Home of the FREE weekly email Update

Running time: 2:15 - two intermissions
A fascinating tale well told
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: The young protégé of a small town doctor returns with his brand new medical degree to visit his mentor, the only doctor in what all agree must be the luckiest, happiest town in Vermont. In this town, there aren't any people suffering from the worst of medical conditions or the consequences of societal ills. This is obviously not simply the result of Doc's willingness to make house calls.

Levin is much better known for other excursions into dark reaches of storytelling. His is the mind that conceived of that story of a woman bearing Satan's child, Rosemary's Baby, the tale of a town full of feminine but not feminist automatons, The Stepford Wives, and the yarn of a serial killer working his way through one family, A Kiss Before Dying. All those stories first emerged as novels, but Levin is also noted for his works for the stage, although not all are of a similar genre. His first Broadway hit was the adaptation of a comic novel, No Time for Sergeants, which gave wing to the careers of both Andy Griffith and Donn Knotts. (Do you hear Earl Hagen whistling his music for the television show now?)  Lovers of short-lived musicals place his one excursion into the realm of a Broadway Musical, Drat! The Cat! on their short list of favorites they'd love to see someday. The hugely successful Deathtrap and others like Veronica's Room are of a formula. Indeed, this three-act story is proof that there's nothing particularly wrong with being formulaic if the formula you follow is sound.

Director Ellen Dempsey has assembled a cast of six, but it is the two leads that carry the bulk of the load. For these roles, she has two newcomers who dig into their parts with intelligence and enthusiasm. David Schmidt begins with charm as the old town doctor whose unorthodox approach to his practice he defends with a vigor that belies his approaching seventieth birthday. As the story unfolds he adds a touch of the demonic to the mix which works well. JB Bissex is light and humorous as the idealistic youngster just setting out on a medical career until events cause him to drop the humor and become an earnest seeker of truth. In both cases, the transitions are a bit abrupt. Dempsey's direction emphasizes clarity in the delivery of lines to such an extent that there are times when the production feels like a daytime soap opera.

Steve Lada handled the fight design and direction for the final struggle. As executed by the actors, it has something of the same mechanical feel of the dialogue scenes, with obvious set ups and pauses and a sluggish pace. Set designer Trena Weiss-Null places her detailed construction of the doctor's office on the long wall of Theatre II's black box, spreading the action over more space than necessary but creating a feeling of reality. Her choice of floral print wallpaper is a subtle commentary on the character of the old doctor who must have had some hand in selecting it decades ago when setting up his practice. Maybe he was a bit demented from the start.

Written by Ira Levin. Directed by Ellen Dempsey. Fight direction by Steve Lada. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set) Rip Claassen (costumes) AnnMarie Castrigno (lights) Christopher Baine (sound) Micah Hutz (photography) Zoia N. Wiseman (stage manager). Cast: JB Bissex, Kathryn Cocroft, Robert Lavery, Carol McCaffrey, David Schmidt.

 
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:10 - one intermission
A taut recreation of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962

Storyline: The calculations and decisions taken in the Oval Office of John F. Kennedy and the Kremlin of Nikita Khrushchev reach a climax as the American President seeks a way to get Soviet missiles off Cuban soil without triggering nuclear war.

Robert M. McElwaine's script resembles a scrap book of pictures of key events running from September 1960 to October 1962. It carefully lays the groundwork for understanding the complexities of the final negotiations, providing the basic information needed in measured doses. Director Jack Marshall moves these early scenes along briskly so the audience doesn't loose patience with the piece. Once the crisis has erupted, the pace accelerates even more. The imposition of an intermission interrupts that progression, however. It isn't as if the two acts have their own escalating dramatic arc. It's one continuous story. Besides, without an intermission, the piece would not be too long for a single sitting.

McElwaine's script attempts to depict John Kennedy as a man growing into his job as President. In Jon Townson's hands, Kennedy seems a bit like the politically astute, but governmental lightweight that Khrushchev first believes him to be. As the events proceed, however, he becomes more thoughtful, more careful of his words and more concerned over the consequences of his actions. Because the scenes must cover so much historical ground, Townson and John Tweel as JFK's brother Robert, have to deal with some highly concentrated versions of events, as the Kennedy brothers hover over the Presidential desk with a magnifying glass examining intelligence photos without benefit of briefing officers, or when Jack simply announces to Bobby his intention to address the nation - surely Bobby had been an important player in both the decision to speak out and the tone of that fateful speech of October 22. While there are times when his Boston accent seems a bit of a heavy impersonation, there is no doubt that Townson is absolutely accurate in the recreation of that speech, right up to the hesitations and tiny mistakes that marked the live delivery under such highly emotional conditions.

The finest performance of the evening comes from Kim-Scott Miller who makes this Khrushchev a smart, deeply human, committed comrade striving with the skill of a survivor to advance the cause of his country and of the philosophy in which he so strongly believes. The brink of nuclear confrontation seems a familiar place to him, reminding us that Khrushchev survived the turmoil of the Russian Revolution, both World Wars and Stalin - danger was no stranger. His sincere effort to find a way out of the confrontation that was consistent with his duties and responsibilities rings true in a performance that won't remind you of any other time you have seen Miller on this stage. That isn't just because of his shaved head or his adoption of the stooped posture of the Premiere. It is pure and simple acting ability.

Written by Robert M. McElwaine. Directed by Jack Marshall. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set and properties) Rip Claassen (costumer) AnnMarie Castrigno (lights) Bill Gordon (sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Rhonda Hill (stage manager). Cast: William Aitken, Kim-Scott Miller, Brian Razzino, Jon Townson, John Tweel.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:15 - one intermission
A vintage slice of Vonnegut - for the stage
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: After an eight year absence, a he-man who values all things masculine returns to his lair - ooops, home - to find his wife believes he has died. She is being courted by two men, a peace-loving doctor and a milquetoast of a vacuum cleaner salesman. Neither seem to him to be a fit successor for him with his "woman" or father to his teen-age son. He takes steps to reestablish his primacy as the "man" of the house while, off in heaven, various characters who once had some slim connection to the family share their observations with the audience.

Vonnegut's play is sort of like Vonnegut's novels or Vonnegut's short stories, speeches or interviews. It is filled with his idiosyncratic humor with its concentration on the illogic of the real world and the contradictions inherent in "popular wisdom." With Slaughterhouse Five, he had gone as deep as he could into his own experiences as a witness to the destruction of war (he was a prisoner of war in Dresden during the firebombing that destroyed that most beautiful of German cities) while letting his attention flit from topic to topic through the use of a time-traveling technique of "coming unstuck in time." He tries to find an equivalent technique for the stage in having scenes separated by snippets of commentary from characters in some sort of afterlife. But the essence of the piece is the story playing out in the home of the returning warrior.

