1:20 - no intermission
A slight comic fantasy with a bizarre twist
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Storyline: Three couples struggle with desires and commitment. A married couple face strife as she tries to simplify her life by getting rid of extraneous physical possessions while he plies her with gifts. A lesbian couple think they will live happily ever after if only the smoker in the pair could quit. The strangest of the couples, however, is a gay man who thinks he has found the love of his life but his intended is, literally, a shark he first saw swimming in the giant tank at the aquarium.

Bock is a Canadian-born playwright now working in San Francisco, where he revels in the title "a gay playwright." He says "it's who I am!" He wrote The Thugs which won a 2006 Obie Award. Swimming in the Shallows brought him a 2006 nomination for the GLAAD (Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Award for theater which features fair, accurate and inclusive representation of gay people. He's got two new plays premiering in New York this season. This is the Potomac Region premiere of this play and it gives Catalyst and Fortier a chance to try something a bit lighter than their usual fare but still feature a sense of the off-the-wall or unusual which seems to attract their attention. At its essence, it is a "be careful what you wish for" play that mines the topic for quirky humor. At just about the length of a movie, and with Catalyst's pricing policy making a ticket only 75 cents more than a movie at the nearest cinema (Union Station theatres now charge $9.25 for evening movies), this diversion is competitive with a light "date flick."

Christopher Janson and Patrick Bussink team up as the cross-species pair. Janson avoids overdoing affectations as the openly gay man who has a history of short love affairs that constitute not much more than one night stands, and Bussink manages to look appealing in his fin-equipped wet suit, always moving at least just a bit because, as we all know, a shark needs to keep moving in order to keep water flowing through his gills. There is an honest sense of sexual chemistry between them which helps make this portion of the multi-couple, interconnected-stories play work fairly well.

The same-species couples are Scott Bailey and Ellen Young as the married heterosexual couple and September Marie Fortier and Adrienne Nelson as a lesbian couple struggling with nicotine addiction. Ms. Fortier's performance seems driven by just how strong the urge to smoke has become for each scene which makes her plight completely understandable to anyone who has taken up smoking and then tried to stop.

Written by Adam Bock. Directed by Scott Fortier. Design: Tom Donahue (set) Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Brian S. Allard (lights) David Lamont Wilson (sound) Joe Shymanski (photography) Carey Stipe (stage manager). Cast: Scott Bailey, Patrick Bussink, September Marie Fortier, Christopher Janson, Adrienne Nelson, Ellen Young.

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Running time 2:10  - one intermission
A stage adaptation of Kafka's unfinished novel
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Storyline: A mid-level bank official is informed that he is under arrest, but no one will let him know the charge against him and he isn't detained or kept from going to the office to conduct business. He's advised to hire a lawyer, but the lawyer proves to be little help, principally just telling him how serious the matter is and how much he needs his services - but never actually mounting a defense or even sharing any information with him about the case against him.

Catalyst produced another stage adaptation of a Kafka novel two years ago. Metamorphosis, the story of a man who awakes one morning to learn not that he's under arrest for an unspecified crime but, rather, that he's turning into an insect. That production was directed by Jim Petosa and featured a script by Steven Burkoff and the highly emotional leading performance of Scott Fortier. That this production is less compelling and less satisfying than that earlier one might be in part because it is being directed by its own author - always a tricky business because the interchange between author and director is an important part of a work's premiere presentation. Or, it may just be that Gallu's script isn't as strong as Burkoff's, that his direction isn't as effective as Petosa's or that Johnson is no Fortier. But, truth to tell, it seems that it is a result of the fact that Kafka's earlier story is more suited to a theatrical presentation than is this later piece which was never actually completed in Kafka's lifetime. It was assembled from his papers and published after his death.

Gallu's script takes advantage of Kafka's descriptive writing about the many minor characters which populate the accused man's world. This gives the talented group of supporting actors something to sink their teeth into as they move from character to character. Ashley Ivey is particularly good at distinguishing between the three specific characters he's portraying - especially that of another man caught up in the maw of the judicial system who has been completely worn down by five years of bureaucratic nonsense. Grady Weatherford is distinctive as the artist who, having painted the portraits of many of the judges of the court, claims to know a good deal about how they work. Christopher Janson and Jim Jorgensen pair up to make the arresting officials (Police? Bailiff? Sheriff?) something of a vaudeville team, while Ellen Young is strongest as the accused man's landlady.

Catalyst has made a habit of filling the east end of the confining space of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop's black box theater with striking structures for their shows, and Michael D'Addario's elegantly efficient set for this production is no exception. Two large rear-projection screens flank a triangular playing space throughout most of the evening. But when the world begins to close in on the hero, the walls pivot inward to literally close in on him. Throughout the production, projections, designed by D'Addario, expand the world being represented by revealing details of time and place and providing labels for the scenes. (There are actually three projection surfaces, for D'Addario also uses the back wall as a screen at times.) Adding atmosphere to the piece is a fine soundscape from Brendon Vierra.

