Kafka on the Shore

From Chris Jones's review in the Tribune:

"In dreams begin responsibilities," observes the hero of Kafka on the Shore, Frank Galati's inestimably cerebral, endlessly complicated, occasionally incomprehensible and quite beguiling new show at the Steppenwolf.

What a terrifying thought! In our world of personal overextension and professional crisis, falling asleep for a few hours is the only chance we get to actually evade responsibility. Now Steppenwolf is telling us that we're on the hook for our dreams? Oy.

But if you know your Freud, Oedipus and Hamlet, you'll know the centrality of the unconscious. Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami (on whose novel the play is based) argues that our dreams must be the moral template for our actions.

If you think hard about it—this show requires you to think hard about everything—that's a timely and potent political observation. Throughout history, plenty of people have claimed to have been innocently asleep while, say, one of their leaders bombed innocent people or looted the treasury. Murakami argues that dreaming ain't no defense.

Kafka on the Shore, which contains multiple, elliptical narratives and includes wild, supernatural characters like Colonel Sanders, Johnnie Walker and a talking cat, is about far more than the division of conscious and subconscious. Little is achieved by arbitrary summation of plot, because the piece has many and they don't all follow through."