Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press viewing of In Quietness courtesy of A Red Orchid Theatre.
A former consultant follows her born-again husband to a Southern Baptist seminary. She enrolls as a student at the Homemaking House, the nation’s premier training ground for future homemakers and a place where marital bliss means never having to say thank you for cleaning the toilet. Anna Moench’s important and timely play In Quietness takes a nuanced look at issues too often debated in a partisan way about women, men, their relationships, and the roles they take in society.
In Quietness asks us to believe that a New York alpha woman would drop her successful career and follow her cheating husband to Texas. He’s going to train as a pastor and she is going to work at the Homemaking House, a school for future homemakers. There she’ll have to take the top bunk while her bible-thumping zealot roommate pulls a scripture-inspired fast one on her.
Very little is predictable as this unlikely tale unfolds. When Paul, played by Joe Edward Metcalfe, reveals to his workaholic wife that he is having an affair, one would expect her to give him his marching orders. But Paul, didn’t just find a mistress, he also found God. So instead or breaking things off, the powerful Max, in a role played by Brittany Burch, demurely tags along. This bizarre decision is hardly probable, as the chemistry between the two is very cool. Why would a woman want to hone her housewifely arts polishing the floor and cutting the crusts off sandwiches? Apparently as a way to save her rather lukewarm marriage.
Their move to Texas heralds the arrival of the two comic anchors of In Quietness: Alexandra Chopson’s Beth the roommate and the formidable manager of the Homemaking House Terri, portrayed by larger than life Kirsten Fitzgerald. Terri suspects that Max is less adept at the housekeeping arts than her application claimed. She tries to get the truth from Paul in a delightfully wacky scene in IKEA where she spouts Bible passages at him: “Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church.”
Beth and Max exchange life lessons from top bunk to lower bunk in their room. But Beth’s devotion to her fiancé is not what it seems (the fiancé himself is not what Beth makes him out to be), and her calling may not be to the homemaking arts. As Max immerses herself in her duties, she changes. The audience sees her cooking for her husband and doing his laundry, albeit badly. This new submissive Max, while wildly incompetent, proves alluring to her straying husband. “I like this new you. All domestic and shit. It’s hot,” he says.
How much of a satire In Quietness is aiming to be—if at all? Religion is blindly followed, and even the high-flying executive expresses little skepticism. Weird? Yes. Curiosity piqued? Absolutely. The cheating husband may have wrought more than he intended to sow, as his wife sticks doggedly by him. And she may have decided that forgiveness and acceptance are the better part of honor.
The more endearing characters of the show are the ones that make us laugh even as their faith in traditional gender roles and the power of religion never waivers. Even as it condemns them to lives they have not really chosen.
A Red Orchid Theatre has served as an artistic focal point in the heart of the Old Town community of Chicago since 1993, and was honored with a 2016 MacArthur Award for Creative and Effective Institutions. Over the past 31 years, its Resident Ensemble has welcomed into its fold an impressive array of award-winning actors, playwrights, and theatre artists with the firm belief that live theatre is the greatest sustenance for the human spirit. A Red Orchid is well known and highly acclaimed for its fearless approach to performance and design in the service of unflinchingly intimate stories.
In Quietness is now EXTENDED through March 10th, 2024. It is now on stage at A Red Orchid Theatre, 1531 West Wells, in Chicago’s Old Town neighborhood. Tickets are available by calling the theatre box office at (312) 943-8722 or visiting the website.