Directed and adapted for the stage by Christopher Gallu. Based on the novel by Franz Kafka. Directed by Christopher Gallu. Design: Michael D'Addario (set and video) Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Jason Cowperthwaite (lights) Brendon Vierra (sound) Joe Shymanski (photography) Lacey Talero (stage manager). Cast: Catherine Deadman, Ashley Ivey, Christopher Janson, Dave Johnson, Jim Jorgensen, Elizabeth Richards, Grady Weatherford, Ellen Young and the voice of Ralph Cosham.

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Running time 2:10 - one intermission
A strong cast in a meandering play of perception versus reality
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Storyline: Prologue and Epilogue present a play about which they cannot agree. They can't even agree on its title. Prologue says it is "The Snow Romance." Epilogue says it is "The Flu Season." It concerns Man and Woman. They meet and fall in love. Or not. Man and Woman happen to be in a hospital for psychiatric patients. Can love flourish among the patients? Can they know their own minds - and hearts? The presence of Doctor and Nurse isn't going to effect the course of true love. But, then, true love isn't going to be allowed to effect orderly administration of the hospital either. Which play will prevail? Will either play prevail?

Eno seems more interested in the process of storytelling than in stories. Here he shifts rapidly from one view to another, while giving the audience careful clues as to which view is the topic of the moment before moving on to another. His language is precisely vague or vaguely imprecise - depending on the speaker. Catalyst would have served its audience better had they included some information about Eno in the program. (Why do we often get biographical information on everyone but the playwright?) For the record, Eno is a Massachusetts born, New York based playwright whose best known play, the strangely titled solo-performance piece THOM PAIN (based on nothing) was nominated for a Pulitzer, and who has received fellowships from both the Guggenheim and the Edward Albee Foundation. His plays are noted for wordplay and a concentration on structure.

Dan Via and Gillian Porter are the vulnerable, insecure couple who oh-so-tentatively reach out for intimacy. Via is good at the buttoned up restraint of the part and Porter makes her character's need for some human contact and affection painfully clear. Jim Jorgensen, who is so very good at awkward silence as well as the actual delivery of lines, is the Doctor, and Ellen Young gets the Nurse's conflict between the urge to nurture and the devotion to proper procedure just right. The play within a play aspect of the piece gives Alexander Strain and Michael John Casey, as Prologue and Epilogue, plenty of pithy lines as they struggle with each other for control of the play, debating its meaning and shifting its focus.

This is the second set that Tom Donahue has designed for the challenging space Catalyst uses at the Capital Hill Arts Workshop, and the second time he has produced an environment that allows the director freedom to move the cast about in the world of the play efficiently, creating different locales without breaking the flow. David C. Ghatan's effective use of the lights he can cram into the space helps a good deal too. Since the theater doesn't have any space above the stage, he's constrained both in how many lights he can use and where he can place them, but he keeps coming up with admirable designs despite the limitations.

Written by Will Eno. Directed by Jessica Burgess. Design: Tom Donahue (set) Debra Kim Sivigny (costumes) Jennifer Yu (properties)  David C. Ghatan (lights) Erik Trester (sound) Joe Shymanski (photography) Ellen Houseknecht (stage manager). Cast: Michael John Casey, Jim Jorgensen, Ghillian Porter, Alexandrer Strain, Dan Via, Ellen Young.

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Running time 2:00 - no intermission
A confusing contemporary drama
v Includes some strongly sexual language

Storyline: Two waifs outside an internet café in an unspecified but probably third-world city at an unspecified but probably current time. They see the connection to the world wide web as a link to the outside world and it stimulates hopes that they might bridge the gap between the reality outside the café and the wonder world beyond.

Callaghan is said to have developed her play after noting illicit internet cafés in China and reading about the case of two teenagers who set fire to one when they were kicked out. Her interest doesn't seem to be specific to any one city, country, region or continent - just the general prospect of places where life is rough and dreams of a life in some removed, rich and idyllic place can be fed by imperfect communication. Once it was Hollywood movies spreading the idea that everyone in America was either a gangster or a star. Now it is the internet that disseminates even wilder concepts. But, then, as Trekkie Monster tells Kate Monster on Avenue Q, "The Internet Is For Porn" and the content of the traffic in this café isn't quite as uplifting and edifying as, say, the daily content of Potomac Stages.

The pair outside the café are Rigina Aquino, so good in Dog Sees God at Studio's Secondstage, and Casie Platt, who was so very funny as a librarian reading scary stories to kids in Shawn Nothrip's Cautionary Tales for Adults in the 2005 edition of Madcap's Winter Carnival of New Works. They team up to deliver the baby talkish language that Callaghan wrote for the girls with an earnestness that almost makes you believe it is their natural form of communication. Still, many of the lines are descriptions in nearly nursery rhyme patois of the sleaziest of porno, so it is difficult to process it as childlike innocence. Scott Fortier is the misfit from the other side of the cultural divide: an adult seeming to study these children for some unspecified reason. His performance is stylishly satisfying with ticks and quirks enough to make any kid wonder about the older generation.

Catalyst has a strong tradition of striking use of the space in their small theater and set designer Nicholas Vaughan continues that tradition with his seemingly helter skelter construction of the detritus of the digital age. Erik Trester's projections hint at the topics of the traffic in the café without becoming a distracting parade of porn. However, with the Washington Post reporting a new program by the Government of China to stamp out that "grave social problem," addiction to the internet, Catalyst certainly has an up-to-the-minute topic. Talk about "ripped from the headlines!"