The husband has only been gone for eight years, hardly long enough for there to be fundamental shifts in society in his absence. But he must have been close to "unstuck" even before his departure, holding to concepts that were coming to be seen as outdated, for he returns with a chip on his shoulder, ranting over the decay in the manliness of the current crop of men. William Aitken gets the rant right and delivers many of the barbs with an acid tongue although there doesn't seem to be even a hint of a difficulty to believe what is happening to his world. The lack of that difficulty keeps him from being even the slightest bit human. Instead - and this may be consistent with Vonnegut's intent - he's a caricature of a "manly man," a simplistic Ernest Hemmingway figure.

The home life he has returned to includes an attractive Kari Ginsburg as his wife who, during his eight year absence, has begun to exercise her own capacity to think for herself, but who hasn't quite developed the self confidence to withstand his resumption of his assumed primacy as the man of the house. Brian Crane gives a sharp performance as the "peacenik" doctor in her life, while Brian Razzino isn't able to make much of the character of the vacuum cleaner salesman who passes through. The collection of observers from heaven make the diversions entertaining: Bill Gordon as a Nazi who revels in destruction, Deborah Rinn Critzer, who puts down her martini just long enough to move the plot along one notch, and Rachel Weber as the little girl whose birthday cake plays only briefly in the story but gives the title to the piece.

Written by Kurt Vonnegut. Directed by Ellen Dempsey. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set and properties) Rip Claassen (costumes) AnneMarie Castrigno (lights) Jake Null (sound) Ian Armstrong (photography) Maggie Clifton (stage manager). Cast: William Aitken, Brian Crane, Deborah Rinn Critzer, Joe Cronin, Kari Ginsburg, Bill Gordon, Andrew Newman or Adin Walker, Brian Razzino, Rachel Weber. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 1:10 - no intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a taught and realistic police drama
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: At two o'clock in the morning there isn't much stirring at an all-night dinner in Chicago. Just a very few customers, a short order cook, a waitress who wants nothing so much as to call it a night, and a few late night cops trading stories of life on the force. Then one customer pulls a gun and takes a hostage. In a flash lives are lost, others are changed and those remaining alive have to make quick decisions on which other lives may depend.

This is pure police drama, not crime drama. It isn't concerned with the conditions on the street, the causes of crime nor the plight of the victims. It is also completely devoid of any whodunit tease or intriguing mystery. It is the life and code of police officers that is at issue here and the way even those who may snipe at each other unmercifully in times of the routine and the mundane can close ranks in a heart beat and become a unified reaction to an external threat. Director Stephen Jarrett takes his cue from the instant the night of boredom turns to anguish. It happens so fast that it is like a knife edge separating two different slices of real life. Jarrett paces the one slice at a slow drawl with just enough punch in the punch lines of the cops stories to make them real. The other slice is so intense it seems to run at double speed except at those moments of uncertainty when the struggle between the shooter and the officers could go either way.

Brian Razzino and Regan Wilson play the plain clothes detectives stopping in for some of the caffeine of coffee kept hot on the burner for far too long, and the sugar of a slice of apple pie. Razzino's is the sharper cop who exudes a sense of command even when fatigued, while Wilson is unconcernedly frumpy and confident of his worth and not above delivering a good natured ribbing. John C. Bailey, as a uniformed cop confident that he knows his beat better than anyone, is often the recipient of that ribbing. They while away some of the wee hours of the morning together before the mayhem erupts.

To invoke the feel of "reality TV" Trena Weiss-Null has created a set that feels very much like a rundown diner in an urban locale like North Side Chicago. Dishes, dented pots and pans, a tinny cash register, banged up tables and chairs - it all feels just right. You can almost smell the grease on short order cook Rob Heckert's range. You most definitely can smell the smoke of everyone's seemingly ever present cigarette. And Rip Claassen has provided costumes that feel very lived in - as everything does at 2:00 am. The sense of reality is part of the reason the burst of violence strikes with such force.

Written by Terry Curtis Fox. Directed by Stephen Jarrett. Design: Trena Weiss-Null (set) Rip Claassen (costumes) Karen Currie (properties) AnnMarie Castrigno (lights) Michael Null (technical direction and sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Alicia Oliver (stage manager). Cast: John C. Bailey, Bruce Follmer, Bill Gordon, Rob Heckert, Brian Razzino, Honora Talbot, Shane Wallis, Regan Wilson.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:35 - two intermissions
t A Potomac Stages Pick for some superb performances in O'Neill's only comedy
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: On the Fourth of July in 1906, the sixteen-going-on-seventeen son of a small-town newspaper editor comes of age before his family's very eyes. His girlfriend's father is adamant that he be punished for poisoning her mind with radical romantic literature and forces his daughter to write a letter ending their relationship. The son seeks solace in a disreputable bar but emerges unscathed while his family worries that he may follow in the footsteps of an uncle whose drinking has ruined his life.

Reading the storyline above, you may question the comment that this is O'Neill's only comedy. A comedy about the evils of alcohol, and "bad" women? Apply the definition of a comedy from classical drama and it fits. "A form of drama distinguished by its humorous content and happy ending." This evening does end happily, and if there aren't a lot of belly laughs, there are many knowing chuckles along the way, Still, Eugene O'Neill didn't write a mindless diversion peppered with laugh lines. Instead, this is a comedy with heft. It doesn't dwell on the negatives or the dangers of life, but it doesn't pretend they aren't there either. Alcoholism, prostitution, venereal disease, economic dependency. They are there and they are real. But they aren't the topics O'Neill chooses to highlight. Instead, he puts optimism and a deep sense of family loyalty at the heart of this, his light-hearted contribution to America's effort to keep its chin up in the face of economic catastrophe.

Miller has the role that was originated by none other than George M. Cohan. Indeed, director Bob Bartlett and his sound designer Matt Otto open this production with a blast of Cohan singing "Yankee Doodle Dandy." That is the last obvious Cohanism in the show, for Miller doesn't try to impersonate the great George M. Instead, he works to let us see the inner workings of his character's thoughts and concerns and in this he succeeds. He makes this father figure an intelligent adult with a soft spot in his heart for his family, including his wife and his middle son. Evan Crump has a bit more difficulty as the son, for it is written about a time when a sixteen year old boy in a middle class home was thought to be much less mature than in other decades. O'Neill gives him some nearly embarrassingly immature comments and actions, but also writes the part with a rich vein of hope which Crump manages to show.

This is a substantial but not sumptuous production. The set nicely represents a mercantile middle-class turn of the twentieth century New England home, but doesn't include any of the touches of decorative brick-a-brack, Victorian wall covering or ostentatious opulence that marked the time. The costumes are well matched to time and station and have the lived-in look of real clothing as opposed to theatrical costumes, but not all of them seem to fit the bodies that are wearing them. Then, too, while the electric doorbell was invented as early as 1831, the buzzer represented here seems all too modern even for up-to-date Connecticut in 1906.

Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Bob Bartlett. Design: Andrew Barry (set) Rip Claassen (costumes) Andrew F. Griffin (lights) Matt Otto (sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Michael Null (stage manager). Cast: Joe Baker, John Collins, Tina Renay Fulp, Kari Ginsburg, Harry Hagerty, Robert Heinly, Rebecca A. Herron, Evan Crump, Michael Feldsher, Kim-Scott Miller, Tori Miller, Carolyn Myer, Kevin O'Reilly, Christopher Tully, Emily Webbe.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:35 - one entertaining intermission
An attempt to recreate the tomfoolery of the wackiest of Broadway shows
Click here to buy the DVD
(But don't bother)

Storlyine: Are you kidding? The one thing Hellzapoppin never, ever thought of doing was tell a story!

In 1938 the team of Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson hit it big on Broadway with a crazy collection of sketch comedies and show music which ran for over three years and became the longest running musical in the history of Broadway (until then) if you could call it a musical and if you could call the three years of eight shows a week a "run" since the show was different practically every night. Acts were added, songs dropped, gags inserted, performers replaced, topical humor updated, hackneyed tired old material given a new twist one night and then returned to its original form the next. Sometimes Olsen and Johnson would arrive on stage from the wings in a car. At others they would make their entrance from the audience as if they were coming in late. They were old time vaudeville comedians and had developed their shtick not as a highly polished performance that was the same each night but as a rambling stream-of-consciousness assemblage of gags and concepts that changed as they "worked the house." Whatever worked on any given night would be carried along until the audience seemed to them to be just short of loosing interest - then the team would switch to something else either already scripted or improvised on the spot.

A recreation of this wild, wacky, irrepressible and unpredictable package involved both significant research (there is only one remaining original script and no one knows if the show was actually performed on any given night the way it says in that script) and sharp artistic judgment. As fascinated as Jack Marshall is with the history of theatrical genres, he somehow managed to maintain his concentration on the cardinal function of the show - entertain the audience. He wisely jettisoned the original music (now there are numbers you will remember, such as "Try to Remember," and some brighter, better material such as a number by Milton Schafer which was heard on Broadway all of 19 times. 

Marshall's cast includes people who sit in the audience heckling or being accosted and troubadours such as Steve McWilliams. There's Brian Crane who makes a fine Tevye in a Hitler uniform. There are actors (such as John Tweel) who can throw themselves into a running gag with complete abandon, or (Alex Perez) who can mime being attacked by a weasel (don't ask). In fact, the cast list numbers over twenty-five, but nearly everyone has multiple roles to play so it is nearly impossible to keep up with who is who as the show goes along. Even intermission isn't a chance to gather your wits about you and consider what you have just witnessed, for the foolishness continues in the lobby with Evan Crump wandering about with a potted plant to deliver, Tanera Hutz tapping people on the shoulder to find out if they are the "Oscar" she's been searching for throughout the first act, and Tweel struggling with his straight jacket. But most importantly, it includes Bill Karukas and Doug Krenzlin as Olsen and Johnson. They may not recreate all the humor of the original team but they come close enough to make the entire package work.

Concept and book by Ole Olsen and Chic Johnson, with material by Jack Marshall, Thomas D. Fuller, Loren Platzman, Rip Claussen, Doug Krenzlin, Ron Sarro, Andrea Abrams "and the great comic artists of the 20th century." Directed by Jack Marshall. Musical direction by Thomas D. Fuller. Choreography by Kay Casstevens. Music arrangements by Lauren Platzman. Design: Mike Switalski (set) Rip Claussen (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Marc Wright (lights) Matt Otto (sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Rhonda Hill (stage manager). Cast: Andrea Abrams, Esther Covington, Brian Crane, Deborah Critzer, Evan Crump, Ellen Dempsey, Susan Edgar, Bruce Follmer, Alice Fuller, Kathryn Fuller, Lou George, Tanera Hutz,  Bill Karukas, Doug Krenzlin, Steve Lebens, Steve McWilliams, Jack Marshall, Sr., Mary Millben, Alex Perez, Dwayne Pierce, Jennifer Robison Potts, Ron Sarro, Ginny Tarris, John Tweel, Emily Webbe, Glenn White, Ed Xavier.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:25 - two intermissions
A new setting for a Pulitzer Prize Winning Drama
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Four of the five members of the 1952 state champion high school basketball team reunite in their old coach's living room for a twentieth anniversary celebration. Over the course of a liquor-lubricated evening each team member's frustration over the course of his life since the fabulous final ten seconds of their last basketball game. It has been all down hill from there although some have fallen farther than others. And the coach isn't too happy with the lack of team spirit among "his boys," or how his life has turned out either.

Under Bishop's direction, the cast of this five-character play begin their evening of drinking and arguing by shouting at each other too loudly or sulking at the other extreme. They use up all the dynamic range during the early exposition scenes where their conversations provide the audience with basic information on who they are and what they are doing in the trophy-bedecked living room. Morgan James Hall is the first to put too much "oomph" in throw-away lines as the former team member who is now the mayor of the small town. (The dialogue establishes that town has a population of 52,000 - hardly something to shout about.) Later, Elliott Moffitt enters as the former coach hosting the reunion and he, too, bellows many of the lines that seem to have little emotional or dramatic importance. As a result, when tempers flare - and flare they do - there's really no increased volume or emotional level to which to switch.

Two in the cast turn the volume/energy dichotomy to their own characters' advantage. Joseph A. Mills, III plays a former star who is now a wandering alcoholic. He begins the evening as a morose, quiet presence content to pour drink after drink and contribute a comment under his breath from time to time. The contrast is refreshing. Omar A. Bah, as a player turned businessman whose need for new victories has driven him to seek sexual conquests, establishes an attitude of withdrawal until he is drawn into the fray by revelations of the identity of his amorous as well as political connections. It falls to Ron Lincoln to be the link between these two extremes - the overly loud and the quietly withdrawn. His own transitions as the team member who has risen "only" to the rank of principal of the local junior high school are smooth if a bit mechanical.

Bishop wisely avoids changing the time of the piece as he changes the location and racial identity of the team. The play is still set in the year of its premiere, 1972. While there are few overt references to many of the landmark disappointments that were blows to the body politic at the time (Vietnam, Watergate) or even the heights that created such contrasts (the landing on the moon) there is a moving commentary on the rash of assassinations that plagued the era from Kennedy to King. Perhaps somewhat less true to the time, the drug of choice is exclusively alcohol. However, these men drink indiscriminately - one goes from bourbon to vodka to scotch in about twenty minutes, another bobs back and forth between whisky and beer. Thus lubricated they reveal personal disappointments more than societal ones.

