What makes this cab run? Since Hellcab's opening in 1992, no less than eleven actors (whose faces appear on the line of posters featured on the theater's marquee) have put their personal stamp on the role of the humble hackie piloting his yellow ferry through the stygian wilderness of Christmas Eve in the city. The alumni roster of ensemble members whose interpretations comprise the urban bestiary he meets on his pilgrimage reads like a storefront-circuit Who's Who (with several names -- notably Paul Dillon, Andrew Hawkes and Marc Grapey -- now making Coastal waves). It can't be the locations, which have been consistently isolated from hotels, convention centers or tourist attractions. Nor can it be the regional factor -- a 1995 detour to Los Angeles, where taxis are rare and exotic as rickshas, met with sufficient enthusiasm to be made into a film.
Whatever the answer, something in Will Kern's detached look at the vagaries of human nature -- a corporate lawyer accuses her criminal-law colleagues of moral laxity, just before another tries to seduce the cabbie; a poor white girl blames herself for her boyfriend's abuse, but a poor black girl refuses to tolerate it; a chain-restaurant owner is a boorish pig, while an architect displays gentlemanly grace -- touches a universal chord in audiences of all ages, races and backgrounds. Under the intelligent direction of the mononymic Dado, Second City-veteran Tim O'Malley, the current cabman, inhabits his role with a phlegmatic compassion devoid of the smug irony that so often characterizes improv-trained players (a description more fitting Steve Walker, who plays a variety of WASPs with uniform TV-sitcom blandness).
The road-show houses downtown may tempt the lazy, but summer visitors looking for unhomogenized fare would do well to hop the Ravenswood El or the No. 22 Clark Street bus to Lakeview for a ride on the Hellcab.