Written by Sheila Callaghan. Directed by Shirley Serotsky. Design: Nicholas Vaughan (set) Deb Sivigny (costumes) Jennifer Yu (properties) Erik Trester (projections) Jason Cowperthwaite (lights) William Burns (sound) Lacey Talero (stage manager). Cast: Regina Aquino, Scott Fortier, Casie Platt.

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Running time 2:35 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick as a superb production of a rarely seen historical farce
Winner of the Ushers' Favorite Show Award for October  
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: While projections of newsreel footage from the Nazi regime of Adolph Hitler make crystal clear the real meaning of what is going on, the live cast adopts the style of a Hollywood gangster movie to perform the story of the rise of a dictator to power through bluster, fear and violence -  including arson (think Reichstag fire) murder (think the shooting of Hitler's henchman Ernst Rohm) and the elimination of competition (think the annexation of Austria).

Bertholt Brecht wrote this caustic farce of the rise of a Hitler-like despot at the height of World War II in Europe while he waited for a visa to enter the United States. He had fled Germany and roamed Europe as the area not under Nazi control became smaller and smaller. He also visited the United States on a tourist visa for a while, and while here, fell under the spell of the gangster movie aesthetic found in the films of James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. This play, by the author of The Threepenny Opera, Galileo and The Caucasian Chalk Circle, was so strong and so troubling at the time that it wasn't performed until 1958. This may have been in part because the wound of World War was too fresh. It may also have been that farcical parables are just so outside of the mainstream of popular theater that many are turned off by the odd nature of the piece. The translation performed here is not credited but retains the hexameter verse structure that Brecht used to establish a semi-classical feel. Director Christopher Gallu gives the presentation the period feel it requires (although there is a short anachronistic lapse with the inclusion of a thumbs up gesture too reminiscent of the photos out of Abu Ghraib - or of Molly Smith's recent staging of the similar period Cabaret.) 

McKenzie is supported by a cast turning in sharply stylized performances of note, especially John Tweel in the role that represents Hitler henchman, Ernst Rohm, named here, just in case you miss the point, "Ernesto Roma," and Grady Weatherford as Dogsborough, the politician brought down by the ambitious Ui. Adding to the atmosphere of the piece is original music by Chris Royal played behind the scenes by three members of the cast, Monalisa Arias, Jason McCool and Andrew Price.

Sometimes adversity and not necessarily necessity is the mother of invention. Surely few theater companies have a space so challenging to a set designer than Catalyst does with its tiny performance space that is easily three times as long as it is wide. No flies. No wings. No backstage to speak of. What is a set designer to do? Catalyst has a track record of bringing out the best in set designers, and Giorgos Tsappas adds another fabulous design that uses every inch of space in a black-and-off-white cubist construction that is pushed into multiple configurations while serving as a surface for Mark Anduss' projections of newsreel footage of Hitler's rise to power which add a great deal to the visual excitement of the show. Tsappas' structure is a bit awkward for the cast to shove around (perhaps they could have gotten better casters?) which draws attention to their slipping out of character to act as stage hands but, once positioned, the compositions are varied and supremely functional for such a confined space.

Written by Bertold Brecht. Directed by Christopher Gallu. Music composed by Chris Royal. Projections by Mark Anduss. Design: Giorgos Tsappas (set) Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Jennifer Yu (properties) Jason Cowperthwaite (lights) Joe Shymanski (photography) Sharon King (stage manager). Cast: Monalisa Arias, Jason McCool, Scott McCormick, Scot McKenzie, Andrew Price, Elizabeth Richards, John Tweel, Grady Weatherford.

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Reviewed May 6
Running time 2:05 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages pick for a searing emotional experience
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Storyline: Three men are imprisoned, chained to the wall of a basement in Lebanon with no real understanding of why, or what will become of them. One is English, one Irish and one American. They each react differently to the terror of their situation and come to know and rely on one another - until one is killed by their captors and another released.

The inspiration for the play was the case of Brian Keenan, taken hostage in 1986 in Lebanon where he taught at the American University of Beirut, and not released until 1990. While playwright Frank McGuinness changes the names of the prisoners, much of the set up to the story is true to history. It isn't history that concerns him so much, however, as it is the question of how the human spirit handles such terror and deprivation. That is at the heart of the script as these three men search their psyches for coping mechanisms that will work for them. Do they trust each other or avoid further disaster through silence and secrecy? How, then, can the bond that is inevitably forged survive separation either through release or death?

Baldwin, Janson and Via deliver an impressive trio of performances, individually and as an ensemble. For the record, Janson is the American, Baldwin the Brit and Via the Irishman, but the nationality is neither the issue nor the defining characteristic for any of them. They have more in common than they have differences - their plight connects them and a bond is formed that is both stronger and different from any other, at least during the captivity. They come to rely on each other to such an extent that each is someone to watch over the others. It makes a fascinating and serious topic for consideration - are prisoners better off with companions as shown here or in a solitary confinement as shown over on H Street? See them both and discuss.

While the visual design elements for the production are all first rate and make substantial contributions to the experience, it is the more subtle touch of sound designer Mark Anduss that works the greatest wonder. A nearly inaudible clanking and rumbling seems to come from the pipes which run through Cooper's marvelous set of the isolated basement in which the characters are imprisoned. The sound not only emphasizes the depths to which they have been relegated but occasionally hints at the possibility that others are imprisoned just a stone wall away.

