Back in 2018, an attorney-playwright (and former Chicago Police Department employee) named Loy A. Webb made a stunning Chicago theater debut with a play called “The Light,” a work about the aftermath of sexual violence that was set in Hyde Park. That profoundly intense drama was so successful when first produced by New Colony in Wicker Park, that it was off-Broadway by the following year. I thought it was the best new play of that year in Chicago.
I’d been wondering what Webb had been up to during the lost pandemic years, but now Definition Theatre Company has produced the premiere of another locally centered Webb play, this time in Hyde Park itself at what has been the location of the improv company known as The Revival (which has just moved to the South Loop) and is now Definition’s interim home. This essential South Side company is currently building a new theater which will be its permanent home.
The new Webb play, “Judy’s Life’s Work,” directed by Michelle Renee Bester, is quite different from “The Light” although it probes some similarly intense and intimate themes. Set in a boxing gym, it follows the fortunes of Xavier (Rashun Carter), a former prizefighter now looking to make a difference in his community. Events focus on Xavier’s relationship with his younger sister, Charli (Cereyna Jade Bougouneau), a pre-med student. The two, we learn, are the children of a brilliant medical researcher who appears to have left behind the kind of coded notebook that Big Pharma would kill to have, and Big Pharma does indeed show up in the play in the person of Camille (Kenesha Kristine Reed). The question of the play is what Xavier will do with the legacy of his mother, a Black female scientist who made ground-breaking scientific discoveries (the movie “Hidden Figures” comes to mind).
I wouldn’t say “Judy’s Life’s Work” is at the lofty level of “The Light,” not least because the mechanics of the three-character drama are so focused on a particularly crucial item that requires you to believe somewhat improbable things about who has or has not read its contents. All of that needs adjustment. That said, it was just thrilling to be at another Webb play. There is something about the authenticity and vulnerability of her writing that cuts through so many of the usual tropes that appear in plays by writers fresh from the same small group of MFA programs.
“Judy’s Life’s Work” will, I think, be especially moving to anyone who has lost a parent and found themselves working through many of the things that tend to crop up in those circumstances, especially the overpowering responsibility of guarding someone else’s legacy. Death, it hardly needs saying, invariably is ill-timed and our deceased loved ones usually have not completed all they intended to do. Their kids then have to take over at the worst possible moment when it comes to guarding against those arriving with tempting offers. Add sibling disagreement and the sense of being bereft of loving parenting and you have the kind of internal and external chaos that Webb writes about here. So well. It is as if she is feeling every word herself.
The staging is straightforward and I thoroughly believed Carter and Bougouneau’s performances; Carter shows us internal pain writ physical as his coiled-up character confronts the moral authority of his younger sister.
Everything about the 90-minute play feels personal and compassionate. I’d add that this is an accessible piece, too, with an affordable ticket price. I hope Webb keeps working on it, and expanding these ideas a little. Especially given her title. But it’s already well worth your time.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “Judy’s Life’s Work” (3 stars)
When: Through Feb. 25
Where: Definition @ 55th, 1160 E. 55th St.
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
Tickets: $31 at definitiontheatre.org
