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Bringing your girl home to meet dad motivates two of the five plays in this year's festival, while a less familiar ritual exposes relations between generations in another, and two others have contrasting views of very different governments. Humor, drama, confrontation and moments of self revelation are peppered through five very different plays, each quite satisfying in its own way. Of course, some are more satisfying than others, but none of the offerings this year turn out to be a dud and there are a number of fine moments to be experienced in a two-day immersion into new plays in the comfortable surroundings of this old town. Two cast members each come up with a pair of notable performances, David Emerson Toney and Anderson Matthews. The festival continues to earn the trust of theater goers who rely on it to provide quality, variety and something worth talking about all the way home.

Stylish performances in a kick of a play fill an evening with the give and take of complex family relationships as two men bring their girlfriends home to meet dad. The dad in question happens to be Potomac Region regular David Emerson Toney, who sets the standard for the evening. His presence as well as his deeply resonant voice enrich this look at the little known world of black Americans with "old money" in New England - here it is the insular island of Martha's Vineyard off Cape Cod. The family is gathering and both boys have brought girls home to meet the folks - but where is Mom? Interfamily conflicts abound, some preexisting and some that arise in this one weekend at the Cape. Then there's the back-story of the family's long time maid who is absent, with her daughter filling in. Add the complication that one son's fiancée is white while the other son's fiancée may not be making her first contact with the family, and things are definitely not what they seem. One of the fiancées is an Entomologist, who, when studying a certain kind of flying insect, glues it on a stick to record its actions - when she's finished with her "stick flies" she disposes of them and studies the record. In much the same way, the audience here has an opportunity to study these samples of prototypical family members and consider just how they relate to each other. Lydia R. Diamond, who wrote the lovely script for Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye which was so lovingly staged by the Theater Alliance two years ago, wrote this lively script. As with her earlier work, this one reveals a command of structure that is impressive. Here, she uses simultaneous scenes with cuts between overlapping conversations to keep the audience involved and intrigued.

Written by Lydia R. Diamond. Directed by Liesl Tommy. Design: Robert Klingelhoefer (set) Reggie Ray (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Matthew M. Nielson (sound) Denny Crosby (photography) Lori M. Doyle (stage manager). Cast: Joniece Abbott-Pratt, Avery Glymph,  Anne Marie Nest, Tijuana T. Ricks, Maduka Steady, David Emersion Toney.

In Greg Kotis' best known work, the Tony Award Winning Urinetown, the outlandishness of the concept is revealed at the very beginning with Officer Lockstock explaining to Little Sally "the central conceit of the show" in the opening number. Not here. Kotis's non-musical piece of outlandishness starts out fairly modestly as a comedy about a pig farmer, his unfulfilled wife, the hired hand and a visiting government inspector who is tracing the effluent of illicit sludge disposal. Kotis' humor is pleasant and even ingratiating in the early going, building running gags with gimmicks such as having all characters names starting with "T" (even the off-stage Tony and Tyrone) and building huge assemblies of exaggerated alliteration and multiple, escalating clichés. He gives little warning of the comic pandemonium that is about to break out. Break out it does, taking the audience with it. Full bodied laughter in a crowded theater is such a wonderful sound! Lee Sellars is the farmer who is more concerned with the accuracy of the count of pigs on his farm than with the needs of his frustrated wife, Andrea Cirie whose sexual chemistry in scenes with hired hand Graham Powell is strong. Anderson Matthews enters a bit farther in to the piece than the others as the EPA inspector with a gun under his suit coat, so the insanity level has already begun to percolate. Therefore, he starts off a bit more outlandishly, but still has room to escalate his own brand of madness.

Written by Greg Kotis. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Robert Klingelhoefer (set) Devon Painter (costumes) D.M. Wood (lights) Todd Campbell (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Captain Kate Murphy (stage manager). Cast: Andrea Cirie, Anderson Matthews, Graham Powell, Lee Sellers.

Well, it is Neil LaBute, after all! The man has a style and it is unmistakably his own. In fact, it becomes something more than just a style. It becomes a formula, and this solo piece, a monologue, follows the formula to the letter --  start with a common place but dramatic event. Add at least one thoroughly crafted character with quirks and foibles enough to fuel a series of revelations that beg the audience to pay attention, and assemble the clues. Mix it all within a theme that breaks at least one taboo. LaBute, who gave Potomac Region audiences a series of jolts with The Shape of Things and Fat Pig, follows the formula and delivers the guaranteed bite in just about an hour. Things are a bit formulaic, however, with everything in its proper place including the setting in the light an airy black box space in the new Center for Contemporary Art which is turned into a funeral parlor, complete with somber pre-show music, an usher dressed in the black garb of a funeral director, and a perhaps too obviously calculated performance from Kurt Zischke who shares with the mourners/audience his memories of life with the deceased, his wife.

Written by Neil LaBute. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Margaret A. McKowen (set) Leslie Sorenson (costume) Laura Wilson (stage manager). Cast: Kurt Zischke

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The conclusion of Richard Dresser's Happiness Trilogy (Augusta and The Pursuit of Happiness)  turns out to be the strongest, funniest one yet. As with the first two comedies which premiered here in previous years, he sets his tale in Maine. This time it is on the porch of a dilapidated mansion on the cliff overlooking the craggy coast of that state. The scion of a wealthy family brings his girlfriend to meet his father, not because he thinks its the right time for an introduction, but because his sister has wired that poor old dad had a stroke. Nothing is quite as expected, however. The girl friend is a union organizer who thinks her man is poor, a worker in the plant that it turns out his family owns. The boyfriend has chucked it all in order to get away from a dysfunctional family, including a sister who can't quite escape from home and a father who raises "crotchety" to a new level. The one-act play feels tight, as if a longer work had been trimmed and cut down to its essence, saving just the best material. The dialogue is sharp and funny. The scenes are functional and funny. The characters are delineated and funny. Director Charles Towers' contributions are clear here. He has many premieres under his belt, so he knows about the final polish a premiere can provide, and he's directed a hand full of Dresser's other plays including the first two episodes in this trilogy. The cast is strong across the board, but the work of Anderson Matthews as the irascible dad and Andrea Cirie as the daughter with the sharpest tongue in the family stand out. It is performed in the round in the small Studio Theatre where sightlines are a bit restricted for about half a dozen seats. Since it is general admission seating, try to get there early enough to be able to select a seat where the screen door you see as you enter the space isn't between you and the action.

