“Oh fuck, what is he doing?” —Joe Schofield, in Chimerica
And, like I say, I got the T-shirt.
Bowling’s staging seemed diffuse, perhaps a little underrehearsed on opening night. The elements were all there, though, and I have no doubt that the show has pulled itself together by now. Coburn Goss is a charmingly obnoxious Joe, wearing his self-righteousness like a foolscap while others try their best to steer him toward their versions of growing up. Those others include H.B. Ward as the editor, amusingly gruff but also pained as he copes with the new rules of the news game. As Joe’s love interest, Tessa, Eleni Pappageorge’s rather spectacular sexiness is tempered by her developing ambivalence toward her work in digital demography: on the one hand calling the Tank Man a consumer by virtue of the bags he held in his hands (“The Tank Man . . . has been shopping!”), while on the other sensing just how creepy that is.
Through 7/31: Thu-Fri 7:30 PM, Sat 3 and 8 PM, Sun 2 PM, TimeLine Theatre, Wellington Avenue United Church of Christ, Baird Hall Theatre, 615 W. Wellington, 773-281-8463, timelinetheatre.com, $28-$51.
