The use of “fuck” as an expression appears approximately 62 times in Will Arbery’s new play, “Evanston Salt Costs Climbing” and “Haha” or “Hahahaha” appears approximately 34 times, sometimes with the word “fuck”. It’s perfect – both horrific and hilarious – given this gorgeous 95-minute one-act tragicomedy that takes place during three recent Illinois winters, all hurtling towards a climatic apocalypse.
But forget the words “climatic apocalypse,” because no one in the play (or on this planet) wants to think about it: Three of the four characters in Arbery’s play work for a company that salts roads when storms come, and they mostly don’t talk about the terrifying weather that plays out. Pivotal role in their lives – they just zip up their jackets when they’re freezing and unzip them after a few minutes when they suddenly get weirdly hot and say “fuck” a lot and then laugh. Sometimes they cry.
Peter (Jeb Krieger) and Basil (Ken Leung)—two regular, forty-something guys who’ve been working together for years—drive the salt truck. My Worm (Quincy Tyler Bernstein), a middle-aged Assistant Director of Public Works, comes by frequently to say hi to the men she secretly knows will lose their jobs in the near future due to soaring salt prices and the imperative of applying climate-defying technology on crumbling roads (shhh!) in light of the situation. Present. My Worm remains mostly cheerful, although her adult daughter Jane Jr. (Rachel Sachnoff), who lives at home, is either suffering from a nervous breakdown due to hysteria or more rational reactions to the impending apocalypse.
These four people are trying to help each other, even though everyone is either in denial, lying about what they know, trying to put a good face on it, or working hard to make others feel better because, despite the fact that they are all hearty, beautiful Midwesterners, they are sad, terrified and angry (the words “fuck you” are uttered 34 times). In fact, more than one person is suicidal.
Under the direction of Dania Taymor, the acting by all four actors is exemplary—funny, nuanced, and deeply moving—though with dialogue punched along the lines of Samuel Beckett and David Mamet’s Sam Shepherd-esque, classic American setting doesn’t hurt. (Stage, design, lighting, and sound are all equal A-plus.) What Arbery (“Progressions”) adds to all that exquisite craftsmanship is an extraordinary insight into the way human beings work together to deny reality and still love each other. Some – or maybe “work together” isn’t the right phrase, because often what Arbery’s characters do is push each other back. They all love to read and write little stories about their lives, but when My Worm asks them to dive into a non-fiction book she adores because it’s so true to reality – Jane Jacobs’ “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” – it literally goes out the window and into the snow.
In the design of the exhibition’s visceral set, a giant warehouse facade occupies the entire stage, with two massive doors that slide up and down to reveal two levels to place the truck’s cab, My Warm’s bedroom, the space where Basil and Peter drink coffee before work, various common rooms, and a pathway where salt doesn’t hold back. woman from death. The stage is often lit by a single light shining through a small window, and the angles it makes to the floor create a sense of either freezing cold or boiling hot. The sound effects—truck engines, screeching tires, falling salt, the occasional crash—sound like characters in their own right, and when Taymor brings them together to create a sense of world-ending terror, it’s breathtaking. (This is one of those pieces of art where the depiction of horror is prestige and inspiring.)
Don’t listen if someone tells you “climbing Evanston Salt costs” is about climate change, because you’re not going. (Who would?) But this little play about love, loss and betrayal in dying Central America is something everyone should see and then talk about.
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