Even before the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol last week, the desire to get away from this current hellscape was strong in many of us. Cooped up, fed up, scared, confused, and angry, I’ve been veering between doomscrolling and fantasizing about a Yeatsian bucolic escape. Whether “peace comes dropping slow” or pours down like a waterfall, I’ll take it. (BRB: looking up YouTube tutorials on how to make a cabin from clay and wattles.)
In Zoo Motel, Phillips is a guest in the eponymous establishment, where the walls are covered with paintings suggestive of both catastrophe (the Titanic) and the yearning for communication and connections (the “golden record” sent into space with the Voyager in 1977, a now-gone payphone in the middle of the Mojave Desert, 12 miles from the nearest paved road).
Zoo Motel, directed by Tatiana Mallarino, gets a tad homiletic at points, while also tending to jump away from a story just as a deeper point peeks out over the thematic horizon. But Phillips is a thoroughly charming presence, and even if our connection with other audience members in the Zoom motel setting is spotty, it’s a welcome reminder of how much the other people around us add to the experience of watching theater unfold.
Silven too is dropping pebbles of insight for us as the show (directed by Allie Winton Butler, designed by Jeff Sugg, and written by Rob Drummond) unfolds. Forced by the pandemic to curtail his international travel (we see a boarding pass from his last live tour during one bit), his show seems to exist as much for him to reconnect with his roots as it does to remind us of what matters in our own lives.
Zoo Motel, through 1/24, Thu-Sun 7 PM CST, linkshall.org, $21.The Journey, through 1/24, Tue-Sat 6:30 and 8 PM CST, Sun 4:30 and 6:30 PM CST, chicagoshakes.com, $45-$65 “per screen.”
