| Alberto Finetti's portrait of a
user on skids is innocuously called, "A Chronology of a Crack
Addict." But the 13 scenes that comprise this jagged profile are way
out of chonological order. Like his life, Jeff Chase is exposed in
strobe-like fragments that leap back and forward-from his teen years to
the unfinished dead end of this 38-year-old alcoholic/drug abuser's
life. Within the scenes he's always threatening to leave, then
returns to do something even more rotten.
Finetti bases the story on a still-living friend who he couldn't help and now just wants to understand. His point: There is no closure for this self-made victim. Some scenes suggest that Chase was abused by a hateful mother, an absent (as in suicide) father and a child rapist, that as a teen he killed his best friend while driving drunk, and that, years later, this passive-aggressive instigator murders his girlfriend in a fit of 90-proof sadism. Or did he? All we can be sure is that, whether the drugs were a cause or a symptom, he tried and failed as an actor and flight attendant and succeeded only as a mugger and doper. As Chase admits in a moment of accidental honesty, "Sometimes nothing happens. You just live after life is over." Laurie Kladis' staging sets this breakdown to a pulsing rock score that implies there's more at stake than the stuff we see. Indeed Chase's case is utterly unedifying, like most of life. It's no cautionary lesson, just a look at one man's inability to admit he made any choices, good or bad. Dale Tagetmeyer's combustible Chase is a very recognizable ball of anger, an all-purpose jerk and mean drunk who skips the maudlin stage and goes right for paranoia. Lori Garrabrant, Dejan Avramovich and Nate White play the pushers, enablers, authority figures and other hapless saps who dare to interfere with Chase's self-absorption. -Lawrence Bommer |