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Running time 3:30 - one intermission
O'Neil rendered faithfully - warts and all
Note: due to the length of the production, the theater starts the show at the announced time
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Storyline: Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize winning drama presents one day and night in the New England home of the Tyrones, haunted by their pasts and the consequences of their mistakes. The father is an aging matinee idol, an actor wracked by guilt over compromising his art for financial success in the grip of financial insecurity which causes his family to think of him as a miser with terrible consequences. The mother is a morphine addict wracked by guilt and disappointment over how her life has turned out. The eldest son survives on his father's fame on the stage while the youngest son is suffering from tuberculosis. These terribly unhappy and destructive people tear at each other in one long day of fighting and drinking.

This, the last of O'Neill's highly autobiographical and excruciatingly honest plays, exposes the weaknesses in a family he understood so intimately, so deeply and so thoroughly that he misses none of the pain or the blame while maintaining a familial affection that keeps the portraits from seeming mean-spirited or vindictive. They are pure and simple tragedy. (He was, in reality, the young man seen dying of "the consumption." In real life, he did recover after a year in a sanitarium, but that was after the events of this one long day.) Quotidian makes the point that this is an unusual staging of the lengthy play in its entirety. Actually, this is the second time in about four years Potomac Region audiences have had the opportunity to experience the play full length. The Heritage Theatre Company did it in 2004. Firebelly Productions presented a slightly edited version earlier this year which played better in its second act than its first which, when compared to this production with its first act working better than the second, demonstrates just how complex and difficult to master this play really is.

The four members of the only-barely-fictional Tyrone family are fascinatingly flawed and their flaws are intriguingly interrelated. Mumford imbues the unfortunate mother with more than simply a chemical addiction. She captures a certain over-reliance on denial and wishful thinking that feel as if they pre-date the introduction of narcotics into her life. LaRocque adds a sense of duty-driven pride to the theatrical ham of the father that makes the character more complex. Both Brownstein and Avolio have plumbed the considerable depths of the sons' foibles, but their exchanges with each other and with their parents seem to need more rehearsal or performance time to gain that sense of naturalness that mark the work of their elders. Erika Imhoof does a fine job with the tippling maid, especially when the second act's drunk scene (which is always difficult to stage without descending into parody) reaches the point where she's folding the tablecloth into a pillow for her head which has become too heavy to hold up.

The company constructs a workable set out of flats and filigrees and a satisfying wardrobe for the piece set in the summer of 1912 on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound. One inexplicable lapse is the use of three-bulb wall sconces which are period appropriate, but distractingly incorrect for a play that involves a debate of the cost of electricity for "one bulb." Sound designer Ed Moser provides more than just the fog horn that drones on at specified moments. His pre-show audio environment evokes the beach resort ambiance and his somber, introspective intermission music holds the mood while the audience takes a stretch break from the long sit in the Writer's Center's chairs which can't quite stay comfortable for as long as this performance requires.

Written by Eugene O'Neill. Directed by Bob Bartlett. Design: Bob Bartlet and Jack Sbarbori (set) Stephanie Mumford (costumes) Jack Sbarbori (properties) Don Slater (lights) Ed Moser (sound) Audrey Cefaly (photography). Cast: Michael Avolio, Andy Brownstein, Erika Imhoof, Steve LaRocque, Stephanie Mumford.

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Running time 2:00 - one intermission
A soothing and mellow drawing room comedy from a time gone by
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Storyline: In this British comedy, a self-centered wife of leisure spends her days on her chaise lounge and runs her household, including her husband, the governess of her two children and her visiting younger brother with an iron-handed passive-aggressive streak.  That is until the stakes are too high and she finally sees that she risks losing her husband and her status in the world unless she finally gets up and takes action rather than using words to resist all movement.

The playwright, Hubert Henry Davies is one with a short resume who died at the age of 47 in 1917, and is all but forgotten today. One can only wonder what he might have written if WW I had not ended his life and he had lived to be part of the great British awakening, at least by its poets who had survived the war or had the opportunity read deeply the early works of Freud. But The Mollusc is a nice piece of theater to revive for archival purposes alone. And it was once even made into a live television production in 1952 by Kraft Television Theater. The Quotidian Theatre gets a big nod for this unexpected revival as another small Potomac Region theater company that makes risky choices in seeking out and finding little trinkets. The casting by Jack Sbarbori includes several who may be less familiar to area professional theater-goers, but together make for an overall sound ensemble. With a script that is not full of natural action or great bombastic outbursts of dialogue or abstractness, the production moves more swiftly in Act II and carries itself along. Sbardori has found ways to keep his cast off their chairs, at least those surrounding the non-moving mollusk herself. In Act II there are two unexpected scenes with some more broad comedic touches that provide a nice respite from the back and forth of dialogue.