Written by Richard Dresser. Directed by Charles Towers. Design: Robert Klingelhoefer (set) Devon Painter (costumes) Colin K. Bills (ligths) Matthew M. Nielson (sound) Denny Crosby (photography) Lori M. Doyle (stage manager). Cast: Andrea Cirie, Anderson Matthews, Kelsey J. Nash, Anne Marie Nest.

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Starkly staged and crisply played, founding producing director Ed Herendeen's mounting of  J. T. Rogers' exploration of the moral imperative to oppose oppression and genocide stakes out a feeling of intensity from the beginning, partly because the audience knows what must be coming. This is the play, after all, that was publicized as a look at the genocide of Rwanda. Just in case you haven't got a handle on the history of a Central African country of about ten million where, just after the period of the play in 1994, a wave of unspeakable violence resulted in the slaughter of some eight hundred thousand citizens, mostly of the Tutsi tribe, by the Hutu majority, the program comes stuffed with an eight page essay by Rogers putting it all in perspective and telling "What Came After" the fictional events of the play. In many ways, the story related in the essay is more astonishing and compelling than the play. However, the material in the play is strong enough to keep its seventeen-member cast busy sinking their teeth into well delineated characters caught in a nearly unfathomable point in history. The action takes place over a few days just at the start of the genocidal tidal wave. Lee Sellers does a fine job with the hardest single role in the piece, making the American scholar who naively brings his black second wife (Tijuana T. Ricks) and his white son (Graham Powell) along with him as if on holiday. He's there to work on a book on which he's seems to have done enough research on to at least understand that the country isn't a very safe place to bring his family. David Emerson Toney is impressive as a government official and Maduka Steady makes the family servant an interesting character. Making a key contribution to the impact of the evening is Todd Campbell whose sound design is all enveloping.

Written by J.T. Rogers. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Robert Klingelheofer (set) costumes (Reggie Ray) D.M. Wood (lights) Todd Campbell (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Captain Kate Murphy (stage manager). Cast: Joniece Abbbott-Pratt, Ayaunna Bibb,, Chris Boykin, Rodney Creech, Avery Glymph, Michael Goodwin, Sipiwe Moyo, Graham Powell, Tijuana T. Ricks, Lee Sellers, Maduka Steady, David Emerson Toney, Kurt Zischeke.

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July 6 - 29, 2007
2007 Festival
Reviewed by Brad Hathaway

Each year’s festival seems to have one really moving production, two very good shows and one evening that falls somewhere between “well, at least they tried” and “what were they thinking?” This year’s festival is better than that, with two really fabulous gut-wrenching theatrical experiences: My Name is Rachel Corrie was all but guaranteed to be memorable because of its history of controversy, and Lee Blessing’s thought-provoking look at a very contemporary issue on the hazy boundary between freedom and security, Lonesome Hollow. There is one very pleasant, if hardly extraordinary comedy exploring a set of challenging issues in an entertaining way, Richard Dresser’s The Pursuit of Happiness. As is practically inevitable in a program that takes risks, one effort doesn’t quite work, a mixed bag of a riff on A Thousand and One Arabian Nights called 1001. If you have the time and money to take a two-day, over-night excursion to see all four, you will have a very pleasant and memorable getaway. If, on the other hand, you can only sneak up to Shepherdstown, you can catch both My Name is Rachel Corrie and Lonesome Hollow on any of the last two weekend days of the festival, July 21, 22, 28 or 29. Both shows are playing in the smaller of the festival’s two theaters, the black box Studio Theater, so it would be wise to order tickets as soon as possible.

Here is an abbreviated look at each of the four shows in this year’s festival.

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Lonesome Hollow
A world premiere
(1:50 – no intermission – Nudity)

Lee Blessing has a habit of making audiences take a good healthy look at the complexity of issues that others seem to gloss over or avoid all together. Today, with our nation struggling to find the balance point between freedom and security in what is still referred to simply as post 9/11 nearly six years after 9/11/01, Blessing grabs a hot coal of an issue and uses it to turn up the heat of the debate. He uses the emotionally charged issue of pedophilia and what society can, should or must do to protect its children for a look at the consequences of our choices. He refuses to couch his arguments about the consequences of excesses in protectionism in the comforting morality of protecting children from harm. We never see the children. Instead, we see the inmates in a contractor-operated detention facility for convicted sex offenders, who, while they may have completed their assigned prison term, are nonetheless not to be allowed to return to society. The villains here turn out to be not the inmates, but the jailors gone amuck in the absence of civilized controls on their powers, and the government which gave them that unchecked power. Through this lens, Blessing focuses on the difficulties facing a democracy trying to be both the land of the free and of the safe.

On Robert Klingelheofer’s elegantly simple set of a lawn with a labyrinth (which his characters quickly explain is different than a maze, saying it is a pattern on the ground which hides nothing rather than a construction of hedges that obscures much) Sheffield Chastain and Lou Sumrall create two very different “perpetrators.” One, Summrall, is alternatively chilling and troublingly charming, an unrepentant child molester with a strong continuing drive toward detestable acts. The other, Chastain, is open and easy to identify with as a decent man who has come to sincerely regret his crime, a single event of statutory rape with a willing but underage girl. Andrea Cirie is correctly cold as a controlling instrument of “the company,” a jailor who sets her sights on Sheffield, but it is Frank Deal, as her boss, who is the most frightening specter of the play – and he’s wonderfully frightening indeed. Be forewarned, the production involves nudity and a few instances of troubling violence.

Written by Lee Blessing. Directed by Hal Brooks. Design: Robert Klingelheofer (set) Devon Painter (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Matt Nielson (sound) Rick Cunningham (stage manager). Cast: Sheffield Chastain, Andrea Cirie, Frank Deal, Anne Marie Nest, Lou Sumrall.

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The Pursuit of Happiness
(1:50 – one intermission)

This is the second year in a row that the festival has included a values-based comedy by Richard Dresser. Last year it was the first of his three-play series exploring the concept of happiness in contemporary America, Augusta, which dealt with the world of working class women who would like to advance to the middle-income levels. This year, he returns to the topic with a play about a family solidly ensconced at that level convinced that moving up a notch generation by generation is the secret to finding happiness. The glitch, however, is that the next generation isn’t quite convinced – as witness their daughter’s announcement that she’d rather not go on to college when she graduates from high school. This outing lacks the impact of Augusta. Still, Dresser has a facility for light banter and he puts it to good use here. He does indulge just a bit too much in sophomoric humor, as with the strange reason for Lou Sumrall’s character’s name of “Spud.” Without the substance found in Augusta, this is a fairly frivolous outing.

