Sam Shepard is not known for romanticism, though many of his plays are about love. His work is unsparingly dark and he is a master at digging up shadows and generational trauma. Love in his work is never healthy.  In years to come I believe scholars will attest to his ability to humanize toxic masculinity. None of these punches are pulled at the current production of Lie of the Mind now on at Raven Theatre.Â
The play begins with a disoriented Jake at a phone booth somewhere calling his brother Frankie: he believes he has beaten his wife Beth to death. We find out soon that she is not dead, but broken and brain damaged as her brother Mike tries to help her learn to walk again– and this was not the first time he beat her. As the story spools out, we get to know Jake and Frankie’s enmeshed mother Lorraine who is deep in her denials even while tracing Jake's lifelong history of violence. We meet Beth’s parents who are also disconnected with each other and themselves. In this world violence is a form of love, and no one seems to be able to untangle.Â
Director Azar Kazemi made the compelling choice of casting Beth, Mike and Meg as immigrant Persian Americans. There is nothing in Shepard’s text that gives any indication of this back story, but the context provides a disturbing depth: perhaps Jake’s family has no connection with Beth because she is other? Much of the play is set in rural Montana and one wonders how Beth’s family came to be, which may or may not be a distraction to the central issues of these characters: why can no one escape the continuing traumas, why is love here so twisted?
The cast is strong and thrilling to watch: Gloria Imseih Petrelli as Beth is believably impaired and then we see her trying to rise like a phoenix from her own ashes. John Drea is a beleaguered Frankie whose hapless attempt at making sure Beth is not dead may kill him. Ian Maryfield is terrifying as Jake, at once lost and sympathetic, next full bore homicidal psychopath. Joan Nahid’s Meg drifts through her family believable as a mail order bride who may or may not have assimilated. Rom Barkhordar's Baylor is infuriating as a clueless entitled male of a certain generation who hunts not because he likes venison but because it is the role he was given.
Director Kazemi makes choices with the ending that leave more questions than devastation and dissipates the tragedy: even if these characters do not all die, it is unclear whether they will ever live. I remember seeing the Steppenwolf production years ago and leaving the theater nauseous: this production left me thinking, wondering, hanging. Which in this day and age is pretty much where we all are. Life is confusing and difficult: people say they love you and hurt you more deeply than those who hate you. Â
Lie of the Mind is not a play for an entertaining night out: it is an excavation of two broken families that will reverberate. It’s playing Thursdays through Sundays until March 22, 2025 at the Raven Theatre, 6157 North Clark Street in Chicago. For tickets and information go toÂ
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