Medicine show - Chicago Reader

It’s hard to constitute a play whose leader is the American Medical Association (AMA), adjacent arsenic embodied by crusading Dr. Morris Fishbein (the appealing Andrew Bosworth) and his arsenic earnest sidekick (Shawn Smith, without capable to do). The AMA’s erstwhile relation arsenic the scourge of quack medicine has been eclipsed by its much caller past of opposing each effort to grow entree to wellness care. 

So playwright Dolores Díaz has that obstacle to overcome. In her favour is our hunger to spot a con antheral get his comeuppance, and particularly to spot him neglect politically. Enter John Romulus (J.R.) Brinkley (the appropriately smarmy Michael Peters), an humanities fig who got affluent and celebrated claiming to cure impotence by implanting goat testicles. Who wouldn’t hatred this feline who masters caller communications techniques to dispersed lies? Who wouldn’t cheer his predetermination loss, adjacent erstwhile secured by fraud?

Man of the People
Through 11/20: Thu-Sat 8 PM, Sun 2 PM; besides Mon 11/7 (industry night) 8 PM and Mon 11/14 (understudy performance) 8 PM; Chicago Dramatists, 1105 W. Chicago, 773-883-8830, stagelefttheatre.com

A publication tightly focused connected the conflict betwixt Fishbein and Brinkley, betwixt honesty and deceit, betwixt bully and evil—which the bully guys triumph by cheating—could beryllium a good governmental thriller with satisfying motivation heft. But that’s not the play Díaz has written oregon Anna C. Bahow has directed. Theirs is simply a communicative of parallel unhappy relationships (Brinkley’s with his wife, Fishbein’s with his mother) acceptable against the backdrop of a conflict betwixt men who are lone successful the aforesaid country once. And portion I’m arsenic funny arsenic Tolstoy successful unhappy families, these 2 don’t person capable momentum oregon transportation to prolong the piece’s 2 and a fractional hours length. There’s a play successful determination somewhere—probably much than one—but it volition instrumentality a fewer much iterations to get to it. Fine performances and an evocative acceptable aren’t capable to transportation it successful its existent form.