If it weren’t for the content warning and resource guide in the program, you wouldn’t know that “The Brightest Thing in the World” is about opioid addiction until the performance is well underway. And that’s the point. Leah Nanako Winkler’s 2022 play, now in its Midwest premiere at About Face Theatre, focuses on the love and joy in protagonist Lane’s life despite her struggles with addiction. Without glossing over the complex and painful effects of the disease, Nanako Winkler tells Lane’s story with tenderness and compassion.
Directed by Keira Fromm, the play opens with a series of vignettes set in a Lexington, Kentucky, café in 2016. Claire Kaplan gives a radiant performance as Lane, an outgoing, smiley barista with an offbeat sense of humor. When a bookish new customer, Steph (Jojo Brown), catches her eye, Lane initiates a sweet flirtation that leads to deeper discussions of literature, politics and religion.
As romance blossoms between the two women, secrets emerge that threaten their budding relationship. Lane reveals a fact that she thought Steph already knew: The café where she works is affiliated with an opioid recovery center and solely employs its patients. Lane is in recovery from heroin addiction. Instead of the rejection that Lane fears, Steph responds by telling Lane about her strained relationship with her teenage daughter, who was born when Steph was in high school. “We’re all recovering constantly from something,” Steph says, full of empathy.
Weaving elements of the playwright’s own journey with chronic pain into Lane’s fictional story, Nanako Winkler humanizes the experience of addiction and shows how it can happen to anyone. Lane rattles off an exhaustive list of medical and holistic therapies she tried for her chronic condition before succumbing to the only thing that eased her pain: heroin. Not only was the heroin more affordable and more effective, but the first dose was given to her for free. That’s all it took, she says, chillingly.
Lane also explains that she continued to function well — better, even — throughout her daily activities while high. That was the problem; soon, she needed the heroin to function at all.
After we learn Lane’s backstory, we see her relationship with Steph progress in scenes that move quickly through the next three years. We also meet Lane’s older sister, Della (Cyd Blakewell), who has been her primary support through her years of addiction, and the siblings welcome Steph into their small but close-knit family.
It took a while for me to feel the chemistry between Lane and Steph in the first half of the play; the structure of fast-paced vignettes sometimes comes at the cost of character development. However, a later series of Christmas scenes goes beyond the couple’s quirky rapport to explore the complexities of loving each other through Lane’s disease and Steph’s family baggage.
Interludes of stylized movement, choreographed by Jenn Freeman, are interspersed with the more traditionally staged scenes. I’m not sure I fully understood what each of these interludes was meant to communicate, beyond illustrating a character’s internal struggles. Still, the work of the creative team shines in these moments, with lighting designer Conchita Avitia employing beautiful globe lights in various colors and Christopher Kriz’s score setting the appropriate emotional tones.
“The Brightest Thing in the World” is the most sensitive, life-affirming story about the opioid epidemic that I’ve come across since Barbara Kingsolver’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2022 novel, “Demon Copperhead.” While Kingsolver’s characters are mostly from rural Appalachia, Nanako Winkler’s play is likely to be more relatable for urban theatergoers, with Lane holding a degree in creative writing, living in a midsize city and espousing liberal politics.
Nanako Winkler’s play includes some tragic scenes, but she is largely successful in her effort to focus on the light that Lane brings to those who love her. The most memorable scene is not one of sadness but a spontaneous dance party at one of Lane, Steph and Della’s Christmas gatherings. As the others fade from view, Lane dances alone while the lighting shifts to a strobe effect, twirling with abandon and lifting her face to the light. At that moment, she is, indeed, the brightest thing in the world.
Emily McClanathan is a freelance critic.
Review: “The Brightest Thing in the World” (3 stars)
When: Through April 13
Where: The Den Theatre, 1331 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes
Tickets: Pay-what-you-can tickets ($5-$35) at 773-697-3830 and AboutFaceTheatre.com
