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Running time 3:05 - two brief breaks
A solid rendition of an emotionally touching classic
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Storyline: Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning drama presents one hot day in the New England home of the Tyrones, haunted by their pasts and the consequences of their mistakes. The father is an aging matinee idol of an actor wracked by guilt over compromising his art for financial success. The mother is a morphine addict wracked by guilt over her own weakness. The eldest son survives on his father's fame on the stage while the youngest son is suffering from tuberculosis. These terribly unhappy and destructive people tear at each other in one long day of fighting and drinking.

This, the last of O'Neill's highly autobiographical and excruciatingly honest plays, exposes the weaknesses in a family he understood so intimately, so deeply and so thoroughly that he misses none of the pain or the blame while maintaining a familial affection that keeps the portraits from seeming mean-spirited or vindictive. They are pure and simple tragedy. (He was, in reality, the young man seen dying of "the consumption." In real life, he did recover after a year in a sanitarium but that was after the events of this one long day.)

Both John Collins, as the thespian father who who can't stop acting even when he's at home with his family, and Patricia Foreman, as the drug addicted, guilt stricken mother who alternates between anger, frustration and denial, seem most affected by the too-quick pace of the early going. Each settles into a satisfying progression, however, and both become fascinatingly tragic and very human figures. Jon Townson and Andrew Pecoraro are the sons who battle with self-loathing and "consumption," respectively. Townson grouses and lopes at first in an affected manner, but he warms to the emotion of the part while Pecoraro strikes just the right note at the very beginning and maintains it nicely. Note should also be made of Theresee McNichol, who avoids over-doing the comedy in the smaller part of the maid with her tippling scene where she consumes quite a bit of her employers' whiskey.

Theater on the Run is a black box space which Andrew Berry fills with odd pieces of furniture to create the summer home on the banks of Long Island Sound with a painted backdrop of the seascape subdued by the fog that triggers Thomas Terlecki's recordings of fog horns. Suspended above are three timber trusses to suggest the roof over this family's heads. It is simple and effective.

Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Andrew Berry (set) Kathi Gollwitzer (costumes) Connor Dale (lights) Thomas Terlecki (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Anna Louise Gionfriddo (stage manager). Cast: John Collins, Patricia Foreman, Theresee McNichol, Andrew Pecoraro, Jon Townson.

 
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Running time 2:20 - one intermission
A Russian classic inspired a contemporary Canadian playwright 
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Storyline: The son of a land owner in rural Russia in 1859 returns home from school with his older best friend to find his widowed father has a child by a servant with whom he is in love, his uncle has complications in his own love life and the overseer has difficulty with the newly freed serfs.

Those who know Turgenev's novel will find familiar ground at the start of this play but things begin to become a bit destabilizing as the plot veers from the source material. Walker constructs his plot from the motivations of the characters and lets it play out in a different way than the original. Those who aren't familiar with the Russian classic needn't fear, however. No knowledge of the source is needed to quickly comprehend events and recognize sharply defined characters. The language that Walker uses is free of any pretension of being "historical" or "classic". Instead, while he avoids any contemporary jargon, there is a lightness in the dialogue that feels distinctly modern even as the characters retain their Russian names.

Townson looks a bit like a young John Lennon, which seems right for a young nihilist. Russian nihilism of the mid-nineteenth century rejected the social mores of society, but Townson gives it a touch of flippantry that feels sort of Lennon-like. Flannery has a bit more reserve, as befits the scion of an estate. Together, they establish a rapport as friends. Charles St. Charles and Dave Bobb find a sharper, slightly more competitive relationship as the young student's father and uncle. Clarissa Zies is effective as well as the servant the father loves.

Following the action of the nine-scene (plus prologue) play is easier because of the use of signs at the side of the stage reminiscent of vaudeville posters that give the location for each scene ("A Country Road," "The Kirsanov Garden," "The Kirsanov Drawing Room"). Andrew J. Berry's set splits the playing space in the Theatre on the Run into thirds with one segment the garden, one the dining room and the third, the front lip of the playing space, serving as a road or the woods or even an extra room. Highlighting the fact that this is not your stuffy classic, Hunter adds music ranging from a mandolin solo on the old Italian tune Funiculí, Funiculá to one with a hint of a Parisian cabaret.

