(photo: Christopher O. Banks)

April 22 - May 23, 2004
Enigma Variations
Reviewed April 24
Running time 1 hour 30 minutes
A Potomac Stages Pick for impressive performances of an intriguing and literate script

Two of the Potomac Region's finest dialogue actors sink their teeth into one of the most intriguing dialogue plays to come along in quite a while. It may seem to be just two men talking to each other, but what worlds they create with their words, what passions they ignite, what mysteries they spin and solve! The fascinating dialogue is delivered with style, honesty, intelligence and passion by Conrad Feininger and Bill Largess. They carry the audience through a range of emotions from amusement to passion to grief, all the while mining the literate humor of the conversation between two characters who, at least at the beginning, seem to have in common only the use of words in their professions.

Storyline: A reporter comes to interview a reclusive novelist in his island home above the Arctic Circle where few visitors and no journalists are ever allowed. Why did the novelist agree to the interview? Why does the reporter seems to know a great deal more about him than could be gleaned from the public record?

Jeremy Sams' translation of French author Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt's two character play is receiving its area premiere with this production. It is certainly the most satisfying new French play to reach our stages since Yasmina Reza's Art and one of the most intriguing representations of intellectual battles since David Auburn's Proof. Neither Sams nor Schmitt could ask for a more satisfying production. Alan Wade returns to the Washington Stage Guild to direct two actors of whom WSG regulars expect great things.

Feininger, with his mellifluous voice, his eyes sparkling with spirit and his imposing presence begins with such command of his lair as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author uncharacteristically granting an interview, that his reactions to the revelations to come are amplified without seeming over-done. As the visiting interviewer, Largess, on the other hand, starts with his character's strength's under wraps and lets them emerge little by little. He has always excelled at the on-stage skill of listening, and here he makes a virtue out of supporting the early tirades of Feininger's character with rapt attention. As the play progresses and his own emotional outbursts are called for, they are all the more dramatic for the near-milquetoast persona with which he started. To watch Feininger's final breakdown or the look in Largess' eyes when his heart and soul are flooded with memories on the line "she hardly seemed to notice" is to watch two extraordinary actors at the peak of their skills.

Wade fields a fine team of designers who do nice work indeed but the play could just as well be mounted with but two chairs and a record player. Clay Teunis' sound design, while a bit artificial on the gunshots and footfall effects which play such an intriguing part in the play, does an unusually good job of making the on-stage record player sound appropriately located as the characters play the recording of Elgar's intellectually mysterious work which shares more than just its title with this play.

Written by Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt. Translated by Jeremy Sams. Directed by Alan Wade. Design: Tracie Duncan (set) William Pucilowsky (costumes) Marianne Meadows (lights) Clay Teunis (sound) Christopher O. Banks (photography) Keri Schultz (stage manager.) Cast: Conrad Feininger, Bill Largess.

1901 14th St. NW.
Thursdays at 7:30 p.m.; Fridays & Saturdays at 8 p.m.
matinees Saturdays & Sundays at 2:30 p.m.
(240) 582-0050