**** Highly Recommended When your entire life has imploded – for whatever the reason – can you go back? How do you put the pieces of your life back together? How do you adjust to the changes in people, places and situations that happened while you were gone? These questions are at the center of Shattered Globe Theatre’s gripping and thought-provoking new play, Ugly Lies the Bone. 4 Spotlights
Jess (Christina Gorman) is a veteran who was deployed three times to Afghanistan. On the last deployment, she was severely injured and spent more than a year in a hospital in Germany trying to recover from near-fatal burns.
Now she’s finally released from the hospital. Her return home isn’t exactly what she expected, however. She’s coming back to her Mom’s home in Florida, but her Mom (Barbara Figgins) who has dementia, lives in a nursing home and doesn’t even recognize her Meanwhile, while her sister, Kacie (Cyd Blakewell), is living in Mom’s house.
Jess has a lot of scars, both visible and invisible, which make rebuilding her life difficult. She can’t raise one arm, she walks with a walker, and she wears a scarf to cover the plate in her head. Although she’s going to physical therapy, she really doesn’t want to see or talk to anyone other than her sister. Her sister’s boyfriend, Kelvin (Eddie Martinez) thinks Jess is taking advantage of Kacie, so there’s some friction.
Physical therapy and/or pain meds weren’t helping Jess deal with her pain, so they’re going to try Virtual Reality. A disembodied Voice (Figgins) tells her to think about her happy place. At home, Kacie says her happy place is anywhere with snow, so for lack of a better idea, that’s what Jess tells them. Her VR – as projected around her – is a snowy wooded area where she’s encouraged to walk, to use her arms, to move.
Just as an aside, I’ve been reading about VR being used for therapy. Moving inside the VR encourages the patient to move and use the affected limbs, resulting in less pain and stronger muscles.
One evening, Jess wanted a snack, so she went to the corner gas station and mini-mart where she ran into Stevie (Christopher Acevedo) who was working as night manager. Stevie lost no time in telling her that he’d gotten married while she was gone. She was taken aback, finally asking why he’d never visited her even once in the hospital. His response, he needed something more. She always wanted the military, he always wanted a home and family.
Eventually, the VR course ran out, but although Jess brought a new vision board, they wouldn't use it. Soon after, she and Kacie reconciled and Mom came home and recognized her daughters.
Ugly Lies the Bone was written by Lindsey Ferrentino. It had a developmental workshop at Fordham University before its premiere in 2015 at the Roundabout Underground in New York. The Shattered Globe production, directed by Jonathan Berry, is the Midwest premiere.
Shattered Globe Theatre’s production of Ugly Lies the Bone runs through November 15th at Theater Wit, 1229 W. Belmont, Chicago. Parking is available in Theater Wit’s parking lot across the street for $10 (pay at the Box Office).
Running time is 90 minutes, no intermission. Performances: Thursday, Friday & Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 3:00 pm. There is no performance on Thursday, October 30th. There will be an additional matinee on Saturdays, November 1st & 15th at 3:00 pm.
Audio Description and a Touch Tour, Friday, November 7th. Touch Tour at 6:15 pm, performance at 7:30 pm. Captioned performance, Sunday, November 9th at 3:00 pm. Assisted Listening Devices are available for all performances. Theater Wit is wheelchair accessible, and all patrons with disability needs are invited to purchase $20 access tickets with the code “ACCESS20” at Theater Wit’s checkout page.
Tickets range from Pay-What-You-Can through $60. FYI (773) 975-8150 or sgtheatre.org,