TIME CHANGES EVERYTHING, Saint Sebastian Players, at Saint Bonaventure Church. There’s something sweet and appealing about this new play, in which two brothers–one a slick Chicago lawyer, the other an unpolished dirt farmer–are reunited when their mother dies.
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It isn’t the story. Chicago playwright Jonathan Hagloch lets his plot wander and amble too long before settling down late in the second act to the play’s most compelling dramatic issue: should the brothers keep or sell the family farm? It isn’t the dialogue. Hagloch’s characters routinely blurt out long speeches about their feelings and issues, elements of a play best left buried in the subtext. And God knows it isn’t the acting. In the mid-90s the Saint Sebastian Players transformed themselves from a community-theater group to a non-Equity one, but the company’s performances retain a stiff, underrehearsed quality.
