This week I took a break from the natural world and spent just under 60 hours is the very unnatural world of the theater. That theater, up there, to be precise. 

Theater Oobleck‘s production of Jeff Dorchen‘s new play, Strauss at Midnight, opens Thursday, June 11, at the DCA’s Storefront Theater downtown. And it is great! But Jeff can explain it better:

“The play is called “Strauss at Midnight,” and the Strauss in the title is the classicist and political theorist who taught at the University of Chicago for a while, Leo Strauss. There are various reasons why the title character in the play is Leo Strauss, and they mostly have to do with neo-conservative politics. The main real-life figures in the play are Strauss, his student Allan Bloom, and Bloom’s friend Saul Bellow. Also appearing is Niccolo Machiavelli, author of the famous Italian Renaissance guide for heads of state, The Prince. Strauss wrote about Machiavelli.

“Also in the play are fictional characters created by Neil Simon in his play The Odd Couple, and the character Virgil Tibbs from the 1967 film In the Heat of the Night starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. …

“You don’t need to read Leo Strauss, Saul Bellow, Allan Bloom, Machiavelli, or see The Odd Couple or In the Heat of the Night to enjoy Strauss at Midnight, anymore than you need to read Shakespeare or Marlowe in order to enjoy Shakespeare in Love, or Sade to enjoy Quills, or On the Origin of Species to appreciate the drama of Inherit the Wind, or to have played seventy-six trombones to enjoy The Music Man. It may add to the experience, but it’s not at all necessary.

“Strauss at Midnight is about the ongoing struggle between two forces: those who condemn us to repeat history, and the rest of us. The rest of us are represented by the world of The Odd Couple, and those who condemn us to repeat history are represented ultimately by Leo Strauss and his disciple Allan Bloom.

“Saul Bellow is the artist caught between the forces of his social environment and the inevitable gravity of the artist’s moral truth.”

Intrigued? There’s more here. Jeff will also be talking about the play on WNUR’s This is Hell today (Saturday, June 6) at … like, now, actually.

Meanwhile, those tomatoes in the window? They remain in the window. Though they are significantly taller one week later. But today I’m taking a break from figuring out what the light looks like in hell, so they may be liberated from their potting cells in short order.