Rebecca Spence (Jane)

Rebecca Spence recently portrayed the role of Merteuil in Remy Bumppo’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses (Jeff Nomination, Supporting Role) and Catherine Donohue in Rivendell Theatre Ensemble’s These Shining Lives (Jeff Nomination, Lead Role). Other Chicago credits include The Voysey Inheritance (Remy Bumppo); The Crucible, Household Spirits, Our Lady of 121st Street and Pacific (Steppenwolf Theatre); Cyrano (Milwaukee Repertory Theater); Twelfth Night (Noble Fool Theatricals) and Dracula (Defiant Theatre). Film: Contagion, The Dilemma, Audrey the Trainwreck, Earthling, Public Enemies, Grace is Gone and The Break-Up. Television: Detroit 1-8-7, The Chicago Code, The Beast and Prison Break. This is her first collaboration with Theater Wit.

Lily Mojekwu (Merrill)

Lily Mojekwu is tickled to be making her Theater Wit debut. Chicago theatre credits include: Romeo and Juliet (Chicago Shakespeare Theatre). The Brother/Sister Plays (u/s), The Elephant Man, Intimate Apparel (u/s) (Steppenwolf Theatre). The Overwhelming and Well (Next Theatre). Greensboro A Requiem (Non-Equity Jeff Nomination: Best Supporting Actress) and In Arabia We’d All Be Kings (Non-Equity Jeff Award: Best Ensemble) (Steep Theatre). King Lear, As You Like It, Love’s Labours Lost and Henry V (Lakeside Shakespeare Theatre). The Great God Pan (Wildclaw Theatre). Another Part of the House (Teatro Vista). The Violet Hour (Uma Productions).

John Byrnes (Tom)

John Byrnes is thrilled to make his Theater Wit debut with This. He is a proud member of The Hypocrites, with whom he has performed in The Hairy Ape, Our Town, 4.48 Psychosis and many others. Recently, John has appeared in Port with Griffin, Thieves Like Us with the House, All My Sons at Timeline and The Overwhelming at Next Theatre. He has worked regionally around the country as well as in television and radio. When he’s not on stage, John teaches theater to teenagers around the city, most recently with Court Theatre. He holds a BFA in Acting from Boston University’s School For the Arts.

Mitchell J Fain (Alan)

Mitchell Fain is pleased to be back in a show at Theater Wit after donning his stripey tights in The Santaland Diaries for the fourth holiday season. He was last seen at The Actors Theatre of Louisville in Lookingglass Theater’s production of Lookingglass Alice and also as a member of a Second City Theatricals touring company performing improv/sketch comedy. Other Credits: Stilettos, Circus and Soul, Hamlet; The Musical, Henry VI, Hamlet, Comedy of Errors, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, As Bees in Honey Drown, Bitches, Hayfever, The Mystery of Edwin Drood and The Lynching of Leo Frank. Television: What About Joan?, Early Edition and most recently The Beast on A&E. Mr. Fain is an Artistic Associate of Chicago’s The Midnight Circus and The About Face Theater as well as a Co-host of The Windy City Queercast. He received his degree in English at the University of Rhode Island.

Steve Hadnagy (Jean-Pierre)

Steve Hadnagy is happy to be working with Theater Wit for the first time. Steve was most recently seen in last year’s production of Bertolt Brecht’s Baal at TUTA and in the title role in Macbeth at City Lit Theatre. Other area appearances include Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, also at TUTA. Regional credits include Escape From Happiness at Roundhouse Theatre and the world premiere of Lynwood Pharmacy at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington D.C. He also toured with The National Players as Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet and holds a Master of Fine Arts from DePaul University Theatre School.

Highly Recommended! Sensational!

Gibson’s smart and oddly seductive work — an unusual blend of yearning, grief, desire, satire and self-lacerating humor — is now receiving its Chicago debut at Theater Wit under the fine direction of Jeremy Wechsler. It is one of those plays that sneaks up on you in a wholly unexpected way during the course of its 90 minutes of short, sharply limned and originally worked scenes. It might very well leave you surprisingly devastated at the end…

Merrill (Lily Mojekwu, who can be both shrewish and sexy, and does a great job singing Peter Eldridge’s torchy songs) is an attractive but shrill and restless singer-songwriter who is married to Tom (pitch-perfect John Byrnes), a quiet, underachieving carpenter. The pair’s best friend, Jane (Rebecca Spence in an emotionally stripped bare performance that should earn her great attention) was part of a biracial couple, but her husband died suddenly, and she is now heartsick, lonely and more than a little lost as she tries to keep moving forward and be a good mother to her daughter. Mitchell J. Fain [is] sensational as the tragicomic guy who sees and recalls everything, craves love and seems destined to be the court jester. She also includes Jean-Pierre (Steve Hadnagy, providing the ideal comic relief), a good-looking French physician who works for Doctors Without Borders… The heart of the play is Jane’s painful, difficult attempt to return to her true self, and emerge from her state of anguish and mourning. And Spence brings a raw candor, heat and sense of ambivalence to every contradictory impulse of her character before rediscovering certitude.

— Hedy Weiss, Chicago Sun-Times

★★★ Recommended! Profoundly moving, both caustic and funny!

This “This” is the stuff of real life: relationships, sex, friendships, marriage and bereavement. Especially as it afflicts the kind of overeducated, hyperarticulate, humanities-besotted, politically liberal, 30-something urbanites who populate certain neighborhoods of New York and Los Angeles and Chicago and have a tendency to date, commune, love, fight and marry among themselves. And, of course, a tendency to go to the theater with disproportionate regularity. At least until they get socked with having to take care of a baby — an exhausting, intellectually confounding event that can have a seismic impact on an otherwise relaxed marriage, a thunderous change that this very savvy piece of writing nails. Nails. “This” is the kind of smart-but-accessible date-night show that combines laughs with tears and requires no arty proclivities to enjoy. Swift, unpretentious and honestly played… profoundly moving… both caustic and funny.

