Snow, a drama by the fast-rising 37-year-old playwright Tom Szentgyorgyi, is being performed by the Next Theatre in Evanston, IL, through Dec. 13.

The play is about a middle-aged couple in a long-stale marriage who find themselves trapped in their car during a severe snowstorm.

Szentgyorgyi (pronounced "Saint George") began his career as literary manager at the Manhattan Theatre Club and associate artistic director of the Denver Center Theatre Company.

His two earlier plays, Dinosaur Dreams and A Family Man, received much critical acclaim in various productions around the country. In 1994 critic Richard Christiansen called A Family Man "the strangest, quirkiest, most unsettling and most original drama."

In a recent interview in The Chicago Tribune, the playwright spoke about Snow: "I wanted to suggest two characters who stopped listening a long time ago and who have argued so much that at some point the words have ceased to have any meaning for them. Yet in the course of this final adventure, if you want to call it that, they do learn to talk to each other again, and memory no longer is just a blunt instrument used to bludgeon someone else, but a source of warmth." The play stars Mary Ann Thebus and James Deuter. The director is Sarah Tucker.

For tickets to Snow, at the Next Theatre Company on Noyes St. In Evanston, call (847) 475-1875.

-- By Rebecca Paller