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Running time 2:30 - one intermission
A new play with music about a meeting of the modern and the medieval
Performances after October 20 had to be cancelled when Deborah Rinn Critzer left the cast

Storyline: After closing time in a print and frame shop, the proprietress is visited by a customer who may well be a mystic from fourteenth century England named Margery Kempe.

There really was a Margery Kempe. She may well have been the first author of an autobiography in the English language. The Book of Margery Kempe resurfaced in 1934 after having been lost for centuries, and it seems to have captured Alprin's imagination. She creates the Margery of this story out of the known elements of Kempe's life, including her tendency to burst into tears (a phenomenon that director Brian Alprin refers to as the "gift of holy tears") and her religious mysticism. To tie the plot together with the historical record, Alprin uses the chorus, which for reasons that escape me, are collectively called the "course," to chant background information as well as to sing a wide range of songs.  They range from the up-tempo "To Beer or Not To Beer" to the rock-ish "Add Up Sheep 'Cause Sleep's What Counts" and from an Irish jig of "Whirling Girls" to a faux Yiddish Theatre style "Pass Over Satyrs."

Alprin plays the proprietress with a growing sense of exasperation at the strangeness of her visitor, while Critzer creates something of a blend of Opie's "Aunt Bee" from the Andy Griffith Show and Jean Seberg as Joan of Arc in Otto Preminger's Saint Joan. She's the kind of mystic who thoughtfully pulls on knee pads before falling into a prayerful pose and who carries a phrase book on a string around her neck to check for the proper modern idiom to express her points. Of the four members of "the course," Larue Geigel and Spencer Mickelson are the most effective vocalists.

The contributions of musical director and arranger James D. Watson and choreographer Tosia Anne Shall are both notable. Watson's arrangements vary from classical chamber music sounds with spirited exchanges between Katie Chambers' cello and Marcia McIntyre's violin to contemporary jazz guitar riffs by Rob Weaver punctuated by Marc Dion's bass. Watson leads the quintet from his keyboard. Shall created an acrobatic set of moves for the four singing dancers that is quite distinctive. The dances aren't in the tradition of musical theater at all but are closer to modern dance. Costume designer Cat Martin put them in multi-colored outfits that add to the distinctive nature of this musical element of this play with music.

Music, lyrics and book by Paula Alprin. Directed by Brian Alprin. Arrangements and musical direction by James D. Watson. Choreographed by Tosia Anne Shall. Design: Todd F. Edwards (set) Cat Martin (costumes) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Jason Cowperthwaite (lights) Stan Barough (photography) Maggie Clifton (stage manager). Cast: Paula Alprin, Deborah Rinn Critzer, Laurie Geigel, Genevieve James, Spencer Mickelson, Andrew Vergara Retizos. Musicians: Katie Chambers, Marc Dion, Marcia McIntyre, James D. Watson, Rob Weaver.

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Running time 2:55 - two intermissions
The Oedipus myth retold from his wife's perspective

Storyline: A wealthy woman, alone in her villa on the hillsides of the island of Martinique, resists the approaches of a white man from her own social circle at the same time that she is secretly taking a young black lover, a plantation worker hiding from the authorities after killing the overseer on a plantation on the other side of the island. In measured doses her true story emerges, the fact that she had a child by a black overseer in her youth, that she was told the child had been born dead but in reality it had been sent to a neighboring plantation, that her new lover is in reality her son, and that the overseer he killed was his father.

The placement of the action in Martineque nearly half a century after the end of slavery in the Caribbean requires of the playwright that he inform the audience about many facets of a society unfamiliar to most modern American theater goers. The notes in the program help a good deal, but it takes time to absorb the implications of the ratio of whites to blacks, the extremity of the gap in wealth and the legal and social structure in which the play takes place. The three-act structure would have been more acceptable when the play was first written but it feels a bit creaky by today's standards. The first act moves along quite well with four scenes setting out the basic concepts, helped immensely by a strikingly effective short performance by Terry Spann as a blind seer, a Caribbean equivalent of a soothsayer in Greek drama. Things begin to drag, however, as the second and then the third act stretch out the realizations by the characters of things the audience has already divined.  

