By Anna Klos,Dmitry Samarov

Copyright chicagoreader

A giant picnic basket (think Yogi Bear) sits on an otherwise bare stage. A young person sleeps in front of it. Three other young people enter the scene, then split into two couples and mime lovemaking while intoning churchy songs. A woman in a diaphanous dress emerges from the basket. She says she’s the ghost of an aborted fetus who’s come back to haunt the young woman, as well as the other three, for the choices they’ve made.

Suz Evans’s Ghost Fetus, directed by Anna Klos in its world premiere at Trap Door Theatre, is a series of disconnected scenes meant to evoke the struggles of queer couples in a small, intolerant Christian community. These are performed through song, movement, and occasional dialogue.

Ghost FetusThrough 9/27: Thu–Sat 8 PM; Trap Door Theatre, 1655 W. Cortland, 773-384-0494, trapdoortheatre.com, $22

I have no doubt of the sincerity of the playwright and admire the commitment of the performers, but I couldn’t connect either emotionally or intellectually to anything shown. The trouble starts with the oversize picnic basket. We’re told it’s meant to represent a woman’s body and what it carries, but also reminds a character of a basket her grandmother gave her; then she goes on to say she carried the remains of her aborted child in it. This basket becomes a kind of moving target, standing in for whatever the characters are talking about, which left me completely confused.

There’s a violent death toward the end, but no real resolution to much of what’s been shown. This is a bunch of thoughts and feelings needing a much sturdier container.