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Regional Reviews: Washington, D.C. Stage Kiss Also see Susan's review of Motown the Musical
Sarah Ruhl's delightful play Stage Kiss, now at Round House Theatre in Bethesda, Maryland, takes that premise and turns it inside out and back again, sparked by the multi-leveled performance of Dawn Ursula as an actress identified only as "She." From her first scene, where she auditions for a play opposite a less than optimal scene partner, Ursula makes the audience see the many layers of a character who is acting even when she pretends not to be—acting about acting, in other words. The unnamed director (Craig Wallace) casts She as the lead in a turgid 1930s melodrama that he wants to retool with gimmicks such as performers breaking into song for no dramatic purpose. (Understand that he's working with a plot in which true, if extramarital, love can cure a terminal illness.) This set-up, with the attendant shenanigans both on- and offstage, might be enough to make for an entertaining performance, but then the director casts self-absorbed He (Gregory Wooddell) as She's long-ago lover, not knowing that they were once lovers themselves. Director Aaron Posner understands how to keep increasingly tangled plotlines clear enough to follow. He ably guides the audience through Ruhl's clever first act and, after intermission, into an even more convoluted setting where the onstage and offstage worlds of He and She start seeping into each other and familiar people turn up in unfamiliar places. (By this time, the lead actors and director are working on a different play, about an Irish Republican Army soldier in 1970s New York City who falls in love with a prostitute who dreams of becoming an ophthalmologist. Just go with it.) Even Tony Cisek's scenic design becomes self-referential, while Kelsey Hunt's costumes range from first-act elegance to second-act absurdity. Where Ursula scintillates, Wooddell provides solid support as an actor who can only struggle as the moments of indignity pile up. Wallace squeezes all the juice he can out of the director's role and Michael Glenn, in several small roles, steals focus whenever he appears. Tom Truss, billed as "The Piano Man," offers solid support throughout. Round House Theatre |
