This is the tone of The New Colony's hilarious hit show Frat playing at The Apartment Lounge, a nightclub above Chicago's Lion Head Pub. Evan Linder's play brings us into the Theta Pi Psi fraternity house during the week before initiation (known as "Hell Week") and introduces us to a group of fraternity pledges, the brothers who are initiating them and their respective girlfriends. The new pledges are roommates Fleet (Will Cavedo) and Ross (Joel Kim Booster), legacy Kevin (Quinn White) and Todd (Patriac Coakley) who just wants to see if he can make some new friends.
Determined to make life dificult for them--at least until they become full-fledged brothers--are Jerry (Gary Tiedmann), Benjamin (Steve Gensler) and Blake (Jared Fernley), despite the better efforts of some of the gentler brothers like Michael (Alexandr Lane) and Steven (Wes Needleham).
The girls in the play are Sara Catherine (Meg Johns) Blake's girlfriend whose tits are the reason most of the new pledges signed up, Natalie (Thea Lux) Benjamin's girlfriend who has already slept with most of the Theta Pis, Amy (Tara-Jayne Sissom) no one's girlfriend and the frat house DUG--Designated Ugly Girl--and Katie (Caitlin Chuckta) Todd's girlfriend who doesn't understand why Greek life is so important to her boyfriend and his friends.
Rounding out the cast are playwright Evan Linder, Benno Nelson, Kevin Stangler, Brandon Ruiter, Sophie Gatins and Nick Delehanty.
Andrew Hobgood's direction utilizes the entire space and the actors encourage the audience to walk around the room, following the action of the play (often to the tune of "Dude, you gotta see this!" or "You don't wanna miss this!"). We walked around the room as the lights changed or as we heard a scene begin somewhere else, we sat on the couches and chairs with the characters as we watched scenes unfold, and in some cases, if we were in the way, we had to interact with them. Maneuvering a cast of this size is no easy task, but Hobgood accomplishes it with ease.
The play moved seamlessly from scene to scene, location to location. Many of us had to be coaxed early on to get closer to the action (I was told at one point, "Go ahead, sit on the couch"), but as the play went on and we all got more comfortable with how it would work, we were eager to get ourselves to the next playing space when a new scene would begin.
This was also due to the wit and humor with which playwright Evan Linder allowed us to get to know his characters. We got to laugh with them and learn their jokes, like when Natalie describes the difference between Theta Pi and some of the other fraternities on campus ("Theta Pi, helluva guy! Sigma Chi, rapists.") or when Ross yearns for the kinds of girls he'll be able to get once he's initiated ("I wound up making out with a Gender Studies minor, Tech Theatre major.").
But the play is not just a fun romp through sophomoric nostalgia. It's a searing look at what one will go through to make friends, the kind who will presumably "stand next to you at your wedding" and whatever major life event should follow, including your funeral. Hell Week finally takes its toll on all involved during the night before the final initiation. Rifts between friends begin when Lux as Natalie and Johns as Sara Catherine drop the humor which had characterized them as they expose each other's more embarrassing sexual exploits in front of the brothers. Gensler as Benjamin questions Natalie's fidelity to him and takes his anger out on his least favorite of the new pledges. Coakley as Todd navigates through the difficult decisions of where to place his loyalty while Chuckta as Katie urges him to be faithful to the real friends whose loyalty has been tested rather than those who put him through hell testing his. If the play's ending is not as jovial as the opening promises, it leaves us with more to consider and chew on than a neatly wrapped up comedy.
Frat is the kind of theatrical experience one rarely finds, and even more rarely done as well as this one was. Anone who finds themselves in the Chicago area should definitely head over and check out The New Colony's Frat. After all, "it's fucking great to be in Theta Pi!"
