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Reviewed September 9
Running time 2:25 - one intermission
Women's roles and rights viewed through the centuries
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: The newly named head of the "Top Girls" employment agency hosts a celebratory dinner party where her five guests are women from the past ranging from a woman who passed as a man until she became Pope, to a medieval courtesan. Later, at work in the agency, some of the same issues discussed around the dinner table are faced by the women who want to find work and the women who try to match their skills to available openings.

Fountainhead gives the entire piece a solid production featuring a cast of actresses whose performances highlight the interesting facets of each of the characters. Lynn Audrey Neal is the strong center of this production. As the hostess who throws the dinner party and then the manager who runs the agency, it is through her eyes that most of the other characters come into focus. She manages to be fully communicative while exuding an almost haughty sense of reserve that signals a seriousness of purpose, even when she's indulging in a flight of fancy - the dinner party is, after all, a construct of her own mind.

The assembly of unique women played with spirit and clarity by Rigina Aquino as a Japanese courtesan of the thirteenth century, Rosemary Regan as a Victorian English travel writer, Kate Michelsen as the subject of a famous sixteenth century painting, Charlotte Akin as a character out of Petrarch and Boccaccio by way of Chaucer, and, of course, Callie Kimball as the aforementioned pregnant Pope. Heather Haney and Lindsay Hayes come more into their own in the second act after spending some of the first as waitresses to the assembly of notable women.

Costume designer Lynnie Raybuck has decked out the cast in some strongly stated outfits including the modern as well as the historical. Neal in her brightly colored, severely tailored suits is as impressively in-character as is Callie Kimball in her Pope's Mitre.

Written by Caryl Churchill. Directed by Dorothy Neumann. Design: George Lucas (set) Lynnie Raybuck (costumes) Rebecca Shogren (properties) Jessie Crain (lights) Randy Lancelot (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Lisa Bickford (stage manager). Cast: Regina Aquino, Charlotte Akin, Heather Haney, Lindsay Haynes, Callie Kimball, Kate Michelsen, Lynn Audrey Neal, Rosemary Regan.

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Reviewed March 5
Running time 2:15 - one intermission
General Admission Seating
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: A respected Member of British Parliament at the close of the nineteenth century is blackmailed by a lady from his past. He struggles with the consequences of exposure but, through the intervention of a good friend who knew the lady and whose view of his friend is unshaken by revelations of human weaknesses, is saved from both professional and personal ruin.

Director Leslie A. Kobylinski makes the transition between community and professional theater very smoothly. Whichever level she's working in, the results are always fully professional. Here, with a superb professional cast, she brings a sense of polish as well as her trademark intelligence to the production. She allows each of her cast members moments in which they are highlighted but it is always in support of the script. For example, early in the play Ladmirault has a particularly heart-rending moment with Nanna Ingvarsson as his wife, and Kobylinski blocks the scene so that Ingvarsson is behind Ladmirault, allowing him to show the emotion of the moment in his eyes without having to appear to be hiding that look from her. Subtle touches like that give the cast free reign throughout the show.

Invarsson is the image of the supportive spouse and Charlotte Akin is very good at being menacing while maintaining the apparent reserve that would be appropriate for the drawing room environment of the piece. Jim Jorgenson, as the fop of a friend whose actual moral strength shows through his dilettante pose of superficiality, has most of the funny lines and pulls them off with aplomb. That cast also includes a nicely haughty Gilly Conklin, a delightfully self controlled Larry Daniele as a knowing butler, and a lovely and lively Danielle Davy in an ingénue's role that she moderates nicely, getting more detailed and impressive as the role gets more important in the plot.

The playing area of the small Theatre on the Run is transformed into a sumptuous drawing room environment by William Aitken's collection of columns of various heights, a few pieces of period furniture and an empty picture frame with the label "O. Wilde." Franklin C. Coleman's warm lights make the jewels the ladies wear sparkle and Anna Hawkins selections of chamber and small orchestra music completes the feeling. With Saturday matinee tickets going for just $10, and evening performances and Sunday matinees only $20, this may be one of the best deals you will find in professional theater today.

Written by Oscar Wilde. Directed by Leslie A. Kobylinski.  Design: William Aitken (set) Suzanne Maloney (costumes) Franklin C. Coleman (lights) Donna Reynolds and Rose M. Kobylinski (properties) Anna Hawkins (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Rose M. Kobylinski (stage manager). Cast: Charlotte Akin. Gilly Conklin, Larry Daniele, Danielle Davy, Nanna Ingvarsson, Jim Jorgensen, Danny Ladmirault, Richard Mancini.

