By LOU HARRY
There are expectations that come when a play explicitly centers on death – particularly a play with a doom-and-gloom title such as the one attached to Noah Diaz’s play You Will Get Sick, that played until recently in an extended run at Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre Company.
The surprisingly funny play circumnavigates most of those expectations.
You Will Get Sick, directed by Audrey Francis, concerns a young man whose body is turning on him. Identified in the program as 1 (Diaz gives the roles numbers rather than names), his degenerative affliction, like his name, is never identified. The affliction has some of the characteristics of cerebral palsy, but I’m no doctor and I don’t believe CP involves in innards of your arms turning into straw.
That’s just one of many, many surreal elements in Diaz’s concoction. There’s also giant birds to worry about – including the decision of whether or not to purchase bird insurance, advertised on paper flyers that actually seem to fly. The birds, rather than a figment of 1’s imagination, apparently are real. A weeping waiter (one of many roles played by the able Cliff Chamberlain) lost his mother to one such avian attack. And who exactly is behind that disembodied voice providing some of what at first seem like simple stage directions?
If the straw and the voice behind the curtain brings to mind images of “The Wizard of Oz,” other references are even more overt. The core relationship in the play is between 1 and 2, the latter being a woman yearning to play Dorothy in a community theater production in clear denial of the fact that she’s north of 60.
The two meet when 2 responds to a posted job offer: 1 is willing to pay someone to call him and listen to the diagnosis that he can’t articulate to people he actually knows. (A character unable to say a particular word or phrase is a trope I have trouble buying whether it’s in a ‘70s TV sitcom (I see you, Fonzie) or in an ambitious play such as this. But in a world of giant attacking ravens, that device is low on the suspension-of-disbelief-required scale.
A friendship, of sorts, develops, even though 2 tends to attach monetary restrictions on just about every transaction. Both roles are juicy ones and the increased connectivity feels earned, thanks largely to the way Namir Smallwood and Amy Morton bring these two narrow worlds together.
At moments, though, the whimsy crosses over into “oh, come on” territory. It’s tough to believe, for instance, that 2 – even when brought to life by Chicago acting legend Morton – would be disillusional enough to believe she’d be castable as Dorothy. And while laughs are gained by her character’s terrible singing voice, I felt the actor singing deliberately badly, not the character doing so.
While the play — and Andrew Boyce’s scenic design — continued to bring in wild elements (I won’t spoil), for me, the most powerful moments were those less whimsical. An awkward meal where the news is broken to 1’s sister proved a heartbreaker, with Sadieh Rifai mining the scene for both its awkward humor and deep sadness.
Unlike that scene, the plays ending, while aiming for depth, felt unfinished and, thus, not as moving as it could be. While “You Will Be Sick” had a New York run and is likely to be picked up by more regional theaters attracted to the juicy roles, its provocative themes, and its humor, I’m hoping that more work will be done on it.
Either way, Diaz is certainly a playwright to watch.
You Will Get Sick ran at Steppenwolf Theater in Chicago from June 5 through 20, 2025.
