Steppenwolf Theatre Company is currently staging Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love, directed by Jeremy Herrin in an extended reprise through March 23, 2025, in its Downstairs Theater at 1650 N. Halsted, Chicago. Starring Caroline Neff, Tim Hopper, Cliff Chamberlain, and Nick Gehlfuss, it’s a tense and complicated 65 minutes of confrontational gloves-off between ex-high school sweethearts, Gehlfuss and Neff, scarred long-time slugging lovers. They meet at a delipidated hotel in the Mojave Desert, a metaphor for the raggedy lives they’ve led and the raw feelings to be exposed.
Fool for Love, a finalist for the 1984 Pulitzer, is the 4th in the actor/playwright’s 5-part Family Trilogy, and like the rest, it’s a stark evocation of familial folly, primal rage and sexual tyranny, irony shot with bleak humor, not at all light-hearted. A cascade of central stories emerge as the drama unfolds, layer upon layer, casting them all as “fools” for love.
Chamberlain inhabits the most convincing role; he plays a sucker, a foil for the action, innocent in his gallantry. Gehlfuss is a charming-smarmy rodeo tricky cowboy lover. Hopper is an interloper, a contributing narrator, the father of the protagonists, casting an alcoholic pall over the scene. Neff is a battle-scarred warrior; she loves deeply but deeply needs a break from the craziness. And there’s an off-screen inamorata stirring up a host of hell. Her Mercedes in the parking lot backfires, crashes, and horn-toots (kudos to sound designer Mikhail Fiksel). This noise combines with lighting designer Heather Gilbert’s dim bulbs in dime store lamps and scenic designer Todd Rosenberg’s neon “MOTEL” and “POOL” signage to brighten up the dim way to the grim action.
There is a sense of lag time in the pacing; whether intentional or not. At first, Neff as May and Gehlfuss as Eddie don’t really seem engaged despite their candid dialogue and well-coached struggles- a nod here to intimacy and fight coach Samantha Kaufman. Perhaps it’s because they have played out this scene too many times. But the audience hasn’t, and we’re befuddled by how they have arrived at this frazzled state. Until Eddie, tanked on vodka, begins to tell the saga and Neff delivers up her past as well.
And as their history emerges, we are spellbound, held in the grip of the past, horror and pity battling with credulity. Meanwhile Hopper, dressed as a gas station hanger-on with the head of Kris Kringle, as May and Eddie’s Old Man, insinuates his snarky reality into the zone.
We all know a crisis has been coming, and yet it arrives in historical dialogue. When the story has been told, we are all free to understand who has left whom, and what the consequences of broken faith can wreak upon survivors, if there are any. The denouement is breathtaking; beautifully directed by Herrin, we are left in awe of the skills of the playwright, the stagecraft, and the artistry of the cast.
All photos by Michael Brosilow
For information and tickets to all the great shows of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, go to www.steppenwolf.org
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