‘Beyond Caring’ spotlights plight of workers
Portrayal of temps is shockingly honest
CHICAGO - One of the most ugly and depressing scenic designs I’ve ever encountered awaited me upon entering Lookingglass Theatre for the U.S. premiere of Alexander Zeldin’s “Beyond Caring.”
The Lookingglass space had been stripped bare and then rebuilt as a factory break room, with a concrete floor and walls, a flimsy table strewn with paper and junk and folding chairs. Garish fluorescent lighting is as hard as the space (lighting as well as scenic design by Daniel Ostling).
Because of renovations underway in the meat processing plant where “Beyond Caring” takes place, the break room is doubling as an oversize janitors closet, with an assortment of mops and brooms as well as a large shelf’s worth of poorly labeled cleaning supplies (the better to avoid thinking overly much about the ingredients within).
No wonder the temps we see entering this space for the first time exhibit the slumped shoulders and tired eyes of lost souls entering hell. Abandon all hope, ye who enter here? The four workers we’ll meet in “Beyond Caring” did so long ago. They’re beaten down and resigned to their fate, much as so many of the rest of us are seemingly beyond caring about them.
Zeldin conceived his piece, which took Britain by storm, after reading a book by a French investigative journalist who went undercover as a minimum wage temporary cleaner. Zeldin did the same, resulting in “Beyond Caring.” It runs 90 minutes that can seem like nine hours. By design. These workers’ drudgefilled night shifts can feel that long.
We spend considerable time watching these workers sweep and mop, scrub and scour, haul trash and, toward the end of the night, break down and disinfect parts of the line, smeared in the greasy blood and entrails of animals being turned into meat product.
In one sequence, we sit in the dark as the homeless, 43-yearold Sonia (Wendy Mateo) furtively tries to stay and bed down after her shift ends in the wee hours of the morning.
In another, the frightened 23-year-old Ebony-Grace (an unbearably open and vulnerable Caren Blackmore) sits in a chair, weakened by the rheumatoid arthritis that makes completion of every pointless chore a heroic struggle.
In a third, 36-year-old Tracy (J. Nicole Brooks) furiously sweeps the floor, taking no heed of theater patrons’ feet as she jams her broom beneath them. We never learn why this onetime commercially licensed driver has fallen so far, but we understand some of why she’s so angry: Her 14-day contract on this job means she can’t visit the daughter who is her lone source of joy.
Lording over this trio of temps and one regular — 50year-old Phil (Edwin Lee Gibson), his nose in a Dick Francis novel so that he need not look up at what’s happened to his life — is Ian (Keith D. Gallagher). He’s the lone white in the room.
Ian spouts risible self-help bromides — while reveling in the micro-inequities and coarsening, petty cruelties of a man compensating for his own nearly powerless status by treating those still lower as dirt. But he clearly loathes himself and his life, even as he heaps embarrassment and shame on the lives he controls.
One feels deep shame watching this piece. That shame goes much deeper than the guilt-inducing sort that preachy and predictable theater regularly delivers — along with its comforting dose of catharsis allowing us to walk away and wring our hands, complacently enjoying our own capacity to feel.
There’s nothing preachy, predictable or indulgent about this piece. It doesn’t induce tears but abject despair, along with a taste of the crushing boredom that the men and mostly women working these jobs must live with. Impressed as I am by what Zeldin has wrought, I couldn’t wait for “Beyond Caring” to end. After just 90 minutes, of what for some people is an entire life.
“Beyond Caring” continues through May 7 at Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago (adjacent to Water Tower Place). For tickets, visit lookingglasstheatre.org. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.