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Running Time 3:00 one intermission
A satisfying evening on a tough topic: aging and dying

Story Line:  A play about community and loss, about the different ways grief is expressed and felt, and how pain is excised with ritual and humor. It takes place at a small hotel in France in 1963 where Tom Stoppard and Tennessee Williams are both staying when a mother and daughter come to consult with a doctor about the daughter’s mysterious medical condition. The title comes from a number of myths told throughout the play of how the Sun came into existence and lived its life.

Playwright Akerley is known in the Potomac Region for her daring productions and acting. Here she has written a play bursting with vexing ideas, but with a meandering script which can seem a bit academically-based at times. She seems to be attempting a high-brow, secular, non-religious treatise, but has a tendency to add unnecessary literary flourishes and theatrical conceits. Some of the extras include the description of an ever changing dinner menu and references to beautiful poetry that would only be cheered by a PhD in Literature. Theater cognoscenti will give hosannas to the transparent homage to Tom Stoppard, as Stoppard and Tennessee Williams meet to chat about their distinct theater styles. Here is Williams, all heat and strong whiskey, and Stoppard, all cool and wine bound. As a co-director with Jonathan Church, Akerley has a deft touch, especially in physical presentations of intellectual matters. They have taken the script and molded it into a work accessible for a larger number of theater goers, but more trimming of theatrical flourishes would be good.

The script revolves around Wood’s character, a woman whose baffling medical malady has affected her life and her relationships with friends and family. Wood is stiff at her entrance but softens and becomes much more warmly expressive over the course of the production. Her costumes change to more colorful peignoirs and pretty dresses that that hug her body and swirl as her hips turn. Casey is a charmer as a middle-aged man who wants to reach out and lay a hand on Wood, but not in the way that touching might normally mean. He is almost a religious icon in this very intellectual, non-faith based play which uses cultural myths about the birth of the Sun to stand in for Western religion. When he tells the stories about the birth and life of the Sun, he is at his pulpit: sonorous, melodious and enthralling. Kathleen Akerley moves through this production ably and at the end presents unexpected bravado while seeking certain assurances that are central to this play’s arc. Michael Glenn’s "Tennessee Williams" and Dylan Pinter’s "Tom Stoppard" seem to be thin characters and add a bit to the background, but little to the foreground of the central theme. Jason Stiles, as a man with his own mystifying existence, has the ability to render himself as a regular guy or something a bit different. Jason Lott’s "Doctor" is the main levity of the evening. He is a hoot as he prods and probes, sniffs and grimaces. As he noses a small vial of urine to see what he can learn, he is either the greatest scientist or the most perverted. Daniel Vito Siefring, as the hotel proprietor, is all stuffiness and obsequious.

The Longacre Lea technical work is solid throughout. In Hannah J. Crowell’s scenic design, the Callahan theater space is given a summery look with a 2-tier patio setting with white patio furniture and a number of doors and windows. The lighting is especially lush amber when Sun stories are depicted. Sound affects are generous from the pouring of wine to the buzzing sounds that can be heard in one’s head. Costumes for the women change throughout the production showing various internal journeys; the men remain in the same well-healed clothes throughout.

Written by Kathleen Akerley. Co-directed by Kathleen Akerley and Jonathon Church. Choreographed by Heather Haney. Design: Hannah J. Crowell (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) John Burkland (lights), Neil McFadden (sound) Jesse Terrill (original music) Clinton Brandhagen (photography) Jessica Pearson (stage manager.) Cast: Kathleen Akerley, Michael John Casey, Michael Glenn, Jason Lott, Dylan Pinter, Daniel Vito Siefring, Jason Stiles, Abby Wood.

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Running time 2:15 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a progressive descent into bureaucratic insanity
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: The incompetent administrator of a mental institution is astonished to find, on Christmas day no less, that one of the inmates has given birth to a boy child. He's further astonished to learn that she claims that she can't be certain of the paternity since most of the staff has had relations with her. (The hint of a biblical nativity passes quickly here.) The search for the father turns the institution upside down, almost as much as does the request of the understaff for a Christmas address from the administrator.

