Ike Holter’s ‘Sender’ has a stark message for millennials

We all know the easy labels and essential traits used to describe several generations of American society in recent decades:

The Greatest Generation. The Baby Boomers. Gen X. The Millennials.

No generation can or should be so easily pigeonholed, but such historical categorization seems unavoidable.

Millennials are the generation neatly savaged in “Sender,” Chicago writer Ike Holter’s play, now having its world-premiere production by A Red Orchid Theatre, where Shade Murray has assembled an ensemble whose virtuosity might never be duplicated.

And, as one of the characters finally blurts out near the end of the play to her three closest (and most problematic) friends: “Grow the f… up, you selfish pieces of hipster s…”

Well, that’s telling them. And maybe, after all that transpires in this play, it might just jolt them out of their Peter Pan-like stupor, fueled by sex, alcohol and at least one very theatrical escape.

‘SENDER’

Highly recommended

When: Through May 29

Where: A Red Orchid Theatre,

1531 N. Wells

Tickets: $30 – $35

Info: (312) 943-8722;

www.www.aredorchidtheatre.org

Run time: 90 minutes

with no intermission

The play is set during summertime in Chicago. Tess (Mary Williamson) is sitting on the shabby rooftop patio of her apartment building — most likely located in a transitional corner of Logan Square, as Andersonville has already been dubbed an outpost for yuppie scum.

Then, out of nowhere comes Lynx (Steve Haggard), a handsome if bedraggled young man with a backpack. A ghost? Perhaps. After all, Lynx, Tess’ lover, disappeared more than a year earlier and was not only presumed dead (though no body was ever found) but was also profoundly mourned by the upended Tess and the couple’s best friends, Jordan (Steven Wilson) and Cassandra (McKenzie Chinn).

The chemistry of passion between these two clearly hasn’t died, but Tess is furious. She has been a basket case for a year and is only just beginning to come back to life. Now, Lynx has just reappeared and apparently expects to make his apologies, settle unfinished business and pick up where he left off.

Or perhaps he will just disappear into the mist yet again, taking up an off-the-grid existence that will protect him from debt, legal consequences and all other responsibilities.

There is plenty of unfinished business with Jordan and Cassandra, too. As it turns out, Lynx and Jordan were less than brothers but more than friends who dabbled in bisexual adventures and other permutations. Now, Cassandra (who is either independently wealthy or has a high-paying job) is pregnant with Jordan’s child, and Jordan is far from ready to be either a husband or father, or even a committed heterosexual. Cassandra, who helped Tess through a hellish year, aches for stability and a normal life. Lynx’s return upsets the apple cart in many dramatic ways.

As Holter seems to ask: In a time where everything from fluid sexuality, to recession woes and oppressive student debt seem to keep many millennials in a state of post-adolescent uncertainty — and where existence (or non-existence) can be just a click away on a mobile phone or with a Facebook entry — how can formerly traditional ways of life survive?

Holter, whose previous plays include “Hit the Wall” (a chronicle of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, which was produced at the Steppenwolf Garage and subsequently Off-Broadway), and “Exit Strategy’ (about the shutdown of a Chicago public school), writes punchy, musical dialogue. And the four terrific performers here act the stuffing out of his play as they engage in heavy-duty drinking, sex (with Haggard, whose lean, muscled body is easy to look at, in a scene of full-frontal male nudity), and much inventive obscenity.

Williamson brings a force-of-nature blowsiness — equal parts swagger, pain and black comedy — to the role of Tess.

Haggard (so superb in A Red Orchid’s “Accidentally Like a Martyr and Writers Theatre’s “Doubt”) brings his controlled, enigmatic sensuality to bear on every scene, whether spinning Lynx’s tall tales or deploying his cunning charm.

Wilson taps in to the nerdy, confused, panicked immaturity of Jordan.

And in a breakout performance of astonishing ferocity and quirkiness, Chinn, as smart as she is attractive, turns every “aria” of control and neediness into a cry for a more normal life.

Mike Durst’s urban-hipster set design (complete with grafitti-covered brick wall), is perfect, as are Alexia Rutherford’s costumes (shabby chic to secondhand boho, with a notable pair of turquoise cotton Jockey briefs).

But style is really beside the point in “Sender,” whose message of “straighten up and fly right” gives quite the wake-up call.