Chicago Reader27%
Here comes a regular 48%
By Kerry Reid0%
7/14/2026, 8:56:47 PM
Topics: Theater Review
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Halo Effect, Representativeness Heuristic, and Attempt to Sell a Product or Service, with Biased Writer Voice as the most egregious example at 39.1% saturation with 330 hits. Analysis detected 1,135 faulty-reasoning hits from 844 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.8% and a BS Rank of 48% (10,060 of 19,233 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 52.30% of the article peer group.
In the Ross brothers' 2020 fiction/documentary hybrid film, Bloody Nose, Empty Pockets (starring the late onetime Chicago storefront actor, writer, and producer Michael Martin), a down-at-the-heels dive bar in Las Vegas celebrates its last night of operations with stories and vignettes about the regulars.
(The film was actually shot in Louisiana.)
In John Henry Roberts's new play, Dive, the inaugural production for Dark Room District now being staged at Fritzy's Tavern in Edgewater, that same air of closing-time nostalgia and familiarity lands with an entrancing blend of emotional revelations, wit, and deep affection for the barflies who make up the clientele at Cully's bar.
Dive
Through 8/1: Thu–Sat 7:30 PM; Fritzy's Tavern, 6156 N.
Clark, darkroomdistrict.com, sold out, but wait list available at the door
Cully (Roberts) is running the tavern left to him by his late father.
He's surrounded by people with their own obvious troubles, who seem to go through the same routines at each of the several closing times we see during the two-hour play (directed by Maura Kidwell), like a dive-bar version of Waiting for Godot.
There’s the elderly married couple, Filene (Eileen Vorbach) and Earl (Richard Baiker), whose lives seem to be a series of squabbles in between imbibing (light beer for him, a "low-cal gin and tonic" for her).
There's Hugh (Josh Odor), who wants to write a book but mostly seems to hang onto martini-loving Irisi (Anna Joy Yee) as a life raft, even as she clings to him.
Sleeping alone gives her nightmares about her dead brother, so even a drunk dude with questionable philosophies is a better option.
(What we glean of Hugh's life view—encapsulated as "politeness is destroying America"—makes Ayn Rand sound like Dorothy Day.)
There's washed-up rocker Slug (Jamie Ewing), who carries a torch for young and constantly inebriated Wesley (Mickey Dolan).
There's Vivian (Moira Begale), a nurse who takes Wesley home after one last call and seems to think she can reform him by introducing him to different kinds of cocktails.
Into the colorful mix walks Cygnet (Michaela Petro), a drifter who offers to help Cully out by waiting tables.
She'll just work for tips, she tells him.
He figures anyone that desperate probably needs the help.
One night after closing, through a wager as to who has done the worst things in their lives, Cygnet and Cully open up about the damage they've caused for loved ones in the past.
It looks like together they can find a way to heal, at least a little.
But then her past catches up to her.
Roberts has a sure ear for the offhanded and self-deprecating ways that deeply wounded souls dole out information about themselves.
Kidwell stages the ensemble so that every part of Fritzy's feels alive, with overlapping dialogue adroitly worked in at various points to capture the sensation of listening to several drunken conversations at once.
(The audience is mostly seated along one wall, with no bar service during the show, but actual bartenders are available to wet your whistle before curtain and at intermission.)
There are elements of the play that share some narrative DNA with previous works.
Tracy Letts's 2008 play, Superior Donuts—about an emotionally shut-down man running his late father's doughnut shop in Uptown with the help of a younger man with big ideas to revitalize the joint—comes to mind.
So does Terrence McNally's 1987 play, Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune, about a middle-aged couple working at a greasy spoon who find romance.
But that's not to say that Roberts's script is derivative in any way.
It all feels immediate, engaging, and well-paced under Kidwell's hand.
(It also helps that the play works in sure-handed but unobtrusive references to real Chicago bars, with the Ginger Man, Hidden Cove, and Carol's all getting shout-outs.)
We feel like we know these people.
Maybe they sat next to us at a different bar on a different night in a different lifetime.
The acting is first-rate throughout.
Caroline Kidwell (the director's sister) as Cully's fellow bartender, Deedee, is a sturdy voice of reason.
Dame Grant's Omer, who is obsessed with chess and keeps inviting people home to see his piranhas, is an intriguing encapsulation of the regular at every bar whose life seems balanced between the mundane and the slightly unnerving.
But every character gets a chance to give us just a peek into the roiling mess of their lives behind the jokes and stories.
Mostly, though, Dive asks us to spend time thinking about what it means to keep going after doing the worst thing.
How do you forgive yourself, and how do you bring that empathy to others who have also fucked up?
As Cygnet tells Cully, there’s no special trick to figuring people out—it's just listening.
Dark Room District's inaugural offering gives us plenty of reasons to pay attention to these characters, and the setting adds comforting authenticity.
I hated to say goodbye to them, but in my mind, they're going to keep coming back in all their flawed but valiant glory.
Analysis
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