As is often the case with a Harold Pinter play, language is more than words. It is the structure of expression that marks the text and gives the cast a great deal with which to work. An intriguing and outlandish beginning swirls off into confusing but no less intriguing territory before the evening is done. It is the skill of Kathleen Akerley that keeps this production so coherent and entertaining. For one thing, she has an obvious love of the intellectual approach to dialogue that is the essence of this verbal circus. For another, she mounts the entire play with an earnestness and high sense of seriousness that allows the wit and cleverness of the dialogue to shine. But her most important contribution appears to be in casting the production in the first place.

Michael John Casey is delightfully precise in the opening moments of the play as the totally in-command but completely incompetent administrator. His enunciation, his manner and his gestures are razor sharp. As the administrator's command of his situation deteriorates, so does Casey's portrayal show all the appropriate rough edges. By the second act, he's disheveled and even a bit pallid (with the help of what appears to be some grey makeup, at that). Michael Glenn's smooth sycophant of a second in command is a superb foil. Jason Lot, Abby Wood and Jonathon Church all do nifty work as well as the staff. The two newcomers, Siefring and Pinter, take small roles and deliver equally sharp and detailed performances as the spokesman for the "understaff" and as an administrator in the headquarters the institution reports to.

Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden has provided a unit set for the piece that is imaginative and memorable, with a central structure of various levels before a deteriorating hot-house wall of sheet plastic. Add Gail Stewart Beach's character-driven wardrobe and Neil McFadden's soundscape, and the atmosphere of the piece feels just right.

Written by Harold Pinter. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) Annie Alesandrini (properties) John Burkland (lights) Neil McFadden (sound) Elliot Homburg (photography) Megan Reichelt (stage manager). Cast: Michael John Casey, Jonathon Church, Michael Glenn, Jason Lott, Dylan Pinter, Daniel Vito Siefring, Abby Wood.

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Running time 3 hours - 2 intermissions
Great wordplay in a meandering plot
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: One of the innumerable "back stories" of Shakespeare's Hamlet shows the two menial members of the castle population who are used by Claudius to spy on "The Melancholy Dane." Most of the play takes place in those moments the pair aren't on stage in the Bard's play.

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead was the breakthrough for Tom Stoppard. Indeed, it was first produced as an amateur piece and then had a professional premier at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival of 1966. Since then both play and author have gone on to substantial success. It is easy to see why it would wow fringe festival audiences, especially if it were given a quality performance by actors who could pull off its complicated blend of light banter and hidden meaning. Whatever the qualities of the cast in Scotland in 1966, the cast here in Washington forty years later is fist rate.

Jonathon Church and Jason Stiles are Guildenstern and Rosencrantz, or is that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern? (It is a running gag of the piece that their identities keep getting mixed up, just as Hamlet appears to mix them up in Scene II of Shakespeare's Act II.) Both are delights as first Stiles and then Church seems to have the upper hand intellectually, but neither character really has a grasp of the world they inhabit. Watching the two work together is the primary pleasure of the evening. Add to that very sharp work by Michael John Casey as the player who seems to know a great deal about the play, Hamlet, and really enjoyable work by Michael Glenn as the Hamlet character himself, and you have many great moments to distract you from looking at your watch, wondering just how much longer this is going to last.

Abby wood's clever set design provides for entrances and exits from three principal directions, not just two. Characters can enter or exit stage right or stage left, but much of the time the raked platform of the stage provides space behind the playing area for actors to jump off or climb into the world of the action. The platform is riddled with trap doors through which characters pass, and is lined with jagged, rippling slits which shine with light from within.

Written by Tom Stoppard. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: Abby Wood (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) John Burkland (lights) Michael Glenn (sound) Elliot Homburg (photography) Annie Alesandrini (properties and stage management). Cast: Michael John Casey, Jonathon Church, Michael Glenn, Jason Lott, Jason Styles, Alexander Strain.

