The Aliens at Aegis Theater

Or: Mushroom Man

If you met KJ (Miles Potter) on the street, you’d avoid him. A scruffy, gangling thirty-year-old in Birkenstocks and growth. To find him in his natural territory at the back of the Green Sheep in small-town Vermont, gazing into the sun and bursting forth with psychedelic lyrics for spontaneous songs, you’d (unless you’re quite compassionate, which, Reader, I have no doubt you are) assume he and his friend Jasper (Peter Giessl) were nothing but disappointments, young college drop-outs; unenlightened, unproductive, purely surplus. But oh how wrong you’d be.

The inaugural production of Chicago’s Aegis Theater, Annie Baker’s The Aliens (the play that stilled a thousand tongues) continues, no matter how many times you’ve leaned against its sun-warmed bricks, to surprise. Baker is an actors playwright, leaving her characters as sandboxes strewn strata deep with all kind of treasures. Potter has dug a great deal: his KJ has a radiant feeling, as he lounges or bobs from his various perches. He reminds one of a being composed of the slow luminous thoughts of mycelia, or the bacteria colonies that compose bread starters, growing appreciatively to music and conversation, withering in the cold aloofness the world sometimes smothers him with. Giessl’s Jasper is nowhere near as placid; an animal energy occupies his strides and stillnesses, he cannot even be patient enough to fish out a smoke but must pluck his cigarette, wriggling, from the package with his teeth. A novelist and musician (the two-man bands music and lyrics courtesy of Michael Chernus, Patch Darragh, and Erin Gann) Jasper radiates worry that his talents and time and decaying, but his passion invigorates his art and our interest in it (even when it turns towards the blue).

The new ingredient to this two-part chemical reactions is Evan (Griffin Johnston), a proverbial Nice Young Man and barista at the Green Sheep who falls into the orbit of this world-wise pair. While Johnston daintily crafts his sweet ineffectiveness, he has difficulty maintaining (or at least showcasing) the spark that draws Evan to Jasper and KJ. Baker’s script seeks “a match lit in the wind type” relationships; undefinable, but magnetic. This match keeps getting blown up and precious time is wasted restriking it.

Admittedly the wind is very strong indeed. The excitement and curse of a fledgling Chicago company is struggling with its nest mates not to be muscled out for the long drop. Baker’s famed silences, in which so much can live, do not do well when pitched against the excitable folk-jazz-tribute-band-thing down the hall. On quieter nights, I’m sure, The Aliens will grow an engrossing culture indeed. And even in adverse circumstances the production cups and raises those beautiful, affirming, moments that pass in a flash but linger much longer (even for the most dedicated of Baker lovers, or flinty-hearted critics, for that matter).