By Celia Wren
Special to The Washington Post
Friday, November 7, 2008

Rhythms dance through Imagination Stage's exceptionally affecting drama "Playing From the Heart" -- not that you'd expect otherwise.

Charles Way's funny and lyrical play for family audiences, after all, draws on the true story of Evelyn Glennie, the renowned -- and, as it happens, profoundly deaf -- solo percussionist. But the rhythms in director Janet Stanford's production, making its U.S. premiere, aren't merely the standard concert hall ones: the voices of the timpani, snare drum, cymbal and so on (although designer Neil McFadden certainly includes those in his painterly soundscape). Instead, it's the brisk musical pacing of the scenes, and the bold but graceful performances of the five actors, that keep the dramatic metronome ticking in the intimate Christopher and Dana Reeve Studio Theatre space.

Stanford has guided Way's 90-minute tale (recommended for ages 6 and older) so judiciously that even sequences that could feel too familiar -- nostalgic reminiscences of childhood pleasures, portraits of sibling rivalries and so on -- have a mysterious resonance to them.

Anchoring it all is actress Erica Siegel, who brings a wonderful charisma and emotional transparency to the central role.

Captivated by music as a small girl, the Scottish-born Glennie stubbornly pursued an instrumental career even after losing her hearing at age 8. Way's script -- which has a seductive, memoir-style tone, no doubt because it was written with Glennie's cooperation -- chronicles the vulnerable young dreamer's enthusiasms and setbacks. It ranges from her schoolgirl days through a barrage of discouraging medical tests, then to her fortuitous meeting with a music teacher who realizes that she can feel percussive reverberations, even if she can't hear sounds conventionally. In the play's triumphant climax, Evelyn enrolls at the prestigious Royal Academy of Music, and her globe-trotting career is launched.

It's ultra-inspiring stuff, obviously, but Way avoids any power-of-positive-thinking triteness by anchoring the story firmly in a sense of artistic wonder. Looking back from adulthood, in various framing speeches, Evelyn recalls the sounds of a Scottish farm childhood. The Imagination Stage production brings such recollections to life: Actors banging on a wheelbarrow, or rustling newspapers, or scraping at the spokes of a bicycle create the mini-concertos that a fledgling virtuoso might have heard around her. And to depict the Scottish hills and Glennie farm buildings, scenic designer Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden uses corrugated metal that generates raspy clatterings -- like a pitchless xylophone -- when a hand runs across it.

Nicely balancing these almost mystical aesthetic riffs are the down-to-earth and comic performances of the play's supporting characters. Misty Demory and Eric M. Messner are endearing as Evelyn's wise though worried parents, and Joe Brack and Rex Daugherty lark about rowdily as her brothers. All four actors double in other roles: Most amusingly, Brack portrays a puttering, wheezing doctor; Messner depicts a newspaper editor with a cynical eye for human-interest stories; and Daugherty hits cartoonish villain mode as a pessimistic career counselor ("Why not be an accountant?").

At other times, the ensemble members function as a chorus, channeling fragments of Evelyn's wistful memories -- a device that proves more atmospheric and dynamic than a straight monologue might have been. In the wrong hands, Glennie's story could easily have acquired the forced, one-note optimism of a motivational speaker's favorite anecdote. But as dramatized by Way and directed by Stanford, it brims with orchestral theatricality.

Playing From the Heart, by Charles Way. Directed by Janet Stanford; lighting/projection designer, Robert Brown; costumes, Jenn Larsen; properties, Nikki Cammack; choreography, Krissie Marty. Open captioned. About 90 minutes. Through Nov. 30 at Imagination Stage's Christopher and Dana Reeve Studio Theatre, 4908 Auburn Ave., Bethesda. Call 301-280-1660 or visit http://www.ImaginationStage.org.