Deven Anderson (left) plays a luckless garbageman, and Kirk Gostkowski is Chicago’s oldest mailroom clerk in Keith Huff’s play Garbageman at Ensemble Studio Theatre.
Keith Huff likes to write about blue-collar thirtysomething white dudes from Chicago. His magnum opus, A Steady Rain, made a high-profile Broadway debut back in 2009—high-profile because it starred Hugh Jackman and Daniel Craig as a pair of Windy City cops (both were good). With his latest, Garbageman, Huff is maintaining a considerably lower profile, at the 60-or-so-seat Chain Theatre space on West 36th Street, and instead of Jackman and Craig we get Deven Anderson and Kirk Gostkowski. But once again he’s given us a two-hander about hapless blue-collar dudes, trying to make sense of a series of bad fates, and in so doing, revealing both their humanity and their lack thereof.
It’s December 2020, and maybe Covid-19 is raging outside the grubby apartment of Dan Bandana (Gostkowski), but that doesn’t concern him much. The virus doesn’t even come up when he’s unexpectedly visited by Buddy Maple (Anderson), an old high school bud who’s now, as both keep reminding us, one of his “murky friends.” They’re not tight, they’re often off each other’s radar, though Dan is the godfather of Buddy’s son.
Gostkowski as Dan Bandana has an unexpected visitor in old acquaintance Buddy Maple.
Buddy is, in fact, a garbageman, one who’s endured a run of bad luck the sort of which only happens in plays or novels. Walking with a cane, the result of an injury he sustained on the job, he has a grim tale to tell. He transferred to a desk job, where his problem-solving duties included the receipt of a bag containing a severed human head. He became, in the first of a series of somewhat-implausible plot developments, emotionally attached to that head, having frequent conversations with it. He then switched employers and landed another trash-pickup gig, where he caused, though it really wasn’t his fault, a horrible on-the-job accident that killed a little boy, leading to a barrage of lawsuits and unwanted media attention. Now his wife’s thinking of leaving him, and further tragedy has left his own son in a coma. And he just stopped by Dan’s to chat, and maybe borrow a gun. Do we believe this?
As for Dan, well, he’s a loser, a loquacious one. A dishonorably discharged veteran, he hates his coworkers and his job, as Chicago’s oldest mailroom clerk; has no social life; is bitter about his wife ditching him; and is given to occasional violent outbursts. Thus the stage is set for two estranged friends mouthing a lot of back-and-forth about the unfairness of existence and what to do about it, most of it discussed while sitting down. Greg Cicchino might have worked more movement and action into his direction, though the pair do eventually indulge in a well-staged knock-down-drag-out. For a great length, though, the audience is left to wonder, Where the heck is this headed?
The reunion of two old friends takes a dark turn. Photographs by David Zayas Jr.
And then, most unexpectedly, Act I ends with both men resolving to drive off to Washington, D.C., for the Jan. 6 rally. (By now it was 9:25 p.m., and a woman a couple of rows back plaintively asked, “Is the second half shorter?”) Politics hadn’t been discussed at all, and there was no evidence of either man maintaining any particular political philosophy. Why are they going there? Maybe because they’re just unsophisticated, beaten-down souls who, as one of them says, “wanted to be part of something bigger than just us.” Maybe that was also true for a substantial number of Capitol insurrectionists, and it’s an intriguing idea one wishes Huff would explore further. But he soon resumes the back-and-forth, with Dan evidently having blacked out at the Capitol while assaulting a cop, and Buddy trying to protect his murky friend from a hot-on-the-trail FBI. The finale, placing the two in a not-too-unexpected venue, is a sweet scene, giving Dan and Buddy as close to a happy ending as these two miscreants will ever get, and it really works.
Of the two performances, Anderson’s is the more impressive, but that’s not Gostkowski’s fault. Dan hasn’t much on his plate besides rage, grievances, and bitterness, and they add up to exactly one note. Buddy shows at least signs of guilt, regret, and human connection, and Anderson finds some redeeming qualities in his tortured soul. Meantime, Richard Hoover’s and Kis Knekt’s set requires frequent and protracted changing, Michael Abrams’s and Greg Russ’s respective lighting and sound design are competent or better, and Dan and Buddy do provide a glimpse into the lives of unremarkable dudes who deserve more attention than the theater has given them. Garbageman is a bit of a slog, and there’s certainly no reason it has to last two hours and 15 minutes. But the next time Huff serves up blue-collar Chicago thirtysomething guys, I’ll want to be there.
Neal Huff’s Garbageman runs through April 16 at the Chain Theatre’(312 W. 36th St., 4th floor). Evening performances are at 8 p.m. Wednesday to Saturday, with matinees at 2 p.m. Sunday. For tickets, visit chaintheatre.org.