Paula Alprin, Artistic Director of Natural Theatricals who often appears on this stage, has adopted an accent for her role that is hard to get beyond. There is a credit in the program for Martinican dialect coaching by Kathleen Gonzales, and the range of dialects in the cast seems all together appropriate for the range of social standings from laborer to overseer  to government official to planter, so it is possible that Gonzales deserves kudos for that. However, the dialect Alprin uses keeps her performance from registering on any level other than a concentration on her accent. John Brennan, as her white suitor, has a much more listenable accent capturing the French heritage of the island and the pretensions of his class which assists in his smooth performance.

The sparse setting in the spacious indoor amphitheater where Natural Theatricals performs at the George Washington Masonic Memorial, uses all of the open space which gives the entire production a feeling of being underdeveloped. The makeup for Lolita-Marie in the role of an elderly servant is also overdone, drawing attention to the artificiality of the presentation. On the positive side is the sound design ranging from off-stage chanting to subtle natural sounds during and between the three acts. The opening fight, too, is very well directed and well executed.

Written by Philip Freund. Directed by Gregory Stuart. Design: Todd F. Edwards (set and sound) Mio Hasegawa (costumes) Sheila R. Hyman (makeup) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Klyph Stanford (lights) Stan Barouh (photography) Pieter Landers (stage manager). Cast: Paula Alprin, John Brennan, Bruce Kaplan, Lolita-Marie, Jason B. McIntosh, Cezar Remon, Terry Spann, Rosalyn Ward.

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Running time 2:15 - one intermission
An atmospheric staging of a 2,400 year old tragedy
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Storyline: Euripides' 409 BC take on the Greek legends of what happened in the family of Oedipus after he discovered that his wife Jocasta was also his mother. In this version, Oedipus' sons Eteokles and Polyneikes have shut him up in the palace as they struggle over who is to be King of Thebes. In the meantime Teiresias reveals that the city/kingdom is in even greater peril as the forces of neighboring Argos approach, and that Thebes is doomed to fall unless the gods can be assuaged. The only way for disaster to be averted is for Kreon to sacrifice his only son to the offended gods.

This new translation seems to work well for modern ears. There are really three different speech patterns being used. The classic Greek chorus speaks in the disembodied classical tone, devoid of any personality of its own. The Members of Oedipus and Jocasta's household, including Polyneikes and Eteokles, have more personality and individuality but remain tied to an oratorical style. It is the sub-plot of the torment of Kreon that gets the most modern sounding, nearly flowery speech patterns. Of course, this may be in part a reflection of the skills of the actors reading the lines.

Among these are Manolo Santalla, whose prophet Teiresias is an emotionally charged poet who wouldn't be out of place in a jazz club in the beat generation, John Tweel, who lets loose in the anguish of an unspeakable choice as Kreon, and Kevin Finkelstein, as his son, combine to make a sub-plot the memorable event of the evening. Cherie Weinert is a suitably royal Queen Jocasta and Jason Nious is very good as her son who has taken the throne but refuses to relinquish it to his brother as per agreement. Trei Ramsey is somewhat less effective as the cheated son who wants his share of the throne.

Set and sound designer Todd Edwards provides both a simple a visual setting and a very effective soundscape for the production. The hall is filled with a semi-musical environment that combines his own musical compositions with recordings from NASA’s attempts to present radio frequency emissions of Saturn in sound frequency. NASA compressed many minutes into a few seconds and shifted the pitch down to within the range audible to the human ear. Edwards left some of the resulting sounds unchanged and used others as the starting point for his own creations. The interesting thing is that sounds from the 21st century compliment an ancient play.

Written by Euripides. Translated by Carl R. Mueller. Directed by Bob Bartlett. Design: Todd F. Edwards (set and sound) Cat Martin (costumes) Sherry Santana (makeup) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Andrew F. Griffin (lights) Vanessa Vaughn (photography) Amber Krause (stage manager). Cast: Leila Ben-Abdallah, Tara Chiusano, Kevin Finkelstein, Genevieve James, Elliott Moffitt, Marissa Molnar, Will Monahan, Jason Nious, Trei Ramsey, Manolo Santalla, Julia Stemper, John Tweel, Cherie Weinert.