Written by Frank McGuinness. Directed by Christopher Gallu. Design: Alexander Cooper (set) Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Jason Cowperthwaite (lights) Mark Anduss (sound) Joe Shymanski (photography) Sara Griffin (stage manager). Cast: Cecil E. Baldwin, Christopher Janson, Dan Via.

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Reviewed February 4
Running time 1:40 - no intermission
A delight for lovers of language
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Storyline: Three generations of women - Grandmother, Mother and Daughter - reveal their views of their relationships with each other when gathered in response to the grandmother's suffering a stroke and requiring support. Gradually, the reasons for the estrangement between the grandmother and the mother become clear as do the bonds that skip a generation.

Each of the three actresses establish individual characters but the three have much in common. Each is highly intelligent and each sets a high standard for herself. Lindsay Haynes is the youngest of the three, the spelling bee champion who won with the word "eleemosynary - having to do with charity, charitable activities or alms." She gets the devotion to the grandmother who raised her and her frustration with her mother just right. Ellen Young, as the grandmother, is delightfully erudite and demonstrates a keen delight in learning and pursuing the intellectual side of life. She also embodies some of the unorthodox values of a grown hippie quite nicely.

It is Kathleen Coons who provides the spice to keep the wholesomeness and affection between the other two from being either cloying or too nice to be believed. She does this not only with the words of Blessing, but with expressions and body posture that are fun to watch. Her body says "ah, Mom!" in so many ways, especially in a fabulous first scene as she recalls the day her mother forced her to don a pair of wood and cloth wings and try to fly - "Flap harder, honey!" Adding insult to potential injury, her mother recorded the whole thing on film! What's a girl to do? Her dilemma is compounded by a particular trait that seems to affect all three but which is most pronounced in her. As she explains "I have trouble with my memory. It can't forget anything." A cruel trick of nature, that.

Milagros Ponce de León carries the image of that early experience with attempted flight over into the set design, an assembly of wing-like forms that serves both as a playing space and as a visual metaphor. Under slightly over-active lighting from Alexander Cooper and with sharply individualistic costumes designed by Gail Stewart beach, the women form the ensemble of family while retaining distinctive personalities that make their relationships worth putting into words.

Written by Lee Blessing. Directed by Christopher Janson. Design: Milagros Ponce de León (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) Alexander Cooper (lights) Matthew Nielson (sound and music) Joe Shymanski (photography) Jess W. Speaker, III (stage manager). Cast: Kathleen Coons, Lindsay Haynes, Ellen Young.

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Reviewed September 17
Running time 1:25 - no intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a unique physical performance supported by a quality ensemble
Click here to buy the novella

Storyline: The pressures of supporting his parents and sister as the only wage earner in the family finally get too heavy for a young man. After five years of never missing a day at work, he wakes one morning to realize he is beginning to metamorphosize into an insect. His family's reaction and that of his employer are completely self-centered and only serve to increase the pressure which has caused his condition.

Petosa's staging here is sharp and starkly beautiful in the confined space of the long and narrow, tiny theater at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. Petosa uses the depth of the playing space to move the action forward and back giving a sense of spaciousness where there is very little space. Indeed, there are times when this very "in your face" approach almost becomes "in your lap." Petosa is again working with set and lighting designer Alexander Cooper whose starkly antiseptic construction of girders and chain link make a memorable metaphor for the industrial age pressures afflicting Fortier's character.

The trio of family members are fine as well. Valerie Leonard and Nigel Reed make the parents' concentration on their own financial stake in their son's health more repulsive than any insect. Leonard softens the innate selfishness of the mother's reactions with just a touch of repressed maternal instinct. Reed is particularly good at the hobble his character adopts to avoid any demands, but he sports long side whiskers that are too obviously stage makeup for such an intimate space.

The family unit includes September Marie Fortier in an outstanding performance as the sister who seems to be her brother's only defender, and becomes his only contact with the outside world. Her final rejection ("we must get rid of it") is explosive. James O. Dunn takes on two roles (the employer and the lodger to whom the family rents their son's room - explaining the presence of their bug/son in the home by saying simply "we keep a pet"). Dunn makes each a distinct individual passing briefly through this incredibly intriguing world.

Written by Steven Berkoff based on the novella by Franz Kafka. Directed by Jim Petosa. Design: Alexander Cooper (set and lights) Kathleen Geldard (costumes) Mark Anduss (sound) Sarah Coleman (stage manager). Cast: James O. Dunn, Scott Fortier, September Marie Fortier, Valerie Leonard, Nigel Reed.

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Reviewed January 15
Running time 2:25 - one intermission
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: With action split between British colonial Africa in the 1880s and a London teeming with ambiguity in the 1970s, the relationships within a family and the people who constitute their world are called into question as gender, race and age relationships are mixed up with abandon.

