Science plays like this one by British playwright Lucy Kirkwood often hinge on the idea that the most staggeringly powerful technology in the history of the world—life-giving, life-cheapening, life-threatening—maybe shouldn’t be overseen by people incapable of understanding morality or human emotions.
The action of the play is essentially these three individuals contending with their mutual inability to understand one another’s pain. Alice’s son Luke (Alexander Stuart) comes out as collateral damage. Everyone has their way with him until, finally, enough is enough. He scores a kind of victory by running away from home, throwing Alice’s life into an all-consuming “chaos” that her binary cause-and-effect rationality is incapable of untangling.
Through 11/16: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 3 PM, Steep Theatre, 1115 W. Berwyn, 773-649-3186, steeptheatre.com, $39 reserved $27 general admission, $10 access tickets.