Written by George F. Walker. Directed by Robb Hunter. Design: Andrew J. Berry (set) Connor M. Dale (lights) Ray Gniewek (photography) Kathi Gollwitzer (stage manager). Cast: Dave Bobb, Patrick Flannery, Mitch Irzinski, Craig Lawrence, Andrew Pecoraro, Kelley Slagle, Charles St. Charles, Jon Townson, Cliff Williams III, Scott Zeigler, Clarissa Zies.

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Running time 1:00 - no intermission
 The product of a play building exercise using the story of two young people in WW II Germany 

Storyline: A young woman named Marta and a young German soldier named Kurt take shelter from an air raid as Berlin falls to the Allies at the end of World War II. A series of flashbacks reveal the history of their contacts over the course of the war.

The image Gollwitzer presented to her team to start the play building was of a soldier, a child, an old man and a woman in a confined space where the tension was high. She had hoped to find a young actor for the part of the child but couldn't get one on the short notice the team had before opening the show. She also felt that, without a child, the presence of the old man unbalanced the picture. So she settled on just the soldier and the woman. With Kirsten Benjamin as the woman and Patrick Flannery as the soldier (Flannery being the younger of the two, having recently graduated from high school and here making his professional debut), they started the process of bringing the image alive. The team thought the soldier could be a Nazi and the confined space a bomb shelter so they began researching time and place to give life to the story. The result was the story of these two young people.

As the piece is presented, both performers do a good job. Benjamin takes her character from the stress caused by being underneath an air raid to the even greater stress of having the secret she has so assiduously protected for years revealed. In the process, she also contributes charm and a certain hint of romance to the interaction with the soldier. Flannery doesn't quite capture the maturing that his callow youth would probably have undergone in a military career that took him from his homeland to the frozen battleground of Russia and then to the staff of a well placed officer on the homefront. He does, however, give a believable portrait of just how young the combatants on both sides of that war often were. He also shows the strain of the conflict between his sense of duty and his sense of compassion and humanity. 

As is befitting a play building exercise, the physical design for the production is bare bones. But that doesn't mean it is not effective. Performed on a bare stage with just a roll-on upright piano for the "music room" scene and a wooden box for the bomb shelter, time and mood are enhanced by Andrew Griffin's lighting design which illuminates different scenes differently but ties it all together with a striking change in intensity and color for the moments between memories. Add Christopher Rothgeb's loud effects of droning aircraft overhead and explosions all around, and the closeness of disaster is clearly in the air. Benjamin wears a tailored outfit and a hairdo appropriate to both time and character. Flannery is decked out in a German military uniform a bit too fresh and ill-fitting to seem correct, but, then, would an enlisted man at the end of the war been very concerned over sartorial issues?

Created by Kirsten Benjamin, Patrick Flannery, Kathi Gollwitzer, Ali Miller. Directed by Kathy Gollwitzer and Ali Miller. Design: Andrew F. Griffin (lights) Christopher Rothgeb (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Meg Glassco (stage manager). Cast: Kirsten Benjamin, Patrick Flannery and the voice of John Collins.

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Running time 2:15 – with one intermission
Shakespeare’s most successful comedy
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Storyline:  Shakespeare’s classic story of mistaken identity, mistaken love, and mistaken devotion finds a girl disguised as a boy falling in love with a Duke in love with a Countess who falls in love with the girl … hilarity ensues.

Akiva Fox, whose latest directing work was seen in the short play Howard at the Winter Carnival of New Works, takes this timeless piece and presents it in a simple setting with minimum focus on details such as set and costume. Instead he concentrates more on ensuring his cast and crew convey the play in such a way that an audience unfamiliar with the piece will still find much to enjoy. There are some awkward moments. The stage fights are clumsy and leave one feeling uneasy, hoping that no one really gets hurt, and some lines by performers in the smaller roles are delivered in a stilting manner, but overall there is much to enjoy over the five acts.

For those who seek to experience Shakespeare with a light element of fun in an up close and intimate setting, this is the production to attend. While sometimes clumsy, it is not painful to sit through; in fact the actors are enjoying themselves so much on stage that it is easy to get swept along with them. Special mention goes to Joshua Drew for his portrayal of the priggish servant whose nature leads him to be the butt of one of the major jokes in the play. It takes great courage to appear on stage in nothing more than boxers and crossed garters over yellow women’s stockings. Also entertaining is John Reynolds, the singing jester whose two numbers during the show are well done and easy on the ear.

