"The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide"

Chicagoan Sean Graney is best known as a director, and for good reason. His low-budget productions of seldom-done modern classics (Ionesco's "Rhinoceros," Lorca's "Blood Wedding") consistently set a new standard for off-off-Loop theater.

Anyone who saw his Jeff Citation-winning production of Sophie Treadwell's "Machinal" in early 2003 knew they were watching the work of a director with talent and vision who might, given the right combination of luck, opportunity and perseverance, join the ranks of Chicago's top-flight directors.

For the past year or so, the fringe Chicago theater scene has buzzed about a quirky one-act play Graney wrote with an even quirkier title, "The 4th Graders Present an Unnamed Love-Suicide." The play was given a short workshop production that attracted so many people, some had to be turned away. Those that caught the play couldn't contain their excitement.

Now, Graney's own company, The Hypocrites, have given the play a full production, and the buzz was not wrong. The play is a work of astonishing beauty and grace. It is easily the best new work to come out of Chicago in quite some time.

Mainstream theatergoers should be warned: The play is strange. But not in a bad way. The play is not ultraviolent and it contains no nudity, adult language or situations. But it is based on an odd, but very daring premise.

The play concerns the death of a 4th grader, Johnny, who dies before the play begins. He is killed by a handgun that goes off. Everyone assumes it is suicide. The play focuses on the way the other students deal with his death, most notably in the pageant they put on in his honor. Johnny, it seems, wrote a play before he died, and his classmates want to perform the work in his memory.

Oddly enough the play Johnny wrote is an intensely autobiographical work, in which Johnny is the main character, and all of his classmates appear as major characters. I don't want to reveal anymore except to say the story Johnny tells involves the eternal themes of love, betrayal and revenge, as seen through the eyes of a child. Watching the play unfold, you can't help but look for evidence of why this young boy killed himself.

I know this sounds kind of depressing, but believe me, it isn't. Graney's play is written in a simple, comical style that recalls the best "Peanuts" cartoons. Graney's characters, like Charlie Brown and the gang, are remarkably articulate and have an astonishing degree of self-awareness. At one point in the story, the school bully launches into a moving monologue in which he reflects on why he feels compelled to bully students. And then he goes back to his bullying ways.

As in the best "Peanuts" cartoons, the play is based on the comedy of recognition. We laugh because we recognize ourselves, or, at least, what life was like when we were in elementary school.

It would be hard to imagine a better production of this material than director Jimmy McDermott's simple, unaffected, emotionally honest production. The casting feels absolutely right. Steve Wilson makes a great bully, and Anna Weiler is utterly convincing as the spoiled rich girl. Kimberlee Soo wins a lot of sympathy as the Asian hall monitor who pines for Johnny but can never get his attention.

At the center of the play is Joe Calarco, who plays both Johnny's best friend and, when the pageant is performed, he plays Johnny himself. Calarco's performance communicates volumes about friendship, mourning and the myriad ways survivors try to understand why someone they love has committed suicide.

Throughout the play within a play we never forget that Calarco is playing someone who is impersonating his dead best friend. This makes the performance and the play all the more riveting.

Graney's play only runs about an hour, but it is one of the richest, most theatrical and emotionally satisfying hours of theater currently available in Chicago.