Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press opening of Fool for Love courtesy of Steppenwolf Theatre.
Steppenwolf Theatre continues its season with a searing revival of Sam Shepard’s dark and beautiful masterterpiece Fool for Love, directed by Jeremy Herrin. Fool for Love is now extended through March 23, 2025 in Steppenwolf’s Downstairs Theater. Fool for Love features ensemble members Cliff Chamberlain as Martin, Tim Hopper as The Old Man and Caroline Neff as May, with Nick Gehlfuss as Eddie in his Steppenwolf debut.
In a sweltering motel room in the Mojave Desert, May and Eddie lick their wounds and get ready for another relentless round. This brawl is eternal and infernal. And the Old Man is always watching. Perhaps the most haunting play of the 20th century, Fool for Love is a twisted and tequila-soaked love letter from Sam Shepard, one of the greatest American playwrights, indulging the need to get inside someone just to tear them apart.
Steppenwolf Artistic Directors Glenn Davis and Audrey Francis comment: “Through the decades, Steppenwolf has returned again and again to Sam Shepard’s searing body of work. His plays, filled with tension, symbol and muscle, pose delights and demands for actors and audiences alike. Fool for Love is no exception, with Eddie and May’s iconic power struggle at the heart of this prize-winning masterpiece.”
Davis and Francis add: “And–we can’t stress enough–there’s nothing quite like Shepard’s work when we do it here. It’s lightning in a bottle; it’s visceral, timeless, contemporary and mythic all in one. For seven short weeks this winter, our Downstairs Theater will once again be transformed to a house of worship dedicated to Shepard, Steppenwolf’s patron saint of irreverent, enigmatic and downright explosive American Drama.”
Eddie tries to convince May to come back to him and live in a trailer on a farm in Wyoming that Eddie has always wanted to buy and where he has always imagined living with May. May vehemently refuses. She says that she has absolutely no interest in living with Eddie under such circumstances, that she has a job and started a new life and knows that if she goes back to Eddie their relationship will repeat the same destructive cycle it has followed before. Throughout the play the character of the Old Man—apparently the father of both lovers—sits to the side and talks to May and Eddie and offers commentary on each character and about himself. It is revealed that the Old Man had led a double life, abandoning each family for different periods during each child’s life.
The two became lovers in their high school years and when their parents finally figured out what had occurred, Eddie’s mother shot herself. May is afraid that Eddie has begun to emulate his father; taking to drinking and secretly seeing a woman May refers to as the Countess. The play centers around the drama of the confrontation rather than a plot with any rising and falling action. In the end Eddie appears to have left May, just as his father had left his mother, and May has packed her suitcase to go off somewhere unspecified. Eddie and May have not reconciled, the Old Man has begun to drift off in denial that Eddie’s mother had been driven to suicide, and May’s erstwhile date, Martin, is left on stage bewildered to observe it all.
Fool for Love rages on stage, fast, intense and furious. Barely over an hour, the play flies by in a blink of an eye. The cast is beyond talented, creating memorable moments of unexpected twists and turns of the plot. This is ensemble theatre at its finest, and no matter what you think of Shepard’s writing, the acting takes your breath away. I found myself on the edge of my seat, holding my breath a few times. Grab a ticket and see the volatile drama for yourself.
Fool for Love is currently on stage through March 23, 2025, at Steppenwolf Theatre, 1650 North Halsted Street, in Chicago’s Clybourn Corridor neighborhood. Tickets are available here.