FAULT LINES

A glossy production sinks under the weight
of a script that mistakes talk for wit

Unpleasant, unfunny, misogynistic, and worst of all, boring.

Let’s play a drinking game: every time you hear the words “banter,” “witty,” or “verbal” in Scooter Pietsch’s Fault, now on stage at Chicago Shakespeare, take a shot. If they are used in combination, do a double.

On second thought, maybe not. You’ll be passed out before the play ends and well on your way to alcohol poisoning.

On third thought, maybe being passed out for the duration is the best way to enjoy this “witty satire.”

Directed by Seinfeld‘s Jason Alexander, Fault opens on an absolutely gorgeous set. Paul Tate dePoo III’s scenic design depicts a high-rise apartment in one of Manhattan’s tonier neighborhoods, perhaps the Upper East Side. Elegant grays, raised paneling, carefully curated paintings, Louis XIV chairs. You get the idea.

“I hate running around these verbal circles with you.”

No actor should have to speak that line. Unfortunately for her, the terrific Rebecca Spence, a last-minute substitute for Teri Hatcher, gets the short straw. She plays Lucy, a brilliant corporate attorney married to Jerry (Enrico Colantoni), another corporate honcho involved in orchestrating mergers and acquisitions. Jerry returns home from the biggest success of his career, having successfully pulled off a deal that will net the couple a billion dollars in commission. Walking into the apartment, champagne in hand, he finds his wife in flagrante delicto with a much younger man, Shaun (Nick Marini), whom she’s brought home from a bar.

Jerry chases after Shaun with a sword, not a swordstick. More on this later. While running away, Shaun is briefly concussed. He is handcuffed to a chair, and when he wakes, Jerry offers him a proposition. Who is responsible for the current state of events in the marriage? Jerry and Lucy will present their cases. Shaun will decide who is at fault. His reward is a cool million dollars.

This could be the setup for an amusing comedy of manners, a dark update of classic Broadway comedies of the early twentieth century. Goodman’s fantastic Holiday is an excellent example of how to accomplish this. But Fault is not sure whether it wants to be a comedy or a drama. There is a whiplash-inducing shift in tone midway through, followed by a reversion to comedy at the end. The drama fares slightly better, thanks to Spence’s blistering delivery of a twenty-minute monologue that contains every cliché imaginable. It is essentially All About Eve for the corporate set, but it works because it is delivered with force and conviction by a talented actor at the top of her game. The comedy part, however, oof.

“Our banter flowed like poetry.”

Fault conflates speed of delivery with comedy. The play contains more dialogue about how witty Jerry and Lucy are than actual wit. Both Spence and Colantoni are accomplished enough to handle the rapid-fire timing, with responses coming before the previous line fully lands, but the lines themselves lack snap or verve. The jokes are few and far between. Jerry’s dialogue, in particular, is so dense that every time Colantoni launches into an extended speech, “What a yammering sphincter,” to borrow from The Big Bang Theory, becomes the only possible response.

Aside: Could someone please inform Mr. Pietsch that a “swordstick” refers to the entire contraption, a sword hidden inside a walking stick? Once the blade is drawn, it is simply a sword. If you are going to have a pedant on stage repeatedly correct another character, he needs to know what he is talking about.

“I’ve had enough of your fucking witty banter.”

So is there no laughter to be had here? Not quite. Colantoni has strong physical comedy instincts, and his movement onstage is occasionally hilarious. A sequence where he inches across a couch without breaking eye contact with Marini had me in giggles. An early scene where Spence scurries across the stage looking for a first aid kit (or was it towels?) drew a snort of laughter. The wads of tissue sticking out of Marini’s nose, moving up and down in time with his mental state, is a genuinely funny sight gag. A frantic waggling of those tissues produced my first and last real laugh of the evening.

But there are very few lines that land, and plot-wise, every turn is telegraphed. There are no surprises. If this were consistently funny, that would not matter. It is not.

What takes Fault from merely bad to genuinely appalling is the vile undercurrent of misogyny running through it. The script draws a moral equivalence between a drunken one-night stand and a sustained emotional and sexual affair. Jerry’s explanation for his behavior is a self-pitying rant about aging. Lucy’s monologue concerns having her entire career yanked out from under her by her protégé. One of these things is not like the other.

The rift in the marriage boils down to Jerry’s bruised ego after being contradicted by his wife. Never mind that she was right, she must still claim fault for failing to support him unquestioningly. It is not enough that Lucy loses everything she has worked for. She is then humiliated about her age by a stranger in a dressing room. And even that is not enough. We are treated to Shaun explaining that he prefers older women because they are easier and less demanding, and that he does not really mind sagging breasts, while Jerry lounges on the couch, smirking.

Rebecca Spence, who was also the best part of my previous least favorite show of 2026, deserves awards. Simply getting through this script with her dignity intact would be accomplishment enough. That she makes Lucy feel like a fully realized human being for most of the play is remarkable.

Let us never speak of this again.

The quotes are from memory and may not be exact. The first may be misattributed to Lucy instead of Jerry. It hardly matters. Whoever said it deserves hazard pay.

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦

photos by Justin Barbin

Fault
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
The Yard, 800 E Grand Ave, Chicago
Tues at 7:30; Wed at 1 & 7:30; Thurs-Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2:30 & 7:30; Sun at 2:30
ends on May 24, 2026
for tickets ($64 and up), call 312.595.5600 or visit Chicago Shakes

for more shows, visit Theatre in Chicago

✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦ ✦