This is a text driven script in a very confined space. Each of the four characters is very distinct physically and emotionally and is easily traced throughout the production. Some are better at English accents then others. The two women in this four actor ensemble are the more agreeable ones, especially given that they are working with a script and a direction that does not emphasize nuanced and highly fine gradations and distinctions. There is the matron of the house, Malinda Smith, as the immobile “mollusc.” She is quite natural in her ability to bat back any attempt to have her move or take action. She seems to be enjoying herself in the role although the audience may want to push her about in open frustration at her "stickedness." Laura Russell, as the dutiful, pretty Governess with a heart and a mind to know that there is more to life than what she is living is an Eliza Doolittle-type, but from a different starting point … she grows and grows into a strong women. Russell’s British accent is the best of the ensemble. John Decker plays the compliant, subservient, little yes-man husband as a wimp who knows he is such. He speaks and walks about as if he is a mouse. As the earthy (at least for its time) Americanized brother, Steve Beall tries mightily to carve out a central place in this ensemble, but is man-handled by the two women. Still, he can bring a perturbed mien to his performance at times.

The Writer’s Center stage area is a sufficient space for this small drawing room comedy. It has a confined feel that the set design uses to advantage as the entire proceedings take place in one room. There are several windows including one floor to ceiling window that not only provides a three dimensional feel to the set but is effective for one of the more broad comedic scenes. The costumes of the women are of more interest and seem more of the time and place than those of the men.

Written Hubert Henry Davies. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set) Stephanie Mumford (costumes) Don Slater (lights) Jack Sbarbori (sound) Audrey Cefaly (photography). Cast:  Steve Beall, John Decker, Laura Russell, Malinda Smith.

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Running time 1:45 -  no intermission
A family comes alive through a fictional oral history lovingly enacted by a talented trio of actresses
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Storyline: The three remaining children of a Union Army soldier who settled in Confederate territory in Texas after the Civil War, and who built up a significant estate  through either personal dedication and hard work or through unfair exploitation of a carpetbagger's power during reconstruction, deliver a series of interconnected monologues revealing their family's history bit by bit and view by view, creating a warm but not uncritical portrait of their father, mother, siblings and spouses at the end of a full and varied life.

Early on in this extended series of monologues addressed directly to the audience, it appears that each of the sisters will have one chance to tell her story and the addition of details in one amplifying the observation in another is fascinating. After each has had a fairly extended time to speak, however, alternating shorter monologues pick up various threads and elaborate further, often contradicting the earlier impressions, as can be the case when stories are examined and re-thought. A new, more complex and more humanly believable view of their father and the family he formed comes into focus. It begins to ramble just a bit as it gets into its second hour, but the personal charm of the three actresses carries it along until it starts to come back together at the end.

Mazade is a pillar of strength as the daughter trained by their father to take over the business instead of his son who failed to meet his standards. Mumford is sensitive and frail on the surface but hints at the depth of her character. Scheide's portrait is tinged with a bitterness over her treatment after she eloped in opposition to her father's strange wish that none of his daughters marry in order to avoid having outsiders obtain a claim on the estate he was so assiduously amassing.

The three ladies occupy three distinct areas of Sbarbori's elegant set. Scheide delivers most of her monologues from the left where brown-toned patterned wallpaper bedecked with a framed portrait of FDR forms a backdrop behind a single rocking chair. Mumford holds forth on the right in an area of blue floral paper with a flower-patterned shade on the tiffany-style lamp beside a cushioned chair. Mazade is at center, as is her character. She's at a desk before a golden wall displaying a portrait of their father as well as the family table setting. The feel of the space is just right for these ladies, and Kathleen Newton's period costumes add to the realistic recreation of Foote's world.

Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set) Kathleen Newton (costumes) Don Slater (lights) Nick Sampson and Jack Sbarbori (sound) Jeff Bell (photography). Cast: Leah Mazade, Stephanie Mumford, Barbara Scheide.

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Running time 2:25 - one intermission
A classic comedy of manners staged in cramped quarters
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Storyline: A misogynistic English linguist believes that the most important determiner of class in class-conscious Britain is the way a person speaks. To prove it, he takes on a project of teaching a "guttersnipe" flower girl how to speak like a lady so she can be accepted even in the presence of royalty.