Churchill is well known for her challenging works. Three of her plays walked away with Obie Awards as Best New Play Off-Broadway (Top Girls, 1982, Serious Money, 1987 and this one in 1981) and her Far Away challenged audiences at Studio Theatre last year in a highly debated production. This play mixes techniques she has used before in creating a world filled with confusions and with clues. Her theme, the human tendency to try to live up to expectations even when those expectations may be beyond each person's capacity and even include conflicting elements, is both emphasized and illustrated through mixing up the casting as well as the characters. Thus the role of the wife is played by a man, the role of the black servant by a white man, the role of the girl child by a grown man and that of the boy child by a woman. Then, as act II takes up the stories of the characters as archetypes but not really as characters, a century has gone by but some characters have aged while others have shifted identities completely.

The rock around which all this confusion swirls is Dan Via as the patriarch of the family. He carries off that duty with aplomb. As his wife, Jesse Terrill pulls off the neat trick of not making his cross-dressing assignment seem camp or cute. He's just natural, which is what it is all about. Tricia McCauley makes the transition from young man of the past to young woman of the "present" without batting and eye. Bill Gillett makes the most complete transition (from grown male black slave to white girl child) with energy and menace shifting to beguiling innocence that is simply marvelous to watch.

The tiny space of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop imposes a great challenge to designers and directors alike. Giorgos Tsappas' abstract setting starts the challenge for the audience even before the play begins. On a stage painted with the British Union Jack and backed by a cloud filled blue sky are movable partitions of a color akin to the African veldt in the dry season, but striped in black. In contrast with this abstraction are the costumes of Franklin Labovitz which are true to time, place and character down to tiny details like cravats, ribbons and, in the case of Gillett's little girl, ill-fitting tights. All the elements of design help keep the relationships straight as the performers keep the energy level high, and Wines keeps it all straight so the audience can begin to ponder the issues Churchill raises. It makes for challenging theater.

Written by Caryl Churchill. Directed by Halo Wines. Design: Giorgos Tsappas (set) Franklin Labovitz (costumes) Meaghan Toohey (properties) John P. Woodey (lights) Clay Teunis (sound) Christopher Janson (photography) Laura Smith (stage manager). Cast: Bill Gillett, George Grant, Tricia McCauley, Elizabeth Richards, Jesse Terrill, Dan Via, Ellen Young.

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Reviewed September 18
Running time 2:20
t A Potomac Stage pick for superb design, direction and acting
Winner of the Ushers' Favorite Show Award for October, 2004
Click here to buy the Script

Storyline:  History records that the deformed John Merrick was plucked from a Victorian freak show to be protected and studied in a hospital in 1884. He became a mover in London’s high society before his death in 1890. Bernard Pomerance’s Tony Award winning play explores serious issues of social values and human worth.

It was the playwright's fortuitous choice to have the horribly deformed "elephant man" portrayed by an actor without any help from makeup or special prosthetic devices. Because the concentration on Merrick's humanity is achieved through this lack of artifice, it requires an actor of inordinate talent, skill and taste. Some chose to play it with only a hint of deformity, usually with a limp and a twisted arm. Here Scott Fortier twists much more than an arm. In the early scene where Dr. Treves presents his case at the London hospital where he practices, Fortier's posture and facial muscles take on the characteristics described. While none of the "grotesque protuberances" actually grow on Fortier's slight frame, his arm appears to shrivel up into his chest, his head seems to fall of its own weight over onto one shoulder and his face contorts to the extent that he is only barely able to speak. Yet speak he does, delivering with apparent difficulty but great dignity - and not a little humor - the lines Pomerance gives Merrick to reveal the intellect, the poise and the innate humor of the man. It is the mark of Fortier's own intellect, poise and humor that, having saddled his performance with the weight of its own version of elephantiasis, he manages to let the humanity of his subject shine through.

Equally impressive is the work of Peter Finnegan who creates a more fully rounded, substantial and sympathetic character as the doctor who sees more in Merrick's case than a medical curiosity. His own doubts about the value of his chosen profession, the adequacy of his skills and ultimately his own values surface subtly but substantially as the play progresses, making him much more than the narrator and dramatic convenience the role often is in lesser hands. The rest of the cast double or even triple up on smaller roles with Valerie Leonard, Jesse Terrill and John Tweel contributing nicely tuned contributions and James Konicek introducing the Potomac Region to his own strengths developed through the classical acting academy at San Diego's Old Globe and two seasons with Shenandoah Shakespeare. Among the characters he creates is a marvelously pompous Bishop.

Music has always been a feature of the play. The original Broadway production had a cellist playing works of Bach, Saint-Saëns, Elgar and others while the revival had incidental music composed by Philip Glass. Petosa uses an on-stage oboist, Jin-Young (Janice) Shin whose graceful presence adds one more facet to the reflections surrounding the action as she performs the pieces Jesse Terrill has composed for the production. It adds a period-proper feeling to this story of Victorian London and adds to the atmospheric feel of the marvelous set and Debra Kim Sivigny's fine costumes.

Written by Bernard Pomerance. Directed by Jim Petosa. Design: Alexander Cooper (set and lights) Debra Kim Sivigny (costumes) Suzen Mason (properties) Dan Ribaudo (sound) Jesse Terrill (original music) Ben Premeaux (photography) Zoia Wiseman (stage manager). Cast: James Konicek, Valerie Leonard, Peter Finnegan, Scott Fortier, Jesse Terrill, John Tweel, Ellen Young. Musician: Jin-Young (Janice) Shin.