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Reviewed December 2
Running time 2:00 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for high energy comedy for grownups

Storyline: A gay man falls in love from afar with the actor playing an angel in the Radio City Music Hall Christmas show. He invites this angel  to his apartment (still in costume complete with wings) where he manages to tie him to a chair to pursue some rather unorthodox rite of affection. All is interrupted by the arrival of his mother who announces she has finally left her husband and has come to move in with her son. With a bound and gagged angel in the next room, "Mom, this isn't a good time" seems too weak a reply.

Nicky Silver is known for quirky comedies about life in the trendy world of urban America. Quirky this one certainly is. It is also extremely well constructed with plot complications evolving rationally out of the outlandish set up with which he starts. The comedy doesn't rely solely on funny lines or on quirky developments, it comes from a combination of both,  drawing lots of laughs throughout the evening. Setting it apart from some other contemporary "slice of urban life" comedies is the way each individual character is so sympathetically written. Silver doesn't dislike any one of the four characters even as he puts them through events that reveal their weaknesses. What is more, the plot is so well constructed that each character remains completely consistent - none is required to break the logic of his or her personality just to introduce a complication which is so often the case in less well crafted farces.

Scott Bradley and Keith Lubeley create likeable personalities for the two young men caught up in the madness. Bradley lets enough of the angst of young gay men facing the plague of AIDS shine through without diminishing the humor of the situations he has gotten himself into, and Lubeley even manages to fall asleep humorously. Jim Jorgensen comes unglued nicely in the second act and sports the most outlandish comb over. But this is really Charlotte Akin's show. She makes the mother a riotously self-absorbed intrusion into her son's whacky world and carries the evening along with high energy; and, she looks great in the wardrobe that director Kerri Rambow designed for her. 

Rambow controls the energy level with a frequently subtle touch. After a first act that builds from emphatic to manic in quick steps, she starts the second act at a lower level, emphasized by subdued lighting, in order to give her cast a base from which to build to a full climax. As with any farce, the play requires a set featuring solid doors that can be thrown open and slammed shut with abandon. Stefan Gibson provides one with enough detailing to sustain the feeling of a small urban apartment, and Jessie Crain lights it brightly to match the feeling of the action with sharp spotlights for some of the set-up speeches. Local actor/artist Ian LeValley, who combined both activities in the recent Fifteen Rounds with Jackson Pollock, contributes a Matisse-like piece for the back wall.

Written by Nicky Silver. Directed by Kerri Rambow. Design: Stefan Gibson (set) Kerri Rambow (costumes) Jessie Crain (lights) Jim Jorgensen (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Sean Corcoran (stage manager). Cast: Charlotte Akin, Scott Bradley, Jim Jorgensen, Keith Lubeley.

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Reviewed August 14
Running time 1:20 - no intermission
Produced in association with Keegan Theatre
t A Potomac Stages Pick for intimate intense acting
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Nine short scenes zigzag backward in chronology to reveal the history of an extramarital affair and its impact on a marriage and on the husband, the wife and the wife’s lover who has been the husband’s best friend. Starting with the breakup and ending with the meeting, the retrogression is fascinating even if the lack of a "tag" at what should be the ending, but is actually the beginning, means it ends with a whimper, not a bang.

Pinter is certainly not the first playwright to attempt a reverse order play. The concept has fascinated writers practically since the dawn of drama writing, think of Sophocles' Oedipus Rex in which the king's history is slowly revealed. The old standby flash back is a kind of reverse order technique. More rigorous time reversals can also be found. More recently, consider Kaufman and Hart's Merrily We Roll Along which George Furth and Stephen Sondheim turned into a musical that starts at the end and works back to the beginning.

The principals here are Fountainhead's Charlotte Akin and Jim Jorgensen, joined by familiar local actor Dan Via. Jorgensen has such expressive eyes, and he knows just how to use them as tools in communicating his character's inner thoughts to an audience. He's at his best in an intimate house such as this one, where every shift of focus or fleeting glance registers. As the cuckold of this triangle, his eyes tell volumes about just what his character knows and when he knows it. Akin gets the weight of guilt across more clearly than the excitement of the early stages of the affair (which, of course, come later in the play.) Via has a nice flippancy about his demeanor that works well and manages to indicate his character's own confusion over just how much the husband knows at each stage of the affair.