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Reviewed August 25
Running time 2:10 - one intermission:
Two contrasting short pieces
 - one is a kick but the other is a drag
 Click here to buy the Stoppard script

Storylines: Mac Wellman's one act play involves the effort to deprogram a young woman caught up in a cult. Tom Stoppard's spoof of British whodunits draws two theater critics from the audience into the action.

First things first - what does "energumen" mean? It isn't listed in many modern dictionaries, but if you go back to the 1913 issue of Webster you find it means "one possessed by an evil spirit." Ah, that's what this is all about! Wellman, the author of innumerable plays with flippant titles from Bodacious Flapdoodle to 7 Blowjobs (which Kathleen Akerley directed back in 2002), makes it a play about words - words poured out, spit out and savored. Ostensibly, the words add up to the story of a deprogramming performed by one nicely named "Mr. Nutley" (Hugh T. Owen). At one point it is observed that "Mr.Nutley is fond of fractured parable." The same could be said of Mr. Wellman.

Things pick up considerably after intermission, although it may take some audience members awhile to catch on to the gag. The play starts well before anything is going on on stage. Two newspaper critics arrive and take their seats in the audience and chat amiably. Once the action begins on stage, however, they turn their attention to the task at hand - momentarily. Stoppard's inventiveness even extends to inserting two mock intermissions so we can eavesdrop on the critics sharing views of the play. Michael Glenn and Jason Stiles are hilarious as the critics while the spoof of a whodunit plays itself out on stage with a mannered mania from the balance of the cast including a wonderfully befuddled Carlos Bustamante as the titular inspector.

Set designer Matt Soule uses the long central playing space in the Callan Theatre with a flair that adds to but doesn't distract from either play. With rotating panels at the rear for the first piece, the transition from locale to locale is swift and unobtrusive, with the set drawing attention only at intended points. For the second piece, he brings things down front with a see-through structure at the very lip of the stage which helps connect the supposed "critics" in the audience to the action in the on-stage spoof. It works very well indeed.

Written by Tom Stoppard and Mac Wellman. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: Matt Soule (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) Kathleen Akerley and Katie Clemmons (properties) Andrew Griffin (lights) Kathleen Akerley and Michael Dove (sound) Elliot Homburg (photography). Cast:  Carlos Bustamante, Jonathon Church, Jeanne Dillon, Melissa-Leigh Douglass, Marybeth Fritzky, Michael Glenn, Hugh T. Owen, Jason Stiles, Abby Wood.

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Reviewed August 15
Running time 2:30 - one intermission
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: An unidentified man arrives in a strange land and a strange time with just two bags to his name, searching for something. The something turns out to be his third bag but it may also be his worldly goods or even his family. He may have lost his belongings or he may have killed his family or he may never have had a past. His dealings with the officials of this strange land are stranger still since he lacks proper documentation and can't even provide basic information such as his mother's maiden name. Clues fall in place, bringing memory back but he's not at all certain he wants the answers to his questions.

Ionesco's brand of theater of the absurd comes closer to absurd theater than that of many others such as Samuel Beckett (Waiting for Godot) or Jean Genet (Deathwatch). By giving the audience a view of an insane world through the eyes of a presumably sane observer he creates a disturbing dissonance that is absent from those others. This 1975 play came late in his career, some fifteen years after his most famous work, Rhinoceros. 

This man with bags is Jason Stiles who plays the role strait, a picture of rationality in an irrational world. He responds to the absurdities of Ionesco's imaginings as would a member of the audience with initial belief in the ability of logic and rational behavior to unravel the problems he is facing, followed by frustration at the way the world seems to be getting stranger and finally with a sense of anger and desperation. He's accompanied through much of what transpired by James Flanagan who plays one of the bags, a scampering presence with a harness creating a handle by which he can be carried.