As often is the case with one of Shakespeare’s works, since it is in the open domain, all bets are off as to what kind of staging, costumes, and props will be inserted by well meaning productions. In the case at Firebelly we find portable CD players and Polaroid snapshots taking their place alongside old English and period props. It works for the production, but sometimes the mixing of the new with the old can offend some purists. Let those who need a more strictly conforming production attend one of the many other performances during the Shakespeare in Washington festival, but for those who can stand a little tongue in cheek with their comedy, this is a good night at a good value.

Written by William Shakespeare. Directed by Akiva Fox. Design: Clark Huggins (set), Andrew F. Griffin (lights), Emily Otto and Israel Baline (music composers) Lynly Saunders (costumes), Cliff Williams III (fight choreographer). Cast: Seth Alcorn, Dave Daniels, Joshua Drew, Joanna Edie, Vince Eisenson, Mikal Evans, Michael Fernandez, Kevin Finkelstein, Brian Lee Huynh, Ryan Nealy, Jon Reynolds, Amanda Thickpenny, John Tweel, Cliff Williams III.

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Running time 2:05 - one intermission
Click here to read our review of the movie
t A Potomac Stages Pick for intellectually stimulating
 and emotionally satisfying fare
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Storyline: The twenty-five year old daughter of a famous mathematician has spent five years caring for her father as mental illness progressively incapacitated him. On the eve of his funeral she has to cope not only with his death, but with the concern of her sister, the attention of one of her father’s graduate students and the lingering presence of her father in their Chicago home. She may have inherited some of her father’s genius, but she fears she may have also inherited his "tendency to instability."

As good as this cast is, and these four form a well balanced ensemble, they are working with a script that is uncommonly successful at creating four well-defined people, each with dreams, fears, histories and opinions, whose dealings with each other are the natural results of their personalities and circumstances. It is all there in the text. With a mathematical "proof" at the center of the story, Auburn turns his title into a double entandré. He also comes up with one of the great first-act curtain lines of recent memory. There is little actual discussion of higher mathematics, so the audience need not even know what a prime number might be in order to follow the discussions. There is an absence of "talking down" to the audience or artificially keeping the discussion non-technical. A welcome improvement to the original text is the elimination of the one awkward effort to avoid technical details, a fairly clumsy "lets go for a walk and you can tell me what this means" moment which proves to be superfluous. The play is the better for its absence.

Interconnecting relationships come into focus at different times during the play. First it is the relationship between father and daughter and it is a warm and touching mixture of affection and mutual admiration. Don Kefelick finds the right amount of frustration as the father whose capacities have failed him, and Katy Carkuff mixes multiple emotions as the daughter who is not only dealing with grief over her father's fate but with a deep seated fear that she may share that fate. Much of the play sits on Carkuff's character's shoulders and she handles it with a sense of assurance and aplomb. Soon the focus shifts to the relationship between the daughter and a young man who had been her father's student at the University of Chicago. He's played with charm and intelligence by Daniel Eichner. The most difficult part in the play, the one that is the least sympathetic and likeable, is the father's other daughter, the one who has helped him financially but at arms length in his final illness-filled years. K. Clare Johnson tackles this most difficult/least rewarding role in a businesslike manner that, while not adding a great deal to the mix, avoids the very real potential to damage the tender heart of the story of the other three.

Firebelly, a small professional company with a mission to give younger performers a chance to sink their teeth into meaty parts appropriate to their age, lives up to that mission here. They produce their shows in the spare black box owned and operated by the County of Arlington, Theatre On The Run. Production values aren't the point of their shows and here the set is sparse but thoroughly serviceable. The one-location play takes place on the back porch of a house, so a stick fence, a few sprigs of ivy, some patio furniture and a flagstone pattern of linoleum suffices. Time and season are nicely invoked by Andrew Griffin's lighting design which goes from the semi-darkness of late night moonlight  to the memory of the warmth of a late September afternoon. The entire design is simple enough and approached with sufficient subtlety to avoid drawing attention to itself, which just like the acting, serves to keep the focus on Auburn's lovely play.

Written by David Auburn. Directed by Ali Miller. Design: Ali Miller (set) Lynly Saunders (costumes) Andrew Griffin (lights) Sam Walker (sound)  Ray Gniewek (photography) Kathi Gollwitzer (stage manager). Cast: Katy Carkuff, Daniel Eichner, K. Clare Johnson, Don Kenefick.

