Memories, like radioactivity, can possess long-lasting, debilitating toxicity. Playwright Jason Lindner works this potentially provocative point to death in his conceptually tortured new play. Salek, a Polish Jew and former Manhattan Project nuclear physicist, suffers from end-stage dementia and believes he's a college professor commissioned to create a radioactive memory bomb as destructive as the one dropped on Hiroshima. Lindner shows impressive flair as a writer, but as a dramatist he's lost, unwisely setting the play inside Salek's unmoored imagination, where metaphors run amok and plot points run aground. As Salek, Chicago newcomer Mark Maxwell delivers such a grounded, graceful, emotionally compelling performance that his every choice seems to make perfect sense, even if little else in the play does. —Justin Hayford

Price: $15