The good news is that
Lee Sellars and Jennifer Mudge return to the little festival on the bluffs above the Potomac in two killer comedies, The Last Schwartz and Bright Ideas.
But first, the less than good news.
Whores, written by Lee Blessing and directed by Ed Herendeen, is a talky fantasia that takes place mostly in the mind of a Central American military commander, now emigrated to Florida, who finds himself on trial for the murder of four religious relief workers in his country. The script is apparently still a work in progress, as the actor playing the (now amnesiac) general consulted his script for help with two of his monologues.
Erin Cressida Wilson adapted a straight play of hers called Cross Dressing into a one-act musical named Wilder, directed here by Lisa Portes. The adaptation doesn't work, as it disrupts the focus of the story—a teenaged boy's gender issues in Depression-era Colorado. Only one of the songs
is worth remembering. It's sung by Coleen Sexton, who enacts the boy's masturbation fantasy, a squeaky-voiced girl figure skater glimpsed in a snow dome.
William Whitehead's baritone gravitas is just wasted here.
The two comedies of the festival are more accomplished.
First consider The Last Schwartz, written by Deborah Zoe Laufer and directed by Lucie Tiberghien.
The four surviving children of a Jewish businessman gather for his jahrzeit ceremony, along with their significant others, at the family home.
The family spirit has splintered into the four siblings' personalities. Herb acts as if anything can be bought and sold; Gene is off directing music videos and seems mainly to be interested in getting laid; Norma is the tradition-bound daughter who clings to every last relic of her family, ratty coffee tables and second-best china.
The only hopes for the survival of the family lie in two people, Simon (the fourth child) and Bonnie (married to Herb).
Bonnie (played by Jennifer Mudge) has converted to Judaism with her marriage, and desperately wants to have a child. Her second-act midnight monologue is all the more wrenching because the sleepers in the house reappear one by one in the living room in which she is trying to tell her story.
Which brings us to Simon (Aaron Kilner), who spends much of the play gazing through a telescope at nothing. Simon's story is that he is gradually going blind, which is a bit of a hindrance for a professional astronomer. Was it a defect in the writing, or Laufer's skill, that left me wondering whether Simon is legitimately a man of science or a boy doing science projects on the kitchen table? Simon is convinced that the world will end soon, perhaps in the next 50 years. Indeed, is Simon's blindness organic or hysterical?
At any rate, he has the last word. After two false endings, he is left alone in the house in the dark. As the moon rises, he climbs a ladder to the stars, where perhaps can be found the Schwartzes' salvation.
In its ability to find humor in high pathos, Laufer's play invites comparison with the work of Chistopher Durang.
Then there is the festival's high point: Bright Ideas, a battery acid-sharp, very funny satire about today's passion for child rearing as a competitive sport. Directed by Herendeen and written by Eric Coble, it is a 100-minute romp.
The excellent Lee Sellars and Jennifer Mudge are Joshua and Genevra, parents of trophy pre-schooler Mac Bradley; they will do anything to make sure that he gets ahead, including maiming teachers with lawn equipment and even killing off the competition's parents.
Subtly, and then not so subtly, the Macbeth story parallels that of the Bradleys. The capper is an screamingly funny parody of the sleepwalking scene, as Joshua blunders drunkenly through the kitchen, mumbling, "Mrs. Malcom had a leaf blower; what of her?"
The kitchen set piece is on a wagon. I noticed cables, and I wondered why the electrician had gone to extra trouble to wire the unit.
The answer comes in the play's central climax, when the Bradleys slay their first victim with an Internet-researched slow-acting heart poison mixed into the salad.
When Genevra laces the poison into the salad bowl, a toxic green glow emanates from the base of the bowl as it sits on the counter.
Catherine Curtin, Daniel Cantor, and Carolyn Swift provide multiple
memorable personas as the supporting ensemble.
