Dining Chicago

Playwright J. Nicole Brooks stars in the title role of her play “Fedra: Queen of Haiti” at Lookingglass Theatre. (Photo by Sean Williams.)

In Lookingglass Theatre Company’s “Fedra: Queen of Haiti,” playwright J. Nicole Brooks moves the ancient Greek myth of Phaedra and Hippolytus into a near-future alternate Haiti that’s become a world power. Given the island’s rich history and culture (the first Western Hemisphere country after the U.S. to achieve independence from imperial Europe … the first independently black-ruled nation in modern world history … slave revolts … dictators … political coups … voudoun … ), the concept is tantalizing.

Yet you’d never know it if you haven’t read your program. A few lines of offhand dialog refer to the extinction of birds and Haiti’s importance, but nothing in the set, costumes or staging seems futuristic or Haitian. (Rather more cleverness has gone into a promotional fake Haitian Media Service.)

Like much Greek drama, the tale addresses questions of freewill vs. divine influence. Brooks’ plot adheres, more or less, to the classical tragedy adapted by Jean Racine in the 17th century. In case you’re not up on your Euripides, Phaedra, wife of King Theseus, has been visited by Aphrodite with lovesickness over her stepson, Theseus’ firstborn, Hippolytus. When he spurns her, she and her conniving nurse accuse him of rape. Theseus, believing the lie, calls down a deadly curse on his son, learning the truth only too late.

Stalking above the stage in glittering red and gold, Afrodite (Tamberla Perry, with hairdo justifying the spelling) makes an arresting sight, but her echo-enhanced pronouncements become hard to understand both acoustically and theatrically. We wait for her to do something dramatic, but she just struts around.

The playwright takes the title role, which leads us to believe that Fedra must be exactly as she envisioned her. The great queen comes off as a spoiled child, and her passion appears to manifest as heartburn. Similarly, Anthony Fleming III, as Hippolytus, exhibits his love for political prisoner Aricia through a painful twitching.

Sharina Martin does a engaging job as Aricia, but the 20th-century geek chic of her role adds another layer of anachronism. Fedra’s plotting attendant, Enone (Lisa Tejero), goes from chattering about ass waxing to ardent avowals of dedication. We’re constantly jerked back and forth between latter-day trash talk, stilted evocations and out-and-out melodrama.

Moreover, much of the acting seems awkward, ranging from stiff to hammy. Fedra’s death scene is so overdone it made me think of “The Fantasticks”: “Go ahead, Mortimer. Die for the man.”

Director Laura Eason has set the theater’s versatile space as a thrust stage, but then plays her cast toward the center rows. Audience members seated at the sides see a lot of backs. At one corner of the stage, a square pool makes us wonder: Will Afrodite rise from the water? Will somebody drown? Ultimately, nothing that happens in the pond merits its distracting presence. Again and again, scenes promise high drama, and fizzle.

As with impoverished Haiti itself, we’re left with a poignant sense of what might have been.