A Chicago Parable With Feverish Social Heat

Journeymen Theater's Civic-Minded 'Neglect'

It's fitting that Sharyn Rothstein's "Neglect" should make its Washington debut just in time for summer: This earnest and affecting but slender social parable pivots on a plot that involves air conditioning.

The story takes place in Chicago during the 1995 heat wave that killed hundreds of city residents, including many isolated and elderly individuals. Against this harsh meteorological backdrop, the tentative kindnesses exchanged in "Neglect" -- a shared card game, an offer of a glass of Tab -- point to the broader failure of modern urbanites to care for one another. This plaintive critique emerges clearly in the graceful, if occasionally dawdling, Journeymen Theater Ensemble production at the Church Street Theater.

The 65-minute play's now-tense, now-humorous action unfolds in the tenement apartment of Rose (Cynthia Costa Rollins), a stubborn, elderly African American widow who lost one of her children to a building gas leak some years ago. When Rose's cash-strapped neighbor Joseph (James J. Johnson) drops by, hoping to cadge a little AC (alas, the unit is broken), his desperation and her fragile mental health prove a dangerous mix.

The entertaining Journeymen staging, directed by Jessie R. Gallogly, pitches us into this sweltering world convincingly enough. In the play's first moments, Rollins's Rose hobbles into her dowdy, magazine-strewn living room (Robbie Hayes is the set designer), gripping her cane and testing her balance with each slipper-shod step, her pace agonizingly slow. Once this nightgown-clad figure has consented to unbolt the numerous locks on her front door, admitting her neighbor (who has recently been fired from Taco Hut), the apartment's energy level spikes: Johnson's Joseph is all sweaty agitation, pacing and fanning himself feverishly with the front of his tie-dye T-shirt.

Both actors ferret out their characters' contradictions as the story wends toward crisis. Johnson, in particular, succeeds in juggling Joseph's menacing and vulnerable qualities. Rollins musters some nice moments of orneriness and wile -- Rose's gleeful look as she cheats at rummy, for instance, or her curmudgeonly tone when she talks about a son-in-law ("I wouldn't go making a cockroach comfortable in my kitchen; why should I make him comfortable in my living room?"). Unfortunately, the actress sometimes lets the dialogue bog down in pauses -- realistic, perhaps, given Rose's frail health, but annoying for an audience hankering to be swept up in the play's momentum.

The contributions of sound designer Domenic Creswa and lighting designer Brian S. Allard include the decrepitude of Rose's air conditioner, which sputters and dims the apartment lighting before conking out altogether. These sensory details help drive home Rose and Joseph's precarious position on the margins of society (Rothstein, whose plays have been staged off-off-Broadway, is completing a master's degree in public health).

Ultimately, the texture of the writing and the characterizations don't seem idiosyncratic and rich enough to make "Neglect" terribly memorable, but the play's simple, wistful civic cry will briefly drive up the mercury on audiences' moral thermometers.

Neglect, by Sharyn Rothstein. Directed by Jessie R. Gallogly. Costumes, Debra Kim Sivigny; props, Pat Daniels; fight choreography, Casey Kaleba. About 65 minutes. Through June 21 at the Church Street Theater, 1742 Church St. NW. Call 800-494-TIXS or visit http://www.journeymentheater.org.