Written by Jason Miller. Directed by Ed Bishop. Design: Michael Switalski (set) Rip Claassen (costumes)  Joyce Andrea Sampson (properties) Thomas B. Kennedy (lights) Matt Otto (sound) Jeffery Bell (photography) Kelly Armstrong (stage manager). Cast: Obar A. Bah, Morgan James Hall, Ron Lincoln, Joseph A. Mills, III, Elliott Moffitt.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:20 - one intermission
Seven short plays written by women playwrights between 1914 and 1931

Storyline: Short plays by women authors look at life in America in the period 1914-1931. Vignettes include a honeymooning couple, a murder on a Midwestern farm, the numbers racket in Harlem, the differing memories of various family members about a deceased relative and psychoanalysis.

As with most assemblies of short plays, the highlights here tend to block memories of the less successful moments as soon as the lights go up. You walk away from this evening of short pieces remembering just how delightfully humorous Jennifer B. Robison was in her first production with this company. The humor of William Aitken's silent suffering through his wife's rantings over the significance of dreams, or his successful struggle to express his frustrations and suspicions in a dark farmhouse on the great American plain linger in the mind. The super-stylized presentation of memories in Sophie Treadwell's Eye of the Beholder which opened the evening continues to resonate even after all that followed it.

The confusing separation of Gertrude Stein's Photograph: A Play in Five Acts into five separate pieces distributed throughout the evening somehow makes it recede without leaving much impression. The wildly differing quality of the performances - from Robison, Aitken and Ellen Young as a woman coping with the impact of "The Great War" at one extreme to Jay Tilley's unfortunately overplayed lover in Treadwell's Eye of the Beholder at the other - seem to blend into a general impression.

Elizabeth Baldwin has devised a set structure which serves the needs of all seven  plays nicely. A set of platforms, with doors at either side and an empty frame at the rear. It is sufficiently segmented to provide distinct playing spaces in which director Mazola can locate separate scenes, but is undecorated enough to dispense with elaborate scene changing requirements. Cast members can heft a table on here or a mirror off there. It helps to keep the evening moving right along for, as with many compilations of short works, part of the pleasure comes from the fact that, if you don't like what is happening on stage at any given moment, you need only wait a short time - another play is on the way.

Written by Susan Glaspell (Suppressed Desire, Trifles), Dorothy Parker (Here We Are), Eulalie Spence (Hot Stuff), Gertrude Stein (Photograph: A Play in Five Acts), Sophie Treadwell (Eye of the Beholder) and Rita Wellman (For All Time). Directed by Steven Scott Mazzola. Choreography by Lotta Lundgren and Amanda Abrams. Fight direction by Michael Jerome Johnson. Design: Elizabeth Baldwin (set) Jennifer Tardiff (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Marc Allan Wright (lights) Ian Armstrong (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Karen Currie (stage manager). Cast: William Aitken, Colby Codding, Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey, Tanera Hutz, Lauren Judith Krizner, Katherine McCann, Steve Lebens, Mary McGowan, Jennifer B. Robison, Jay Tilley, Ellen Young.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:05 - one intermission
A revival of a seldom seen but well known play
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: The long-suffering and often abused youngest son of a hardened New England farmer thinks he's finally going to get the life he deserves when his father disappears and he buys out his brothers for the family farm. But his father returns with a new wife who comes to believe that her only way to secure her future is to give her new husband another son. She seduces the son but convinces the father that the child she bears is his.

Aitken's approach to the play softens some edges, but the three strong characters created by O'Neill still come through with more than a shard showing. The principal pleasure of the evening is watching Rhea, especially in the first half as she gives a fabulous performance of a woman scheming to be whatever she needs to be to two different men. She flashes from seductive to determined in the blink of an eye and both the internal strengths and the scars of her prior life, which combine to allow her character to fall into the traps that eventually destroy her, are clear and painfully visible as her world first seems to offer a simple agrarian version of happiness and then turns terribly bad at her own hand. The image of her central crime, here actually enacted before your eyes instead of simply revealed in dialogue, is a haunting one, but it is her exhausted silence which follows that is perhaps even more haunting.

The two men in her life - her hardened aging husband and his vital young son - are played by Kevin Adams and Parker Dixon. Adams is an immediate strong presence and drives a number of scenes nicely, while Dixon creates a consistent character but misses some of the ethereal nature of O'Neill's writing. (What ever happened to the sub-theme of his fixation over his dead mother's spirit?) Both handle the set up to the calamity well, and they both are believable in their attachment to the hard scrabble land that is at the heart of their conflict. Still, at key moments when they realize the extent of disaster that has befallen them, their reactions seem simply too bland for true tragedy. Dixon doesn't reel in shock when he realizes that the son he dotes on has been taken from him. Adams seems to shrug off the discovery of the theft of his life savings as a mere distraction before wandering down to the barn to milk the cows. The reactions  -- or lack of them -- rob Rhea of something to play off for her own moments of what might be termed "shock and awe" in more modern times.

Originally calling for a cast of twenty, the script has been pared down so that this cast of five can handle the material. Nothing really is lost in the process except the rendering of the final line in the play is just a bit confusing, being read from off-stage by a disembodied voice. John Geoffrion and Colin Smith set up the evening well as the two brothers that Dixon's character buys off. They introduce the audience to the heavily accented sound of the New England intonation called for by O'Neill's text ("My woman. She died. I rec'lect--now an' agin. Makes it lonesome. She'd hair long's a hoss' tail--an' yaller like gold!") The ear becomes accustomed to the twang before having to decipher lines like "my blood--mine. Mine ought t' git mine. An' then it's still mine--even though I be six foot under. D'ye see?"  Even so, it remains a bit difficult to catch some of the dialogue from the set, which is surprisingly lacking in any looming presence (where are the elms?), which is placed far back in the black box space, creating a gulf between action and audience.

Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by William Aitken. Dialect coaching by John Geoffrion. Design: William Aitken (set) Maggie Butler (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Kat Brais (hair and makeup) Scott Folsom (lights) Ian Armstrong (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Melissa Richardson (stage manager). Cast: Kevin Adams, Parker Dixon, John Geoffrion, Susan Marie Rhea, Colin Smith.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:20 - one intermission
A recreation of a famed political satire from the 1960s
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Following a sketchy version of the plot of Macbeth and using the words of Shakespeare, the rise and fall of Lyndon Johnson is satirized as he accepts the Vice Presidential nomination from his rivals, the Kennedy Brothers (here called the Ken O'Duncs) and takes the White House from them only to fall himself.

