A persistent plague: The Gift Theatre's new thriller 'The Locusts' shows promise
“The Locusts” - ★ ★ ★
In “The Locusts,” Jennifer Rumberger's grim thriller about a serial killer targeting teenage girls, a sheriff offers a 16-year-old girl some advice.
“Don't be nice like the other girls,” she warns, her meaning implicit. Too often, nice girls - the girls who give a stranger directions, help load something into his car or help search for his missing pet - end up dead.
But Rumberger's promising play, which premiered Monday at The Gift Theatre under Wheaton native John Gawlik, offers more than sound advice (which we should all consider, regardless of age or gender). “The Locusts” examines how women cope with the persistent, intergenerational plague of male violence, how that trauma informs their lives, and how the residual fear that results manifests itself.
The play - which unfolds as a police procedural - has potential. Gawlik's direction is assured and the acting is first-rate. Rumberger's writing, which recalls the macabre dramedy of Martin McDonagh - is vivid and poetic.
Take, for example, the observations of FBI profiler Ella, played by Cyd Blakewell, upon returning to her hometown of Vero Beach, Florida, to lead the investigation into the abduction and murder of six teenage girls.
“I don't like being back here,” Ella informs us. “Something depresses me about these small town roads. A patch of America the world forgot. The glare off the pavement at 2 p.m. The light on the roofs of the strip malls. The stillness. The weight. The dead grass on the side of the highway. Everything giving up.”
It's a bleak but utterly compelling portrait of a city struggling economically, as evidenced by its near empty mall and decaying stadium, the onetime spring training home of the Los Angeles Dodgers. As a result, its residents - particularly its children - are vulnerable to a predator who has made their community his hunting ground.
For anyone who's ever watched a true-crime TV docuseries, “The Locusts” has a familiar ring. Gawlik's cast does a good job ratcheting up the tension in the second act, but audiences will see the climax coming. Rumberger packs a lot into two hours: Unresolved family issues, sibling resentment, violence against women and coping with fear. Not all of them are fully explored. The play needs shaping and tightening. The design needs clarification (some set and sound design choices were puzzling and, as a result, distracting). Still, I found Rumberger's darkly comic play compelling. It stayed with me long after I left the theater.
The play begins with Ella (ideally played by Blakewell with no-nonsense efficiency in response to unresolved issues) meeting her counterparts at the Vero Beach Police Department, whose most serious investigations involve ice cream parlor robberies.
Robbie (Patrick Weber), an eager 24-year-old local who's risen quickly through the department ranks, is more perceptive and more qualified than he may initially seem. A bit defensive about the feds' participation, Chief Layla (Jennifer Glasse) puts aside her ego for the sake of her community.
“These are my people,” says the chief, whose clear-eyed, convincing performance avoids the cliches that - in these types of procedurals - tend to make caricatures of local cops.
It turns out that Ella's connection to the investigation is more than geographic. As a teenager, she survived being abducted and assaulted by an unknown assailant. After high school, she left and didn't look back until she returned to help younger sister Maisie care for their dying father.
Her return - her first visit since their father's death three years earlier - forces her to confront her strained relationship with Maisie (the richly expressive Brittany Burch), a pregnant, single mom to 16-year-old Olive (Mariah Sydnei Gordon), a budding writer who, like her aunt, can't wait to leave Florida.
Maisie invites Ella to stay with her and Olive in the rundown apartment they share with 90-year-old Willa (Renee Lockett). Grandmother to Ella and Maisie, Willa (who's also referred to as Nana) has Alzheimer's disease, which has not diminished her enthusiasm for the horror stories great-granddaughter Olive crafts about young women gruesomely dispatching their male tormentors.
A sense of fear unites these characters, who Ella describes as “lonely and scared and bored and mad.” What differentiates them is how they cope with the fear many women share: the fear of being intimidated, terrorized or attacked by a man. Maisie's is reflected in depression and sleeplessness. Ella expresses hers in her tireless devotion to catching killers. And Olive, who watches as her friends disappear, channels hers into ghoulish stories where the would-be victim turns the tables on the predator who attacks her because he can. And for some women it isn't just fear, it's reality.
“Hard world, little girl,” Willa says to Olive, “be careful.”
And don't be nice.
Location: Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave., Chicago, (773) 975-8150 or thegifttheatre.org
Showtimes: 7:30 p.m. Thursday through Saturday and 3 p.m. Sunday through Nov. 19
Tickets: $38-$45
Running time: About 2 hours, 10 minutes with intermission
Parking: Paid street parking
Rating: For adults, contains strong language, references to violence and subject matter some audience members may find upsetting
COVID-19 precautions: Masks required