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Reviewed May 15
Running time1 hour 35 minutes
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a high count of laughs per admission dollar
Click here to buy the Script

Storyline: In the bedrooms of three couples of varying levels of commitment - one gay, two somewhat heterosexual - confusion reigns over mistaken identities, mixed up allegiances and panic over the fact that one bed has a dead body in it. In the gay bedroom one man wants the other to move in after a one night stand. In another, a couple who fill their days with protests can't remember what this week's cause is. In the third, a soap opera actress worries about her looks, her job and - oh, yes - the fact that she shot her bedmate.

Nicky Silver has become a hot property over the last decade with delightfully politically incorrect plays like The Food Chain which takes on both obesity and anorexia and Pterodactyls, a black farce dealing with family relationships under the stresses of AIDS, gender confusion, alcoholism and much more. Twice nominated for the Charles MacArthur Award for Outstanding New Play in the Helen Hayes process here (both for Woolly Mammoth productions) he won the award for Free Will and Wanton Lust in 1994. Not all of his works are as focused on using humor to make his points, but they are all known for his facility in constructing dialogue. He blends sharp observation with a certain pithiness, rarely an extraneous word. Silver can come up with sharp dialogue that, in its very precision, isolates a thought as if in a spotlight for just long enough to make a point, get a laugh or set up a concept. Witness the burning question:  "Hispanic gays. Black lesbians. Who suffers more?" One more word would have killed the moment (and the laugh).

Jesse Terrill gets things started with a black-out monologue as the lonely gay man who may have finally found true love in the person of Scott Kerns who wakes in a later scene and reveals his professional status as a prostitute with a total lack of inhibition - "Wonderful! I love a project!" enthuses Terrill. As his sister, the soap opera queen, Allyson Currin progresses from a totally self-absorbed view of small problems ("you make me feel small just because I once owned a fur coat") to a self-absorbed view of bigger problems - she just killed her boyfriend. Ah, but the boyfriend is, in fact, very much alive over in Eva Salvetti's apartment (Salvetti manages to maintain just the right earnestness while slipping into slogans from recent protest marches even when she gets them wrong. "Free Nelson Mandela!" she demands, only to be thunderstruck to find out that Mandela has already been freed.) Jason Lott is that wandering boyfriend who might be dead if he'd been in the other bed during the night. He's the very image of the free spirit who sees no requirement to be interested in anything but his own need of the moment.

This is the kind of tightly constructed comic play that benefits from being performed in a tightly constrained space. Not only does it help that the audience is not separated from the action by a proscenium or a raised platform, it feels right that the three bedrooms encroach on each other in Eric Licthfuss' cramped and crowded set. The audience looks through one bedroom to see the action in another one and can almost feel the actors in one room shift to the side when the actors in another lower the fold-up table from the bottom of the fold-up bed. For a play about people who are clueless about, among other things, the spatial niceties of civilized society, this works beautifully and it seems to amplify the laughter.

Written by Nicky Silver. Directed by Christopher Janson. Design: Eric Licthfuss (set) Rhonda Key (costumes) Jennifer O'Neill (properties) John P. Woodey (lights) Maya I. Robinson (sound) The Walk (music) Zoia Wiseman (stage manager). Cast: Allyson Currin. Scott Kerns, Jason Lott, Eva Salvetti, Jesse Terrill.

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Reviewed January 24
Running time 2 hours 5 minutes
t A Potomac Stages Pick for emotional intensity

Storyline: A bleak view of a future world sees 81% of the human race under the control of an all pervasive central authority under “Big Brother” which controls their surroundings, their actions and even their thoughts. One minor clerk hasn’t been completely cured of independent thought and is brought back under control through a process of torture and compulsion.

Three elements combine to create a memorable experience: a tightly constructed script, an extremely effective design and the performances of a fine cast led by Scott Fortier as the hero and Ralph Cosham as his torturer. The rest of the cast is very good as well but it is these two who have to carry the load, for theirs are the only characters who have much substance. All the rest have been dehumanized in the system to the extent that any real showing of intellectual activity or emotional depth would be dangerous.

Michael d’Addario fills one end of the small theater with platforms, siding, partitions and a movable rack. Moving the pieces into various configurations results in a wide variety of playing spaces, all of which seem very much a part of this world Orwell feared. Three large television screens are the “telescreens” that bombard the population with propaganda while monitoring their activities. D’Addario also provided the videos that are shown on those screens, while sound designer Mark K. Anduss completes the feeling with original music, some extremely effective sound effects and a nearly constant humming that emphasizes the point of a story of people reduced to mechanical functions.

Gallu’s adaptation uses the simple structure of Orwell’s plot but streamlines it even further in order to concentrate its focus on the dehumanizing society about which Orwell was warning. He retains some of the key moments of the original such as “the two minute hate” and the torture in ”room 101” but things move along briskly as they must if most important messages from the 23 chapters of Orwell’s novel are to be covered.  He cut just enough to be able to tell the important parts of the story effectively.

