FOUR UKRAINIAN REFUGEES
NAVIGATE WAR’S AFTERSHOCKS
IN A NIGHTMARE OF BUREAUCRACY

Natalka Vorozhbyt’s darkly funny, deeply bruising play
finds Trap Door Theatre at its most urgent—and most human.

Four women push mobile doorjambs around the stage as the audience filters in. Their movement is slow and halting, as if moving through fog. Once the theatre lights dim, the doors are moved to the back and the women—along with a couple other people—form a line in front of an immigration official. So begins Ukrainian playwright Natalka Vorozhbyt’s Green Corridors, Trap Door Theatre’s opening production of 2026.

Green Corridors Cast

This is merely the first of the many lines in anonymous offices that we see: there will be lines for social services, bathrooms, transport, and countless other iterations of bureaucracy. These are women escaping the invasion of Ukraine, and each checkpoint is rife with the promise of extraction—or the fear of return.

The four women are each identified by a single attribute in the Playbill: Actress, Cat-Lover, Manicurist, and Housewife, and Vorozhbyt filters their stories through an absurdist prism. It’s a smart move, leavening the proceedings with dark, dark humor, and avoiding the misery-porn pitfalls that usually plague projects like these.

Nicole Garneau

Director Kay Martinovich stays clear of fussiness, keeping the focus on the dialogue and her powerful quartet of actors. Absurdism is a tricky balancing act for a performer, and even more so when actors have to pivot to realism. Of the four leads, Nicole Garneau as the Actress and Marzena Bukowska as the Cat-Lover are the most adept at threading the needle, balancing flat realism and exaggerated absurdity with seemingly effortless flair. Their roles are extraordinarily difficult in different ways: Garneau switches characters multiple times in the film-shoots-within-the-play sequences, while Bukowska plays the character with—relatively speaking—the lowest stakes of the four. Manuela Rentea as the Housewife is most successful in the absurdist bits, her little striptease and explosion over borscht bringing some of the biggest laughs of the night.

Marzena Bukowska, Manuela Rentea, and Emma Mansfield

The most problematic part of the play, for me, is the character of the Manicurist, who is defined purely by the horrific torture visited upon her. This is not the fault of the performer, Emma Mansfield—their monologue revealing what happened is shattering—but the writing. Played as straight drama, the scene, as emotionally powerful as it is, comes across like it’s from a different play altogether. The other characters are presented as more than the sum of their trauma; the Manicurist is presented entirely in the context of hers.

And I must mention Jen Conner, who, in several roles, provides a counterpoint to the leads. Playing the audience surrogate and (usually) antagonist, she imbues the mostly one-scene and one-note parts with a conviction and brio that make them land—and elevates the performances of her scene partners. It’s the kind of performance that gets unfairly overlooked with regularity.

Emma Mansfield, Manuela Rentea, and Marzena Bukowska

There are a few minor problems with the production. A giant screen stage-left adds very little to the proceedings and, worse, becomes a distraction. I stopped paying attention to it halfway through (about 20 minutes after the audience seemed to have abandoned it). The imagery might be more effectively utilized as momentary projections on the backdrop—but none of that dilutes the power of the play. The individual scenes are so well-written (kudos to translators John Freedman and Natalia Bratus) and performed that they transcend issues with the mise-en-scène and narrative construction. Vorozhbyt pulls no punches, implicating and indicting both sides of the political spectrum, as well as the audience itself. There’s even a neat bit of (unintentional?) circularity in the opening, as audience members filter into their seats, chattering away, willfully ignoring the four emotionally and physically battered refugees trudging around a few feet away from them.

Green Corridors Cast

About three-quarters of the way through, there is a lovely moment where the women share a meal in almost silent communion. It’s a rare moment of grace and community for characters bonded together by history. A lesser playwright might have ended it there, choosing to close on a marginally up note, but not here.

Shortly after comes an excruciatingly uncomfortable scene between a European studio rep (Conner) and the Actress. As the agent harangues and belittles her for the crime of very mildly criticizing the host government, Garneau’s larger-than-life Actress shrinks, turning inward in response to the unending berating. She is diminished, infantilized, and browbeaten until she can barely speak. Her rich, sonorous voice is reduced to plaintive appeals for forgiveness and understanding, until it gives up entirely. She cannot breathe. She occupies a lower tier of humanity than her “rescuers,” and nothing other than complete, unquestioning gratitude will suffice.

Marzena Bukowska

“It is not your business to condemn our silence!”

Green Corridors ends with a touch of wish fulfillment that is sharp, funny, and—like everything else here—wonderfully acted and directed. For this critic, though, it offers only momentary comfort.

Green Corridors Cast

What lingers instead is the tableau of four women, bereft of agency, curled up on the floor in yet another bureaucratic waiting space, blankly scrolling through cable news reporting the devastation of their homeland. Their anger and despair hits hardest when the world tires of them and moves on to talking about something else.

It may be a New Year for some, but for others, it’s just more of the same.

Manuela Rentea, Emma Mansfield, Marzena Bukowska, Nicole Garneau

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photos by J. Michael Griggs
poster designed by Michal Janicki

Green Corridors
Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland St.
Thurs-Sat at 8; Sun at 7 (Feb 1, 8, 15)
ends on February 21, 2026
for tickets ($32; 2-for-1 on Thursdays), call 773.384.0494 or visit Trap Door

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

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