Avenue Theatre, struggling to make a mark in its home at 4223 N. Lincoln Ave., has come up with a sizzler in ”Total Abandon,” Larry Atlas` harrowing, gripping look at child abuse.
The project launches Avenue`s collaboration with director Leon Palles, longtime head of Skokie`s Kinetic Theatre Company, where this production played earlier. The Avenue transfer, and plans for Palles to relocate there, bode well:
”Abandon” is brave and impressive on all accounts, tackling hair-raising fare in light-hearted summer months with spellbinding force and gutsiness.
Main character Lenny Keller (Reid Ostrowski) is guilty of a sick, horrifying act.
His 2-year-old child, Tommy, lies hooked to a machine in a hospital, with deadly injuries throughout every part of his tiny body. Clearly Keller was not a parent who simply lost temper and struck too hard once or twice. He went on a rampage, beating, kicking, and throwing the child in an onslaught of homicidal madness.
Atlas` portrait is fascinating in its revelations of Keller, not so much with bleeding-heart sympathy as with unsentimental psychological
understanding. Keller`s is a monstrous act, but he is no mon ster. The explosion was a complex reaction to his life-an oppressive father, wifely abandonment, social isolation and a nowhere job.
Love bloomed singly for this sad man in the form of his fawning son, innocently adoring his father`s round-the-clock affections. But love came too late: Keller broke from an incapacity to accept its glow, from a twisted sense his child might be shielded from the pain Keller saw everywhere else.
Atlas offers a clean, spartan script, dealing with courtroom arguments and jailhouse conversations, with Ostrowski in a chair center stage and three other actors-his attorney, a psychiatrist and a physician-coming in and out of the proceedings.
Ostrowski peaks too soon and sometimes goes over the edge. But his final, vein-popping explosion, and his characterization throughout, are riveting, and support players Bob McDonald, Brad Miller and Paul Jeans provide elegantly understated, realistic backup.
`TOTAL ABANDON`
A drama by Larry Atlas, directed by Leon Palles. A co-production with Skokie`s Kinetic Theatre Company playing at the Avenue Theatre, 4223 N. Lincoln Ave., at 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 7 p.m. Sunday, through July 15. Length of performance, 1:45. Tickets are $10. Phone 312-404-1780.