If the effort to bring topical humor forward out of its time is a struggle, it is helped by the cleverness of Barbara Garson's original concept and the intelligence behind her selection of pieces of Shakespeare to carry her message. She lifts material from the bard and reassembles it in her own story's shape, never letting the constraints of her concept inhibit the barbs she slings so fiercely at her target. She even departs from Shakespeare's text when it suits her purpose (no, Shakespeare didn't write "My God. My God. Why hast Thou forsaken me?" but it ends up in one of MacBird's speeches.) It is hard to recreate the unique blend of innocence and malevolence that the semi-hippie subculture of the late 1960s brought to the role of loyal opposition, but some of the feel of the day is still here in this production. Underlying the animosity verging on hatred for its subject in the script, is the hippie's sense of joy at being able to publicly revile that is juvenile in the strictest sense of the word, i.e. not only being young but being about being young. The youngest members of the ensemble bring the greatest sense of that joy to their work.

Some of the cast here is older than the original cast was when MacBird! first opened (the original MacBird was none other than a 26 year old Stacy Keach), but even if the MacBirds (Joe Cronin and Charlotte Akin) aren't exactly bubbly subversive twenty-somethings, they bring a sense of fun to their work that fits the piece well, and the team of Kennedys - oops, Ken O'Duncs - share a touch of the juvenile jokester spirit. Cronin carries the weight of the play from first to last with energy and intelligence but an almost too-strong sense of dignity. He's spoofing Johnson's own enormous ego, of course, but it comes across a bit more genteel than one imagines that Keach would have been in the original. Akin is a kick in the smaller role of Lady MacBird (which was originally played by a 30-year-old Rue McClanahan). Working as a team as the brothers in power are Robert Rector as John, Joshua Drew as Bobby and Steven McWilliams as an almost infantile Teddy. Drew is a devilish delight as the middle brother. Brian Crane gets a chance to shine in the Adlai Stevenson rip-off, Egg of Head which must have been even funnier to an audience who remembers not just that Stevenson had a reputation as an "egg head" but knew the persona directly.

Tom Kennedy's set is just right for the production, working nicely as both a multi-level playing space and a visual representation of the mood the show attempts to set with its cartoonish backdrop of the tumbling Washington Monument and off kilter Capitol Dome flanking a White House whose pillars are crumbling. The central playing area is a simple desk and chair office area, but the use of that backdrop and a curved platform makes it a very oval office. The time is evoked effectively in some of Matt Otto's sound cues. He doesn't confine himself, however, to the rock-ish music of the subculture of the time such as Credence Clearwater. He even throws in a bit of Mancini's Pink Panther Theme.

Written by Barbara Garson. Directed by Ellen Dempsey. Design: Thomas B. Kennedy (set) Jennifer Tardiff (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Ayun Fedorcha (lights) Matt Otto (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Christine Lange (stage manager). Cast: Charlotte Akin, J. J. Area, Colby Codding, Brian Crane, Joe Cronin, Joshua Drew, Suzanne Edgar, Theo Hadjimichael, Stephen McWiliams, Anne Nottage, Alex Perez, Robert Rector, Theodore M. Snead, Maura Stadem, Jay Tilley. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Running time 2:40 - one intermission
Dos Passos' three novels blend fiction and American history
Click here to buy the novels
Click here to buy the script

American writer John Dos Passos (1896 - 1970) was a highly successful, influential part of his generation's cultural corps which was so influenced by the events of World War I. He published the free-form novel The 42nd Parallel in 1930. Two years later he added Nineteen Nineteen and four years after that it was The Big Money. The three, taken together as a trilogy, painted a mosaic portrait of his America published as a set under the title U.S.A. in 1938 and became well regarded as a major piece of Americana. In 1959 the three were adapted for performance by Dos Passos and Shyre and the piece played a small theater in the Martinique Hotel on New York's Harold Square for something above 700 performances. In the stage version, Dos Passos creates a vivid if somewhat long-winded portrait of a slice of American life. That slice, however, is narrow indeed. For the most part, these are the urban and urbane wealthy or would-be-wealthy who worried about selling short on the stock exchange in their maturity after sharing the cares of "the great war" and the nascent peace (what would Wilson, Clemenceau and Lloyd George do with the map of Europe?). Nearly absent from this world were native Americans, African Americans, farmers, the chronic poor, etc. Oh, there's both Emma Goldman and Henry Ford viewed through the lens of their impact on "the workers" but those workers never seem to have faces.

Director Jacqueline Manger has assembled a well balanced troupe of six who each take on multiple roles. Evan Hoffman not only plays Moorehouse with a fine sense of style from youth through maturity, he's Orville Wright as well. The women in his life are a fine trio of actresses who also double up on roles -- Patricia Hurley is briefly statuesque as Isadora Duncan. Many of the parts call for quick cartooning of a character but brevity takes on additional importance in the segments using headlines from newsreels to create a mosaic of the times. Bruce Alan Rauscher's major part is of the character of Richard Savage who rises in Moorehouse's business to heir apparent, but some of his major contributions to the evening come in delivering one-line snippets of headlines as a member of the ensemble.

Projection designer James G. Champlain dug into photo archives to come up with a series of fascinating pictures and Manger cleverly integrates them into the staging. The effect of live passengers before a slide of the interior of a train, or of a speaker at a podium before a slide of a hotel ballroom, gives some visual excitement to the production, often at just the right time as the text seems to drag on. The use of slides displaying dates, however, gives the American Studies students in the audience a hook on which to hang a criticism, for the chronology of the material sometimes seems out of synch with the displayed dates. The Henry Ford story centering on the assembly lines for the Model T came about the time of the 1924 slide although the "T" was the predominant vehicle on the roads by 1918 and the assembly line to produce them was introduced in 1913.

Written by Paul Shyre and Jon Dos Passos. Directed and choreographed by Jacqueline Manger. Design: Michael deBlois (set) James G. Champlain (projections) Rip Claassen (costumes) AnnMarie Castrigno (lights) Brendon Vierra (sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Melissa Richardson (stage manager). Cast: Monalisa Arias, Evan Hoffman, Patricia Hurley, Kim-Scott Miller, Amy Quiggins, Bruce Alan Rauscher.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed March 18
Running time 2:50 - two intermissions
A solid revival of a rarely seen drama
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: Life among the guests in a Gulf Coast resort in 1949 intersect. There is a family of grandmother, mother and son stressed over the plans for the son's marriage. There is a former Army general and his wife who manipulates him into staying in a loveless marriage. There is the young girl who is a refugee from war-torn France without the resources to return to her homeland. It all comes together under the pressures generated by the presence of an artist who can't bring himself to complete pictures and his long suffering wife. Then there's the woman he painted years ago in her youthful prime who agrees to sit for another portrait.

At the center of the play is the role of the artist and in Jim Jorgensen's hands the part gets the smarmy sense it needs. The character soils just about everything and everyone he comes in contact with while being so self absorbed that he not only doesn't know he's doing it, he wouldn't care if he did know. When he finally meets his match at the hands of Maura Stadem as the French girl who makes the most of opportunity when it knocks, the audience wants to cheer.

