Paula Vogel's brother, Carl, died of AIDS in 1988. She wrote "The Baltimore Waltz," as a tribute to him and an expiation of her own grief. It's a wild ride of explanation and fantasy, of frustration, dark wishes and overwhelming love, with believable acting and first-rate direction. The Muddy Waters Theatre production opened last night at the Kranzberg Arts Center, to run through March 20.
Vogel's persona is Anna, played nicely by Kate Frisina, with Stephen Peirick as her brother, Carl, and DJ Sanders as the Third Man et al, which puts him into a dozen or so quickly sketched, mostly quirky roles, climaxing as the Third Man, Orson Welles as Harry Lime in the classic film, "The Third Man."
Though supposedly a tribute to her brother, "The Baltimore Waltz" is also about Vogel, her response to his death, her pain and her anger as she goes through Elizabeth Kubler-Ross' steps of grief. Vogel substitutes ATD, or Acquired Toilet Disease, for AIDS, then explains that Anna, a first-grade teacher, caught it while using the same toilet her pupils did.
An imaginary trip to Europe, actually planned but never realized by them, is a place for Anna to explore many things, including a series of one-night stands with men from every city, hotel and restaurant they visit. Sanders, in a series of costumes, wigs and accents that demonstrate strange, stranger, strangest, is terrific, lurking beautiful in the dark space between fantasy and reality. He stood out as a double-talking doctor. Frisina's role is difficult, but she generally handled it well. Peirick was adequate, but the role of Carl is so thin that there is not much for an actor to get his hands around.
Jerry McAdams directed smoothly and kept things calmer, and more positive, than they might have been in looser hands. Keaton Treece's costumes were mainly for taking off and putting on, and they held up well under the strain. The set, uncredited, consists of a bed where much of the action takes place, some on top of the covers, some underneath, and a few chairs. It works, and better than a lot of the projections, which often had an amateurish look, but which showed some good pictures of Baltimore. The waltz? Sad, but worth waiting for.
Muddy Waters, which devotes is season to the works of a single playwright, has two more Vogel plays on its 2011 schedule, "The Mineola Twins," coming up next and "How I Learned to Drive," which earned a Pulitzer Prize, to conclude the season.
The Baltimore Waltz, a Muddy Waters Theatre production at the Kranzberg Arts Center, will be on stage through May 20.
--Joe
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