Shaw's play was, of course, the source material for one of the greatest musicals of the American stage, My Fair Lady. Using stories from other sources for plays works both ways. Shaw drew from Greek mythology for the basic concept of his play. The myth of Pygmalion dealt with a sculptor who created a statue of such beauty that he fell in love with his own creation. Shaw fleshed out the characters with greater human interest (the statue in the Greek could not have had a father) and changed the art involved from sculpture to something he knew a great deal more about - language. He infused the script with great wit and humor as he made his points about society, class, communication and beauty.

Stadem makes the journey from flower girl to lady with a delightful sense of strength of character. In her flower girl stage she's a real lady in the standards she maintains, even if her enunciation and diction are execrable. She has an inner charm that can be sensed long before it can be seen. It emerges in measured doses as she masters the lessons of the Professor. John Allnutt is that Professor, and, while he has a large number of line readings that are smashing, the performance seems to jump from highlight to highlight rather than progress through the evening. Jane Squier Bruns manages the rare feat of doubling on distinctive roles without becoming distracting in her effort to distinguish between them. She's quite good as both the Professor's Scottish housekeeper and as his mother. John Deeker is fine as the Professor's partner in the project, Colonel Pickering, although he can't quite shake some of the character's contradictions. Steve LaRocque is very effective as Eliza's father, the unapologetic, self-proclaimed member of the undeserving poor. Strangely, however, his dialect is a few notches up the social scale for the part.

Mumford's staging is marred by many awkward touches including cast members hidden by umbrellas or reclining on the floor, the constant use of empty glasses and cups in a space too intimate for such things not to be noticed, and an unnecessarily crowded stage. The Writer's Center doesn't have any wing space so Mumford and set designer Jack Sbarbori cram multiple locations onto the already tight playing space, forcing cast members to squeeze around gewgaws such as hat trees and window frames in order to make entrances and exits. A nice touch, however, is the placement of Jean-Léon Gérôme's painting of the Greek legend of Pygmalion and Galatea as the central feature in Professor Higgins' study. Mumford is also credited with the costumes and is deserving of kudos in this regard, for the period feel of the piece is supported nicely.

Written by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Stephanie Mumford. Design: Jack Sbabori (set) Stephanie Mumford (costumes) Don Slater (lights) Nick Sampson and Jack Sbarbori (sound) Audrey Cefaly (photography) Donald Bruns (stage manager). Cast: John Allnutt, Michael Avolio, John Decker, Steve LaRocque, Jane Squier Bruns, Maura Stadem and the voice of Donald Bruns. 

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Running time 1:35 - no intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for absolutely
 absorbing story telling
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Storyline: Viewed through the eyes of a lawyer seeking to understand the outcome of "the only case that he ever lost where he was convinced that right and justice were on his side," this one-act play presents a lonely love between a watchman sitting through the winter at a closed sawmill in a remote section of northeast Mississippi and the pregnant woman who seeks shelter from the bitter cold in his one-room shack.

The path to this absorbing evening of theater began back in 1940 with the publication in the Saturday Evening Post of a short story by William Faulkner that began with the matter of fact wording "It should have been an open-and-shut case." The story was adapted for television's Playhouse 90 by Horton Foote, who then adapted his teleplay for the stage. Robert Duvall played the loner in the New York production and later made the movie version with his original co-star, Olga Bellin. There is a match between Foote's theatrical use of everyday events or observations and Faulkner's legendary eye for revealing details. The characters are not so much shallow as they are reserved, hesitant to display their emotions or expect attention.

John Collins uses physical understatement in the role of the soft spoken watchman the way Faulkner/Foote use verbal understatement. At times it seems that the two word reply "Yes, ma'am" is the longest speech he has. But that is misleading. In fact, he has some very important speeches - short though they may be. It is just that he creates such a solid impression of the strong silent type that it pervades the entire play. His taciturn approach is matched by Michele Osherow, who adds a deep sense of fatigue to her portrayal, which gives the part a poignancy that serves the story well. Steve LaRocque avoids any excesses in the role of the narrating lawyer.

Sbarbori creates a detailed replica of a tiny watchman's cabin with a wood stove's warmth and light battling the chill represented by a whistling wind. Every time the action shifts outside of the cabin the magic seems to falter just a bit. It is as if the scenes taking place at the wood pile or the wash basin somehow distract from the warmth and comfort represented by that tiny space with its single cot. There is no credit for costume design but each performer is decked out in just the right garb, especially Steve LaRocque who is dapper in a lawyer's light linen suit, and John Decker who is the opposite of dapper in his farmer's clothes as Collins' pa.

