‘The Qualms’ a new play full of tired old ideas

Before discussing all that is off-putting about The Qualms, the smug but vacuous play by Bruce Norris now in its world premiere at Steppenwolf Theatre, a definition might be in order. The dictionary explains the title as “uneasy feelings of doubt, worry, or fear, especially about one’s own conduct; a misgiving.” It is derived from the Old English “cwealm” (death or plague) and related to the Old High German “qualm” (despair). Now, to the char-grilled meat of the matter: Had I taken my seat at Steppenwolf not knowing The Qualms was a new play, I would have thought someone had opened a time capsule from the late 1960s and decided to give the script an airing for laughs, or that some grad student who had just encountered Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice — Paul Mazursky’s 1969 film about middle-class couples engaged in spouse-swapping in the heat of the sexual revolution — had decided to give it a contemporary reworking. And the response would have been: Why bother? It’s all so old, so obvious.