Lea Umberger's set of interlocking platforms allows swift transitions from locations - the restaurant where the lovers reunite, the flat they rented for their affair, the living room in the married couple's home. Behind it all is a screen on which are projected a series of photographs of the cast which capture their attitudes and feelings over the course of the affair, as well as slides giving the time and location of each scene ("The Flat, Winter 1975".) Unfortunately, the images are so dim that they are distracting without enhancing the overall experience of the play.

Written by Harold Pinter. Directed by Sarah Denhardt. Design: Lea Umberger (set and costumes) Jessie Crain (lights) Robert Timothy Jarbadan (sound) Ray Gniewek (photography) Jessica Timmins (stage manager). Cast: Charlotte Akin, Bryan Davis, Jim Jorgensen, Dan Via. 

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Reviewed November 24
Running time 2 hours 20 minutes
Playing in rep with Keegan's Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf at the Clark Street Playhouse

Storyline: A couple whose marriage is so tenuous they haven’t shared a bed for over a decade find their home life turned upside down when their neighbors, whom they consider friends, take up residence in the room that used to be their daughter’s just as she comes home after the breakup of her fourth marriage. The house is just too full of people who seek refuge from the terrors of failure in the outside world.

Jim Jorgensen gives another of his mannerism-rich performances as the husband who hides in the ever present alcohol (even sharing a pre-breakfast drink with his house guest, the suitably up-tight Tel Monks). From his entrance playing with the coins in his pocket, to the twirling of his thumb around his index finger as he listens to his wife’s ramblings, Jorgensen is a joy to watch.

Annie Houston is staunchly uptight as the repressed wife, starting a bit shakily but blossoming into full-throated neurosis in the third act. Vanessa Vaughn is a bit overly petulant as the supposedly grown daughter with childish expectations and an almost infantile level of self control. Charlotte Akin nearly steals too many scenes as the heaviest drinker in this collection of heavy imbibers. When she’s up against the stronger members of the cast the balance is delicate but maintained. When she shares the stage with either Houston in the early going or Vaughn later on, however, the balance is lost and the scenes tend to spin off into farce.

Whether the imbalance is attributable to a mismatch between the strengths of the performers, the clarity of the script, or the balance imposed by the director is hard to say. The result, however, is an evening of very interesting individual pieces that don't seem to meld.

Written by Edward Albee. Directed by Kerri Rambow. Design: Faz Besharatian (set) Dan Martin (lights) Ray Gniewek (photography). Cast: Charlotte Akin, Annie Houston, Jim Jorgensen, Tel Monks, Vanessa Vaughn. Ellen Young.

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Reviewed May 10
Running time 2 hours 55 minutes
Playing at the Clark Street Playhouse
Joint production with Keegan Theatre
Price: $25 for both shows
t Potomac Stages Pick

Storyline: Jake thinks his wife abuse has finally reached its logical conclusion and that his wife Beth has died of his latest beating. His brother gets him home to the tender care of his mother who is still in denial about every shortcoming in Jake as she compensates for the tragedy that was her marriage to his father. In the meantime, Beth has survived and is nursed back to health by her brother who gets her out of the hospital and back to the home of their parents - their mother driven just a bit ditsy by her life with their self-centered, psychologically abusive father.

From the storyline above it must be difficult for the readers to believe they would enjoy three hours in the presence of these people. But Shepard’s skill at creating fascinatingly flawed flesh and blood people whose humanity can still be glimpsed through layers of hurt and hate, and whose striking out comes from some deep well of pain and frustration, is such that each of the eight characters is an interesting individual and their interaction is consistently compelling.

Keegan and Fountainhead both bring the strengths of their co-production but clearly this first installment of “The Shepard Project” bears the Keegan stamp. In addition to Keegan co-founder Eric Lucas as director, the other co-founder and Artistic Director, Mark Rhea, plays Jake with a ferocity frequently hinted at in his previous performances but never quite let loose in this fashion before. He owns the first act, which is the only act that is really about Jake. Linda High, who was so memorable in Keegan’s The Glass Menagerie on tour last summer in Ireland and then reprised here in the fall, is nearly as good in the smaller role of Jake’s Mother, especially in the second act. In the final act it is Kevin Adams in his forth Keegan appearance who captures the imagination with a horrendous but compelling characterization of Beth’s Dad for whom a battered daughter is almost as disturbing a development as is the arrival of the last day of deer season without a buck to his credit.

