Get a home and real problems already:
Theatre Seven's 'Hunting and Gathering' may be slight but it rings true
THEATER REVIEW: "Hunting and Gathering" ★★½ Through June 27 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave.; Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes; Tickets: $18-$24 at 773-404-7336 or www.theatreseven.org. With Tracey Kaplan as Ruth.
In big cities, there are many ways to occupy apartments without actually paying for them. You can couch surf. You can house-sit. Such active compound verbs, of course, mask the inherent rudderlessness of such a life, especially if you've been on the planet for some 30 years without facing up to adulthood.
In her play “Hunting and Gathering” (which premiered in New York in 2008 and is now being produced by Theatre Seven of Chicago), the playwright Brooke Berman (who grew up on the North Shore) uses a lack of commitment to real estate as a metaphor for an urban generation mired in prolonged adolescence.
The central character, Ruth (Tracey Kaplan), tells us at the start of the show that she has lived in a dizzying array of New York apartments (with occasional excursions to Seattle and Boston) in the last few years — in part the consequence of poorly defined relationships in her life. You can, after all, couch surf through what could be love affairs.If you could commit to the furniture.