Longacre Lea’s new production is a lyrical brain tickler, a serio-comic mystery packed with erudition. Perhaps too well-packed: at a running time of three hours, the piece is on a par with much of the work of one of the playwright’s touchstones, Tom Stoppard.
In the fall of 1963, Elizabeth and Barbara Sweeny, ostensibly daughter and mother, travel to an obscure French pension to consult in discretion with Dr. Giraud (played with hilarious sniffy eccentricity by Jason Lott) to learn the cause of Elizabeth’s mysterious affliction. The only other guests in this small hotel are a CIA-ish American and two playwrights: Tennessee Williams drinking incognito and the yet unpublished Stoppard himself. While the opening scene suggests Stoppard’s Travesties, the hotel’s smugly efficient proprietor (nice work by Daniel Vito Siefring) speaks with an accent more in keeping with one of Sir Tom’s adaptations of Molnar.
Elizabeth soon meets the shadowy Mr. Asher (oh-so cool Michael John Casey), who explains that he is a collector of sun myths from cultures around the world. In his evening visits, Asher tells several of these to Elizabeth, and each is a lovely bit of writing, a set piece for the cast/ensemble to illustrate choreographically. Unfortunately, it’s only in the story told solo by Casey that the play’s solar fables really shine.
The play, premiering in this production, needs some tightening. There’s an awkward transition in the second act that reveals the facts of Elizabeth’s complaint to the rest of the guests. However, the arc of Elizabeth’s journey is compelling, and its resolution (with its whiff of another master of contemporary fantasy, Craig Lucas and his Prelude to a Kiss) is quite satisfying.
- Theories of the Sun, by Kathleen Akerley, directed by Jonathon Church and Kathleen Akerley, Longacre Lea, Callan Theatre, Washington