Through it all there are rock-solid performances of a superb cast. There is Chris Stezin as Jake’s brother, the only actually functional character in the lot, although Charlotte Akin’s portrait of Jake’s sister is of a character on the verge of functionality who may well be able to strike out on her own and escape the cycle of abuse. Jim Jorgensen is Beth’s brother whose own problems only surface after he has taken care of hers during her crisis, and Susan Grevengoed is as painful to watch as she should be as the battered Beth. Peggy McGrath succeeds in the humor of the ditsyness that Beth’s mother uses as a shield against psychological abuse without turning her into a one-dimensional joke. That all of these performances of all of these unbalanced characters blend into a well balanced whole is a tribute to the work of the director as well as to the strength of the script.

Written by Sam Shepard. Directed by Eric Lucas. Design: Mark A. Rhea (set) Maggie Butler (costumes) Daniel Lyons (makeup) Dan Martin (lights) Faz Besharatian (scenic artist) Ray Gniewek (photography) Ann Fleming (stage manager). Cast: Kevin Adams, Charlotte Akin, Susan Grevengoed, Linda High, Jim Jorgensen, Peggy McGrath, Mark Rhea, Chris Stezin.

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Reviewed May 17
Running time 2 hours 15 minutes
Playing at the Clark Street Playhouse
Joint production with Keegan Theatre
Price: $25 for both shows

Storyline: A seemingly normal young man brings his girlfriend to meet his grandparents after having been out of touch for years. But his grandfather doesn’t seem to remember him, his grandmother is off gallivanting around with a preacher man, his father seems to have come home completely burned out by some unspeakable secrets in his life and his uncle is terrorizing the household until they take away his artificial leg. The girlfriend begins to unravel the secrets the family has kept hidden from the outside world.

 As with many of Shepard’s plays, this one pushes the envelope of the surreal but does so with a construction that establishes a strong sense of realism before veering off into the bizarre. Keith Bridges' staging is highly visual, using the lighting of Dan Martin in ways that direct attention as well as establish mood, and he brings out all of the humor as well as the weirdness of the characters. However, the secrets underlying the problems of Shepard’s characters in this mysteriously plotted piece aren’t resolved with the clarity that Eric Lucas was able to bring to the other show in The Shepard Project, A Lie of the Mind (see above). Post show conversations may concentrate on “what the heck was ___ about” rather than “oh, that’s what ____ was all about.” It leaves you sated but strangely unsatisfied.

There are performances to savor in this production. Jim Jorgensen sits on stage throughout and is alternately funny and fascinating, always contributing to the scene but never stealing it unless it is about his character. Charlotte Akin carries her role from the flighty and slightly giddy woman trying to get out of the house for a rendezvous with the preacher to dominating matriarch who is a terror when she loses her temper. Eric Lucas gives gripping portraits of the two sides of his character, a monster tormenting his victims (who happen to be his family) until deflated, and then becoming the whimpering weakling everyone believes is actually inside a bully. Mark Rhea, on the other hand, establishes a haunting presence as the son who has already undergone all the personality changes that shaped him, leaving a burnt out shell. Susan Grevengoed is, as always, a pleasure to watch creating a distinctive personality, but either Bridges or Shepard have her making shifts that seem artificial - how is it that this fearful stranger is all of a sudden fixing soup for Grandpa?

About “The Shepard Project” -- Buried Child is playing in repertory with A Lie of the Mind. Admission is on a single $25 ticket for both shows. If you only have time for one, attend A Lie of the Mind -- but don’t throw away your ticket as it may well whet your appetite for the unique pleasures of a Sam Shepard play and you can use it to go back and catch Buried Child. It will be worth the return!

Written by Sam Shepard. Directed by Keith Bridges.  Design: Mark A. Rhea (set) Maggie Butler (costumes) Daniel Lyons (makeup) Dan Martin (lights) Faz Besharatian (scenic artist) Ray Gniewek (photography) Jennifer Richter (stage manager). Cast: Kevin Adams, Charlotte Akin, Susan Grevengoed, Jim Jorgensen, Eric Lucas, Mark Rhea, Chris Stezin.

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Reviewed October 21
Running time 1 hour 55 minutes
Performed at Clark Street Playhouse
t Potomac Stages Pick

Written by William Inge. Directed by Steven Carpenter. Design: Richard Mancini (set) Janice Zucker (costumes and properties) Dan Martin (lights) Steven Carpenter (sound). Cast: Jim Jorgensen, Charlotte Akin, Jennifer A. Driscol, Sam Elmore, Lynn Neal, David Gaddas, Nick Olson, Chris Hamlin-Beight.