Among the Thugs

When American journalist Bill Buford set out to explore the roots of the violent behavior exhibited by British soccer fans, he never thought his report would contradict all the common theories regarding working-class hostility and economic disenfranchisement. Instead, he found a legion of white-collar drones whose nostalgic fantasies of masculine nationalism (sporadically exploited by xenophobic extremists) spurred them to antisocial acts fueled by adrenaline, testosterone and the strength conferred by their numbers--a heady combination leading to a mob mentality as seductive to the naive author as to those he would study.

Audiences last spring were likewise seduced by Tom Szentgyorgyi's articulate adaptation of Buford's documentary, and by director Kate Buckley's inventive staging of such for Evanston's Next Theater Company. On a nearly-bare stage, with an ensemble of only ten athletic males, Among The Thugs conjured visions of barbaric exhilaration that swept playgoers (whose groupthink experience likely extended no further than a few long-ago rock concerts) into a collective enthusiasm as communally stirring as individually observed. It's one thing to generate a concentration of hormonal fumes in a 200-seat auditorium, and another to repeat the phenomenon in the Goodman's 470-seat studio space (over double that at the Next) with its three-tiered galleries and tunnel-vision sightlines. But though the larger stage requires the ten actors (all but two from the original cast) to station themselves a bit farther apart, the action is predominantly focused in the downstage area to create an intimacy between the protean "supporters" -- led by the charismatic Christian Kohn, reprising the narrative role of Buford -- and the passive theater spectators that translates to a visceral response whose intensity is escalated by Jaymi Lee Smith's lighting and Lindsay Jones' sound design.