Written by Horton Foote. Adapted from the short story by William Faulkner. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set and sound) Don Slater (lights) Amber Krause (stage manager). Cast: Michael Avolio, John Collins, John Decker, Steve LaRocque, Stephanie Mumford, Michele Osherow.

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Reviewed May 19
Running time 2:05 - one intermission
v Nudity and intimate situations
A solid presentation of a superbly written play
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Storyline: After their first date, a waitress and a short order cook have returned to her apartment and gone to bed together. After making love, she is ready to have him leave so she can have her privacy back. On the other hand, he thinks he knows a good thing when he sees it, has fallen in love, and has no intention of leaving.

Adults who can accept nudity and intimacy in a non-pornographic, honest presentation will find a great deal to enjoy in this solid presentation of McNally's lovely piece of what might be called "quotidian romanticism." Opening as it does with a sexual climax in the dark, the play skips the awkward process of getting from first date to first sex act and concentrates on the "ok, where do we go from here" that follows. Frankie and Johnny have bared their bodies. Now, in the afterglow, they must get to know each other on a whole new level. As they dare to bare more than just bodies before each other, they reveal their histories, hopes, fears, likes, dislikes and standards. Out of it comes not just a picture of two real people, but also a picture of an embryonic couple, an entity that may grow to be a life-changing partnership.

McNally gives the cast much to work with and Imhoof and Arnold do well with the material. These two people, after all, are going through the process of revealing their characters to each other. What else is acting but the process of revealing character to the audience? Arnold gets both the insecurities and the macho hopes and fears right. His Johnny demands not compliance with his wishes but consideration of his desires while feeling for the limits of her tolerance. Imhoof has the more reserved character to bring to life, and she does a nice job of showing Frankie's tentative efforts to respond to Johnny's advances as she seeks a balance between risks. She's reluctant to risk true intimacy, but also fears loosing this chance to build a relationship. Both give honest performances.

Any play that not only deals with the spell of moonlight but invokes the pure romanticism of the music that French composer Debussy titled  "clair de lune" (French for "moonlight") provides an opportunity for a lighting designer to work wonders. Here it is Don Slater who provides the slanting shaft of moonlight which comes through set designer Howard James' version of the window of Frankie's Manhattan apartment, and it's properly evocative without being excessively showy. The voice of the radio announcer who dedicates Debussy's "most beautiful music in the world" to the couple goes uncredited.

Written by Terrence McNally. Directed by Bob Bartlett. Design: Howard James (set) Jared Shamberger (properties and set dressing) Don Slater (lights) Nick Sampson (sound) Charmian O. Crawford (stage manager). Cast: Ken Arnold, Erika Imhoof. 

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Reviewed June 10
Running time 2:20 - one intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for a thoughtful presentation with an emotional punch
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Storyline: One day and night in middle America, where a year after the end of World War II, a family is still struggling with the impact of the war on their lives. The father has been released from prison after being cleared of charges of knowingly supplying defective parts to the Army resulting in the death of 21 pilots. The mother holds on tenaciously to the thought that her missing-in-action son will turn up even three years after the disappearance of the fighter he was piloting. The surviving son has finally decided to move on with his life, seeking the hand of the daughter of his father's deputy who has been convicted of the fatal fraud. She had been his brother's girl before he left for the war.

This is the first play that director Norman Seltzer has staged for Quotidian, and yet he has taken to heart the company's trademark uncomplicated approach. Perhaps that is because he has performed in two of their productions in the past. It also helps that the play is such a good match for the style of the company. One definition of "Quotidian" is "found in the ordinary course of events" and the essence of Miller's style is to find extraordinary emotions in the experience of ordinary events. The very familiarity of family and neighbor conversations in the backyards of middle-America amplify the magnitude of the issues and emotions being exposed.

Barry Abrams carries the weight of the play as the father of the family burdened with the twin load of guilt and fear of exposure. He avoids overdoing the panic that captures his character as the truth of his past overtakes him. Leo Goodman, as his son, is the one to let loose the full emotion of the collapse of the fiction the family has been living, and he does so grandly. There is a genuine touch of affection and attraction between him and Ghillian Porter as the girl he wants to marry. Lois Sanders, as the mother of the household who is holding tight to one fiction in order to avoid confronting a different truth, sets up her final undoing so well that the intensity of her final breakdown comes as something of a surprise.

