by Mike Hoban
The Hotel Nepenthe – Written by John Kuntz; Directed by Alex Lonati; Presented by The Brown Box Theatre March 2-11 at Atlantic Wharf, 290 Congress St., Boston; March 15th at Ella Fitzgerald Center for Performing Arts at U of Maryland at Eastern Shore; March 16th at The Milton Theatre, 110 Union St., Milton, DE; and March 17-18 at the Ocean City Center for the Arts, Ocean City, MD.
If you weren’t able to catch Brown Box Theatre’s wildly entertaining production of John Kuntz’ The Hotel Nepenthe at the Atlantic Wharf space, perhaps you can escape the snow and drive to Maryland/Delaware area to catch its final four performances this weekend (see above). And if you’re a fan of absurd (but remarkably coherent) theater, it just might be worth the trip. Kuntz weaves a series of imaginative vignettes – loosely centered around the upscale hotel of the play’s title – into an intertwined whole, and the results are often awe-inspiring.
The play is peppered with references to 60’s and 70’s TV shows like “Bewitched’’ and “The Odd Couple” (there’s even a character named Tabitha) and there’s an endless stream of samples from what sound like noir movies from the 40’s (not to mention a snippet from “The Wizard of Oz”), that are used as a kind of strange thread that binds the material together. Kuntz draws on his talent from his early days as a writer of comedy-themed works (Freaks, Starf*ckers) to produce some side-splitting comic segments, such as the insanely funny monologue by starlet Tabitha Davis (a wonderful Margaret Clark, who also played a distressed young mother and a hooker with equal aplomb) who details a night of partying and being seen with everyone from Owen Wilson to Osama bin Laden, the Pope and “all the dinosaurs”. But he offsets the comedy with some beautiful character sketches, including a profoundly touching scene with Cam Torres playing a taxi dispatcher (who wanted to be an astronaut) who still carries a torch for the girl that he had a crush on in high school – despite the fact that she perished in a horrible car crash on prom night.
Much of the material is very dark, with a pretty high body count for a mostly comic piece, and there are number of thumbnail sketches of some fairly unhinged characters, which gives the play its considerable weight and weirdness. What makes The Hotel Nepenthe work so beautifully however, is the work of its director Alex Lonati and the performances of her players. The transitions between the multiple scenes are seamless – no easy task when there is such a radical shift in the setting and tone of each piece. The performances by the actors are also exceptional.
In addition to Torres and Clark’s fine work, Michael Underhill excels with a string of low-status character roles, including a guy who, following an argument with a cab driver, stuffs him in the trunk of his own cab and drives around picking up fares. Rebecca Schneebaum gives a hilarious performance as a car rental agent with the hots for a gay bellhop, and is equally good in her role as a wealthy women who murders her husband – and then runs for Senate. It’s a shame that this production had such a short local run (and the opening night Nor’easter was no help) because it really deserved a wider audience. For info and tickets for the Maryland/Delaware performance, go to: https://brownboxtheatre.org/