The festival produces its plays in repertory, and all but one of the cast members of the deeply troubling Lonesome Hollow switch gears with aplomb to perform this confection. Indeed, it may be more difficult for the audience to make the mental switch if they see Lonesome Hollow first to see Sumrall, who displays a fine light comedy touch, without seeing the dark side of his previous performance. Sheffield Chastain has the strange coincidence of performing as “Tuck” in one show and “Tucker” in the other. Only Carter Niles is not doubling. She’s the high school senior who throws her parents for a loss with her decision to skip college, and she’s very good in the role. Robert Klingelheofer contributes a pleasantly catawampus set, all blond woods and the blue sky of the American Dream as a background. It isn’t quite clear why the music of the Beatles is used for all of the incidental music in Sharath Patel’s soundscape. Perhaps he or Dresser or Herendeen just like the Beatles. 

Written by Richard Dresser. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Robert Klingelheofer (set) Devon Painter (costumes) D.M. Wood (lights) Sharath Patel (sound) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager). Cast: Andrea Cirie, Sheffield Chastain, Frank Deal, Carter Niles, Lou Sumrall.

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1001
(1:40 – one  intermission)

Ed Herendeen directs three of the four shows in this year’s festival. One (My Name is Rachel Corrie) is fantastic. One (The Pursuit of Happiness) is very pleasant. One, this one, never comes into focus . For this theatrical riff on The Arabian Nights, he has a major difficulty to start with. The theater in the Frank Center is nearly cavernous, while this multi-genre mélange requires some sense of immediate connection with the audience. Another difficulty is the predictable nature of the script once the play gets underway. With the blending of the contemporary world and the ancient Persian locale of Scheherazade, not to mention the use of the well known stories she spins, the challenge was not so much how to tell the stories as how to make them fresh. The addition of commentary on modern life results in making such things as Osama Bin Laden masks and titling a story “The Tale of Alah and Alan Dershowitz” a bit predictable – especially since the glossary provided in the program includes a short biographical blurb on Dershowitz.

Zabryna Guevera and Jonathan C. Kaplan work very hard to connect to each other in their dual roles of Scheherazade/Dahna and her lover(s) Shahriyar/Alan, but the chemistry between them seems to be a performing partnership, not a romantic one. The four others in the cast have between five and seven roles each as the two sets of stories - modern and medieval – spin around a thin connecting thread. Production values vary as the whimsy inherent in some of the material is emphasized by such devices as costumes decorated with appliqués of compact discs, while the seriousness of underlying themes is driven home with explosions of sound and light. It appears that the festival spent more money on this production than any of the others, but that has not resulted in the most compelling, most interesting or most entertaining show.

Written by Jason Grote. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Robert Klingelheofer (set) Margaret A. McKowen (costumes) D.M. Wood (lights) Sharath Patel (sound) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager). Cast: Zabryna Guevara, Mark Damon Johnson, Jonathan C. Kaplan, Carman Lacivita, Ariel Shafir, Reshma Shetty.

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July 7 - 30, 2006
2006 Festival

Whatever happened to the art of intermission? This year's festival features four new plays - three of them world premieres - and not one of them has an intermission! How are smaller theaters going to make money offering these plays without intermissions in which to sell candy? Actually, Ed Herendeen, the founder and Artistic Director of the festival, says that this was a coincidence. He pointed out that Jazzland was a two act play until about a week before rehearsals when a streamlining re-write resulted in making the piece work better as a single act without interruption, and that Mr. Marmalade can be performed with or without an intermission. He just felt it worked better when played straight through.

This year's crop of new plays is a strong one, indeed: no clunkers and two really impressive premieres. The performers are all first rate with a break out performance by Andy Prosky and great work from Kaci Gober, Carolyn Swift, Scott Whitehurst, Anne Marie Nest, Marshall Elliott and two very impressive performances by Joseph Adams.

Two unsung heroes of the festival were Todd Campbell and Gary W. Poole, the two sound designers whose work transformed sets and stages into worlds where the action of three different plays transpired. (Poole and/or his sound board operator must have been pulling out their hair the night we saw Mr. Marmalade, for a persistent annoying hum worked into the system in the early minutes of the show and remained throughout. As a result, we couldn't adequately assess the intended sound design for that fourth show.)
 

Running time 1:30 - no intermission
A moving comedy/drama of life at the bottom
of the economic ladder
--- A world premiere

Storyline: A middle aged maid who works for a national cleaning corporation with the "Golden Guarantee" that floors are cleaned on hands and knees, desperately needs the bonus she gets for being the team leader of a two-member team that cleans a rich lady's house, despite the fact that she can't seem to get down on hands and knees anymore. Now a new supervisor has come aboard and he seems inclined to favor a new, younger maid for the post which would drop her income to below the magic $11 an hour.

Dresser has taken the founding fathers at their word - pointing out that our nation is the world's only country that includes a right to "the pursuit of happiness" in its founding documents. That term may have actually been a euphemism for "property rights," but it introduced into the national self-image a feature unique in the world - that the society exists in part to assure every member an opportunity to follow the path he or she thinks will yield that combination of a sense of satisfaction and pleasure that many call "happiness." He has set out to examine that concept in a trilogy. On the basis of this, the first installment, one can only hope the final two match the first.

A highlight of the production is the performance of Andy Prosky as the new supervisor. He manages to combine the surface veneer of sleaze required of the role with a touch of inner humanity that makes the character more than a caricature. He has done some superb work before in Shepherdstown, most memorably as the dad who just wants his kid to enjoy the Little League experience in Dresser's Rounding Third, but he's not reached this level here before. The pair of cleaning ladies is no slouch either. Kaci Gober finds just the right combination of youthful vigor and hesitantly demure insecurity to make her character's development of a backbone believable, and Carolyn Swift, while seeming just a tad too fatigued too early on, summons the fortitude to make the climax work like gangbusters.

Kate Turner-Walker's costumes lead the way in a design package that serves the property very well indeed. When Prosky's character offers the team leader smock to Gober it is clean, crisp and new with a sharp logo of the company on the breast. Contrast that with the smock Swift has sported all through the show with its logo faded to the point of near invisibility. The contrast encapsulates the entire play. Shaun Motley's multi-level set serves as both the up-scale home the ladys clean and all the other locales required with apparently effortless transitions.