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Reviewed September 14
Running time 1:50 - one intermission
A comic play on a serious subject - grief

Storyline: A mother whose world was shattered by the sudden death of her daughter in a car crash can't quite control her mind as it merges memory and hope, denial and acceptance, blame and guilt all at the same time. She hallucinates at times while pulling back to deal with reality in a semi confused state. She deals with some of the emotion through the release of humor and some through anger.

Karen Doubeck provides a subtle performance of the grief-crippled mother. We don't see her at the time of her daughter's death. We don't see all the activity that surrounds first learning about and then dealing with the immediate demands of tragedy. The play takes place long after the funeral or the memorial services and all the supportive friends have given the valued little kindnesses and have moved on. The play is about the long term debilitating effects of a grief that refuses to subside, and Doubeck captures the innate fatigue that creeps into the soul after mourning does as much as it can.

Jennifer Berg is the Alexa of the mother's mind - a visage of the youthful Judy Garland as Dorothy who went over the rainbow in the Wizard of Oz - complete down to the ruby slippers in one of Paula Mayes Coupe's good costumes. Molly Bennett, an eighth grade student from Bethesda makes a genial Virginia professional debut as Alexa's younger sister, while Aimée Meher-Homji is the older sister as well as other characters.

The company is still struggling with the issue of how to best use the beautiful but unorthodox theater space where they are now the professional theater company in residence. The space on the circular floor before the audience tends to spread the action out, and using the stage area behind it spreads it even more. The spaciousness, and the time it takes to go from one area to another or for entrances and exits, tends to make the transitions between scenes drag, but over time, directors will find ways to establish the pace they feel is appropriate for each piece. In the meantime, just seeing the hall is a pleasure.

Written by Paula Alprin. Directed by Susan Alison Keady. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set) Paula Mayes Coupe (costumes) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Anne Kinkella (makeup) Mike Egart and Michael Null (sound) Christopher O. Banks (photography) Kimberly Gretton (stage manager). Cast: Paula Alprin. Molly Bennett, Jennifer Berg, Karen Doubek, Fred C. Lash, Aimée Meher-Homji , Michael Null, Tom Pentecost, Janet Devine Smith.

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Reviewed August 5
Running time 2:05 - one intermission
Greek mythology viewed from the 1960s
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Storyline: A Nobel Prize winner brings his wife and daughter to Athens, site of the glories of Ancient Greece that so enchant him. Later, the family takes a tour to the ruin of a temple. While they are there, the wife of Herakles comes to the temple in order to be there in case Herakles comes to consult the oracle. Heracles arrives and pleads for deliverance from the disasters of his past.

Things got off to a bad start when the computer-generated view out the hotel window showed the Acropolis framed in Microsoft Windows toolbars. The glitch put a crimp in Bruce Alan Rauscher's opening speech about the importance of the Greek contributions to culture, science and philosophy. Rauscher doubles as two characters, his first being the first act's wheelchair bound scientist. Margaret Contreras also doubles. In the first act she's humorously obsequious as the hotel manager. Maintaining the same character in both acts, that of the scientists long-suffering wife, is Deboara Rinn Critzer who gives a nice sense of exasperation to her character, but she is ultimately called upon to listen to lengthy speeches by others so often and for so long that holding still seems the primary performance skill the part demands.

After an interminable intermission, during which stagehands scratched their heads over which platform went which way, things went from bad to worse. The creaking door to the oracle's chamber nearly toppled a nearby pillar while opening only far enough for half of the audience to see Margaret Contreras as the oracle sitting within. Later, when she played scenes downstage, her makeup began to peel off. John Tweel, the titular hero, emotes at high volume, but his primal screams over the fate of his children take place in the dark because the lighting design doesn't seem to extend to the edge of the playing space.  Rauscher returns as the guide who strides into and over the ruined temple. At one point he sat beside the opening in the platform which was was supposed to represent a crack leading to the center of the universe, and fanned the air with his cap in an effort to get the stage-fog that was supposed to emerge from the crack to start flowing.