— Chris Jones, Chicago Tribune

★★★★ Don’t miss it!

Directed to a place of stunning emotional truth by Jeremy Wechsler, This delves the messy, troubled lives of four long-time friends. This is a specifically etched microcosm of the human condition in all its messy, tragic, absurd and blisteringly, blackly funny glory. And don’t let adjectival pile-up or poorly penned loftiness of the preceding sentence (or the thought of yet another drama about the Human Condition) deter you from snapping up a ticket, pronto.

Spence’s Jane becomes the wounded center of the plot, wandering in various shades of confusion and numbness through bereavement until a final, Triple Sec-soaked monologue on death and widows that’ll rip your heart out. Mojekwu and Byrnes are dead-on as weary spouses whose tense state of passive-aggressive marital discord makes something as trivial as who changes the filter in the Brita balloon into an ugly incident. Tom’s desperate, last-ditch attempt at escape from oppressive domesticity and the joyless, sexless lifestyle the new baby seems to warrant is at once slightly pathetic and deeply empathetic. Mojekwu instills shades of fear and resignation – and fear of resignation – into a character who wants to be defined as far more than just a mother but who just doesn’t usually have the energy to do so. Hadnagy’s Jean-Pierre is terrific, bringing both sexual tension and an amused outsider’s perspective to the troubles facing the others.

Then there’s Fain, who brings the whole thing together with Alan’s withering wisdom, vulnerability and killing one-liners. There’s no way a written review can begin to do justice to the tragic, hilarious, whiney, wistful, self-absorbed, fearful and fateful potency that actor Mitchell J. Fain gives… it feels like the part was written for him. And as part of a production this absorbing, it makes This a don’t miss proposition. His embrace of Alan’s dinky life cements the fact that This deserves to be a hit.

— Catey Sullivan, The Examiner

Phenomenal! Riveting! A delight to watch.

Melissa James Gibson’s This is a brilliant script filled with wit and humor that simultaneously hits on the despondency and disappointment that strikes many marriages and relationships today. Gibson’s plotline and writing is incredibly compelling, with high stakes in this scene and throughout the play, and Mojekwu and Spence complement that writing with strong and believable acting choices… Overall, the play was just wonderful. The plot was riveting, the topic was very relatable and real yet had just the right amount of humor, and the actors were a delight to watch. Go see it for yourself!

— Splash Magazine

Recommended!

Gibson’s genuine ear for dialogue and the ensemble’s sharp timing never let the story sink. Spence endows her character with believable grief; she’s a woman who won’t lionize a husband she misses desperately. We want Mojekwu and Byrnes to survive despite their characters’ bad behavior. Fain is the standout even without much to stand on. His technique is immaculate; his soul is obvious.

— Lisa Buscani, New City

★★★ Some striking observations about the what-ifs of love that never go away.

Gibson’s idiosyncrasies shine through, particularly her sharp dialogue’s obsession with language games and the minutiae of communication. And This does arrive at some striking observations about the what-ifs of love that never go away. Wechsler’s strong cast fills in the gaps.

— Kris Vire, Time Out Chicago

★★★★ A to-die-for production. A triumph!

A to-die-for production… wonderfully fresh and entertaining… scintillating realistic dialogue, engaging characters, and brilliant theatrical/dramatic moments. Credit Mitchell J. Fain for a stunning three-dimensional portrayal of a man trying to deal with a life he sees as shallow and inadequate [and] Rebecca Spence’s performance as Jane elevates her to a new plateau. Spence brings out the vulnerability, guilt, sensitivity, confusion, and heart of the woman in an impeccable performance… Jeremy Wechsler deserves highest marks for assembling the flawless cast and then orchestrating a staging that seems inevitable and natural from first to last… It’s impossible to imagine any theater in the area, no matter how high its reputation, exceeding the triumph of this production.

— Dan Zeff, Chicagoland Theater Reviews

Recommended. A coup for Theater Wit!

A coup for Theater Wit to acquire, this much praised off-Broadway hit, Melissa James Gibson’s 95-minute labor of angst, bites at its characters as a pit bull threatens strangers. Except that these friends know each other more than they need to — and themselves less than they should. Gibson is almost zestful as she exposes despair and desperation covered up by gallows humor and bad habits. The result, reinforced by Jeremy Wechsler’s appropriately abrasive staging, hurts as only humans can… [Rebecca Spence’s] final confessional scene with the unseen daughter she neglected is devastation itself. [Lily] Mojekwu, a spitfire free spirit, challenges as tense and tightly wound Merrill. Her eruptions make sense even as you pull back from their acerbic intensity.

— Lawrence Bommer, Stage Style Chicago

Theater Wit has a hit on its hands!

What if “the other woman” was not some scheming, seductive siren but your best friend? Many dramas make melodramatic hash out of both kinds of scenarios but This, the latest production of Theater Wit, keeps a cool, compassionate head about sexual transgressions between friends. Melissa James Gibson’s comic script handles the subject with insight, gentle maturity and grace. Theater Wit has a hit on its hands because This demonstrates the right mix of humor and common sense about relationships, love, loss, and recovery. Meanwhile, Jeremy Wechsler’s direction is nothing less than a deft touch – keeping the action clear, light and decidedly on track.

— Chicago Theater Blog