In a conversation with her agent, Ren, the protagonist of Lisa Dillman’s new play “No Such Thing,” describes her attitude toward her audience in her work as a screenwriter. “Let them wonder,” she says. This meta comment relates to several layers of the play, as Ren, a woman in her 60s, explores the possibilities of an unconventional relationship defined solely by self-revelation and untethered to personal history.
Her words also channel the playwright’s approach to structuring this family drama; Dillman drops a juicy reveal before intermission and begins the second act with a series of flashbacks, leaving viewers waiting to see the fallout. Although the momentum lags a bit as a result, it’s a largely effective choice that creates space for the playwright to examine how relationships can become messily entangled despite one’s best intentions.
Malkia Stampley directs this world premiere at Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, an Equity company on the North Side that centers women’s stories. In Dillman’s program note, she explains her interest in the experiences of women in middle age and beyond, arguing that in this country, women gradually become invisible in these stages of life. Ren (played by Susan Gosdick) is caught up in this trajectory, as a screenwriter whose recent scripts aren’t gaining any traction, a wife unsatisfied with her comfortable marriage and a mother struggling to redefine her changing relationship with her adult daughter.
Lively, smart and curious, Ren wants more out of life, so she begins an affair with a somewhat younger man (Josh Odor), whose name she deliberately does not learn. In fact, the two lovers tell each other no identifying details of their lives beyond the walls of the hotel where they meet. Instead, they choose which aspects of themselves to share by swapping stories — tales that may or may not be true but must “express true feeling without apology or shame,” as Ren puts it.
It’s a provocative premise, one that plays with the idea of just how well we can truly know another person. To a certain extent, all relationships are bound by the stories we tell each other, and Ren’s affair simply takes this concept to its logical end. In her mind, the boundaries that she and her mystery man have agreed to will insulate them from the complications of the outside world: no drama, no ruined marriages, nothing but a sparkling addition to her otherwise flat life.
Of course, things do get complicated — this is theater, after all — in ways that especially impact Ren’s relationship with her 27-year-old daughter, Olivia (Jessica Ervin). After a troubled adolescence, details of which are hinted at throughout the play, Olivia has pulled her life together and is working toward a master’s degree in social work. Ren has trouble adjusting to the woman Olivia has become and still sees her as a broken girl, leading to resentment and distance between mother and daughter. Theirs is the most dynamic relationship of the play, one that many viewers will likely relate to on some level.
By focusing on Ren and Olivia, Dillman doesn’t leave much time to linger on how Ren’s affair affects her marriage to Ted, a stolid businessman mostly seen relaxing in his lounge chair and scrolling on a tablet after coming home from work. If Chicago theater veteran Matt DeCaro seems underused in this role at first, he later shares an explosive scene with Gosdick that justifies the slow build. Cheryl Hamada rounds out the cast as Marilyn, Ren’s agent and longtime friend who serves as the screenwriter’s sounding board, unofficial therapist and deliverer of tough truths — not to mention some witty one-liners.
In Ren, Dillman has written a complex character who makes decisions that are often understandable yet morally fraught. Gosdick and Ervin are well cast as the mother and daughter at the heart of the play, and you really feel for them both as they confront an impossible situation.
I do think the play could dive deeper into the nature of truth as it relates to memory, a theme that is introduced in the program by a quotation from “So Long, See You Tomorrow,” a novel by William Maxwell: “Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we take.”
It’s fascinating to me how family members can recall the same events in wildly different ways, and I thought that’s the direction Dillman was going at first, but ultimately, she seems more interested in the interplay between Ren’s inner world and her family life. Still, memory is the theme of several poetic passages of dialogue between Ren and her lover, and, as a professional storyteller, her personal experiences inevitably shape her work. Ren may write in a different genre from the sci-fi TV series “Doctor Who,” but I bet she’d resonate with a popular quotation from the title character: “We’re all stories in the end. Just make it a good one, eh?”
Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.
Review: “No Such Thing” (3 stars)
When: Through April 27
Where: Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, 5779 N. Ridge Avenue
Running time: 2 hours, 5 minutes
Tickets: $39-$94 at 773-334-7728 or rivendelltheatre.org