The indoor amphitheater where Natural Theatricals now makes its home continues to impress as a lovely venue, particularly well suited to the presentations of serious material with the classical sensitivities this group seems to want to bring to its work. However, the space requires a matching seriousness in design. The sets for this production neither function well as playing spaces nor give the professional sheen the material demands. Even without the technical glitches of opening night, this set would not have done the trick.

Written by Archibald MacLeish. Directed by Rip Claassen. Music composed by Brad White and Pierre Grill. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set and costume) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Franklyn C. Coleman (lights) Michael Null (sound) Stan Barouh (photography) Nancy L. Owens (stage manager). Cast: Margaret Contreras, Deborah Rinn Critzer, Caroline Gotschall, Kate Hundley, Maryanne Mosher, Bruce Alan Rauscher, James Senavitis, John Tweel.

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Reviewed June 24
Running time 1:55 - One Intermission
A rarely seen Greek Tragicomedy given a solid performance in a near-perfect playing space
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Storyline: The daughter of the late King of Athens comes with her husband to the temple of Apollo in Delphi in search of an answer to their childlessness. It isn't that she's infertile, for long ago she gave birth after she was raped by none other than the same god whose temple this is. She had abandoned the baby born of that union and presumes him to be dead. When the God tells her husband that the next man he sees will be his son and then he stumbles into the presence of the young man who takes care of the temple, he adopts him. His wife, concerned that the boy might well be his illegitimate son and that he will leave him all his wealth, tries to have the boy killed. Disaster is averted as his identity as her son by Apollo is revealed.

Natural Theatricals has become the theater company in residence at the George Washington Masonic Memorial, using its gorgeous indoor amphitheater which is particularly well suited to the presentation of classical Greek drama. The audience is arrayed on a steeply raked semicircle surrounding a large playing space the Greeks called an orchestra. The stage backs up the playing space, just as the stage house of those original theaters did. About the only thing that you can't easily do in this space that was a staple of Greek theatrical festivals of twenty-five hundred years ago is to fly in a god on the crane-like machine they called the dues ex machina. For this production, the arrival of Athena is handled with appropriate special effects by having her appear in a pool of light at the back of the seating area. The feeling of time and place is established by sparse set pieces (a statue of Apollo, a low alter and a few trees) and Greek-inspired costumes.

Michael McDonnell plays the young man whose real name is revealed at the end, Ion - son of Apollo and Kreousa. He may be a bit mature for the part but he plays it with a youthful vigor that works. So, too, Paula Alprin's Kreousa may be a bit older than would seem to be indicated by the script, but it doesn't keep her from making this princess seem a real flesh-and-blood person. The chorus here is a quartet of women speaking individually rather than in unison, each creating an identifiable personality. Less satisfying performances come from the supporting cast playing humans. However, Tiffany Givens takes three smaller roles, two of them divinities, and makes them memorably poetic. She opens and closes the show as gods, first Hermes and then Athena, with speeches that set up and then resolve the story, and she provides a mid-play update as an "attendant." Each is a highlight.

Director Brian Alprin avoids making a museum piece of the play, having his cast concentrate on the drama of the story and the relationships between the characters rather than the formality of the language. In this he is helped by a modern translation, that, while avoiding any obvious modern jargon, isn't at all stilted or overly formal. He keeps the cast moving about the playing space so the actors never seem to be standing their ground to read a major speech. Instead, these characters really seem to be talking with and to each other.

Written by Euripides. Translated by Deborah H. Roberts. Directed by Brian Alprin. Design: Michael Null (set and sound) Rip Claassen (costumes) Anne Kinkella (makeup) Theoni Panagopoulos (properties) Franklin C. Coleman (lights) Christopher O. Banks (photography) Kimberly Gretton (stage manager). Cast: Paula Alprin. Jamie Boileau, Danielle A. Drakes, Tiffany Givens, Lucile O'C. Hood, Michael McDonnell, Samantha Merrick, Tom Neubauer, Christina Pitrelli, Monolo Santalla.

