“Won’t somebody please think of the children?” What began as an ironic one-liner on The Simpsons is now a rallying cry that sounds well-intentioned, but is often a dog whistle for right-wing conspiracy theories.
In Adirondack Chair Circle, a gaggle of suburban housewives is determined to save their own kids. Steppenwolf Theatre Company’s world premiere, starring Tony and Grammy winner Katrina Lenk, tries for both funny farce and earnest dramedy and, despite occasional effective moments, fails at both.
It wants better content.
Who exactly needs saving here?
Banna (Lenk, The Band’s Visit) and her committee convene around a fire pit with a plan to remove “dangerous” books from the public school library. But when daffy Winona (Wendy Mateo) finds an unexpected pickleball partner in liberal single mom Evelyn Grace (Caroline Neff), the crew must imagine a future where their children are exposed to critical race theory, DEI, and free speech every day.
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The problems with Adirondack Chair Circle lie in Stephanie Alison Walker’s script. Walker can’t decide what she wants the play to be: a straight-up farce about conservative suburban “wine mom” culture, or an honest dialogue about the real-life consequences of book bans, which Illinois discourages by tying state library grants to anti-ban policies, under a 2023 law signed by Gov. JB Pritzker.
Walker tries to be all things, with playful references to hard kombucha and useless husbands mixed with far-right rhetoric and nasty violence. The play’s abrupt tonal shifts override its powerful moments, such as Winona confiding in Evelyn Grace about her family’s survival of communism, and Banna’s attempts to reconnect with her nonbinary teenager. What could be a chilling ending illustrating the effects of radicalization and censorship is canceled out with a last-second joke about, literally, bird crap.
It’s hard to say who Adirondack Chair Circle is for, since a theatergoing audience in a major city likely doesn’t overlap with the crowd that seriously “challenges” kids’ books. (Anne Washburn’s ANON, which recently pitted a QAnon influencer against her gay neighbors at New York’s MCC Theater, wrestled with the same problem.)
Rather than encourage dialogue with those who (like Winona) may be on the fence, or empathy for educators facing yet another battle, Adirondack Chair Circle feels like an opportunity for audiences to feel smug without questioning their own problematic mindsets.
Is ‘Adirondack Chair Circle’ worth seeing?
Not even a solid cast and tragically relevant subject matter can save Adirondack Chair Circle from a scattered script that should still be in Drafts.
- Steppenwolf Theatre Company, 1646 N. Halsted St., Chicago
- Notable performers: Katrina Lenk, Caroline Neff, Wendy Mateo
- Running time: Approximately 2 hours 25 minutes with one intermission
- Performances through December 13, 2026