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Running time 2:15 - one brief intermission
A solid production of an affecting drama
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Storyline: Into the day room of a mental institution one day in 1962 comes a new patient, one whose respect for authority is as low as his tolerance for routine. He shakes up the established order maintained by the attending nurse and stirs the emotions of his fellow patients, but at a cost.

Dale Wasserman's 1963 stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel provided a great role for Kirk Douglas' last appearance on Broadway. Its revival earned Gary Sinise his second Tony Award nomination for acting, and its movie adaptation gave Jack Nicholson his first Oscar-wining role. Obviously, it is a play that can be performed as a star vehicle. The secret of success, however, is that it is an ensemble piece, not a star turn. That is not to say that Dan VanHoozer is lacking in the lead role. He conveys both the extroverted energy of the new patient and the insecurities that drive him to an anti-establishment position of leadership. He is particularly good at showing the thought process involved whenever his character spots an opportunity to assert control. Still, members of the pack are the real story here.

It is a colorful population indeed. There is uptight, slightly prissy Joshua Drew as the leader of the inmates before the arrival of the newcomer. He's particularly good in the "chicken scratching" scene when the inmates who saw him as a leader start to turn on him. Dave Daniels is quite marvelous as the virginal inmate whose attraction to Suzanne Edgar's good-time-girl triggers tragic consequences. When he tells the newcomer that "I'm not tough like you are" he speaks for all the inmates, making the scene the heart of the show. Best of all, however, is Joe Angel Babb as the Native American Chief whose ruminations form the narration of the play. He does fine work in a part that is guaranteed to reward even merely acceptable work. In his hands, it is much more than that.

Kelley Slagle, in the key role of the head nurse, whose control of her domain is threatened the newcomer's unorthodox manner, is played just a bit harshly. There are brief glimmers of confusion that work nicely, but by and large, she makes the nurse a heavy rather than a victim of her own inflexibility and insecurities. So too, Christopher Colosi gets all the bully in the character of the aide, but misses some of his own fears. The design of the production works well in the always challenging space at Theatre on the Run.

Written by Dale Wasserman based on the novel by Ken Kesey. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Fight direction by Robb Hunter. Design: Kathi Gollwitzer (set) Lynly Saunders (costumes) Doug Wilson (lights) Charles Phaneuf (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Elisabeth Maddrell (stage manager). Cast: Seth Alcorn, Joe Angel Babb, Christopher Culosi, Dave Daniels, Jeffrey Davis, Joshua Drew, Suzanne Edgar, Lauren Antonia Griffin, Brian Lee Huynh, Mitch Irzinski, Francisco Reinoso, Kelley Slagle, Dan VanHoozer.

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Reviewed May 3
Running time 2:10 - one intermission
An inspiring look at integrity in the face of bigotry
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Storyline: In a small southern town during the depression, a true gentleman of a lawyer is called upon to defend a poor black man on a charge of attacking a white woman. Seeing his strength of character as he does what he believes is right, his children learn important lessons.

Brownstein's gentle performance is the delight of the evening. He heads a cast of eighteen. Still the small town of Macomb, Alabama, where the 1935 events transpire, seems under populated despite director Kathi Gollwitzer's valiant efforts to stretch her resources. She has entrances and exits being made from the doors in front of the playing area as well as from behind set pieces and sounds are heard from off-stage. Jean Miller is smooth as the narrating neighbor, but the placement of the narration duties in the hands of a neighbor instead of a grown version of the daughter weakens the story. That daughter is played by Mollie Clement who has proven her ability to do better work than she does here. None of the three youngsters in the cast shake off the appearance of being actors playing a part. Among the adults are John Collins, smooth as the judge in the trial scenes, Seth Alcorn, properly hateful as the accuser, and Ali Miller is properly explosive as his daughter.

Miller also handled set designer duties and she came up with a distinctive approach to the design for the rather cramped space of Theatre on the Run. Her set pieces are all in black with simple white outlines of a porch rail, a roof line or a tree limb. This makes the basic set elegantly simple for scenes played out in the yard of the home of the lawyer and his children, but keeps it from competing for attention when the trial sequences are acted out down front. Theatre on the Run is a low ceilinged space, so the balcony of the courthouse to which the children and the blacks are relegated is actually off to the side of the stage. Nothing, however, compensates for the echoey nature of the space, so some of dialogue, especially that of Sean McCoy as the third child, gets swallowed in reverberation.

