Young Stars Aligned on Washington Stages

BLESSINGS

New blood is as essential to the theater as it is to any vital organ, and this year, invigorating transfusions occurred on Washington stages through the work of a bevy of gifted young actors. Some will return regularly; others will be intermittent visitors to companies in town. In either case, the area's theatergoers can be thankful for exposure to these outstanding new faces of 2005:

Matt Boehler, Wolf Trap's "Sweeney Todd." If you happened to catch Joe Banno's staging of Stephen Sondheim's Grand Guignol masterpiece in a brief run last summer, you also encountered this thrilling performer, who made Sweeney's pain palpable and Sondheim's songs wrenchingly effective.

Jeffrey Carlson, Shakespeare Theatre Company's "Lorenzaccio." The rarely produced 19th-century play by Alfred de Musset was the find of the year, and the talented Carlson, a Broadway actor making his company debut as the work's conflicted hero, infused Michael Kahn's production with an androgynous dynamism.

Erin Driscoll, Signature Theatre's "Urinetown." Killer pipes and an innocence laced with wryness were the enchanting qualities Driscoll brought to the role of the iron-willed spawn of a demon capitalist in this freewheeling Broadway lampoon.

Guenia Lemos, Woolly Mammoth's "The Clean House." Sarah Ruhl's lyrical look at mortality benefited enormously from Lemos's endearing turn as a Brazilian housekeeper hopeless at telling jokes -- or keeping house.

Will Rogers, Round House Theatre's "columbinus." The canny Rogers brought a creepy authenticity to the role of deluded yin to Karl Miller's terrifying yang in this investigation of the humiliations and psychological conditioning that might have led two young men to massacre their classmates at Columbine High School.

BOMB

On the debit side, it wasn't a face but a new work that left the year's dreariest impression. Woolly Mammoth conducted an incoherent christening of its cool new theater on D Street NW with a shrill black comedy, "Big Death and Little Death." It was a downer of every dimension.