Taking multiple roles in the absurd world into which Stiles' Man has fallen are such fascinating to watch actors as Michael John Casey, Hugh T. Owen, Peter Wylie and Nanna Ingvarsson. Each appearance is essentially a cameo but each actor has many of them. For instance, Ingvarsson has ten different characters ranging from "Memory of Mother" to "Old Woman Who Turns Young" while Wylie goes from simple "Doctor" to the incredibly titled "Guy With Insight into the World." 

Written by Eugene Ionesco. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: Joseph B. Musumeci (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) Kathleen Akerley, Annie Alesandrini and Abby Wood (properties) John Burkland (lights) Neil McFadden (sound) Laura Smith (stage manager). Cast: Michael John Casey, Jonathon Church, Melissa-Leigh Douglass, James Flanagan, Michael Glenn, Nanna Ingvarsson, Jarrod Jabre, Jason Lott, Hugh T. Owen, Jason Stiles, Peter Wylie.

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August 13 - September 7, 2003
The Power of the Dog

Reviewed August 17
Running time 2 hours 30 minutes

Storyline: A loosely connected set of scenes in Russia at the height of Soviet Power as World War II comes to an end questions the value of being the victor in such a destructive war, the worth of being a survivor when so little humanity remains and the difficulty of dealing with the guilt over what it took to survive.  

Barker, British playwright, poet and essayist, takes his absurdity quite seriously, as do the director, designers and performers of this, the professional American premiere of his 1985 play. It is structured with care, building its impact by tying threads together from one illogical event to another. Themes such as Stalin’s obsessive mistrust of everyone and everything, the need of a film-maker to capture the “truth” of a subject way too large to even be sampled and the fate of a single woman seen hanging from the rafters weave through explosions of witticisms. It is meant to be disturbing and it succeeds through much of the evening.

Director Kathleen Akerley moves a large cast about a large playing space with precision, moving major events from upstage to down and from left to right to focus attention on the key element of each scene or event. It is an effective way to heighten the sense of absurdity for it places irrational events in high relief. The realistic set emphasizes that sense of authenticity with tall red drapes, grey brickwork, patterned floor and, most importantly, a huge mirror set at an angle so the reflection of the action is visible to the audience in the bank of seats at the front. The effectiveness of Joseph B. Musumeci’s set is enhanced by the sharply focused lighting effects of Adam Magazine, the large wardrobe assembled by costume designer Gail Stewart Beach and the overall feeling of realism is further enhanced by the sound of Russian music ranging from Mussorgsky to Shostakovich. 

With Michael Glenn doing a very funny take on a drunken Churchill, Jason Stiles strutting as Stalin and John Tweel, Jean Dillon, Dan Brick and Fiona Blackshaw standing out in multiple roles, it is Dan Via as a Scottish Vaudevillian turned into court jester/fool that captures the absurdity of the situations most succinctly. His tongue lashes with wit at some points and darts lizard-like at others. Viewed through his eyes, the events of this mid-twentieth century turning point of history make very little sense -- but that is entirely the point.

Written by Howard Barker. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: Joseph B. Musumeci (set) Gail Stewart Beach (costumes) Adam Magazine (lights) Dennis Manuel and Kathleen Akerley (sound) Kathleen Wilber (stage manager). Cast: Charlie M. Berfield, Fiona Blackshaw, Dan Brick, Michael John Casey, Jonathan Church, Jeanne Dillon, Michael Glenn, H. Clare Johnson, Erika Sheffer, Jason Stiles, John Tweel, Dan Via, Abby Wood.

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Reviewed August 18
Running time 2 hours 55 minutes
Price range $8-$15

Written by Eugene Ionesco, Tom Stoppard and Harold Pinter. Directed by Kathleen Akerley. Design: David Ghatan (set) Gail Stewart (costumes) Adam Magazine (lights). Cast: Lidsay Allen, Dan Brick, Carlos Miguel Bustamante, Michael John Casey, Michael Glenn, Hugh T. Owen, Jennifer Phillips, Suzanne Richard, Jason Stiles, Ellen Young.