Written by Christopher Sergel based on the novel by Harper Lee. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Ali Miller (set) Kathi Gollwitzer (costumes) Robbie Hayes (lights) Christopher Rothgeb (sound) Robb Hunter S.A.F.D. (fight direction) Ray Gniewek (photography) Elisabeth Maddrell (stage manager). Cast: Seth Alcorn, Nora Bauer, Andy Brownstein, Mollie Clement, Charles Clyburn, John Collins, Anna Laura Grant, Lauren Antonia Griffin, Robert R. Heinly, Christopher C. Holbert, Mitch Irzinski, Dustin Loomis, Sean McCoy, Ali Miller, Jean Miller, AliceAnna Schumacher, Nancy Schneiderman, Max Silver.

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Reviewed July 27
Running time 2:30 - one intermission
A substantial production of a powerful play
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Storyline: A disturbed student at a struggling private girls prep school destroys the lives of the school's proprietors by making allegations of sexual impropriety.

Firebelly, with its mission to provide equal casting opportunities for young adult artists, selected well when they picked this play. Not only are there parts that young adults can sink their teeth into, there are opportunities for younger performers, as Hellman didn't skimp in writing depth into the characters of even the smaller parts of the students in the school. Two of those young actors are particularly impressive - seventh grader Taylor Eggleston, and nine year old Mollie Clement. Clement astonished everyone in the audience at the Arlington Players the last time we reviewed her with her performance as Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker. Here she gives another tightly controlled performance and exhibits a clear, if aberrant, logic as the fomenter of all the internal strife in the small prep school. Eggleston has a smaller part but one that she manages to reach an impressive climax at the end of Act III. The image of her collapse contrasts marvelously with the slyly satisfied smile Clement lets flick across her face as the lights dim.

A trio of young adults are at the center of the story. Ali Miller and Anna Waigand are the co-founders of the girl's prep school. Their initially incredulous reaction to the allegations which ultimately destroy them are the image of heartfelt naïveté, and the earnestness with which they believe the truth will be a sufficient shield is touching. The crux of this story, however, is the impact of the disaster they didn't see coming. Here it is Miller who gives the more impressive performance as her character descends from confident innocence to devastated victim. Through it all, Christian Gerhart gives a solid supporting performance as Waigand's fiancé, a man of simple, upstanding values who sees his duty and tries earnestly to do it.

Two representatives of the older generation also give notable performances. Heather Sanderson is appropriately infuriating as she receives and then spreads the calumny that destroys the women and their school, and then she is touching in her somewhat haughty reaction when she learns the extent of her error and its consequences. If any proof were needed of the richness of Hellman's writing, it could be had from what Wendy Wilmer does with the character Hellman created for the selfish old biddy of an aunt, who might have been able to forestall the disaster had she even tried. Wilmer makes the character very believable and even frighteningly familiar as calamity swirls about her.

Written by Lillian Hellman. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Kathi Gollwitzer (set and sound) Rebecca Whitworth (properties) Marissa Guillan (lights) Ray Gniewek (photography) Gabrielle Katzbahn-Rush (stage manager). Cast: Julie Chappell, Mollie Clement, Taylor Eggleston, Christian Gearhart, Gabrielle Katzbahn-Rush, Christina Kidd, Eliza Lore, Callan Marie Memmo, Ali Miller, Heather Sanderson, Anna Waigand, Emily Whitworth, Bryan Williams, Wendy Wilmer, Emily Woods

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Reviewed May 18
Running time 1:20 - one intermission
Two new one-act plays performed by
 earnest young players

Storyline: In Conversing Elevens a psychoanalyzing waiter named Sigmund gets his customers deeper and deeper into trouble until things are so bollixed up he finds it best to simply leave. In Not So Soft a policeman is interrogating a female suspect in what seems a familiar scene until first the policeman morphs into the husband in the suspect's recitation of events, and then the suspect morphs into the character of her supposed alibi.

Firebelly is an intriguing company, inspiring and at the same time relying on the fire in the belly of young talent burning for the opportunity to show their stuff. Up to now the young talent involved has been on stage performing the works of established quality by John Steinbeck, Leonard Gershe, Samuel Beckett and Ken Ludwig. Here they entrust works by young talent to the performance skills of a trio of equally new performers. The results are less impressive but not necessarily unsatisfying.

