An FBI special agent, known for her skills in profiling serial killers, returns to her small Florida town. She’s resented by the local police chief who dislikes bigfooting feds and assigns the agent a dumb rookie partner.
The gruesome killings of teenage girls continue. The uniformed kid and the fancy FBI agent spar and bond; maybe the local cops aren’t so dumb after all. And, in short order, we learn the agent has a troubled past in this very town.
Those tropes are, of course, very familiar to anyone who spent the pandemic watching police procedurals. As a fan of so-called Scandinavian noir, I recall seeing most of this setup in a couple of different detective shows, even if we were talking Finland rather than Florida. And, at times, the action in Jennifer Rumberger’s “The Locusts” recalls that in the HBO show “Mare of Easttown.”
Still, here’s what those streaming antecedents could not offer: the blistering acting of Cyd Blakewell and Brittany Burch, live and up close. Those two Chicago women (neither of whom I’ve seen work in a while) are the main reason to go and see the latest production from the Gift Theatre, which has lost its longtime space in Jefferson Park and currently is renting digs at Theater Wit in Lakeview. John Gawlik is the director.
These are deep, emotionally shaking, Chicago-style dives that recall the very best of Gift’s acting work over the years, knockout turns that raise the stakes of what you are seeing and arrest you at every moment.
You’re better not knowing much more about Rumberger’s plot as more murders take place; suffice to say that Blakewell plays the FBI agent and Burch plays the pregnant, locally resident sister upon whose couch the agent sleeps as she works. And Bruch’s character has a teenage daughter (Mariah Sydnei Gordon) of her own; the girl is a writer of what she sees (a la Martin McDonagh) and she spends a lot of time with her grandmother, played by Renee Lockett, whose role grows as the story unfolds.
There is some fine work, too, from Jennifer Glasse as the police chief on whose watch all of this trauma is unfolding.
But the scenes shared by Blakewell and Burch are where the show really sizzles: Burch utterly inhabits this role, by far the most complex of Rumberger’s creation and, in Act 2, Blakewell’s monologues are, well, shatteringly performed. Truly.
The physical production doesn’t really work. The set from Chas Mathieu is more of thematic collage than a sufficiently tense and kinetic space for actors in a thriller and, in Act 2, Rumberger’s tying of the main plot into the stories of a grandmother and a granddaughter needs a lot more work if it is to convince, especially since the older woman waxes and wanes so much in her level of cohesion and comprehension that her trajectory feels more driven by plot than humanity.
But you won’t be bored at this show, I guarantee. Rumberger, a local writer, crafted two spectacular Florida women, and they were realized from head to toe to heart. I suspect Blakewell and Burch had been waiting a long time for this one. Together.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “The Locusts” (3 stars)
When: Through Nov. 19
Where: Gift Theatre at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont Ave.
Running time: 2 hours, 15 minutes
Tickets: $38-$45 at 773-975-8150 and thegifttheatre.org