Calm before a storm: Gidion’s Knot builds with suspense, revelations

According to legend, the Gordion knot was an intricate, unsolvable knot on whose undoing a kingdom hung: Alexander the Great finally undid it by slashing it in half, rather than figuring out how to unknot it. Now, we use the phrase to refer to an intractable problem – one that is solved only by brute or cheating means, by ignoring rather than solving the intricacies of the problem. Such an impossibly complex problem is fifth grader Gidion, the subject of a fraught parent-teacher conference, in Joanna Adams’ harrowing, very taut Gidion’s Knot, directed by Cait Robinson for the Dramatic Repertory Company.

Our setting is the very orderly classroom of Miss Heather Clark (Amanda Huotari), in a Chicago suburb. The trappings of Heather’s room (Stacey Koloski’s super set of elementary-school realism) suggest barest glints of a wider adult world contained in the neat rows of cork boards and cubbies: In addition to the requisite motivational posters of generic eagles, Heather has hung a list of spelling words like “judicious” and “extradition,” as well as illustrations of mythological figures — Shiva, Anubis, Ares — and a student-made poster about Alexander and the Gordian knot.