REVIEW: They Broke Up, with Avalanche Theatre.
Skylar Tarnas' world premiere play They Broke Up (produced by Avalanche Theatre and performing at Rivendell Theatre) is absolutely exhausting. It's close to three hours long, the pace is relentless, the screaming is rampant, and the absurdity is cranked up to 11 before we even meet the entire cast. Oh, also; it's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen. As ever, the American theater is a land of contrasts.
Tarnas' warts-and-all exploration of a cadre of late twenty-somethings attempting to find stability within apocalyptic circumstances is a go-for-broke work stuffed to the brim with delicious excess, not so much throwing spaghetti against the wall but rather an entire Italian restaurant. His characters are diabolical and insane and incredibly relatable, all clearly defined pillars of anxiety and fear and rampant horniness puking up their id onstage for all to see. His humor is top-notch, side-splitting one-liners and inanities being fired off with such a rapid pace that you feel like you need a glass of water just to catch up. The muchness of it all is admirable - and one could argue, dramaturgically integral to the story at hand - but it still ends up being somewhat debilitating. By ninety minutes, I was hooked. By the two-and-a-half hour mark, I was terrified. That Tarnas and co. are still able to land the plane by the end of the show's nearly three-hour runtime is nothing short of a theatrical miracle.
A plot description seems futile here, not only because of the vast panoply of characters and sub-plots and narrative terrain covered therein, but also because much of the joy of They Broke Up lies in the discovery of what makes this world so unique in its disastrousness. Suffice it to say, Tarnas has supplanted the various woes and ills of our current society (disease, climate change, the Republican Party, wars overseas, take your pick!) with fantastical life-ending predicaments that are just as high stakes if just a tad more ridiculous. Your mileage may vary on how many of these specific elements piled on top of each other will become too grating for you, but again, that seems to be the point of this work; the world is on the brink of impending disaster, but Brett (Alexander Attea) and Amy (Gabriela Diaz) just broke up, and somehow, some way, that's the only world-ending event that truly matters.
Director Owen Hickle-Edwards served as the dramaturg on a previous developmental production of the play, which completely tracks, as his overt strengths lie in honoring and transliterating the insane rhythms of Tarnas' script and calibrating everyone's performances to live in the same plane of existence. Hickle-Edwards is sadly not as strong when it comes to the more technical and physical elements of the production; scene transitions are swift yet clunky, and the chaotic energy of the performers almost threatens to destroy the particular flimsy flats acting as scenic design here (as characters enter and exit the front door with the force of a thousand Kramers, I was genuinely worried the set was going to collapse at any moment). As bonkers as the world of the play gets, as an audience member, you ideally want to be sure that there's some sense of stability to keep the chaos at bay.
But the chaos delivered by this cast is entirely welcome, their shared commitment to Tarnas' escalated reality emerging as a true gift of ensemble theatermaking. This is a play that needs to be loud and fast, which everyone delivers to the nth degree, and it feels like a disservice to not shout them out individually; from Reagan Kay James (finally answering the question; what if Kate Berlant was a succubus?) to Jo Tannous (their monologue that closes Act One encapsulates the emotional absurdity of the show as beautifully as one would hope), to Jack Disselhorst (gloriously droll and potentially the show's secret heart?), to Mitch Fischer (depraved and adorable in equal measure), to Maya McEntyre (crazy never felt so good), to Ky Anderson (the most endearing mad scientist you'll ever see). The play belongs to Attea and Diaz though, the couple whose break-up thrusts the play forward. They're each barreling towards their own respective journeys of attempting to justify love within a crumbling society, and for all the bizarre and rambling detours they each take, the place they end up in by the play's conclusion is truly magical.
There are only so many theaters in Chicago devoted to producing solely new work (Chicago Dramatists and The Factory Theater come to mind, if you're looking for fellow theatrical compatriots in this arena), and companies like Avalanche Theatre remain integral spaces for our theatrical ecosystem, providing welcoming environments for audiences to see Chicago playwrights and their work in full-scale productions at their most invigorating. Our city needs more institutions willing to program plays as emotionally raw and as theatrically bold as They Broke Up. Skyler Tarnas, as clearly talented as he is, is just one of many playwrights across this city with visions of bizarre and mystifying and uproarious stage craft. For those interested, they're even selling the script for They Broke Up in the lobby for anyone willing to take the beautiful mess home with them. And if you're still wondering whether you should take this review as an endorsement; reader, I bought one.
They Broke Up runs an estimated 2 hours and 50 minutes, including a 15-minute intermission, and performs at Rivendell Theatre (5779 N. Ridge) through November 22nd 2026. Tickets are available HERE.
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