Jack Sbarbori's set is an economical mixture of simplicity and effectiveness. Faux-brick surfaces on flats create the exterior of the house with patio furniture establishing a sense of familiarity and informality. The plot calls for a damaged apple tree stump off to one side, so Sbarbori puts it in a bit of earth enclosed by wooden borders - simple but sufficient. Kathleen Newton's costumes look as if these people actually wear these clothes in their daily routines.  At the start of the first act, the sound system slowly fades the program of popular recordings of the era that has been playing as the audience enters, and the lights linger at a low setting as if to say "sit back and take your time absorbing the events of the play." It establishes just the right feel for this play.

Written by Arthur Miller. Directed by Norman Seltzer. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set and sound) Kathleen Newton (costumes) Don Slater (lights). Cast: Barry Abrams, Kevin Baker or Simone Grossman, Chris Batchelder, John Collins, Leo Goodman, Ghillian Porter, Lois Sanders, Ted Schneider, Andrea Spitz, Sherry Tyra.

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Reviewed April 15
Running time 2:40 - two intermissions
Gentle portrayals of genuine characters
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Storyline: Three connected one-act plays introduce three women who live in Houston, Texas, in 1924. One woman hosts her next door neighbor and an acquaintance from across town and is torn by the tragedies affecting their lives. Her neighbor is struggling with the infidelity of her husband while the cross town acquaintance is loosing touch with reality due to a psychological trauma in her childhood.

Not really a full length play nor the traditional evening of one act plays in which each is a stand-alone piece, this collection is a hybrid. The connection between all three is clear, but two are connected to each other with a stronger bond than is the case with the third. The first two could really constitute a satisfying whole as next door neighbors face the twin problems of coping with troubles close to home and those a bit more removed. The third, on the other hand, continues one thread of the story and is certainly satisfying on its own, but it really doesn't need the earlier material as a set up, nor does it provide more resolution to the story as it existed at the end of the first two.

Foote's three main female characters are compellingly human and the performances here capture the combination of ordinariness and idiosyncrasy that makes his stories feel so real. Audrey Cefaly and Erika Imhoof bring the neighbor housewives to life with performances marked by many tiny touches, nicely nuanced gestures and a sense of comfort between their two characters that can only be a result of a long friendship. The fact that the two have worked together frequently in the past certainly helped in creating this feeling. Both have also worked with Quotidian co-founder Stephanie Mumford who plays the third major character, the woman who can't cope with the horror of one event from her past. As a trio, they are quite impressive.

The men in these ladies' lives constitute a colorful collection of characters. Ted Schneider masters the tiny shifts in posture as his character falls asleep or pretends to be asleep to either overhear or to avoid being included in a conversation. Doug Prouty subtly shows the audience the frustration his characters' manners wont let him show to the women when he comes to get his failing wife. Then there is Matt Wilschke, who doesn't say a word as a silent patient in the asylum. These and others fill out a world "more real than realism."

Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set and sound) Stephanie Mumford, Audrey Cefaly and Amy Reynolds (costumes) Don Slater (lights) Jim Brantley (photography) Tim Phelps (stage manager). Cast: Audrey Cefaly, John Decker, Erika Imhoof, Matt Jordan, Steve LaRocque, Stephanie Mumford, Doug Prouty, Ted Schneider, Matt Wilschke.

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Reviewed October 29
Running time 1:45 - no intermission
t A Potomac Stages Pick for atmosphere, natural acting and great writing
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Storyline: Into a small Irish pub along the River Shannon comes a woman from Dublin who has just moved into a house in the neighborhood. The men who spend their evenings in the pub compete telling stories of local color, many of them ghost stories or tales of supernatural events as they attempt to impress the woman. But the woman has a story of her own and so does the house she's purchasing.

McPherson's play understates just about everything involved. The relationship between the men in the pub before the arrival of the woman and the developments in the wider world outside the pub are all established but only as background to the evening of storytelling. Many a satisfying solo show is built this way. Indeed, McPherson has written more monologue pieces than plays requiring an ensemble. Few multi-member cast plays adopt the form, however. McPherson makes it work through the myriad little hints he drops into the conversations among the characters before and in between the stories they tell. He gives the actors details on which to hang their performances and just enough structure to give the audience the expected challenge of figuring out just who is who and what is going on which makes a drama something more than a story.

