15^th in a series of season previews: First Midwest staging of British playwright Roy Williams’ ‘Sucker Punch’ leads off a line-up that also features two world premieres. Curtain up Sept. 25.

By Lawrence B. Johnson and Nancy Malitz

The play first up for Victory Gardens Theater this season, Roy Williams’ “Sucker Punch,” might be seen as a summary statement of what fifth-year artistic director Chay Yew has tried to bring to this company. It’s a story steeped in gritty realism about two young black boxers in London struggling to find meaning in life. 

“I’m passionate about this play,” says Yew. “It’s set in London in the 1980s, against riots. Here are these two African-Anglos, both talented boxers, whose dreams get caught up in events beyond their control. But what if this is their only shot at success?”

The Midwest premiere of “Sucker Punch” is balanced at season’s end by Marcus Gardley’s hard-edged comedy set in 19th-century New Orleans, “The House That Will Not Stand.” Victory Gardens’ 2015-16 line-up also offers two probing world premieres: Chicago playwright Sarah Gubbins’ “Cocked” explores the smoking psychology behind gun violence and Lucas Hnath’s “Hillary and Clinton” peers into the fraught marriage of two hypothetical political power brokers in an alternate universe.

“Our audience clearly wants their theater experience to keep evolving and to reflect their lives, even their lives as Chicagoans,” says Yew. “An important part of this theater’s mission is to create new work. That’s what excites me, and that’s what’s happening on our stage.”

Not a premiere but still one of the company’s notable offerings is “Never the Sinner,” a fresh take on the infamous Leopold and Leob kidnap-murder case by John Logan, an alumnus of Victory Gardens’ Playwrights Ensemble whose “Red” about the painter Mark Rothko won the 2010 Tony Award for Best Play.

The 2015-16 season in brief:

• “Sucker Punch” by Roy Williams (Midwest premiere, Sept. 25-Oct. 18): It’s the 1980s, Michael Jackson rules the radio waves and “Conan the Barbarian” is the box office king at the movies. Aspiring black boxers Leon and Troy both have promising futures in the ring. When race riots explode in their London neighborhood, these two friends are forced to make a tough decision. Years later, they square off, facing each other and the men they have become. It’s a hard look at family, friends and the world of boxing. “Roy Williams is the August Wilson of the UK,” says Yew. “He has a great gift for language. It’s so vibrant.”
• “Never the Sinner” by John Logan (Nov. 13-Dec.6): In May 1924, two handsome and wealthy college students, Nathan Leopold and Robert Loeb, are accused of violently murdering a 14-year-old boy. Are these two successful men capable of murder? What demons could drive this pair to commit such a brutal act? “Never the Sinner” explores the  complex and infamous relationship between Leopold and Loeb. “Why do people kill when they have almost everything?” says Yew. “These are two upper-class, intelligent young men who one day just decide to kidnap somebody and kill him. This is a story about class, ennui and the meaning of sexual repression.”
• “Cocked” by Sarah Gubbins (World premiere, Feb. 19-March 13, 2016): Attorney Taylor and her journalist girlfriend Izzie live a comfortable life in Andersonville. Their apartment, relationship and strong anti-gun beliefs are shattered when Taylor’s troubled brother Frank crashes, uninvited, into their lives. As secrets and betrayals rise to the surface, the line between self-defense and safety is blurred. “Cocked” returns to Victory Gardens after its unveiling at the 2014 Ignition Festival of New Plays. “Sarah was intrigued by the idea of the well-meaning liberal who decides to own a gun,” says Yew. “It’s a lesbian couple in Andersonville who feel frightened into getting a gun. And on the other end of the gun is violence.”
• “Hillary and Clinton” by Lucas Hnath (World premiere, April 8-May 1, 2016): Imagine that in an alternate universe, very much like our own, is another world where a woman named Hillary is trying to become president of a country called the United States of America. In a hotel room in New Hampshire in 2008, Hillary is poised to lose her last primary election. When her husband Bill arrives in the middle of the night to offer support, he turns the campaign upside down. From the Ignition Festival of New Plays comes Lucas Hnath’s fast-paced, no-holds-barred glimpse into a political storm of another world and the extraordinary sacrifices one is willing to make in order to gain ultimate power. “Lucas manages to use famous people to look at our own mundane lives,” says Yew, who will direct. “It’s a funny and painful portrait of a marriage between powerful people. You come to realize you’re just listening to these two lonely souls in a hotel room.”
• “The House That Will Not Stand” by Marcus Gardley (Midwest premiere, June 17-July 10): Victory Gardens’ ensemble playwright Marcus Gardley (“An Issue of Blood,” “The Gospel of Lovingkindness”) unearths a story of 1836 New Orleans where free women of color are permitted to enter into common-law marriages with wealthy white men. The home and life that Beartrice has built for herself and three daughters, on a foundation of money, freedom and secrets, threatens to collapse after her husband mysteriously dies. It’s a family drama filled with desire, jealousy, murder and voodoo. “The story comes out of Lorca’s ‘The House of Bernarda Alba’ (about five daughters under the despotic rule of their mother),” says Yew, “but it’s more of a comedy with serious overtones. It deals with some hard realities of gender and race, and how a woman, especially of color, faces unequal circumstances in society.”

Getting there:

Since its founding in 1974, Victory Gardens claims more world premieres than any other Chicago theater, an initiative recognized nationally when the company received the 2001 Tony Award for Outstanding Regional Theatre. Located at Victory Gardens Biograph Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, the company utilizes a 299-seat main stage and the 109-seat Richard Christiansen Theater.

Related Links:

• Official website of Victory Gardens: VictoryGardens.org
• Review of “Death and the Maiden” at Victory Gardens: Read it at ChicagoOntheAisle.com 
• Review of “The Whale” at Victory Gardens: Read it at ChicagoOntheAisle.com