Review: The Sporting Life at The Factory Theater

it's not too much of a spoiler to say that the most potent series of images across The Sporting Life (the delightful feminist theatrical provocation by Marjorie Muller) involves the white canvas that is the production's set slowly being overtaken with blood as the performance goes on. that physical manifestation of carnage and anger messily blooming across the floor and walls is enough to make you want to give in entirely to Muller's primal scream of a play with abandon. indeed, practically my entire audience on opening night filled the room with hoots and hollers, snaps and cheers, and all manner of raucous agreement with everything that was happening onstage here at The Factory Theater for this first production in a season of world premieres, all from some of Chicago's most exciting emerging writers.

i was eager to join them, too. for The Sporting Life, here directed by Kayla Menz (last seen at The Factory directing the wonderful co-pro Muffed), is one of the more excitingly audacious, thematically thorny, crowd-pleasing knockouts of a script I've encountered in recent memory, with plenty of thematic nuggets on it's mind but with the gall and intelligence to care more about storytelling than moralizing. throughout the show, my mind kept wandering to the dashed hopes of Emerald Fennell's film PROMISING YOUNG WOMAN, a movie whose initial promises of bloody revenge fantasy were traded in for half-assed slaps on the wrist. Muller, thankfully, isn't afraid to deliver on her promises here, concocting a tale of feminine rage, toxic masculinity, and religious purity, told with the same quantities of blood and gore as you'd find in an Italian giallo film.

steeped in 1990's nostalgia (references to the bands Hole and Nine Inch Nails help to keep us grounded in this semi-distant past), the action centers around Dot (the genuinely sensational Ziare Paul-Emile), a sixteen-year-old student at St. Anne's High, and the only girl in her class who hasn't gotten her period yet. thank goodness there's a witch - so they call her - out in the woods who can help grant your wish to attain whatever you feel you need to help you "become a woman." all it'll cost you is a human sacrifice. naturally, Dot chooses her leering math teacher, Mr. Carlson (Bill Daniel, comically playing a series of bumbling men who keep ending up on the wrong end of a knife), and from there, the dominoes tumble and the bodies start piling up.

Dot slowly learns about what it means to try and harness the strength of her womanhood, battling a world built upon male dominance and female subservience. the men of The Sporting Life are, tragically and comically, All Pretty Fucking Bad, and the comeuppance they receive is equal parts cathartic, hilarious, and terrifying (the wonderful Fight Direction is by Becca Schwartz and Kate Booth). Paul-Emile is a natural here, her transformation across the narrative performed effortlessly, her physical energy and quick wit perfectly in sync with the script's mission. the "witch" - or Sherry, as we come to know her - is given vivid life by Elizabeth MacDougald, navigating areas of maternal energy, blood lust, and sexual desire, all with humor and gravitas.

Muller's script is witty, cheeky, and ably performed by a daring and game ensemble of performers, but while, on a moment-to-moment level, Menz's production soars and sings, in totality it often feels like a balloon that's slowly losing air every few minutes. the ambitions of Muller's script (multiple scenic locations, a myriad of props and stage effects) are simply misaligned with the practicalities of rendering this world with representational scenic elements in the Factory Theater space, a stage unable to manage a scene change from a classroom to a living room without a twenty-to-forty-second scene transition, thus tossing all built-up momentum from a previous scene right out the window. a particularly egregious instance occurs with a late-in-the play transition into Dot's living room - a cumbersome transition involving bringing on an armchair, a dining room table & chairs, plus a kitchen stand on wheels being lifted onto the stage - for a scene that only lasts a scant few minutes. a moment in the script where the narrative stakes are at their peak, the tedium of watching actors awkwardly transporting furniture on and off the stage threatens to remove any and all tension we might have otherwise been storing up.

it may seem silly to get trapped on such a seemingly minor detail when assessing a work like this, but the alchemy of theater relies on a shared bond between all elements of design, performance, and writing, and even the tiniest weakness can ding the whole. this inability to confidently flow from moment to moment may not bother you, as it certainly didn't bother the rest of the crowd that roaring Friday evening. but Marjorie Muller's The Sporting Life feels like an unstoppable force, here meeting the immovable object that is the constraints of literalist theatrical design. the hope (my hope, at least), is that this isn't the last we've seen of this stellar howl of a new work. can things work better in a production with a more minimalist design? a larger budget? a new life as a film rather than a stage play? that's not my place to say. all I can say is that The Sporting Life, as a script, is nimble, alive, and seemingly invincible. i wish it's presentation here felt the same way.

The Sporting Life runs an estimated 100 minutes, and performs at The Factory Theater (1623 W Howard) through November 22nd 2025. Tickets are available HERE.