Unusual Guests at 'The Hotel Nepenthe'

The Hotel Nepenthe

By John Kuntz; Director, Scenic/Costume Designer, David Gammons; Lighting Designer, Jeff Adelberg; Sound Designer, Bill Barclay; Production Manager, Jason Ries; Stage Manager, L. Arkansas Light

CAST: Marianna Bassham, Daniel Berger-Jones, John Kuntz, Georgia Lyman

Presented by Actors' Shakespeare Project, Performances through March 6 at The Storefront in Davis Square, 255 Elm Street, Somerville, MA; Tickets at 866-811-4111 or www.actorsshakespeareproject.org

To go inside the mind of playwright John Kuntz is a little like stepping through the looking glass with Alice, or being in the zone with Rod Serling, or taking the wild ride with Mr. Toad. Whichever of these descriptions suits your fancy, rest assured that you will spend one fanciful night if you visit The Hotel Nepenthe, creatively imagined by the Actors' Shakespeare Project at The Storefront in Davis Square, Somerville, as part of the company's three-play Winter Festival. 

Imagined is the operative word here as the hotel does not physically exist in the world of the play. However, all of the sixteen or so characters use the Nepenthe (pronounced Ne-pen-thay)as a reference point in the countless vignettes played out on the cluttered platform stage cum dressing area. Kuntz, Marianna Bassham, Daniel Berger-Jones, and Georgia Lyman perform multiple, distinct roles and each makes a major contribution to the cohesiveness of the ensemble. Their characters are not so much written as sketched and it is up to them to provide details and shading with voice, body language, facial expressions, and quick costume changes. It is a credit to the actors' versatility that they successfully accomplish this feat, never leaving the audience to wonder which character is on the stage at any moment.

Among the cast of characters are a deadpan bellhop (Berger-Jones) toting an abandoned hatbox, hoping to find its owner at the rental car counter where a ditsy clerk (Bassham) watches too much television; a name-dropping starlet (Lyman); a senator's wife (Bassham) with a strange request for the prostitute (Lyman) she picks up; a taxi dispatcher (Kuntz) who wanted to be an astronaut; and a mysterious woman named Tabitha Davis. At the outset, most of these people are strangers to each other and the scenes they inhabit seem unrelated, but many of their dangling loose ends are eerily interconnected.  

As director and both scenic and costume designer, David Gammons takes full responsibility for how this show looks (other than Jeff Adelberg's mood-driven lighting design). A bathtub center stage is the focal point of a few key scenes and many props tossed seemingly at random on the floor get picked up to become important artifacts in someone's story. An upstage vertical wall separates four small dressing areas from the main stage, but allows us to watch as the actors morph from one character to another. There are also two video cams to record the action as it happens and project it on television monitors on either end of the stage, giving the play a cinematic quality. Sound designer Bill Barclay adds evocative music and many realistic effects as well, especially the crying tires and busting glass of a couple of incredibly coincidental car crashes.   

Although there are shades of Lewis Carroll, Serling, Stephen King, and maybe even a small debt to the mysterious Sleep No More, Kuntz's new play is not derivative in the least. It feels fresh and full of surprises due to its non-linear structure, but you must be patient and willing to free-float while waiting for the disparate threads to be woven into something that resembles whole cloth. Trust me, you will be rewarded in the end with a musical treat; and that's all I have to say about that.  

(The Winter Festival concludes with Jon Lipsky's Living in Exile, directed by Allyn Burrows, March 9 - March 20)

Photo: John Kuntz (by Stratton McCrady)