Linda High is a caustic delight as the wise grandmother who sees the strengths and weaknesses of her family clearly, while both Jan Boulet, as her daughter, and Joshua Drew, as her grandson, give performances that hint nicely at the very factors she recognizes. Another family match of note is Mark Lee Adams as the general and Annie Houston as his manipulative wife. Their short scenes together are very effective.

Mazzola's production doesn't do much to create the ambiance of the time and place of the play. The play would seem to have all the ingredients for what would be termed an atmospheric production - a formerly grand home serving as a guest house along the Louisiana coast just a hundred miles from New Orleans in that precious interlude for America between the victory in World War II and the outbreak of war in Korea. Yet the production doesn't capitalize on the potential. No thick accents. No sense of heat and humidity. No touch of jazz. Instead, the concentration is on the individual characters as they interact in ensemble fashion. The satisfaction of the evening comes from the acting.

Written by Lillian Hellman. Directed by Steven Scott Mazzola. Design: Beth Baldwin (set) Rip Claassen (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Ayun Fedorcha (lights) Kevin Harney (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Karen Currie (stage manager). Cast: Mark Lee Adams, William Aitken, Jan Boulet, Deborah Rinn Critzer, Joshua Drew, Linda High, Annie Houston, Jim Jorgensen, Mary McGowan, Maura Stadem.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed January 11
Running time 2:15 - one intermission
Small town American lives of the turn of the twentieth century
Click here to buy the book
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: In the cemetery of the town of Spoon River, Illinois, the dead talk about their lives, telling of the high points and the low.

Masters’ 1915 book of poems included nearly 250 individual pieces, some as long as 400 lines, some as brief as 20. Each is in the voice of one of the dead delivering a story or an observation on his or her own life. Together they form a composite portrait of middle-America at the turn of the twentieth century from which the reader can sample at will, pausing to contemplate a vivid truth here, an interesting detail there. Veteran character actor Charles Aidman developed this stage adaptation as a vehicle for himself. In 1963 he took it to Broadway as its principal performer, writer and director where it was fairly well received. Whatever theatrical magic he worked to make it a satisfying evening of theater escapes this effort to recreate it for today’s audience.

It isn’t that individual pieces aren’t interesting in their own right. There appear to be literally dozens of kind-of-interesting stories played out on stage. However, there is no unifying central theme or construct that pulls them together, and the staging here is so strange you never get a chance to just sit back and listen to the poetic words or contemplate the observations by the dead of what they thought was the most important fact about their lives. Instead, a tremendously earnest troop of eight players take up one persona after another with no explanation, no structure and no one acting as our guide. At least Thornton Wilder gave us a Stage Manager to explain things in Our Town. No one explains anything in Spoon River.

The oddity of the physical production works to compound that difficulty. The set is draped with shards of fabric hanging around a plot of ground that features mounds, a stylized stalagmite and some decaying junk. The cast is dressed in drab brown semi-period clothing with fabric draped from their shoulder blades which probably represent flaccid angels' wings, but are used as everything from shrouds to swaddling clothes, and there is no explanation at all as to why one woman has one slipper and one bare foot, one man has one long sleeve and one short, other's costumes are ripped and distressed and the women seem bruised. There are a myriad of details here, but they don't add up to a single, unified whole.

Adapted by Charles Aidman from the poems of Edgar Lee Masters. Directed by Shane Wallis. Choreographed by Caroline Ashbaugh. Musical direction by Tom Fuller. Design: Jan Forbes (set) Jennifer Tardiff (costumes) Thomas B. Kennedy (lights) Matt Neilson (sound) Jeffrey Bell (photography) Eryn Chaney (stage manager). Cast: JJ Area, Caroline Ashbaugh, Edward Daniels, Theo Hadjimichael, Ellie Nicoll, Sasha Olinick, Anna Marie Sell, Patricia Williams.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed September 10
Running time 1:45 - one intermission
Two strong characters in a semi-wacky comedy

Storyline: A flighty-headed actress arrives late for an audition for a television commercial and nervously chatters away any opportunity for the job, but her fresh personality and peculiar view of reality attracts the producer/director. He's thinking she might be right for another project. She's thinking he might be right for her. Figuring that her only chance to start a romantic relationship with him is to keep him from leaving after they share a cab ride to her apartment, she uses all of her unorthodox talents to seduce him and enlist him in her cockamamie scheme to write the great American play.

Playing the scatterbrained actress is the very intelligent actress Karen Jadlos Shotts. She mines the material for many laughs and keeps up a certain comic intensity while avoiding getting too cloying with a part that is actually a self-written confession of insecurity. Shotts has built an impressive body of work in a wide range of roles on stages in Northern Virginia. She was very good as Annie Sullivan opposite Mollie Clement in The Miracle Worker, was nominated for a WATCH award for her "Sally Bowes" in Cabaret, and brought life to the role of the mother in Pack of Lies. This is her second outing in a comedy for The American Century Theater, having been featured in the the Carol Burnet Show retrospective they put together three years ago. The lady obviously can tackle just about anything.

Opposite her, in a role that works because he can do more than simply react to her zaniness, is Mark Lee Adams, himself a WATCH award nominee. The role is rather unrewarding in the first act when the relationship between the two is shallow and tentative. Indeed, the show itself tends to get a bit grating toward the end of that first act. But both the show and the role get better in the second act and this is in no small part a result of his ability to move from annoyed bachelor who just wants to escape after a one-night-stand to an intrigued and attracted man of a bit more depth.

Thomas B. Kennedy has created a properly claustrophobic set for the actress' New York apartment littered with the detritus of her efforts to build a show business career, and Ayun Fedorcha adds a tight spotlight for the audition scene. Costume designer Rip Claussen comes up with a mixed bag of outfits, especially those for Shotts. The red cloak and fur coat are both very good, but for most of the play she is in a nicely slinky item that exposes bra straps which would seem out of place with her character's seduction effort at the time, since the play is set in the early 1980s.

Written by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna. Directed by Ellen Dempsey. Design: Thomas B. Kennedy (set) Rip Claausen (costumes) Ayun Fedorcha (lights) Kevin Harney (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Christine Lange (stage manager). Cast: Mark Lee Adams, Karen Jadlos Shotts.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed July 28
Running time 2:30 - one intermission
A free staged reading with keyboard accompaniment
Click here to buy the CD

Storyline: A wealthy New Yorker acquires an ancient statue of the Goddess of Love, Venus. His barber, who has come to give him his morning shave, is about to become engaged and has the ring in his pocket. He notices that the statue's finger is the same size as that of his fiancée and, to prove it, places the ring on the statute's finger. The statue comes to life and falls in love with the barber, but eventually realizes that the life he offers in the new suburban development of Ozone Park would not satisfy her, and she takes the ring off, becoming a statue again.