Written by Richard Dresser. Directed by Lucie Tiberghien. Design: Shaun L. Motley (set) Kate Turner-Walker (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Todd Campbell (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Rick Cunningham (stage manager). Cast: Kaci Gober, Andy Prosky, Carolyn Swift.

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Running time 1:40 - no intermission
An atmospheric memory play in sophisticated rhythm
--- A world premiere

Storyline: A jazz musician seeks to re-discover his art after an accident causes a specialized amnesia blocking out his memory of music, his appreciation of jazz and his ability to play instruments. In the process of re-educating himself, he re-discovers the mysteries of the life and death of his father, also a famous jazz musician.

It is a good thing that Mr. Glover continues to write about semi-mythical characters who are more articulate than the average man, for Mr. Glover is much more articulate than even the average playwright. He throws words around with such style that it would be a shame for him to have to reign it in to match a marginal character's lack of verbal felicity. Here is a playwright who throws lines like "I try to spread (jazz's) gospel to aural virgins everywhere" and "I try to play (jazz) in my humble hours" into interviews as if everyone had such a way with words. In this piece, all five characters have distinctive voices of their own and each is more colorful, more descriptive and more enjoyable than the average man on the street. He's not writing about the average man on the street, however, and these verbal flights of fancy are as appropriate as they are delightful.

Unlike Corazon two years ago, Glover is not directing his own work here, and the addition of a strong supporting hand in the director's role shows in the final product. Just how much help Ed Herendeen was in developing the play only the two of them know. But the product that finally ended up on stage is heads and shoulders above the earlier work. The plot works better, the songs are better integrated, and the performances match the feel of the piece. Adding to the atmospheric nature of the piece is a dramatic lighting design by Colin K. Bills, who finds ways to use spotlights for scenes away from the jazz club's stage that are as effective as the on-stage spots for solos.

The opening jazz duet is spoken rather than played by Marshall Elliott as the son and Joseph Adams as the father. Each holds his musical instrument but the jazz comes out in words, not notes. It helps, of course, that the scene is played out on Shaun Motley's jazz-club set and is backed by Todd Campbell's felicitous soundscape. Adams continues to speak as if his voice were his saxophone, and he teams with Scott Whitehurst whose vocal mannerisms are a match for a bee-bop trumpet style. (His delivery of the line "Man only knows three notes and two of 'em are out of tune" sounds so true, and he does a fine rendition of a retort when, in reply to Elliott's protestation "I'm not qualified to criticize", he shoots back: "neither are most critics."  Elliott, on the other hand, looses the musicality in his speech when his character looses his memory of music, and only gains it back in measured segments fitting with the progress of the play.

Written by Keith Glover. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Shaun L. Motley (set) Margaret A. McKowen (costumes) Colin K. Bills (lights) Todd Campell (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Rick Cunningham (stage manager). Cast: Joseph Adams, Sara Kathryn Bakker, Marshall Elliott, January Lavoy, Scott Whitehurst.

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Running time 1:20 - no intermission
A biting, bitter comedy viewing the world of adults through the eyes of a child
Previously produced - including a run Off-Broadway

Storyline: A four year old girl frolics with her imaginary friend, but her imagination is a reflection of the reality she sees among the adults in her world. That world is one of divorce, abandonment and abuse. As a result, the imaginary friend whom she calls Mr. Mamalade, is a drug taking abuser and her imaginary world is no place to hide from danger.

The production, like the script, derives its strength from the juxtaposition of world wary adult concerns with an idealized portrayal of the supposed innocence of childhood. Sondheim famously wrote "children will listen" and his point is at the heart of this piece. Haidle uses the cuteness of childlike innocence to condemn the ugliness of adult excesses. It is a defeatist's view of the modern world, devoid of any real reason to hope for the future. Tiny Lucy's real world where her parents have divorced and her mother is always either at work or upstairs in bed with new men is as disturbing as the imaginary one she creates in her mind. That characters make entrances and exits on children's toy slides doesn't convert distressing to cute. That, of course, is Haidle's point. But it is made in the first ten minutes of the play and then there is little left to do but watch him fill out the evening with more of the same. Herendeen chose to present the piece without intermission, which works well, because there really aren't' two separate acts here. An intermission would just have been a stretch break.

Anne Marie Nest captures the innocence and cuteness of four year old Lucy without either over doing the syrupy or violating the concept. Had she shown any hint of recognizing the irony in the humor, she would have destroyed the conceit. Instead, she carries forward with the four year old's attitude consistently, even when her Mr. Marmalade hauls off and hits her. Joseph Adams breezes through the role of the abusive playmate of the title with aplomb. This pre-schooler has conjured up a playmate who is too busy and too self-absorbed to play very much.

The production is bright and candy-colored with a playground-like set by Shaun Motley, and some cute costume work by Margaret A. McKowen (her phallicly endowed cactus costume for Michael Borrelli, who is Lucy's absent father as well as a cactus in her game, is a gem and she places Nest in a tutu as something of a Barbie prototype. Matt Unger does some nice work as Lucy's real life friend from next door, getting all the humor of it without countering the pessimism that underlies the piece.

Written by Noah Haidle. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Shaun L. Motley (set) Margaret A. McKowen (costumes) D.M. Wood (lights) Gary W. Poole (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager). Cast: Joseph Adams, Sara Kathryn Bakker, Michael Borrelli, Anne Marie Nest, Mat Unger, Scott Whitehurst.

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Running time: 1:20 - no intermission
A fantasy of relationships
--- A world premiere

Storyline: A young woman returns to a beach in New Jersey where she was found abandoned as a newborn and taken in by a local family. Mixed together in her mind is a reunion with her adopted family and the ghosts of her past, including a mysterious British officer who marches into her life.

Merrill's dialogue is sharp and clear with flashes of very human wit, and hints of hidden angst that make the people in her story interesting. This collection of characters certainly includes colorful, intriguing and satisfyingly complex individuals which an audience can enjoy getting to know. But Merrill, in her devotion to the one-act format she's adopted here, short changes the dramatic story-telling that would round out the evening. Instead, most of the scenes are revelations of relationships, and a steady diet of this gets too sweet too soon. By the time you figure out who is who and are prepared to go on to watch their lives (or, in the case of the ghost, existence) intersect, the evening is over. It is a good thing the cast took a curtain call, so the audience could be sure the play was over and it was time to go home.

