Chosen Outstanding Play of 1992 by both the Chicago Tribune and the Chicago Sun-Times (Remains Theater production)

Remains Theatre

(Legendary, now-vanished Chicago Theatre company founded in 1979 by William Petersen, Gary Cole, D.W. Moffett and others at the Wrigleyville bar the Ginger Man. They explored the work of non-mainstream writers, as well as some classics. Notable productions include Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime (in which Petersen gave a brilliant portrayal of a doomed rock star), Moby Dick, Puntila and His Hired Hand, American Buffalo, and The Chicago Conspiracy Trial)

ONCE IN DOUBT captures the self-destructive anguish of a dying romance – that point at which couples, out of anger humiliate themselves in order to hurt the other. Harry, an artist, creates a painting/collage on the fourth wall using blood (invisible) from his slashed wrist and the objects (also invisible) that surround him and his wife, Flo, in a tiny white “Skinner Box” room. The collage is his legacy to his wife – his cynical, final statement about the absurdity of the human condition. Their mutual dependency is a sore point between them; they resent it just as they resent any suggestion that they put some distance between them. They resent it when they don’t flatter each other’s looks and when they do…