One review of the show when it opened at Broadway's Imperial Theatre said it had "personality and wit and genuinely high moments of music and dancing." With the exception of "dancing" the same can be said of the staged reading. All of the leading performances are enjoyable with Amy Sheff, Andy Clemence and the team of Carl Randolph and R. Scott Williams standing out in a cast of 31 professionals. Sheff is at her best with the title song and with "Very, Very, Very," while Clemence sets up the entire piece with the "New Art is True Art" opening, leads the lovely "West Wind," and then joins with Randolph, Williams and Dan Herrel for the crowd-pleaser "The Trouble with Women."

Herrel is fine as the barber who sets the complications in motion. The lead role of the statue turned Goddess with all the supernatural powers that implies is played by Joanne Schmoll. She sings the role very nicely and captures a good deal of the flippant insouciance that Ogden Nash and S.J. Perelman managed to give the character in their script. However, no one can really be expected to recreate the charm and magic that made Mary Martin such a super star on the live theater stage. Still, Schmoll lets us understand the material in this, Martin's first starring role. 

There is no reserved seating for this general admission presentation. Choosing to sit on the left side of the audience is a good idea because Grace Marshall's slide show is projected on a screen to the audience's left. Her presentation makes up for much of the information and feeling that might otherwise have been lost in this staged reading which uses just six stools for furniture and set. She not only provides slides identifying location for the scenes, she throws up song titles, quotes from the stage directions in the script, montages of period-looking photos (some shot recently but made to look appropriate for 1943) and even a few bits of whimsy of her own. Among the art displayed during the song "New Art is True Art" includes one side of a different kind of art - Art Carny. Most impressive, however, is her touching montage of images illustrating the thought process of Venus as she considers what life really would be like if she stayed with the barber and lived the life of suburbia he offered.

Music by Kurt Weill. Lyrics by Ogden Nash. Book by S.J. Perelman and Ogden Nash based on The Tinted Venus by F. J. Anstey. Directed by Jacqueline Manger with additional direction by Jack Marshall. Musical direction by Tom Fuller. Power Point presentation conceived and designed by Grace Marshall. Design: Tom Kennedy (lights) Jean Grogan and Marge Tischer (wardrobe coordination) Rhonda Hill (stage manager). Cast: Andrea Abrams, Caroline Jane Angell, Michael Bigley, Kat Brais, Tara Chiusano, Andy Clemence, Gilly Conklin, Amy Conley, Tom Dillickrath, Rebecca Dreyfuss, Yvonne Erickson, Lauren Furjanic, Christine Gahagan, Tina Ghandchilar, Caren Hearne, Dan Herrel, Scott Kenison, Tracy Krulik, Randy Lindgren, Jason Massey, Dave McLellan, Lynn Audrey Neal, Carl Randolph, Brian Rodda, Joanne Schmoll, Amy Sheff, Nelson Smith, Jason Strunk, Marge Tischer, R. Scott Williams. Keyboard: Alvin Smithson.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed June 25
Running time 1:15 - no intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a rare opportunity to see and not just read O'Neill's blend of realism and expressionism
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: It is the last day of the reign of Brutus Jones, self proclaimed Emperor of a Caribbean island. He's an escaped convict from the United States who has bullied and bamboozled his way to control of an entire island, but the natives have had enough and he knows it is time to flee. His well laid plans for escape backfire, leaving him wandering the jungle, confronted by visions drawn from his memories and his demons, while the ever-present drums shake his resolve.

Eugene O'Neill's exciting experiment with blending the realistic with the expressionistic came very early in his career. Fresh from his success with the Pulitzer Prize winning Beyond the Horizon, this short (one act of eight scenes) play set a number of firsts for Broadway, not the least of which was the portrait of a black character as the leading role being played by a black actor. In 1920 it was a ground breaker as well because the black actor was at the head of an integrated cast, something that hadn't happened on Broadway before. In this production it is John Tweel who has the one part for a white man, a cockney overseer on the Emperor's estate. (Just why that overseer is wearing a diamond stud in one ear is unexplained.) The play has rarely been seen as audience acceptance of the story of a vicious, conniving black man brought down by his own faults written with such intensity by a white author has been suspect, at least since the height of the civil rights movement of the 1960s. The fact that the visions which ultimately destroy Jones include racial memories of the slave trade and ultimately the jungle from which his ancestors came is open to interpretations of racism even though The American Century Theater's Artistic Director, Jack Marshall, concludes that the fall of the corrupt emperor is "a metaphor for all mankind and not a racial slander."

For any production of this show to succeed it must have an actor of towering capabilities for the title role. He is on stage practically the entire evening undergoing a tremendous change as he falls before the audience's eyes from arrogant ruler to frightened fugitive, from a man in supreme control to one literally terrified of his own shadow, and ultimately to a destroyed remnant. Bus Howard is superb in the role showing great egotistic overconfidence at the start and proceeding in carefully measured steps down the long decline. He is surrounded by an ensemble whose strength is movement. The visions and specters are evocatively choreographed by Patricia Buignet and Anthony Rollins-Mullens. As Jones' mind deteriorates, his visions become more and more impressive, peaking with a memorable tableau of slaves crammed in the hold of a ship, rolling through rough seas. It is one of the few moments when Barbara Weber's drum goes silent, leaving the room full of the sound of creaking planks, stretching rigging, wind and waves.

Thomas B. Kennedy's set is an expressionistic suggestion of an island surrounded by the audience. Set pieces on wheels are moved into place during blackouts as the jungle closes in on Jones. The characters in his visions give costume designer Rip Claassen plenty of opportunity for invention. His spirits with twinkling lights trigger Jones' decline and a Crocodile God ends the parade of visions while Jones' own deterioration is made even more evident through progressively more tattered versions of his egotistically flamboyant uniform. Even his shoes make the transition from well-heeled to tattered. Lighting designer AnnMarie Castrigno actually seems to be designing darkness for this production, providing shadows, silhouettes and gloom while sound designer Keith Bell's ever escalating jungle soundscape matches the increasing intensity of Weber's drum. They combine to make a compelling evening you are not likely to be able to find anywhere else.

Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Ed Bishop. Choreography by Patricia Buignet and Anthony Rollins-Mullins. Design: Thomas B. Kennedy (set) Rip Claassen (costumes) Suzanne Maloney (properties) AnnMarie Castrigno (lights) Keith Bell (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Melissa Richardson (stage manager). Cast: Patricia Buignet, Bruce Allen Dawson, Constance Ejuma, Clarence V. M. Fletcher, Bus Howard, Delon Howell, Jason Nious, Ron Pawelkowski, Anthony Rollins-Mullens, Julia Stemper, Jimmy L. Tansil, Jr., Linda Williams Terry, John Tweel, Barbara Weber.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed March 30
Running time 2:20 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick astonishing staging
 Click here to buy the script

Storyline: A dictatorial theater director in search of the ultimate dramatic production leads his cast in a run through of a stage version of Melville's Moby Dick with himself in the role of dictatorial ship captain in search of the ultimate prey.