That cast is very strong, starting with Anne Marie Nest as the grown up Beach Baby. It is really through her mind that the fantasy voyage of discovery is viewed, and she brings a helpful sense of wonder to the exploration - plus, she's easy to care about with her fresh open personality. Michael Borrelli is hampered by the intended obscurity of his nature as he marches onto this contemporary New Jersey Beach in his early 1900s British uniform. Carolyn Swift brings a light sense of humor to the role of the woman who found the Beach Baby many years before, and both Matt Unger and Andy Prosky create appealing portraits of men who offer both clues about the past and possibilities for the future.

Gary W. Poole's highly evocative soundscape makes you feel the presence of the ocean lapping at Shaun L. Motley's colorful, slightly abstract creation of the Jersey Shore. The only design element that seems less than it could be is the costumes of Kate Turner-Walker, who opted for a somewhat drab palate when the garishness of a summer resort might have been effective. Nest is first revealed in a skin-colored bathing suit covered below the waste by a blue beach towel that is draped so as to resemble the bottom half of a mermaid. It is a very effective opening effect, but she soon dons a drab smock, while even the British uniform of the ghost, while possibly completely accurate, seems more a subdued pink than an empire ruling red.

Written by Kim Merrill. Directed by Karen Carpenter. Design: Shaun L. Motley (set) Kate Turner-Walker (costumes) D.M. Wood (lights) Gary W. Poole (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager). Cast: Michael Borrelli, Anne Marie Nest, Andy Prosky, Carolyn Swift, Matt Unger.

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Reviewed July 13, 2005
Running time 1:40 - no intermission
Playing in the Studio Theater

Storyline: A graduate art student is tempted to enter into an affair with her professor. Just as she's faced with making such a decision, her mother disrupts her life even further by demanding her attention to the fact that her father is fading away into nothingness - literally. Dad has never been much of presence in her life anyway, but she's forced to face twin crises simultaneously.

There's not much complexity to any of the characters, but each has a distinguishing feature that an actor and the audience can hold on to as the plot thickens. The art student is in the midst of the angst that accompanies graduating from college and facing the need to go out and make it on her own. Kaci Gober keeps this from seeming too stereotypical by giving her character a youthful earnestness that works. The professor is in a crisis of his own having been denied tenure because of a "lack of an impressive body of work." Michael Goodwin lets that sense of panic emerge just slowly enough to make it feel natural. Together they handle the opening scenes with a good deal of skill as their characters are awkwardly reaching out to each other. Awkward is so hard for an actor to do well, and they both get it right.

The mother has become a shrew, and Carolyn Swift gets a bit too shrill too fast, but you can feel the genuine fear in her as she contemplates the day she is left alone by her disappearing husband. As to the father - well, the father has only one real redeeming feature, he really loves his little girl. Jonathan Bustle is very touching as the secret of his character's condition is revealed - a secret we won't disclose.

A major reason for the success of the show is that no effort is made to use special effects to simulate the fading of the father - it is left entirely to the imagination of the audience to envision the progression. It works beautifully. Markas Henry has designed a set that is elegant, simple and memorable. A cracked desert surface of a background is set in a stark white wall while dark wooden furniture pieces are arranged in different combinations to form tables, chairs, benches and sofas. The look is impressive but, since this is a black box space, the audience watches as each scene is set up by actors shoving furniture around in dim lighting - a distraction that seems to interrupt the flow of the show all too often during the brief one-act play.

Written by Sheri Wilner. Directed by Pam MacKinnon. Design: Markas Henry (set) Moe Schell (costumes) Dana White (lights) Jamie Whoolery (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Rick Cunningham (stage manager). Cast: Jonathan Bustle, Kaci Gober, Michael Goodwin, Carolyn Swift.

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Reviewed July 14, 2005
Running time 1:15 - no intermission
Playing in the Frank Center
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Into a remote ranch house in Wisconsin comes first an old friend of the rancher who may be running from the authorities and then a mysterious investigator who may be searching for him. The encounter turns their lives upside down without a warrant or an explanation.

Shepard is at his usual best with verbal fireworks, but in this short piece he adds some actual fireworks of a special kind. Seems that the old friend hiding out in the rancher's basement has contracted a side effect of some super-secret work for a super-secret government project which causes him to shoot sparks whenever touched. Jonathan Bustle, with special effect sparklers strategically located in his sleeve and even in the fly of his pajama bottoms, brings this eccentric character to delightful life.

For all the delight of Bustle's work, however, nothing can compare to the officious insouciance of Lee Sellars as the agent who  frightens Carolyn Swift as the farmer's wife simply by not letting her know who he is and what he is up to. When he starts tacking American flags all over her walls she has every right to be freaked. The rancher, well played by Anderson Matthews, takes a more laid back approach but ends up sharing Bustle's fate which gives him the chance to utter perhaps Shepards' best line of the piece. Reciting all the horrors through which he and his wife have gone at the hands of the unidentified official who operates under the cloak of post-9/11 security, he clutches his groin, the site of his own sparkler, and moans "I miss the cold war so much!"

Most of the plays presented at this festival each year are so new they haven't been published and, thus, it is difficult to determine if a particularly great aspect of a performance comes from the script or the particular production. The God of Hell, however, is already in print, and one can see that the fabulous opening moments as Carolyn Swift establishes her character as the rancher's wife, is so much more than just what is specified in the script. The script simply says "Lights up on Emma in blue terry-cloth bathrobe, slippers, moving methodically back and forth from the kitchen sink, where she fills a yellow plastic pitcher with water and carries it to the plants. She waters plants and returns to refill pitcher, then repeats the process." She makes as much out of this simple instruction as Marry Martin did out of the simple instruction "she shampoos" to the tune of South Pacific's "I'm Gonna Wash That Man Right Outa My Hair."

Written by Sam Shepard. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Markas Henry (set) Moe Schell (costumes) Andrew Hill (lights) Kevin Lloyd (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager). Cast: Jonathan Bustle. Anderson Matthews, Lee Sellars, Carolyn Swift.

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Reviewed July 14, 2005
Running time: 2:00 - one intermission
Playing in the Studio Theater

Storyline: The son from an Army family is coming home on leave from Iraq. His Vietnam Vet father and his Army Wife mother, so thrilled at the prospect of having him home again if only for a short time, are appalled when he says he won't go back. Slowly, the details of his experiences in one conflict are revealed and contrasted with the experiences of his father in that earlier war.

