Theater Review: Peter Marks on One-Act Plays by Stoppard and Kathleen Akerley

In the flea market of the modern theater, it takes a heck of a lot of moxie to lay down your wares right next to those of the contemporary master Tom Stoppard. So you have to regard Washington director Kathleen Akerley as one of the gutsy ones, as she presents her own original play, "The Oogatz Man," as the opener for Stoppard's mischievous one-act, "Artist Descending a Staircase."

The two pieces are the offerings of Akerley's company, Longacre Lea, which is in its annual summertime perch at Catholic University's Callan Theatre. The pairing is a noble attempt at symmetry: One play uses the enjoyment of music, the other the pursuit of art, as a thematic launching pad. And the works share a lively sensibility, in the ways they shrug off narrative convention to convey a familiar type of story in a novel way.

Still and all, the longish double bill makes for -- surprise! -- a rather imbalanced experience, with Stoppard's work -- surprise, again! -- the far more invigorating half of the program. While it's gauche to show up for a performance at intermission, on this occasion the theatrical capital spent after the break is the safer investment.

Though Akerley's play has promisingly playful interludes, "Artist Descending a Staircase" provides a more nourishing comic trajectory. First presented in the early 1970s as a radio play, the work carries Stoppard's signature of breathtaking invention, even if it's not one of his meatiest efforts. That's because it is in essence a densely plotted march to a single punch line -- a rewarding joke for sure, but a stunt all the same.

The shape of the play is as vital as the story, for "Artist" is built as if it were a staircase, the plot metaphorically scaling a set of steps and then retracing each of them on the way back to a witty resolution. It takes the form of a mystery, having to do with the discovery of a body at the bottom of a staircase of an aging avant-garde artist (Eric M. Messner) by his two friends and rivals (Jason Lott and Michael John Casey). After Lott's Beauchamp and Casey's Martello accuse each other of the foul deed, the tale starts to spin chronologically in reverse, presumably to illuminate the motives each might have had to rub out his comrade.

Because the play is, on many levels, about drawing the wrong conclusion -- especially as it concerns the amorous choices of a blind woman (Heather Haney) desired by all of the friends -- the audience is as oblivious to the dramatist's intent as his agitated characters. Akerley and her co-director Caitlin M. Smith engagingly lead the actors through the Stoppardian maze, although perhaps some unintended confusion is sewn in the casting of the three artists' younger selves, who don't seem to match up temperamentally with the characters' older incarnations.

Lott, Casey and Messner all nicely convey the antagonisms of well-traveled friendships, and Haney is a fetching Sophie, the young woman who may or may not have made a whopper of a romantic mistake. Then again, no one in this theatrical sting operation seems to be a reliable judge of anything.

In the opening playlet, "The Oogatz Man," Akerley explores the chaotic thought processes of Thomas (Messner again), a young man trying to summon the courage to break off with Haney's Kelly on the occasion of their eight-month anniversary. The playwright's metier is music, and more to the point, the heavy-metal output of bands like Metallica that Thomas claims means more to him than a girlfriend ever could.

At this stage, Akerley has not puzzled out clearly enough the divisions in her play between the real and the hallucinogenic: the practicalities of modern love, versus the properties of modern music, that inspire the piece's metaphysical flights. (The denizens of Thomas's apartment house appear to him in incongruous situations, as if they themselves were notes to be manipulated onsheet music.) In this sparely staged, hour-long play she has given herself a tall order, one perhaps that might require the imaginative intervention of someone like the author of "Artist Descending a Staircase."

Artist Descending a Staircase, by Tom Stoppard, and The Oogatz Man, by Kathleen Akerley. Directed by Akerley and Caitlin M. Smith. Sets, Elizabeth Jenkins McFadden; lighting, John Burkland; costumes, Gail Stewart Beach; original music and sound, Neil McFadden. With Richard Owens, Daniel Vito Siefring, Abby Wood, Michael Glenn, Tom Carman. About 2 hours 45 minutes. Through Sept. 13 at Callan Theatre, 3801 Harewood Rd. NE. Visit http://www.longacrelea.org or call 202-460-2188.