Chess hustlers cast for prey in 'Fish Men'
For the chess hustlers trolling New York City's Washington Square Park in Candido Tirado's "Fish Men," the game of kings is much more than a social diversion. It's serious business.
It's the business by which these sharks make their living. A living that depends on ensnaring a fish (hustler-speak for a poor player), gutting him, sending him on his way with a considerably lighter wallet, and then swimming off in search of new prey.
Tirado, himself a master chess player, clearly has insight into chess and the culture surrounding it, which makes for an engaging, funny play.
Yet the Teatro Vista resident playwright has other, weightier fish to fry.
Genocide, racism, injustice and torture all find their way into this play, which emerges as a meditation on human cruelty expressed by way of a chess match, which for all its civilized trappings is underscored by a kind of brutality where defeat is often swift and absolute.
The world premiere by Teatro Vista and Goodman Theatre is a brisk, astutely cast, altogether earnest production from director Edward Torres, Teatro Vista's artistic director. That said, the play itself could benefit from a bit more subtlety. That's especially true of the characters' sociopolitical tirades, mini-lectures delivered with sledgehammer force, that pull the audience out of the story.
As for the action, it unfolds in the round, on a hot summer day within set designer Collette Pollard's neatly contained, slightly littered urban oasis, in which tidy hedges surround a slab occupied by concrete chess tables and mismatched benches.
A predatory trio circles the superficially friendly confines. There's Cash (the smart, smooth Cedric Mays), a former doctoral candidate and an accomplished player who can't entirely control his nervous tick. John (Mike Cherry) is a tough-guy Belorussian émigré, while Bible-toting PeeWee (the kinetic, funny Kenn E. Head) is a failed burglar turned chess master.
Also on hand is Jerome (Ricardo Gutierrez), a Native American and resident philosopher who plays chess for fun, and Ninety-Two (a moving, nicely pitched performance by Howard Witt), a Holocaust survivor and chess prodigy who no longer plays, for reasons that are as cryptic as his nickname.
Business is slow without the regulars: Dr. Lee (Gordon Chow), a proctologist who never misses an opportunity to make a crude joke about his profession, and Stuart (Daniel Cantor, the picture of liberal indignation), a landlord trying to evict his poor tenants so he can rent to wealthier ones. But things start looking up when a soft-spoken, Guatemalan immigrant named Rey (Raul Castillo) arrives to pay off the debt his uncle incurred after the hustlers cleaned him out the previous day. Sensing blood in the water, the trio invites him to play. Hesitant at first, Rey eventually takes Cash up on his invitation.
Over the course of play, it becomes clear that Rey may not be the guppy he appears to be. Moreover, conveniently timed personal revelations also make clear the predators have themselves been victims, establishing among the sharks and fish a kind of kinship. And yet, in this tank, there is little room for mercy.
The acting is first-rate. Castillo is quietly affecting as a deeply traumatized young man driven to vengeance. The second act scenes where he and Mays square off across the chessboard crackle. The tension is palpable. You sense it in the characters and in the audience, brought to the edge of their seats.
All over a game of chess.
“Fish Men”
★ ★ ★
Location: Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago, (312) 443-3800 or
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday through May 6. Also 7:30 p.m. April 29
Running time: About two hours, 25 minutes, with intermission
Tickets: $12-$42
Parking: Discounted parking with Goodman validation at the Government Center Self Park, at the southeast corner of Lake and Clark streets
Rating: For teens and older; contains adult language, mature themes