{"id":813253,"date":"2026-05-21T23:11:22","date_gmt":"2026-05-21T23:11:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/813253\/"},"modified":"2026-05-21T23:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-05-21T23:11:22","slug":"the-targeted-is-a-smart-and-empathetic-look-at-conspiracies-and-paranoia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/813253\/","title":{"rendered":"The Targeted is a smart and empathetic look at conspiracies and paranoia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last year, Lyric Opera presented Missy Mazzoli\u2019s The Listeners<\/a>, in which a woman besieged by a low-grade \u201chum\u201d that interrupts her sleep and haunts her waking hours finds a community (or cult, if you prefer) headed by a guru who claims to help sufferers. Something similar is at work in Hanna Kime\u2019s The Targeted, now in a world premiere with A Red Orchid Theatre under Grace Dolezal-Ng\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

The title refers to people who call themselves \u201ctargeted individuals,\u201d or TIs for short. These are people who believe that they are being subjected to persecution from a variety of sources: the government, the medical establishment, their own families. In some cases, as in Tracy Letts\u2019s Bug<\/a>, they believe they have implants under their skin put there by nefarious forces. Once targeted, they also believe that they\u2019re being \u201cgang-stalked,\u201d or followed, harassed, and surveilled.<\/p>\n

The Targeted<\/strong>
Through 6\/14: Thu\u2013Fri 7 PM, Sat 3 and 7 PM, Sun 3 PM; industry night Mon 6\/1 7 PM; Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, 312-943-8722, aredorchidtheatre.org<\/a>, $55, arts for all $75 (helps underwrite discounted tickets), $17.50 access tickets<\/p>\n

In Kime\u2019s play, a group of TIs have gathered at a Catholic sleepaway camp that they\u2019ve rented for a weekend conference, led by Jeff (Lawrence Grimm), who claims to have a PhD in biochemistry and to have worked for Purdue Pharma. He greets the believers by assuring them that they are not alone. \u201cThere are 170,000 Targeted Individuals in the U.S. alone, and one million of us worldwide.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the handful that have gathered at the camp is newbie Sherry (Sadieh Rifai), who has had unexplained pain since getting a flu shot. She shares a cabin with hardcore true believer Rhonda (Kirsten Fitzgerald), who declares early on, \u201cI refuse to see someone suffering and not do something. I am a doer. That\u2019s why I\u2019m being targeted in the first place,\u201d and the kindly Didi (Natalie West), who sells what she claims are lead-lined raincoats and hats to help thwart electromagnetic attacks. (Rhonda\u2019s biggest claim to fame is that she apparently tried to rescue\/kidnap Amanda Bynes.)<\/p>\n

In another cabin is Eric (Glenn Obrero), who, like Chuck McGill in Better Call Saul, sleeps under a space blanket and lines his hat with tinfoil, and his sister, Mia (Stephanie Shum), a doctor who has been taking care of Eric since their mother gave up on trying to help him. The fact that Mia is an \u201coutsider\u201d marks her for suspicion early on from Rhonda, who also packs her own ersatz surgical kit for helping remove implants from other people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kime\u2019s play dances with great dexterity between horror and sympathy for these people whose lives have been destroyed by what seems to us at least to be delusional thoughts. Yet it\u2019s also undeniable that conspiracies are believable because of what we actually know about the world. As Rhonda says early on, \u201cSomeday, everyone\u2019s gonna realize that the whole system is run by a bunch of pedophiles and sex pests, but everyone who tries to point it out now is \u2018crazy.\u02bc\u201d References to MK Ultra, Cointelpro, and the Tuskegee syphilis study also crop up, reminding us that there have in fact been many times when the government and other authorities have colluded to abuse, control, and thwart people and movements in the U.S.<\/p>\n

There is a major offstage drama clouding the weekend: Nathan, one of the people under Jeff\u2019s sway, killed a nurse in the psych ward where he was being held and then ended his own life. In Jeff\u2019s view, \u201cHis torturers drove him to suicide.\u201d Mia starts out skeptical, and then, as she sees more of how identifying as TIs is shaping their lives (Rhonda urges Sherry to leave her husband and children, Didi moves around living in various storage lockers to shut out the waves), she becomes more anguished and confrontational.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kime is a rising Chicago playwright whose past work includes 2024\u2019s The Best Damn Thing<\/a> and DOGS<\/a>. This is the first play of hers I\u2019ve seen, and it\u2019s a remarkably assured and empathetic piece that knows when to draw humor from the absurdity of the TI claims, and when to prod the deeper voids and losses that help those claims burrow in under their psyches in the first place. Dolezal-Ng has staged the 90-minute piece with a solid mix of quiet encounters and painful outbursts, neither of which ever feels forced or self-conscious.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The cast includes several Red Orchid ensemble members in roles that feel tailor-made for them. Fitzgerald\u2019s tough but warped by life Rhonda and West\u2019s warmhearted but slightly alien Didi mesh beautifully, balanced by Rifai\u2019s questioning but vulnerable Sherry. Grimm adeptly nails Jeff\u2019s avuncular tone when he\u2019s addressing the conference participants\u2014they\u2019re seated in benches in the front row, which effectively makes the audience at the Chopin mainstage part of the action.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s the relationship between Eric and Mia that forms the real wounded heart of The Targeted. Shum shows the pain of trying to understand something that, as a doctor, she finds difficult to give credence to, and she\u2019s also palpably terrified for her brother\u2019s life after what happened to Nathan. Obrero is at times heartbreaking as a guy who knows what he\u2019s doing is causing trouble for the sister he loves, but who doesn\u2019t know how to break away from the obsessions that have shaped his life for so many years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kime doesn\u2019t offer easy answers, but it\u2019s obvious that somewhere between Rhonda\u2019s \u201ctrust no one\u201d approach and the growing doubts that Mia and Jeff both share about what they\u2019ve seen, there\u2019s a world of fearful impulses and pain that needs to be negotiated. The easy answers, while initially soothing, won\u2019t save any of us.<\/p>\n

Reader Recommends: THEATER & DANCE<\/p>\n

Reader reviews of Chicago theater, dance, comedy, and performance arts.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\t\t\t\tMay 19, 2026May 20, 2026\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last year, Lyric Opera presented Missy Mazzoli\u2019s The Listeners, in which a woman besieged by a low-grade \u201chum\u201d…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":813254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5124],"tags":[239615,960,330339,330340,5386,1818,4289,77591,330341],"class_list":["post-813253","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-chicago","tag-a-red-orchid-theatre","tag-chicago","tag-grace-dolezal-ng","tag-hanna-kime","tag-il","tag-illinois","tag-listings","tag-reader-recommended","tag-the-targeted"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116615100392354381","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=813253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/813253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/813254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=813253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=813253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=813253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}