Directed and written by Christopher Gallu based on the novel by George Orwell. Fight choreography by Valerie Fenton and Christopher Niebling. Design: Michael D’Addario (set and video) David Ghatan (lights) Michelle Reisch (costumes) Tim King (make-up) Mark K. Anduss (music and sound) Jesse Terril (additional music) Ben Premeaux (photography) Jenn O’Neill (stage manager). Cast: Ralph Cosham, Scott Fortier, September Fortier, Tim Hattwick, Christopher Janson, Irina Koval, Elizabeth Richards, Eric Singdahlsen, Dan Via, Ellen Young.

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Reviewed September 13
Running time 1 hour 55 minutes

Storyline: The title character is a neuvo-riche scoundrel who has schemed and swindled himself into a fortune large enough to buy him entrée into society, but that society is populated by old-money scoundrels as well as would-be-rich servants and hangers on. A Baroness needs his money to maintain her lifestyle and her lover is having difficulty with the creditors as well. The servants get in the act, playing one wealthy character against another until all seems to have fallen apart. But, as you would expect, everything is not what it seems.

September Marie Fortier as the Baroness, all decked out in a 20’s style wardrobe including a smashing kimono-ish house dress, is as chipper as could be wished while her husband Scott is a mischievous servant who plots and plans in cooperation with Valerie Fenton whom he plants in the Baroness’ employ, saving her from her former job. (Seems “she worked for a couple who loved each other ... you could die of boredom in a place like that.”) Each of these and the rest of the cast do their best to generate a sense of style and a feeling of fun for the evening, but it is the arrival on stage of Richard Pelzman that provides the jolt of energy the show really needs. Pelzman, sporting at least four different checks in the suit that covers his oversize body, takes the power level up three notches as the oafish fellow who seems for a while the only one in this circle of fortune hunters who actually has any money. Never mind that he sends ridiculous poems to a lady love (says she: “no professional writer would dream of expressing himself this way” and he takes it as a compliment), dismisses arguments with “Fie, my lady, Fie! Enough of this Piffle” and lets loose with a burp as an exclamation point at the end of a sentence about manners and style.

Catalyst uses a translation by James Magruder whose excruciatingly funny book for the musical version of Marivaux’s The Triumph of Love proved his ability to use modern English in a way that is easy to follow for modern listeners but feels appropriate for historical works. Updating the setting to the 1920’s is accomplished not primarily by changes in the text but through set, costumes and sound. Giorgos Tsappas’ art deco set uses the space very well and Rhonda Key’s costumes are fun. Still, Lesage’s text had to be updated to allow one swindle to involve a luxury car rather than a coach and stallions.

Director Jesse Terrill also selected the music used to establish time and place. Place it seems to capture quite well but there is some confusion as to time. He has a marvelous hot jazz piece used for a brief choreographed scene which is just right and Cole Porter’s Let’s Misbehave from 1927 opens the second act. But he also has another nicely choreographed bit using Maurice Chevalier recording of “Louise” which didn’t appear until the very end of the 20s and the sound of Sing-Sing-Sing is a jolt as it wasn’t a hit until 1938.

Written by Alain-René Lesage. Translated by James Magruder. Directed by Jesse Terrill. Design: Giorgos Tsappas (set) Rhonda Key (costumes) Suzen Mason (properties) John P. Woody (lights) Jesse Terrill (sound) Jenn O’Neill (stage manager). Cast: Valerie Fenton, Scott Fortier, September Marie Fortier, Christopher Janson, Richard Pelzman, Ben Shovlin, Eric Singdahlsen, Wendy Wilmer.

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May 10 – June 14, 2003
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail

Reviewed May 15
Running time 1 hour 35 minutes

Storyline: As America opens war on Mexico in 1846, the naturalist and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau is imprisoned for his refusal to pay taxes which would support the war. During his single night in jail his mind runs over the events of his past -- his brief tenure as a school teacher ten years before, his time working and living with Ralph Waldo Emerson, his relationship with his brother who died five years earlier and his courtship of Ellen Seawell. 

The entire play deals with serious issues but it manages to avoid becoming tedious or overbearing until near the end. In the early going it tackles some very important philosophical ground with an admirably light touch. Humor is used to very good effect as Scott Fortier’s charmingly unaffected Thoreau teaches the school board (in the marvelously malevolent presence of Steven Kirkpatrick) as much as he teaches his students. There is an easy sibling affection between he and John Horn as his brother and an even easier sense of growing fondness between he and September Marie Fortier as the woman who would reject his proposal of marriage. Issues of race relations, slavery and human rights are held up to the light through his unmannered acceptance of his black cellmate, played with uncomplicated honesty by George Grant. There is even a sense of lightness rather than a sense of portent in his interactions with the Emerson family. Environmentalism, transcendentalism, individuality, personal responsibility, humanism -- Thoreau’s take on each of these is put in the most positive and attractive light. It is only when the text turns to pacifism and civil disobedience that the play bogs down.

Director Dan Via manages to moderate the disconnect between the sections but can’t quite overcome the heavy-handedness of its treatment of Thoreau’s pacifism. Perhaps, he didn’t want to. His “directors notes” in the program make much of the fact that this production was in preparation just as America prepared for a war in Iraq and that the issues of today bear great similarity to the issues facing Henry David Thoreau at the start of the Mexican-American War and the authors at the height of the Vietnam War when the play was written. Still, a better balance would have made for better theater.

