Imagine if you will... Ted and Sam. Two men with grueling and grisly occupations spend a fateful night in a hotel room. Ted attempts to come to grips with his own mortality. As he explores jarring revelations concerning the fatal state of the human condition, he encounters some very peculiar people. The freakish strangers ignite his need to seize control of his own fate. In a dichotomy of emotions, he comes to realize a violent state of inner peace at last, setting off a chain reaction that exercises his new found freedom.
 
Submitted for your approval... Thanatos, a dark and humorously twisted revelation of man's inevitable end. Only here... in the National Pastime summertime play zone.
 
National Pastime Theater was voted "Best Place in Chicago to See a Play", by the critics at New City. Playwright Ron Simonian, whose work been produced in New York and Los Angeles, is based in Kansas City. In 1996, Dado, was awarded a Citation from the Jeff Committee for her direction of Tracers. Thanatos cast includes Eric Lumbard, Andrew Rothenberg, Ed Smaron, Wesley Walker and Karen Foley.
 
Reviews
Thanatos,
National Pastime Theater
 
Good news for the Jeff Committee They can put their feet up for the rest of the year now that National Pastime has given them the best director, ensemble and production in one fell swoop. Bit National Pastime will probably get snatched since all their work is in the service of Ron Simonian's somewhat clever, passably intriguing, but ultimately inconsequential play, Thanatos. Ted, a Red Cross "catastrophe specialists" investigating yet another grisly industrial accident, is holed up in a cheap hotel with his terminally uninterested coworker Sam. Ted's career in death has produced a whopper of an existential crisis, and while Sam is off on an adulterous romp, Ted meets an exterminator, a wacky security guard, and a wacky performance artist similarly obsessed with death. Despite a knack for dialogue and an above average talent for building scenes, Simonian can't squeeze much more than easy cliches from deaths awesome mystery.
 
But you'd never know it watching director Dado's whip-smart cast, who make just about every moment of Thanatos engrossing. Dado's crisply paced, unapologetic staging strikes the perfect note of morbid frivolity, and her actors compensate for Simonian?s often stereotypical characters by crafting well-nuanced caricatures. Best of all, they understand what they want from one another at every moment, giving the play a sense of urgency it needs. in short, National pastime again reminds us what real acting and directing look like--as opposed to all the overwrought hysterics that too often rack up the awards.