'Reckless'

“Reckless,” by Craig Lucas, directed by Thom Dygert.

Cast: Kaitlin Montalvo, Greg Sallee, Meredith Hilthon, Justin Anderson, Danine Schell, Karen Kennedy, Kim Bennett, Ben Rosko, Gabe Valdez, and Gray Click.

The Story: At home on Christmas Eve, Rachel is informed by her guilty husband that he has hired a hitman to kill her, and she must flee for her life—which she does by scrambling out the kitchen window and into the snowy night.

She meets and joins up with Lloyd Bophtelophti, a true “original” who has changed his name to avoid alimony payments and who now lives with a paraplegic named Pootie (who also pretends to be deaf in order to get double disability). Rachel then wins $100,000 on a TV game show and begins a series of picaresque escapades. Filled with bizarre characters and events, the play reflects the fractured life-styles which have become the norm for so many in our tenuous times.

“With Reckless…Mr. Lucas has given us a bittersweet Christmas fable for our time. It’s a Wonderful Life as it might be reimagined for a bruising contemporary America in which homelessness may be a pervasive spiritual condition rather than a sociological crisis…Reckless…has a simple emotional pull akin to that of a Crosby ballad born of the lonely World War II home front, it yanks us through every conceivable absurdist hoop, fracturing narrative, language and characterization on the way to its rending destination.” —NY Times.