Park, directed by dado.

Main character Alice (Maria Stephens) has been sleeping too late to see her husband Ben (Josh Odor) before he leaves for the hospital where he works as a doctor. When he comes home after midnight each night, Alice is asleep on the couch. Almost immediately this situation is made worse by the arrival of Alice and Ben’s weird neighbors, Juliette (Shawna Franks), Giles (Kirk Anderson), and their adult son, Francois (Elliot Baker). They seem inordinately interested in Alice and Ben’s apartment. They picture Francois living there. They are inordinately enamored with Ben, gleefully calling him Bennie, which is coincidentally the same name as their second-born. What follows is Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf meets Rosemary’s Baby, with dashes of The Birthday Party, the Apple TV series Servant, and Oscar Wilde. But it’s also none of those. If this is what is going on in French Quebec, I want to go there.

It’s a great play in terms of writing, but what makes it worth seeing now is the exuberant choreography and precise physical choices achieved by dado and the ensemble. Franks commands the room while seeming she’s about to collapse, Anderson stands far too close to you, Baker regresses to age three or four, Odor zones out spectacularly, and Stephens stars in her own private music video. The set explodes with baby toys and precariously poured glasses of red wine, and the cast dances around, over, and through this like a minefield on their way to returning to the womb, in every different form that can physically take on a stage. The hilarity of the first act transforms into horror.

With so many enigmatic things happening, almost the last thing that occurs to you is why it might be called “Right Now.” But in retrospect, that seems like one of the most important things. A sequence of events unfolds over time and little by little what we started with has turned into a gruesome inverse. All of this is Right Now.

Right Now at Facility Theatre
October 26 — December 9, 2023
Thursdays-Saturdays at 7:30pm
Facility Theatre, 1138 N. California Ave.
TICKETS
General Admission: $25 suggested donation
Pay-what-you-can options available