The actors here all avoid any excess at all. If any one of them overplayed a moment or overstressed a line it would break the spell and they know it. Credit for that must go to director Jack Sbarbori, co-founder of Quotidian. He has cast four of the five parts with veterans of past Quotidian productions including regulars Steve LaRocque and Quotidian's other co-founder Stephanie Mumford. LaRocque makes the first entry and his understated struggle to remove his galoshes sets the tone of the piece for the entire evening before he delivers even one line. Each performer has tiny little details that make their characters come to life for those who are watching carefully. Ted Schneider's gesture of using his finger to get the last drop from a shot glass is a classic case in point. The one newcomer is the youngest of the group, Darius Suziedelis who, as the bartender in the pub contributes some of the details of time and place but whose real talent is listening.

More affluent companies might spend a great deal on a handsome set of an impoverished Irish pub but this one serves the purpose quite well, especially under the gentle lighting of Don Slater. McPherson's script calls for the sound of wind to help create and maintain the mood and Nick Sampson's sound design fills the bill quite nicely with an ever present but never overstated effect. That wind, so emblematic of the Shannon River Basin where the pub is set, is just like the rest of the production: understated, naturalistic, impressionistic.

Written by Conor McPherson. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set) Stephanie Mumford (costumes) Don Slater (lights) Nick Sampson (sound) Erika Imhoof (photography). Cast: John Decker, Steve LaRocque, Stephanie Mumford, Ted Schneider, Darius Suziedelis.

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Reviewed September 20
Running time 1 hour 55 minutes

Storyline: In the courtyard of a local hospital, a survivor of the Pentagon attack and her office colleague, who was absent at the moment of impact, discuss their experiences during a break from the survivor’s therapy session. Over the next hour, they also have conversations with her therapist who has had his own searing experiences, the director of marketing for the hospital who would like to use the survivor as a spokesperson for fundraising for the hospital, and a janitor who the survivor recognizes as the stranger who rescued her on that fateful day.

The opening scene of this play is a simple conversation between two office colleagues who have bonded over their shared experience on and after September 11. It is free of artifice and posturing and is performed with such honesty that your expectations for the rest of the evening are raised sky high. Here is the essence of the experience - the aftermath of a day that began as simply a Tuesday like any other (although perhaps a bit clearer with a sky a bit bluer) but which turned to horror that affected the lives of everyone who went through it, whether they were in the E Ring and survived their injuries or they were away from the office or out of the building and received psychological but not physical injury.

Unfortunately, the standard set by that first scene cannot be maintained as the script turns a bit preachy and the supporting performers bring less of a sure touch to their parts than do Cody Jones as the survivor and Susan Holliday as her colleague. Jones continues to be just understated enough to be touching but she has to play her second scene with Colleen Estep who can’t quite pull off the overly broad characterization of the hospital’s marketing director penned by LaRocque. She has the unfortunate task of representing crass commercialism and narrow-minded bigotry which LaRocque sets up for rejection with an all too heavy hand.

LaRocque takes the stage in the role of the therapist but here, again, things turn preachy as the character tells a stranger things that would not normally be shared. Much of his dialogue is eloquent, thoughtful and revealing but it is strangely out of place in a conversation with a stranger. Things get better when Richard Wilt enters as the savior/janitor in a scene that, while not up to the standard of the opener, is filled with subtler touches and some very eloquent imagery. As the evening comes to a close, the friends reestablish the sense of honest intimacy with which it began, touching a nerve that is still too raw for dispassionate assessment.

Written by Steve LaRocque. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Recorded pianist, Jenny Bland. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set) Don Slater (lights) Nick Sampson (sound) Jan Faul (photography). Cast: Colleen Estep, Susan Holliday, Cody Jones, Beatrice Judge, Steve LaRocque, Richard Wilt.

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Reviewed November 29
Running time 2 hours 40 minutes

Written by Henrik Ibsen. Adapted and directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: J-L Cavaille-Coll (set and sound) Stephanie Mumford (costumes) Don Slater (lights). Cast: Stephanie Mumford, Nick Sampson, John Decker, Steve LaRocque, Erika Imhoof or Cody Jones, Sharon Dodd.

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Reviewed May 31
Running time 2 hours

Written by Horton Foote. Directed by Jack Sbarbori. Design: Jack Sbarbori (set) Kathleen Newton (costumes) Don Slater (lights) J-L Cavaille-Coll (sound). Cast: Stephanie Mumford, Lucy Brightman, Jack French, Susan Holliday, Cody Jones, Martha Cashion Abrams, Heather Benjamin, Barbara Scheide, Barry Abrams, Mark Stevenson.