Tuta Theatre bring fire and water to life with TOM & ELIZA

Tuta Theatre’s space is a tiny black box, tucked away behind a storefront. The lobby looks like someone’s garage that has been used for storage for the past decade (at least). You have to enter through an ally. Don’t let that stop you – the truism about good restaurants, that they’ll spend money on good food or good ambience, but not both, applies to theater as well.

Entering the theater space, there is a square, black hole where the stage should be. If you squint, two figures appear to be sitting in the middle of it, utterly still. Even more disturbing, most of the audience doesn’t appear to notice. They chat and shuffle to their seats, like any audience, anywhere. Then the house lights go down, and Tom (Clifton Frei) and Eliza (Seoyoung Park) appear. They are dressed in plain linen, sitting on stools, barefoot. Microphones hang by their heads, the stage beneath them glints like a mirror. They speak.

With this initially stilted opening, as sparse as it is informative, the two begin a parallel, cyclical, rhythmic conversation about their shared life and their secret desperation that is a breathless, engrossing and haunting examination of what would normally be considered a pretty ideal trajectory. They go to school and get jobs, they meet and have sex, they get married and have children. They love their children. They have stable careers. All the while, they never leave their stools, they never actually touch. This separation is the first indicator that Tom and Eliza is bigger than two people.

The staging, by director Aileen Wen McGroddy is a masterful lesson in minimalism. Each element, from the sound design by Alex Trinh and the lighting by Keith Parham, to the deceptively simple scenic and costume design by Tatiana Kahvegian, is used to maximum effect and as sparsely as possible. For example, there are moments when Tom and Eliza are turned away from each other, using the microphones to talk. Their voices fill the space, creating a sense of almost uncomfortable intimacy, while neither touching nor even looking at each other. It is a reminder that a well told story, with a talented cast, needs very little to launch an audience into a visceral experience. That said, there is much roiling beneath the surface.

Tom, we learn, is an author who writes about the rivers that birthed civilization. Eliza, a librarian with an unexpected obsession. Tom is delicate and loving. Eliza is emotionally cold, her only real source of joy can be found in destruction.  It is a story about the desperate search for meaning that can derail a life, and examines, under the harsh light of truth, the bleak mundanity that plagues so many modern lives, and the actions we take to feel alive. Yet, it is often very funny and even silly.

This is in part due to the stellar cast. Frei’s Tom is a delicate, damp sort of fellow who longs for connection and can’t find any satisfaction in the life he’s made for himself. Frei’s pure physical strength as he arches his body over and around his stool is captivating – he is always utterly in control. As he dissolves into a metaphorical puddle of former humanity, his physicality is almost painful to see. Park’s facial expressions are perfect and doll-like. Her Eliza has an intensity of focus that is unnerving and just this side of human. The elements of fire and water they each seem to carry within them dance around each other in increasingly distanced ways. The conclusion feels inevitable and yet, as is always the case with excellent fiction, still surprises.

Near the end of the show, there is a moment when the whole room goes utterly dark. Afterwards, walking out into the balmy Chicago summer night, it felt as though we were re-entering America after a strange, unsettling journey in another country. This thoughtful, provoking piece, despite the darkness of the message, left me with a feeling of awe of what theater can do.

Additional information about this and other area productions can be found by visiting www.theatreinchicago.com.