Displaying items by tag: Elaine Carlson

What do you do when something in life, an unforeseen occurrence, challenges what you thought was one of your most deeply held beliefs?  What direction do you take if adhering to your convictions could mean sacrificing something exceedingly dear to you?  Do you follow your moral compass or choose the personally expedient? These are the kinds of questions that drive Admissions, Joshua Harmon’s brilliant and piercing 2018 play fresh in its run at Citadel Theatre Company in Lake Forest.  Teasing out the answers to this dilemma makes for some of the best theater you’ll likely find anywhere in the metropolitan area right now.

It takes shape in a place where most of us have little knowledge, an elite private high school on the east coast. This one is named Hillcrest.  Sherri Rosen-Mason (Susie Steinmeyer) has been the Admissions director there for years and throughout her tenure; promoting diversity in the student body has been as much a passion for her as it is a mission.  Every incremental percentage increase in minority enrollment is met with euphoric elation.

Sherri’s husband, Bill (Tim Walsh) leads the school as its headmaster. They have a son, Charlie (Justin Jarzombek), who’s finishing his senior year there.  Highly successful and proudly liberal, Sherri and her husband are more than aware of their privilege in society and are anxious for others with fewer advantages to share in the bounty they enjoy.

The timeframe is just a mere ten years ago when, despite its many vocal detractors, diversity was increasingly the law of the land and becoming enshrined in our institutions.  Because it doesn’t impact them directly or personally, many Americans still respond ambivalently toward the change and view it simply as a manifestation of cultural evolution.  Much like Roberta (Elaine Carlson), Sherri’s Development officer who designs the school’s promotional materials.  She tolerates it or may even support diversity as a principle; but it has no real bearing on her own life.

Aptly directed by Beth Wolf, that perceptual imbalance between Sherri and Roberta provide the foundation for frequent incisive and wonderfully humorous scenes that take place whenever the two women sit down to review the promotional catalogs being sent to prospective students. Roberta doesn’t really understand why she must include more pictures of Black students in the recruitment material.   When Sherri asks her why a Black student would want to come to a school if they didn’t see anybody who looks like them in that school’s brochures, Roberta invariably gives a dismayed pout before moving into defensive dismissiveness.  Echoing the kind of language you’d expect of a person who never felt the drag of race as a weight, her outlook on the subject could easily be thought cavalier.   Full of genteel spunk, and propelled by the boldness of Joshua Harmon’s writing, Carlson in her role of Roberta is as illuminating as a powerful lighthouse.  Exposing this rarely viewed profile of a recessed but likely prevalent national mindset makes her character boundlessly fascinating.  And Carlson fills it with laudatory panache.

Something very similar happens when we learn more about Sherri’s son, Charlie.  Elite private high schools, wherever they’re located, know their purpose.  To help pave the way to assured success.  Excelling in academics, sports and his sundry other interests, Charlie appears destined for a life very similar to his parents.   Both he and his best friend, Perry, the bi-racial son of a professor at the school who’s also a super-achiever, have their eyes on Yale.

Although very close in their achievements, Charlie edges out Perry ever so slightly overall.  But it’s Perry, a person we never see on stage, who’ll get to claim the bulldog, Handsome Dan, as his school mascot next Fall.  Charlie receives a beautifully crafted rejection letter. That’s when the stuff of the nightly news becomes real for the Mason family.  

It’s not unusual for disappointment to induce rage. In a Homeric monologue, one that’s as eloquent as it is tremendously edifying, Charlie unleashes the hurt and angst of a generation who feel as if they’ve been placed on an altar of sacrifice.  A generation of white boys and young men who believe their futures are being used to pay for the past misdeeds of a nation.  Jarzombek delivers it splendidly, pushing it deftly down into the souls of a rapt audience and receiving an immediate and enthusiastic ovation for his efforts.

Just as compelling is its counterpoint, embodied in Ginnie, Perry’s white mom.  Hers is another voice seldom heard on the dramatic stage, that of white woman raising a black child.  Played with lovely craftsmanship by Tina Shelly, she’s angered as well as hurt when she gleans people she considers her friends, people who know her son’s abilities, believe the primary reason Perry was accepted into Yale is his color.   

One of the wonderful things about exceptional writing is that you know not to expect conventional, easily anticipated endings. And there certainly isn’t anything like that here.  It’s the way things resolve that you luxuriate in.  Like the way Charlie rises and demands an equal voice in shaping his future.  And then see where that takes him. Or how Ginnie rejects equanimity to embrace passion and stands her ground; never vacillating in her defense and championing the primacy of her family.  Shedding giddy to proudly wrap herself in armor. 

As delightful as the rest of the cast, Steinmeyer as Sherri and Walsh as her stalwart other half gleamed like fine gems as played a married couple who knew how to push and challenge each other with both true force and real respect.  What they don’t do is also very telling.  Which makes Admissions the kind of story your mind might return to when you find yourself, someone you know or even a country, thrashing through a moral conundrum.

Admissions

Through March 15, 2026

Citadel Theatre Company

300 S. Waukegan Road

Lake Forest, IL   60045

For more information and tickets:  https://www.citadeltheatre.org/admissions

Highly Recommended

This review is proudly shared with our friends at www.TheatreInChicago.com.