Bonnie Black sets up her portrayal of the gung-ho Army wife with a forced chipperness that almost seems too strong until its underlying rationale becomes affectingly clear. Michael Goodwin similarly sets up the stoic retired Army Vietnam-era vet whose complexity emerges with time. Also quite effective in a story-theater type role is the actress Ako as a Vietnamese waitress.

The younger generation doesn't quite come across as well. Michael Alperin, as the son home on leave, is tremendously affecting in his interaction with others but his monologues leave the feeling that the actor not only never actually served in the military but that he can't imagine himself doing so. As his sister, Kaci Gober gets the anger of her character right but doesn't have much opportunity to show any complexity.

Often a single moment, a single image, sticks in your mind as the memory of a show. Only rarely will that moment will be captured in one of the press photographs for the production. For American Tet it is a brief instant when the soldier home on leave from Iraq visits a wounded buddy, a girl, who wears a veil over her face, that has been so horribly scarred in a suicide bombing that she begs for a gun so she can commit suicide. Overcoming any personal revulsion in a lovely gesture, he lifts the veil and kisses her mouth. Ron Blunt's photo of that moment is the indelible image of the show (see above.)

Written by Lydia Stryk. Directed by Tracy Brigden. Design: Markas Henry (set) Kevin Brainerd (costumes) Dana White (lights) Jamie Whoolery (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Rick Cunningham (stage manager). Cast: Ako, Michael Alperin, Bonnie Black, Jacqueline Correa, Kaci Gober, Michael Goodwin, Tanya Perez, Annika Rochefort.

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Reviewed July 13, 2005
Running time: 2:15 - one intermission
Playing in the Frank Center

Storyline: The decision of their son to enlist in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001 tears apart the family of a Jewish man and his Cuban wife.

The youngest and oldest of this multi-generational cast contribute the strongest performances. Michael Alperin, who plays the soldier son in American Tet, plays the son here just before entering the Army. He makes a very convincing teenager anxious to report for military duty in the wave of patriotic fervor and frustrated anger in the months after the bringing down of the World Trade Center, and his verbal battle with his Bonnie Black, as his mother, is as intense as could be wished. At the other age extreme is the character of his grandfather, played with very effective energy by Anderson Matthews.

The middle generation in the first act is represented by Sellars and Black as parents whose bond to each other is torn apart by their different reactions to their son's decision. Of the two, Sellars is easier to believe, and his pain at the breach between the couple is palpable. Black does better work in the second act in the role of an old lady.

Written by Melinda Lopez. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Markas Henry (set) Kevin Brainerd (costumes) Andrew Hill (lights) Kevin Lloyd (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Debra A. Acquavella (stage manager.) Cast: Michael Alperin, Bonnie Black, Veronica Cruz, Anderson Matthews, Tanya Perez, Lee Sellars. 

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Reviewed July 15, 2004
Playing in the Studio Theatre
Running time: 1:55 - one intermission
A world premiere
Click here to buy Blessing's Thief River

Storyline: In Good Clean Fun a white racist and a black racist share a small office working on a two-man project in a company with a unique approach to workplace human relations issues: each employee is issued a timer and is allowed, even encouraged, to frankly express politically incorrect opinions only when the timer is ticking away. Repeated bursts of frank statements reveal the depths of hatred between the two who have more than on-the-job conflicts, as one has impregnated the wife of the other. In Down and Dirty Blessing mixes the fascinating story of a black woman who deals with a homeless white man she hit and impaled on the windshield of her car by simply waiting for him to bleed to death so she can burry the body, with the merely potentially interesting story of a writer interacting with the events of the story about which he has either written or read.

Oh, what fun is Good Clean Fun! Lovers of sharp, flashy dialogue and high concept scenes will revel in the exchanges between the black supervisor and the white subordinate who reveal more and more about their relationship with each start of their egg timers. The script is precisely as long as it needs to be to mine the concept, and not a line longer. Blessing's command of his craft is evident in the way he avoids weighing down the early portion of the short piece with lengthy explanations of the concept of the egg timers and the unique policy of the company for which these two characters work. Instead, the audience only gradually learns what it needs to know to understand the concept. Lee Sellars is superb at switching between light banter and soul-bearing blasts and Albert Jones matches him blast for blast, taunt for taunt.

Sellers is again superb as the impaled victim of a hit and carry. He finds a way to underplay what is essentially an extended death scene and he does so with practically no range of motion available since he is suspended in mid air throughout the piece. He manages to communicate the burnt out nature of his character who doesn't seem to expect anything better of life than he is receiving, and he does so with just his voice, his eyes and an occasional  guttural groan. Roslyn Wintner never really gets to delve into the depths of her character because Blessing writes her out of the middle section of the playlet to introduce Michael Flanigan as the writer who ruminates on the nature of time, history, diversity and the act of sharing a beer. After such a strong start, Down and Dirty turns frustratingly facile.

One of the pleasures of attending the festival each year is the consistently intelligent, functional and unique work of Markas Henry who designs the sets for all the productions. There will be comments on his work for the other three productions of this year's festivals in their individual reviews, but it is his work for this two-playlet piece that deserves the highest praise. He found a way to unite the two very different settings as a way of reinforcing the playwright's unity of theme for both of these one-act pieces which are about the confining nature of hatred. Henry criss-crossed the square playing space in the small studio theater with ropes that define the small office which is a fight ring for the first half of the evening, and then stretches the ropes up to suspend the hit-and-carry victim played by Sellers, window and all. The image of Sellers hanging overhead is reinforced by the sharp lighting design which places an equally striking shadow on the rear wall. There are times when you want to watch the shadow instead of the real thing, but then you'd miss the intriguing and uncredited makeup effect which has the blood from Sellers wounds running slowly down his head. Visually, the segment following the intermission is as arresting as the writing makes the portion which precedes it.

Written by Lee Blessing. Directed by Lucie Tiberghien. Design: Markas Henry (set) Moe Schell (costumes) Thomas C. Hase and Troy Martin-O'Shia (lights) Jamesevanpilato (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Robyn Henry (stage manager). Cast: Michael Flanigan, Albert Jones, Lee Sellars, Roslyn Wintner.

