“Paint the picture.” With those three words, the two isolated souls at the heart of Shepsu Aakhu’s “Softly Blue” attempt to transcend their own limitations — real and imagined.
But the limitations we imagine for ourselves are often the most unsurmountable. Technology may make it easier for us to communicate with strangers. But when it comes to vanquishing our psychic demons, we’re still in the beta stage.
Sloan (Brandon Greenhouse) and Dakota (Demetria Thomas) are the recluses in question. He’s diabetic, she’s bipolar, and neither of them feels secure enough to leave the safety of their Chicago apartments for long stretches of time.
They meet online through a dating site, and gradually open up to each other through a series of phone calls and online chats, where those three little words become the prompt for them to imagine where they’d be together if they could just open the door and walk out.
MPAACT first presented “Softly Blue” in 2006, though I missed that earlier version. The company is remounting it now under the direction of Andrea J. Dymond.
Though there are points where it feels like the connection is slow and some of the circumstances less than believable, Aakhu’s writing creates several haunting and poetic moments for these two, and Greenhouse and Thomas commit to the sometimes-histrionic requirements (particularly for the pill-popping latter) with gusto.
On the surface, Sloan seems the more together of the two, with his background in astronomy giving him a certain academic distance. He describes himself as a “moon person” who reveals himself in phases.
Dakota, on the other hand, is a former child prodigy whose early sun has been eclipsed by her mental illness and the process of growing up. “There is nothing so sobering as reaching your potential,” she says.
The main problem with Aakhu’s script is that it leaves us with nagging questions of internal logic. I was not convinced, for example, that Sloan’s fear of death from his severe but manageable disease is so crippling, he hardly ever leaves his home. (Surely he could find an online support group for people living with diabetes to help him out.)
Aakhu’s play works best if you view it as a 21st-century update on 18th-century Romanticism and its love of melancholia.
The unseen live choral trio of Marina Dee, Christina D. Harper and Osiris Khepera, who perform Shawn Wallace and Desta Sounds’ score, adds aural texture that helps this portrait of urban solitude soar at unexpected moments.
2.5 STARS
Through March 15, Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; $21-$25 at 773-404-7336 or mpaact.org