Basement Interrogation Drama with The Constructivists

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Photo Credit: Christal Wagner

The Constructivists stage a taut and claustrophobic interrogation drama in the basement studio space of The Underground Collaborative. The production’s star, Rose Grizzell, is engaging as a short fiction author who has been detained for questioning in Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman.

As the play begins, Grizzell sits onstage, blindfolded in a chair. She’s touchingly vulnerable as a couple of dystopian cops question her regarding a series of murders that appear similar to her stories. Grizell is a deeply moving presence onstage, vividly delivering revelation, emotion and frustration with beautifully expressive eyes as the subtle shadow of emotion plays across her face.

Grizzell is a good storyteller and has some haunting things to deliver on stage, which she expresses with deft thoughtfulness. A couple of the stories are delivered with a disturbing reality, playing out onstage behind and around Grizzell as she speaks.

Jaime Jastrab and Rob Schreiner play the author’s captors. Jastrab’s lead detective is an affectless man with a bored and dismissive demeanor. His vague disinterest amplifies the sense of doom and futility permeating the entire production. Schreiner resonates with weary aggression as the more emotionally explosive cop. There is a cleverly muted interplay between the two policemen, which falls just flat enough to accentuate the emotional intensity of the captive writer and the tragically hapless ignorance of her brother in the next cell.

Logan Milway tackles the challenge of playing a childlike adult who is quite unaware of his own potential cunning menace. The intimate complexity of Milway’s scene with Grizzell lends the production some of its most powerful moments.

Through Nov. 10 at The Underground Collaborative, 161 W. Wisconsin Ave. For tickets, visit theconstructivists.org