Metromix Chicago Theater

"Omniscience" is the 100th production of Stage Left Theatre—a small Chicago theater that has, incredibly, beaten back the shifting sands of time and the high rents of Wrigleyville to survive more than 25 years on a block otherwise crowded with eateries, bars and Cub fans.

Stage Left has had several aesthetic incarnations over the years, but it has never wavered in its commitment to new work. Under its current artistic director, Kevin Heckman, Stage Left has set itself up as a progressive, leftist, internationalist and politically serious young company, specializing in intense, crisis-oriented plays about such concerns as technology, occupation, totalitarian governments, global refugees and the costs of war.

Although many artistic directors hesitate to criticize other companies in public, Heckman has few such compunctions, frequently lamenting in print and on line the attention afforded to more romantically oriented companies, such as the House Theatre of Chicago, and the city's unaccountable affection for Broadway musicals. Stage Left doesn't try to be a theater of dreams so much as a theater of the dire warning. The industrial-media-government complex, it frequently warns, is out to get you, whether you're paranoid or not.

Tim Carlson's "Omniscience," a Canadian play that emerged in Vancouver around 2004, certainly fits that mission. In this dystopian future, a documentarian (Cory Krebsbach) finds himself spinning a quagmire of a war into a movie about a glorious military victory. His employer, a media channel that seems to be wholly at one with the interests of an oppressive, secrecy-obsessed government, is nervous about its in-house propagandist, partly because his partner has disappeared and partly because his military wife, Anna (Cat Dean), is wandering around with post-traumatic stress syndrome. Luckily, those with the power have cameras everywhere. Watching.

"Omniscience" must have felt very timely in 2004, when it sometimes seemed that Fox News Channel—with its thrilling, video game-like graphics and hyperbolic taglines—was controlling at least the perception, if not the trajectory, of the war in Iraq. These few years later, when concerns have turned to more prosaic matters like competence rather than artificially pumped-up narratives, the piece feels dated. And it doesn't set up the suspense of the murder mystery contained therein with enough clarity. But the piece is not without some interest, especially if you're interested in conspiracy theory. Carlson's language is sharp and shrewd and, albeit only intermittently, his play has enough originality to pull you into its world.

Heckman's production is similarly mixed. Most plays of this type contain dangerous figures in business suits, corporate-speaking, and this one is no exception. Christine Gatto and Brian Plocharczyk are stuck mostly with that one dimension. But although the muddy and slow-moving second act can't maintain either the suspense or the stakes of the story, Krebsbach and Dean both have their decent moments.

Frankly, few exchanges in the show are all that believable—if reality is your referent. But Heckman and his teams make impressively elaborate use of sophisticated video and graphics, aptly making their point that simulation is now almost reality, artifice now almost truth and Stage Left perennially present to stand guard.

cjones5@tribune.com

"Omniscience"

When: Through May 24

Where: Stage Left Theatre, 3408 N. Sheffield Ave.

Tickets: $20-25 at 773-883-8830