Josh Drew provides the most highly polished performance of the trio. That may be because he is given the most outgoing character to portray, the amateur psychologist of a waiter who takes a maritally challenged couple under his care until the mischief he stirs up gets so out of hand it is easier just to give up and leave. The role provides many opportunities for comedy and he exploits them effectively. More earnest is Sarah Imes who plays the comedy of the first piece a tad too seriously, but hits a nice stride in the post-intermission drama. Plastic faced Ed Xavier finds just the right tone for most of his line readings in both pieces but in between the lines there is a certain let down, a lack of precision to his performance in both the comic first act and in the more dramatic character shifting whodunit after intermission.

The entire production sits lightly on the stage at Theater on the Run which is a good thing for the company, because when the run here is completed, they have to pack it all up and carry it half a world away. The company has been invited to perform the two pieces at the 2005 Faust Festival in Hong Kong from June 9 to 18. With just one screen, one plant, one table, two chairs, one table cloth, two table settings and an ashtray, they shouldn't have to pay excess baggage charges on the flight over.

Written by David Cahill and Jonah Sea Knight. Directed by Jessica Lefkow. Design: Sarah Pantke and Sara Van Voorhis (lights) Jessica Lefkow (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Kathi Gollwitzer (stage manager). Cast: Josh Drew, Sarah Imes, Ed Xavier.

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Reviewed July 27
Running time 2:05 - one intermission
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Two befuddled characters wait for the arrival of a mysterious person. Their lives don't seem to have much purpose but they seem to believe that this Mr. Godot will provide answers to what they should be doing and why. In the meantime, they try to find ways to fill their day. The monotony is broken by a chance encounter with a stranger and his servant or slave. When a messenger delivers the word that Mr. Godot won't be coming today, all they have to do is wait for tomorrow.

Beckett's most famous play is a classic of the neo-modern school that experimented with the theater of the absurd. They  attempted to deal with what they saw as the nonsensical nature of human existence through techniques such as stripping plays of plot and avoiding exposition which might help the audience understand what is going on. In much of what was written by absurdists, nothing was going on. In Beckett's  best work, however, much was.

Actually, much had apparently gone on before the play began, and it is the challenge for the performers to help the audience piece together the vague clues in the text in order to make sense out of nonsense. Cahill and Brannon are a delight to watch, but they provide too little context for the events of the play, something with which older performers may have more success.

Cahill and Brannon aren't alone in the intimate playing space at Arlington's Theatre on the Run. Kristin Villanueva gives a slightly mannered performance as the enigmatic master of a servant/slave who provides the stimulus for many of Cahill and Brannon's character's reactions, while Michael Eggleston is convincing as the roped and whipped servant/slave who has been dehumanized.

Written by Samuel Beckett. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Kathi Gollwitzer (set) David Cahill (multimedia) Brian Moon (lights) David G. Shaeffer (sound) Elizabeth Smith (stage manager). Cast: Phillip James Brannon, David Cahill, Michael Eggleston, Kristin Villanueva, Ann Walker or Taylor Eggleston.

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Reviewed November 15
Running time 2 hours 10 minutes
t Potomac Stages Pick

Storyline: A young man who is blind, sets up housekeeping in a cramped apartment in lower Manhattan in an effort to break away from his over-protective mother. A free-spirited, even younger girl moves in next door and they strike romantic sparks until Mother comes by to check up on her son. His dreams of independence, his mother’s hopes for his future and the girl’s immature view of interpersonal relationships all come to a head in one evening.

Director Kathi Gollwitzer recognizes the dual nature of the piece and guides the transition from the lightest of light comedies to touching emotional exposure with a sure sense of grace. Although the difference in tone of the first and second acts could be a disorienting jolt for audiences and performers alike, Gollwitzer carries enough tongue-in-cheek insouciance from the first act into the second to buffer the shift.

For this production, the leads David Cahil and Jenn Book carry the evening along nicely. Cahil, who was so solid in the nearly humorless role of “George” in Firebelly’s marvelous production of Of Mice and Men in this same space last August, is perfectly charming and lightly self-depreciating as the young man who has been blind for life and, thus, doesn’t think of it as a handicap (“I was eight before I found out everyone else wasn’t blind too”).  Jenn Book plays the girl next door as the prototypical hippie of the late 60’s, totally immature but good natured, sexually active but innocent to the point of naiveté, well intentioned but incapable of understanding the nature of commitment.

