The K of D: An Urban Legend

KISS AND TELL Whiteside spins a tale.

Whiteside gets a workout in Schellhardt’s solo play, and she hardly breaks a sweat. In relating the story of a rural Ohio girl who witnesses her twin brother’s death in a car accident and maybe, depending on your faith in the supernatural, receives a deadly gift in the process—Schellhardt’s title is superstitious schoolyard shorthand for “the kiss of death”—Whiteside portrays a possibly unreliable narrator and 13 other characters. In McDonough’s economical Chicago premiere, it’s hard not to be impressed by how clearly the actor distinguishes each role with signature gestures and vocal shifts.

But Schellhardt’s portrait of a momentous summer never quite reaches believability; despite Whiteside’s aerobics, these small-town denizens remain stock types. (That McDonough’s production leans, crutchlike, on Lindsay Jones’s invasive sound design doesn’t help.) We’re still attracted to the idea of urban legends, as was made evident by last week’s fevered Internet discussions (invoking the Final Destination movies) of the woman who missed the doomed Air France flight only to die in a car crash. Spooky, word-of-mouth modern myths have a pull. The playwright appears to want to explore that fascination, but in a world that includes accessible debunkers like snopes.com, making such tales plausible requires a bit more exercise.

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