Via and his design team do wonders with the small flexible space at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop. A central revolving platform set of the jail is surrounded by gossamer light set pieces for the scenes that take place in his mind. Sharp lighting by set and light designer David Ghatan smoothly moves the focus between scenes without falling into the trap of making the piece seem jumpy. Mark K. Anduss’ sound design is a marvelous combination of exactly right musical segments and sometimes extremely subtle sonic effects. The sound of children laughing in class, the footfalls on the street outside and the chirp of birds all help 1946 Massachusetts seem real - and his sound of an oar in water to accompany Thoreau’s courtship of Ellen as they take a canoe ride is so delicate it almost eludes notice but it works its magic.

Written by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee. Directed by Dan Via. Dialogue coaching by Steven Kirkpatrick. Design: David Ghatan (set and lights) Tracy M. Ward (costumes) Mark K. Anduss (sound) Wendy Flora (stage manager). Cast: Scott Fortier, September Marie Fortier, George Grant, John Horn, Steven Kirkpatrick, Steven Schatzow, Ellen Young.

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February 12 – March 22, 2003
Endgame

Reviewed February 12
Running time 1 hour 40 minutes

Storyline (such as it is): A day in the life of a crippled blind man, and his servant who acts as his eyes, in a deteriorating world. The man lives in his wheelchair while his parents live in trash cans. The major event of the man’s day is not the death of his mother in her trash can but, like every day, the arrival of the time for his painkilling medication. On this day, the supply of medication has run out.

Catalyst Theater Company has made its reputation through creation of atmosphere. Here again they create a world that, as strange as it may be, is consistent and complete. None of the elements seem out of touch with the others. Scenery, properties, costumes, makeup and lighting all very much feel as if they are part of the same world. The simple looking set isn’t simple at all. In the small space of the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop’s black box theater four windows, the central chair and a trash heap would seem to crowd the space. But in Thomas F. Donahue’s design, the windows frame the space, the chair dominates it and the trash heap (including the discarded computer keyboard and monitor) define it.   

The cast of four brings intensity and a continuation of that sense of consistency to the piece. Each creates a very real, distinct character in the confines of the single act. Eric Singdahlsen makes the blind cripple the energetic center of the piece while Jesse Terrill uses the humor and precision of a mime to make the servant something more than just a functionary in the cripple’s world – he is eyes, ears, limbs for him. The parents in the trash cans are Wendy Wilmer, in an all too short bit for her character dies off fairly soon, and Steven Kirkpatrick, whose stoic stare is the essence of pitiable acceptance of the unacceptable.

Becket’s plays are always marked by a concentration on language. Short, declamatory sentences carry key concepts (Cripple: “I can’t stand.” Servant: “I can’t sit.”) or explain the lack of explanation (“What time is it?” “Zero.”) Repetition helps drive important observations home (the repeated “What’s happening? “Something is taking its course.”)  Indeed, the script even includes the author's own view of theater, the exchange “What’s there to keep me here?" "The dialogue!” In Catalyst’s production, the atmosphere is in service to “The dialogue!”

Written by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Christopher Janson. Design: Thomas F. Donahue (set) Michele Reisch (costumes) Dan Ribaudo (lights) Bruce Robey (photographs). Cast: Eric Singdahlsen, Jesse Terrill, Steven Kirkpatrick, Wendy Wilmer.

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Reviewed October 3
Running time 2 hours 5 minutes
Performed at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop
Price range $10 - $20
t Potomac Stages Pick

Written by Moliére. Translation by Richard Wilbur. Directed by Jeremy Skidmore. Design: Adam Magzine (set and lights) Kate Turner-Walker (cotumes) Jesse Terrill (original music) Jennifer Mendenhall (vocal coach). Cast: Cam Magee, Tim Carlin, Dianne Cooper-Gould, Peter Wylie, September Marie Merkle, Ellen Young, Jesse Terrill, Christopher Gallu, Jim Breen, Rosanne Medina, Eduardo Placer.

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Reviewed March 22
Running time 1 hour 40 minutes

Written by Jean-Paul Sartre. Adapted from the French by Paul Bowles. Directed by Christopher Janson. Design: Adam Magazine (lights) Jesse Terrill (music) Michele Reisch (costumes) Ross A. Dippel (fight choreography.) Cast: Scott Fortier, Toni Rae Brotons, September Marie Merkle, Christopher Gallu.

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Reviewed November 28
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes

Scott Fortier, who is the artistic director of Catalyst, plays the increasingly mad Woyzeck in a carefully paced performance that ties the piece together as surely as Terrill's music does. The other nine performers are uniformly good, a rare balance that serves the play quite well. Each uses distinct postures as clues to personality and those personalities are bizarre indeed. But this is a world of insanity they are presenting. The only question is, is their strangeness the cause of or a reflection of Woyzeck’s insanity?

Written by Georg Buchner. Direction and original music by Jesse Terrill. Design: Giorgos Tsappas (set) Don Slater (lights) Michele Reisch (costumes) Deric Jones (properties.) Cast: Scott Fortier, Scott McCormick, Peter Wylie, September Marie Merkle, Maggie Glauber, Ellen Young, Richard Price, Christopher Gallu, Christopher Janson, Wendy Wilmer.