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Reviewed July 15, 2004
Playing in the Frank Center Stage
Running time: 1:50 - one intermission

Storyline: An experienced little league coach with a strong drive to win begins the new season with a new assistant coach, a parent who is more concerned that the kids have fun in a wholesome activity than that they win a trophy. As the season progresses each finds his approach and his assumptions put to the test and each learns a bit from the other. 

Dresser's approach to telling this story is to turn the audience into the "team" with each coach addressing the house with instructions, encouragement, banter and criticism. Markas Henry's set turns the apron of the stage into the running lanes of the baseball diamond with home plate smack dab at downstage center stage and right and left bases at the extreme sides. This has the happy dual effect of keeping the cost of production manageable by eliminating the need for a dozen or so young cast members and maintaining the focus on the playwrights' main interest, the views of the coaches. It works well although it seems a bit small in the larger of the festival's two halls. It would have benefited from the increased intimacy of the smaller Studio Theatre space being used this year by the Keith Glover musical which might have benefited from a bigger space.

The winning performance of Lee Sellars as the victory-driven head coach is a delight. With this production, Sellars turns this year's festival into a mini-festival of his own acting virtuosity. With leading roles in both one-act segments in Flag Day at the festival, he has three very different characters each fully developed, each easily the most memorable character in its setting, and yet each nicely supportive of his on-stage colleagues. Here his gleaming nearly-bald head is covered by a baseball cap. It becomes a prop of importance in the script but it also seems possible that it is there to remind Sellars which character he's playing at the moment - he can always glance up and see the bill of the cap and remember that right now he's the coach.

Andy Prosky actually has the meatier of the two roles, for his is the character that undergoes the most dramatic transformation during the play, going from a dad who simply wants to spend some quality time with his son to a coach who prays for a win. Prosky puts his skill at body language to good use as he makes his subtle shifts along the story's line over the two hours of the show. Sellars gets most of the laughs but it is Prosky who captures the audience's sympathy. Together, they make a fine two-person team.

Written by Richard Dresser. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Design: Markas Henry (set) Kevin Brainerd (costumes) Edward McEneney (lights) Jamesevanpilato (sound) Ron Blunt (photography) Kathryn Loftin (stage manger). Cast: Andy Prosky, Lee Sellars.

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Reviewed July 16, 2004
Playing in the Studio Theatre
Running time: 2:30 - one intermission
A World Premiere

Storyline: Champ is a Texas boy who just wants to fly. When "the last good war" breaks out, he joins the Air Force and becomes a fighter pilot but is shot down while on a mission over Spain. He survives and ends up in a hospital where he is nursed back to health by Rosa. They fall in love and are married just as he is transferred back to Texas to recuperate. His wounds are such that he can woo his love but not consummate the marriage. Rosa is rejected by the locals as her Spanish background is too like the Mexicans they denigrate. The charming Joe, on the other hand, recognizes her beauty and their attraction is strong and ultimately fatal.

Glover seems to have a thing for subtitles that simultaneously define and constrain his work. His best known is Thunder Knocking on the Door which won the Helen Hayes Award for Outstanding Musical in 1999, was subtitled "A Blusical tale of Rhythm and Blues." Just what a "Bluesical" is was no more clearly defined than a "Songplay" but Mr. Glover's remarks in an interview printed in the festival program implies that it is a play that grew out of the songs and not the usual vice versa. Still, the story that finally ended up on stage tends to get in the way of the effectiveness of the bright and enjoyable score. Glover directs his own work here and that has cost the production the opportunity to have one more brain working on focusing the story and finding ways to emphasize its strengths and compensate for its weaknesses.

Rosa is played and very well sung by Arielle Jacobs. Her charms are certainly sufficient to motivate both Michael Flanigan as the Texan pilot and Perry Ojeda as the charmer who tempts her. Both Flanigan and Ojeda have handled leads (Flanigan handled Chris in Miss Saigon at one point during its lengthy run while Ojeda originated the role of Gabey in the short lived 1998 revival of On The Town). Of the two, Ojeda makes the more intriguing and seductive character although Flanigan gets the light charm of the wing-walking flyboy just right. A talented trio fills in all the other roles.

Joshua Bergasse's choreography further confuses rather than clarifying some of the developments, although it isn't clear that this is his fault or a fault of Glover's concept and the structure that produces moments for dance. The supernatural Spanish (as opposed to Greek) Chorus at times seems more Aztec than Texan, and the masks add color and tone but don't seem to add much clarity to the basic question "What's going on here?"

Written by Keith Glover. Music and lyrics by Keith Glover, Billy Thompson and George Caldwell. Directed by Keith Glover. Choreography by Joshua Bergasse. Design: Markas Henry (set) Moe Schell (costumes) Thomas C. Hase (lights) Ron Blunt (photography) Robyn Henry (stage manager). Cast: Michael Flanigan, Arielle Jacobs, Perry Ojeda, Celina Polanco, Caesar Samayoa, Christianne Tisdale. Musicians: Michael Pettry, Billy Thompson, Toby Williams.

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Reviewed July 17, 2004
Playing in the Frank Center Stage
Running time: 1:40 - no intermission

Storyline: An Indian man and a Jewish woman who live with each other in America are stopped and questioned for four hours at the airport as they return home from a trip abroad. Whether it was pure racial profiling or the result of independent information (called "intelligence" by the inquisitor), the event and their different approaches to dealing with it has a corrosive impact on their relationship and on their dealings with people who are important in their lives.

Flack's script eases into the real subject of his piece, giving the audience a view of the triggering event, the interrogation by a government official who is so supremely in command of the situation and has such complete control over the fate of the subjects that he is free to indulge in a bit of storytelling himself. The story - - a traditional folk tale of a Rabbi, a Russian Tsar and a horse who may or may not recite the poetry of Pushkin - - captures the different initial approaches of the man and woman to the event. He rolls with the punch, having come to expect and even understand some of the suspicion recent events have created toward his ethnic group, while she is more fearful to start but more indignant after the immediate danger seems to have passed. Flack introduces the woman's former husband to give some back story to the piece and an off-stage character who is never seen (with the oh-so-theatrical name of Harvey) to represent "the powers that be."

Amol Shah underplays the role of the man beautifully, letting the audience become enraged over injustice before he does, and thus, keeping his character from ever seeming to be complaining about little things. By the time the bonds of trust have begun to loosen, Shah's reactions seem calmly considered and completely rational. Christianne Tisdale has the more emotional role at first and her outbursts are heartfelt and honestly portrayed. What may have been "just" a four hour inconvenience gradually becomes a destructive factor in their relationship. 