In 1955, at the age of forty, Orson Welles was a washed up former wiz kid of the theater, radio and movies. Julius Ceasar, The Cradle Will Rock, Voodoo Macbeth, The Shadow, The War of the Worlds, Citizen Kane, Jane Eyre, and The Third Man were all behind him and he'd developed a reputation as, well, "difficult to work with" is way too tame a term. He turned to Melville's novel and brought his own literally inimitable style to a stage adaptation which meant, of course, that he became the focus of the piece which he would write, direct and star in as Melville's "Captain Ahab." The program says this is Moby Dick Rehearsed by Orson Welles, but the centrality of Welles makes it really Moby Dick Rehearsed by Orson Welles. This is something of a pity, for its best moments are those when Melville and not Welles shines through. In creating a one-evening presentation of the essence of Melville's 500+ page novel, Welles writing is superb. Actually, it is his editing that is superb as Marshall points out that 80% of the lines in the story of Ahab are from the novel. The concept that this is a rehearsal rather than a fully staged production releases the piece from the confines of set and costume resources. It becomes much more about what the production does with its resources than about what resources it amasses. But Welles went further, mixing in metaphors from Shakespeare in a gimmick about the cast being in the theater to rehears King Lear and not Moby Dick that comes across as simply silly.

Unlike Welles, who starred in the original production, Marshall uses an actor other than himself in the part playing the director playing Ahab. In Charles Methany he has an impressive Ahab. Of course, Methany also has to play the director in the silly King Lear side story which is a curse he has to overcome to make his Ahab fully effective. It takes him a while, but he succeeds. In the climactic whaling scene he is splendid. Splendid from the start is William Aiken who sets the transition from Welles' extraneous King Lear scenes into the core of the evening with the famous words "Call me Ishmael." His narration is the real glue that binds the pieces together. David Jourdan makes a marvelous Stubb while Timothy Hayes Lynch gives heft to the role of Starbuck. Christian Yingling goes touchingly insane as Pip.

The design and implementation of this very theatrical piece is both unique and impressively effective. A platform, a ladder and a scaffold are the principal pieces being used, but it really is Michael deBlois' utilization of those pieces, Marianne Meadows imaginative lighting, Dan Murphy's nearly ever-present sounds of creaking decks and straining ropes and the entire casts' synchronized sway that creates the world of the whaling ship Pequod. The efficiency of this concept is key to the success of the climactic battle with the white whale which is a piece of theater not to be missed.

Written by Orson Welles. Directed by Jack Marshall.  Design: Michael deBlois (scenic coordinator) Rip Claassen (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Tom Fuller and David Jourdan (additional song lyrics and music direction) Shane Wallis (fight choreography) Marianne Meadows (lights) Dan Murphy (sound) Jeff Bell (photography) Rhonda Hill (stage manager). Cast: William Aitken, James G. Champlain, Jeff Consoletti, Joe Cronin, Tom Fuller, David Jourdan, Derrick Lampkins, Timothy Hayes Lynch, Chalres Metheny, Michael Sherman, John Tweel, Calres Upton, Shane Wallis, Glenn White, Christian Yingling.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed January 8
Running time 2:25 - two intermissions
t A Potomac Stages Pick for solid drama and smooth performances
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: At an exclusive boys school in the 1950s a boy comes under suspicion for homosexuality because of his combination of interest in the arts and a certain lack of macho swagger. While the headmaster of his dormitory is appalled by the prospect of scandal in his house and fears its impact on his own career, his new wife finds something in the young man that she can't find in her husband.

Director Steven Scott Mazzola has been responsible for a number of the fine presentations of this company including The Second Man, which was also designated a Potomac Stages Pick, and Picnic, which would have been had it not been produced before we began designating picks. He has a touch for the kind of naturalistic drama which was produced in such quantity for the American stage in the post-World War II period. He lets the stories tell themselves, avoiding excesses of staging and directing his cast to avoid performance excesses which could distract.

This time out, Mazzola's passion for avoiding over-acting seems to have held his cast in even tighter restraint, and at times that restraint is too noticeable. Sheri S. Herren gives a cool, clean performance as the headmaster's bride who sees in the troubled teenager a glimmer of events in her own past, but the heat, anger and frustration her character feels boils over in too brief an explosion. Joe Baker's performance as that teen is kept under tight control when he might well explode a time or two. Carl Randolph probably benefits most from this approach as his character, the headmaster, is the most repressed and ready-to-blow part in the play. He finally explodes quite nicely. William Aitken, despite a few strangely blocked scenes (he manages to hit the liquor decanters before so much as a how-de-do in one scene) makes what may be the most dated of the characters ring true when necessary.

Matt Soule has designed another of his sprawling sets. While the spreading of Titus Andronicus over the spacious floor of the Clark Street Playhouse for the Washington Shakespeare Company worked beautifully and his vertically challenging design for Lord of the Flies at Rorschach Theatre provided multiple levels for the multiple threads of the story, this simple two-room and a hall setting becomes a barrier for all too many in the audience. He places two audience seating bleachers on the south and east sides of the playing space. Those sitting on the east have a clear view of nearly all the action but some of those those sitting on the south find a closed, full height door between themselves and significant scenes. The theater follows an open seating policy so, if you attend - and we suggest that you do - take a seat in the rows to your right when you enter the house rather than those directly in front of you.

Written by Robert Anderson. Directed by Steven Scott Mazzola. Design: Matt Soule (set) Cynthia Thom (costumes) Eleanor Gomberg (properties) Marianne Meadows (lights) Kevin Harney (sound) Shane Wallis (fight choreography) Jeff Bell (photography) Annie Alesandrini (stage manager). Cast: William Aitken, Joe Baker, Michael W. Bigley, Jeff Consoletti, Brian Crane, Kathryn Fuller, Sheri S. Herren, Carl Randolph, Devon Schall. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
 

Reviewed November 19
Running time 2:30 - two intermissions
Click here to buy the script

Storyline: The extended family of a middle-class American businessman succumbs in stages to the crushing pressures of the Great Depression beginning in 1932 when, while America is voting for Roosevelt and against Hoover, the breadwinner's resources are stretched to the limit and continuing in a grinding spiral through to the 1935 day when the family is to be evicted from their home with no place to go, nothing to do and no way even to buy food. Through it all, however, the head of the household hangs on to a set of moral values. 

There is much to explore in America's experience of the twentieth century, the