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Reviewed June 18
Running time 1:45 - one intermission
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The Potomac Region's newest professional theatre company debuts with one of the worlds' oldest plays given a simple and partially satisfying production in one of the area's most striking venues. Sophocles' play dates from about 430 BC, being one of seven of his over 100 tragedies to have survived the 2,500 years since his death. Director Brian Alprin's notes in the program indicate that he can find no indication of another professional American production of this play since 1960. We certainly have never seen one, so this represents a rare opportunity to see, rather than simply read, one of the earliest works from the birth of the art form which continues to have the power to entrance, surprise, entertain and enrich us. Here, indeed, is chance to discover the roots of theater, the very name of which evolved from the Greek "teatron." Alprin's production, while not slavishly following original traditions, avoids most temptations to update the piece for modern tastes, leaving enough of a feeling of the original art form to make a connection over two and half millennia.

Storyline: The wife of Herakles (better known today as Hercules) fears that her husband, off fighting wars and taking pretty women prisoners, is going to abandon her in favor of younger and prettier Iole. She sends her husband a robe treated with a love potion  that is supposed to renew his love for her. The potion was made from the blood of a centaur her husband had killed when it raped her early in their marriage. After the robe had been sent, the rag she used to apply the potion begins to shrivel and she realizes that the blood included the poison that Herakles had applied to the arrows he used to kill the centaur. Knowing that she has inadvertently killed her husband, she takes her own life. Herakles makes it back to their home in the final stages of a fatal agony only die shortly after learning of her death.

Alprin uses the indoor amphitheater in the George Washington Masonic Memorial much as the Greeks had used the outdoor amphitheaters when mounting their earliest attempts at tragic and comic plays. Almost all the action is performed on the floor (called "the orchestra") in front of the raised stage. Alprin does use the stage itself for some of the entrances and exits but he also gives a silhouette tableaux for Herakles' wife's suicide which is a much more modern concept. His actors don't wear the traditional masks or laced leather buskins either, appearing in Greek-like costumes and either slippers or bare feet. 

The most significant deviation from the form of the original is the reduction of the traditional "Greek Chorus" from fifteen "Women of Trachis" to a single character played nicely by Aimée Meher-Homji. The switch has an acoustic benefit in this echoey indoor amphitheater, as well as a financial benefit for the production.  Perhaps to enhance the effect of the single "Chorus," sound designer Stephen Selman backs all her speeches with soft segments of the recorded classical music of Allen Sapp as performed by the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra. Also distinctly different from the original fashion is the use of lighting effects to vary the mood of the scenes. This deviation seems a bit excessive but the effect of most of the other changes makes the piece seem less a museum piece and more a dramatic performance for modern audiences.

The first half of the play is dominated by the character of Herakles' wife, Deianeira, played with a satisfying sense of dignity and a clarity of enunciation by Artistic Director Paula Alprin. The blocking for her major monologues, however, have her distractingly pacing back and forth which is unfortunate, since true to the traditions of Greek tragedy, the play is essentially a series of lengthy monologues describing events that took place before the time of the play or which transpire off stage.  The work of the members of the supporting cast varies from excellent as in the case of Jean Hudson Miller as the nurse through effective work by Daniel J. Oates as the son of Herakles and Deianeira, to the fairly excessive emoting of John Feist or the stilted orations of Manolo Santalla. The final portion of the play is dominated by Herackles, played unconvincingly in all his fatal torment by Dwane Starlin, whose body language never reflects the agony of his character and whose voice seems to switch unaccountably between oratory and anguish.

Written by Sophocles. Translated by Carl R. Mueller and Anna Krajewska-Wieczorek. Directed by Brian Alprin. Design: Jeffrey Neal Stevenson (set and stage manager) Lauren Julien (costumes) Sandy Andrle (makeup)  Jeff McWhirt (lights) Stephen Selman (sound) Allen Sapp (music) Arthur W. Pierson (photography). Cast: Paula Alprin, Steven Paige Blaine, Eileen A. Farrell, John Feist, Heather Haney, Genevieve James, Lauren Julien, Jonathan Marget,  Aimée Meher-Homji, Jean Hudson Miller, Daniel J. Oates, Manolo Santalla, James Senavitis, Dwane Starlin.