Scott Whitehurst is very good as the imperious inquisitor, more icon than character, acting as the catalyst which triggers the reactions of the central characters. As the former husband, Andy Prosky fills in a few plot points while providing a sounding board for some of the emotions that spill out over the different reactions to the initial event. The addition of two on-stage musicians performing a blend of Indian and American jazz give the piece a unique feeling.

Written by Stuart Flack. Directed by Ed Herendeen. Music composed and performed by Fareed Haque and Kalyan Pathak. Design: Markas Henry (set) Kevin Brainerd (costumes) Scott Cawood (sculpture) Edward McEneney (lights) Ron Blunt (photography) Kathryn Loftin (stage manager). Cast:  Joanna Edie, Andy Prosky, Jennifer Russel, Amol Shah, Mindy Shiben, Elizabeth Stump, Christianne Tisdale, Scott Whitehurst.

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Reviewed July 23, 2003
Running time 2 hours 10 minutes

It seems that every year there is one new play that stands out as a delightful discovery. Last year it was Lee Blessing’s Thief River and the year before it was Craig Wright’s The Pavilion. This year it is Deborah Zoe Laufer’s lovely and touching The Last Schwartz.

Storyline: Brothers and a sister gather, along with their more or less significant others, on the first anniversary of the death of the family’s patriarch. They are together in the old family home on the eve of the religious ceremony unveiling his tombstone but there is family business to be conducted. One brother wants to sell the unused house. The sister passionately objects. Another brother couldn’t care less.

Actually, the house is the least of the matters on everyone’s mind. The real problem is the lack of male heirs to carry on the family line. When the girlfriend of the non-committal brother blurts out the fact that she’s scheduled for an abortion, all manner of arguments and machinations break out.

Director Lucie Tiberghien varies the pace of the action so skillfully that a sense of momentum is built up that precisely matches the increasing complexity of the story. The opening scene, which builds from simple chit-chat to energetic farce is followed by a gently quiet introduction of the brother who is loosing his eyesight who simply says of the previous exchange “I wish I was going deaf, not blind”

The cast includes a standout pair of Lee Sellars and Jennifer Mudge, about whom more below, and a delightfully comic turn by Broadway veteran Coleen Sexton. Her portrayal of the free-thinking, free-loving pregnant girlfriend is so innocently clueless but genuinely kind that she makes the dipso someone you really are glad you know.

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Reviewed July 23, 2003
Running time 1 hour 45 minutes

Yes The Last Schwartz is worth the drive to West Virginia all by itself. But, as is so often the case with this festival, there is another play that must be savored while you are there. This year, it is Eric Coble’s farce Bright Ideas that takes to extremes the concept of modern parents willing to do anything to get their children onto the right track to success and into the right schools.

Storyline: Upwardly mobile parents are faced with the conundrum that, despite the fact that the husband went directly from the delivery room to the admissions office to sign up their son for New York’s premiere pre-school, he is still only number one on the waiting list as they approach his third birthday. They know the parent of one of the entering class. If she were to have a difficulty and have to withdraw, their son would be next in line. Would murder be a solution?

These two plays share common casts, with Lee Sellars and Jennifer Mudge, both of whom are wonderful in The Last Schwartz, shining as the parents in Bright Ideas. Of the two, Mudge makes the most of the progression of her character from simply harried working mom to something else entirely. The key is that her character never has a second thought as to the rightness of their plans once the fatal decision is made, while Sellars’ character has to surface the reservations. As a team they are tremendous.

Festival founder and producing director Ed Herendeen directs this production with a fine sense of nonsense, keeping everything under tight control while allowing his cast all of the opportunities to shine inherent in the script. There are a number of fine sight gags but they are placed at points where they won’t distract from the narrative. 

As this review is written, there are two days left when both these plays are offered - Saturday and Sunday, August 2 and 3.

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Reviewed July 24, 2003
Running time 2 hours 10 minutes

The misfire is the real surprise of the festival, for it is the new play by Lee Blessing whose Thief River was the hit of this festival last year and which had such a satisfying production by the Theater Alliance at the H Street Playhouse in Northeast. In it, Blessing explores the phenomenon of granting asylum to foreign leaders who are suspected of atrocities. Given that American audiences seem immune to shock over unspeakable violence, Blessing says, he emphasizes the sexual fantasies involved in the power-crime of rape.

Storyline: A man who was a General in an unnamed Central American country under whom atrocities were committed, even if he may not have participated in them, is tried in civil court after having been granted asylum in the United States and amnesty from criminal prosecution.

Blessing’s script is an abstract examination of moral issues. Nothing wrong with that. But in order to be effective, such an abstract work requires a fascinating character at its core and Shawn Elliot’s version of the addlepated former General with a confused and confusing fantasy life is too unfocused to maintain interest over two acts.

Ed Herendeen directs this production as well. His approach places the emphasis on the abstract, which further weakens its chances to fascinate. Markas Henry comes up with an intriguing backdrop in his set design, turning a map of Central America into a Rorschach test pattern behind which lighting designer Edward J. McEneney, Jr. shines different colors to control the tone of the show. It is a fine visual approach but not enough to compensate for some of the lack of focus in front of it.

For all four productions -- Design team: Lee Blessing, Eric Coble, Deborah Zoe Laufer and Erin Cressida Wilson (writers) Ed Herendeen, Lisa Portes and Lucie Tiberghien (directors) Markas Henry (sets) Kevin Brainerd and Moe Schell (costumes) Christopher J. Ball and Edward J. McEneney, Jr. (lights) David Wanger (video) jamesevanpilato and Kevin Lloyd (sound) Stephanie K. Patterson (photography) Kathryn Loftin and Karen A. Storms (stage managers). Festival cast: Daniel Cantor, Catherine Curtin, Shawn Elliott, James Immekus, Aaron Kliner, Jenny Maguire, Jennifer Mudge, Bernadette Quidley, Lee Sellars, Coleen Sexton, Carolyn Swift, Maryann Urbano, William Whitehead.

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Reviewed July 17, 2002
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes

Written by Craig Wright, Directed by Leah H. Gardiner. Design: Markas Henry (set) Paul Whitaker (lights) Daniel Urlie (costumes) Kevin Lloyd (sound). Cast: Mercedes Herrero, Jason Field, Libby West, Paul Sparks.

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Reviewed July 17, 2002
Running time 1 hour 40 minutes