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MINI REVIEWS
A star (*) denotes a show recommended by our critics.
Newly Reviewed
BRAINPEOPLE
By Rorschach Theatre at the Davis Performing Arts Center, Georgetown University, through July 26
Some plays look just plain hard as you watch them being performed, and José Rivera's is one of them. The setting is a futuristic dystopia, the plot unfolds in real time during a 90-minute dinner party and one of the guests suffers from a spectacular case of multiple personality disorder. It's a grim and quirky quest to bend time, as an adult orphan continues to grieve for her long-dead parents. The dinner's hostess, Mayannah (Regina Aquino), is a wealthy survivor of a society that's apparently under siege (the details are sketchy, but there is a curfew, with raids and sirens heard just outside); she has offered $20,000 to strangers Rosemary (Monalisa Arias, the one with split personalities) and Ani (Amanda Thickpenny, comparatively mousy and heartbroken) if they can handle her meal all the way through dessert. The lucid ending doesn't entirely validate the foggy ride, though, which ultimately plays like a twisted tunnel of an orphaned girl's love.
-- Nelson Pressley
Friday and Thursday at 8. 37th and O streets NW. 202-452-5538 or http:/
THE MILLIONAIRESS
At Olney Theatre Center through July 19
Money has character in George Bernard Shaw's comedy and in the dazzling figure of Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga, it is seductive, efficient and utterly insufferable. "Can one live with a tornado?" cries Alastair, the champion boxer who gets bested at every turn by his ultra-rich wife, played with verve that's simultaneously appealing and daunting by Julie-Ann Elliott in this production, which whizzes along like an agreeably talky romantic comedy, a period piece with verbal panache. After an oddly hapless first act, the cast turns out to be awfully likable. As Alastair, James Denvil creates a subtly daffy portrait of a palooka with a flair for kiting checks. The comedy is a tour de force for Eppy, though, and Elliott strides through the massive role with magnetic energy and carefully measured flickers of warmth. She is iron fist and velvet glove, giving this pleasant show a supple punch.
