Chuck O’Connor’s period-piece drama has the aura of an old basement rec room, where the musty memories of family arguments cling to the walls, no matter how much psychic ammonia one applies. The writing feels retro, too, a sometimes-uneasy blend of Eugene O’Neill’s drinking-and-dysfunction chin-wags and observational humor about working-class urban Catholics, a la the late Chicago writer John R. Powers (“Do Black Patent Leather Shoes Really Reflect Up?”). But this world premiere for Polarity Ensemble Theatre, directed by Richard Shavzin, also contains some sturdy lived-in performances that help make the derivative elements less irritating.
It’s 1968 in Detroit — one year after a deadly riot tore apart the city — and the Tigers are in the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals and their star pitcher, Bob Gibson. But die-hard Tigers fan Clare Connelly (Laura Berner Taylor), a Catholic nun and science teacher, has other major-league issues. She’s taking care of her rage-aholic and alcoholic father, Jimmy (Fred A. Wellisch), whose constant use of racial epithets sparks as many battles with socially conscientious Clare as his attempts to get into the locked liquor cabinet. Her own rage leads her to seek absolution at the start of the show. But this is post-Vatican II, and young Father Lentine (Rian Jairell) is more interested in psychology than sin.
Father Lentine’s own struggles with faith intersect with his desire to help Clare deal not only with her father but also with her recently returned Vietnam vet brother, Charlie (Mickey O’Sullivan), whose idea of burying the hatchet of acrimony with his dad begins with a peace offering of whiskey. Of course there’s a climactic dinner fight and a darkish secret concerning Clare and Charlie’s dead mother. And it’s not much of a spoiler to reveal that the priest and Clare also struggle with their increasingly noncelibate feelings for each other.
What is lacking is a genuine sense of surprise. Unlike, say, Robert Anderson’s “I Never Sang for My Father,” in which father and grown child rapprochement never really happens (nor does it in “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” of course), O’Connor can’t resist pushing the characters into healing realizations that are a little too easily won, despite the histrionics in some of the performances. Charlie in particular feels like a cardboard cutout of the prodigal son, and his relationship with Clare never comes into sharp focus.
But when the production eases up on the overly familiar family conflicts, there are some lovely moments of genuine self-reflection, especially between Jairell’s priest (whose intriguing spiritual revelation provides the title) and Taylor’s tightly-buttoned-and-ready-to-explode Clare.
Through Oct. 5, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; $25 at 773-404-7336 or petheatre.com