The character of the mother is the key to the transition from light romantic comedy (a drawing room comedy where the drawing room is also a bedroom) to something deeper. She triggers not one but two transitions in tone. Charlotte Gnessin has the unenviable task of starting out as an unsympathetic character and then having to earn the audience’s affection or at least understanding later in the play. At this she succeeds fairly well and her final scenes are touching.

Written by Leonard Gershe. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Kathi Gollwitzer (set) Chris Carroll (lights) David G. Shaeffer (sound) Mary Walthall (stage manager).  Cast: Jenn Book, David Cahill, Chris Carroll, Charlotte Gnessin.

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Reviewed August 7
Running time 2 hours 30 minutes
Produced by Firebelly Productions
t Potomac Stages Pick

The pleasures of good, strong, emotionally satisfying live theater can be found in big houses and small at high prices and low, performed by the famous and the relatively unknown. A case in point is this impressive production of John Steinbeck’s depression-era saga which for $12 ($10 for students and seniors) provides a full evening of absorbing drama featuring two leading performances of note. It is a project of Firebelly Productions which provides workshops and courses to young adults interested in theatre and, here, gives some of them an opportunity to work with more experienced actors and technicians. This Of Mice And Men, though, bears none of the signs of being an academic exercise, it is thoroughly satisfying theater.

Storyline: Lennie, an infantile giant whose strength makes him dangerous, and George, his protective friend, arrive on a farm in California. The two migrant workers fled their previous employment after Lennie got into trouble. They hope to earn enough money to set up their own small farm but the inability of Lennie, in his innocence, to control his impulses lead them back into trouble.

George in this case is David Cahil, who just graduated from American University with a degree in media communications and theater. He must have studied about the “dramatic arc” of a role, for he takes George for a long, well constructed arc from his early scenes, in which he draws simple pleasure as Lennie’s protector and de facto parent, through the painful process of reaching the conclusion that Lennie’s defects are unmanageable. His Lennie is Phillip James Brannon, who is on Summer break from The Theatre School at Chicago’s DePaul University. Physically, he isn’t big enough to demonstrate the strength which the script says impresses all the other ranch hands, but he imbues the part with a gentle innocence that keeps that from being a distraction. They make a marvelous pair.

The casting of Brannon puts a different twist on the story because, unlike Lennie in the original story, he is black. Director Kathi Gollwitzer’s approach to this unconventional casting is refreshingly clean and honest. Rather than the sometimes distracting “color-blind casting” in which the audience is expected not to notice race, she makes racial prejudice against this Lennie part of the story. The hatred of the ranch’s owners son which is crucial to the plot is all the more reprehensible because of its racial motivation. Of course, Steinbeck had already written in a racial discrimination subplot with one ranch hand relegated to the tack house because of race. Here that disqualifying racial characteristic is that he is Chinese rather than black and, given California’s history of discrimination against people of Asian descent, it makes sense this way.

Gollwitzer has done a fine job making sure that each of the actors on stage is engaged in the reality of the scene. No one seems on pause, awaiting a cue. Instead, they all are engaged in the minutia of real life farmhands recuperating from hard work in their limited time off in the bunk house. That bunk house is a nicely substantial set designed by Gollwitzer which also bears the marks of the minutia of life, well supplied with canned peaches, worn photographs and a hodge-podge of blankets for the bunks. The atmosphere is enhanced by an incidental music score that relies on the very appropriate period music of Aaron Copland and less recognizable but equally appropriate musical underscores for scene shifts. They give a sense of completeness to this atmospheric production in the intimate black box theater just off Four Mile Run Drive.

Written by John Steinbeck. Directed by Kathi Gollwitzer. Design: Kathi Gollwitzer (set) Chris Carroll (fight coordinator) Michael J. Fulvio (lights) David Cahill and Brennan Ballas (sound) Elizabeth Smith (stage manager). Cast: Phillip James Brannon, David Cahill, Chris Carroll, Luigi Canlas, Elizabeth Chomko, Bernie Cohen, Paul Danaceau, Michael Eggleston, Michael J. Fulvio, Jim Shirey, Nicholas Yenson.