After the Revolution

Next Theatre

Evanston, Ill.

(847) 475-1875

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Amy Herzog understands both the allure and the perils of fixed ideologies, said Hedy Weiss in the Chicago Sun-Times. The playwright drew on her own family history for this drama about a New York family for whom leftist politics is a long-standing tradition. The story’s protagonist, Emma, is a recent law school graduate who so reveres the memory of her communist-sympathizer grandfather that she has set up a civil-rights foundation in his name. She is therefore “upended in many ways” when she learns that granddad was not just a radical but a spy for Stalin, a fact that other family members knew but kept secret.

Herzog’s 2010 play, now getting its Midwest premiere, proves to be as wise about families as it is about politics, said Chris Jones in the Chicago Tribune. Emma’s father, Ben (Mick Weber), is a committed lefty himself who’d rather be a good parent than force ideology on his daughter. But Emma’s older relatives are less sympathetic to her wavering allegiance to her grandfather. As played by Christine Stulik, Emma is a sheltered young woman whose growing confusion “functions as the glue that holds the production together.” Her dismay in discovering that leftists can be just as “morally compromised and otherwise disappointing” as their ideological counterparts is palpable. Ultimately, After the Revolution is “about the need to make your own way in the world, regardless of what those who came before you did or did not do.”