Review: You Will Get Sick, at Steppenwolf Theatre Company
you will see this play, i hope!
i’ve been drawn, recently, to plays that feel like dreams. i’m typically a fan of the surreal and abstract across most artistic mediums, but I do think this is, for the most part, where our theater should be heading; film and television have mastered the mimicry of reality, so why not let our stage plays morph into something more fantastical, more surreal? why not invest in our shared imagination to create something larger than life in the one shared artistic space where we all agree to suspend our disbelief? one of the only realms where the dreaded gen-AI sludge can’t touch our collective imaginative experience? can’t we dream, together, for just a little bit?
forgive me for the whimsical rhapsodizing there, but this is what “You Will Get Me Sick” drew from me; hope and dreams and gratitude. how wonderful to see magical realism delivered so earnestly on a stage that has so often been relegated to gritty realism. how joyous to see actors so committed to a performance style that exists outside of reality but is still buoyed by emotion. how tremendous to - for barely 90 minutes - invest in a collective dream that made me reflect on so much of my own real life.
Steppenwolf has been rather coy in how they’re marketing this piece, and it’s not hard to see why; the abstract nature of the setting, the tone, the characters, is something you simultaneously want to share with everyone around you and keep a secret so not to spoil the magic at hand. here’s the simple logline; through a series of comic escalations not worth spoiling here, a young man (Namir Smallwood, a heartbreaker here) enlists an older woman (Amy Morton) to become his caretaker of sorts after he becomes deathly ill. the specificity of his disease (something vaguely neuromuscular) isn’t terribly important, and the way this sickness manifests physically only becomes more and more fantastical to the point of intentional abstraction. what is important is the twisting, tenuous relationship between Smallwood and Morton, their respective idiosyncrasies interlocking and repelling in tandem. they find solace with one another, even in moments when they can’t stand the other.
to accompany a story filled with rather heavy subject matter, playwright Noah Diaz fills this world with flights of stage fancy, the most prevalent being the bizarre, ever-looming threat of giant birds ready to attack people at any moment, a strange comic element that provides us without information to realize how similar this world is - and isn’t - to our own. the terror of The Big City becomes another looming thematic bugaboo that Smallwood’s character deals with, his sickness only quickening within an urban sprawl designed to isolate anyone and everyone (the deceptively simple set by Andrew Boyce is as surprising and magical as Diaz’s prose).
but for as frightening and wicked as things appear, Diaz is an earnest and hopeful writer, the play ultimately fighting for the goodness in these characters and how they look to care for one another. the most endearing aspect of Morton’s character is her sheer naiveté in planning to audition for the role of Dorothy in a local theater’s upcoming production of “The Wizard of Oz.” Morton - one of our best stage actors - is fully locked in with the tone of the play here, her performance alternately brash and motherly, a woman who fights for what she wants but also makes sure you’re doing okay. director Audrey Francis seems to have, for the most part, successfully bridged the gap here between the emotional truths the Steppenwolf ensemble typically mine, and the more otherworldly theatrical elements at play. this was still a preview performance I attended, so one hopes any moments of physical clunkiness or tonal confusion will be ironed over as the run continues.
the most overt device employed here is the use of a narrator throughout, offering off-stage, second-person narration to guide Smallwood’s journey through the narrative (for example, “he presses a business card into your chest,” “you can’t stop coughing,” etc). i’m honestly surprised I haven’t encountered something like this before (or at least that I can remember), instantly creating an emotional bridge between the audience and Smallwood, inviting us into his journey of pain and discomfort and isolation. another way for the dream to become real.
“You Will Get Sick” performs at Steppenwolf Theatre Company (1650 N. Halsted) through July 20th 2025. Tickets are available HERE.
